Thanksgiving

pumpkin by Marnie Fordice

I hope you each have a wonderful, joyful, and blessed Thanksgiving Day. We each have so much to be grateful for...the love of family and friends, and the basics of life such as shelter, food, and clothing... and hope.

God bless each of you.

How I Spent My Weekend

Cannon Beach Post Office

I've often stopped in local post offices and asked to have a page stamped in my sketchbook; this is the first time that I've been told that I have to buy a stamp in order to have them use the cancellation stamp! So I bought a penny stamp. I rather like the addition of the stamp so I'll probably buy one every time from here on out.

Haystack Rock - Cannon Beach, OR

Shadow walking

Kelp grows as underwater forests which are easily dislodged by storms. This kelp bundle, along with 6 others, was on the beach after last week's storm.

Tops

Roots

Today the sun disappeared and hail on the beach drove us homeward. Snow above 1000 feet.

Here's a little video of my snowy drive home. 

Life is Short

photo by Jo Reimer

Please visit my online friend Bren of eSynergy whose post today points to an essay by David Duchemin called Life is Short. In that moving post and the one following he says

"...life is short and no one is going to live

my life on my behalf.

And one day soon my candle will burn out;

I want it to burn hot and bright while it’s still lit.

I want it to light fires and set others ablaze.

Life is short. Live it now.

And live it with all your strength and passion now.

Don’t keep it in reserve against a day you might not have.

While the ember is still lit, fan it to flame.

Be bold about it, even if your circumstances mean

all you have is to love and laugh boldly."

Thanks, Bren, for the introduction to David's essay on living life to the fullest.  I find it so interesting how God works things together in this life and how through a connection to someone I've never met he brings the answer I was searching for. 
 
David also asks his readers to complete the sentence:

 

"Life is short and therefore I will....."

 

That's my journal prompt for today.

STRUCTURE, FREEDOM, and CREATIVITY

What Shall I Do

journal page

9x9"

I subscribe to Lisa Call’s blog, partly because she’s a fiber artist who makes art quilts as I once did, but mostly because of how she thinks about her work and life.  In her last few posts she’s talked about accountability, goals, and structure, topics which hit home with me as I’ve been struggling for awhile with those same issues.

She quoted Jon Stewart who said “I’m a real believer in that creativity comes from limits, not freedom. Freedom, I think you don’t know what to do with yourself. But when you have a structure, then you can improvise off it and feel confident enough to kind of come back to that.”

I would phrase it differently for myself: Creativity blooms within limits. Too much freedom leaves me not knowing what to do with myself, but when my days are structured I’ve given myself focused time within which I can be even more creative.

Haven’t you noticed how busy people get more done?  “If you want to get a job done give it to a busy woman”. I’ve been that busy woman who gets a lot done, but right now it’s not happening because I haven’t much structure in my life. I don’t have a paying job; I don't work to sell the art I make; I’m not involved in structured volunteerism other than marginally; I don’t answer to anyone for what I make, other than dinner every night and that’s loose, too. I’ve given up my one-time habit of setting 1- and 5-year goals and breaking them down into daily and weekly action items. And I don’t accomplish much… certainly not as much as I know I’m capable of doing or as much as I want to do.

Do any of you feel like that about your own life? Do you wish you could accomplish more? Do large swaths of time pass with nothing to show for it?   I know I'm not alone.

I thought blogging would help, that I’d feel accountable to you readers and get the work done and then write about it, but you’re all so nice that almost no one questions why I haven’t been writing. I can’t put blame on you… it’s me who’s given up doing what needs to be done. I feel lazy, in a bad way.

What would happen if I set weekly studio, art business, and personal goals?

What if I wrote them down every Sunday evening and revisited them the next week and checked off the completed items?

What if I had a section in my Planner for goals and a to-do list with a yellow highlighter that I use to mark completed items?

What if my life had structure?

Jo

The Sketchbook Project – The Beginning and The End

I’m finished!  The title page is complete and the end page is done, too. I haven’t touched the cover and may not do so. It’ll take a lot of handling once it’s back at The Art House/The Brooklyn Art Library and I'm thinking that it's good as is... a simple red cover... maybe with the title stamped across the front. We'll see. And now that I see the ending page published in this post I see that I need to write something more across the top of the photos.

The Sketchbook Project 2011 will be on tour in the USA starting in March and appearing in the following places: Brooklyn, NY - Austin, TX - San Francisco, CA - Portland, ME - Atlanta, GA - Chicago, IL - Washington, DC - Winter Park, FL - Seattle, WA

The Sketchbook Project - Beaverton Farmer's Market

Beaverton Farmer's Market



My routine from May through October is to attend the Beaverton Farmer's Market early on Saturday morning. I buy a pastry from Grand Central Baking Co., buy a cup of coffee and find a bench next to the fountains in the park and do a bit of people watching before actually shopping.

This market is unique in that there are no crafts allowed other than those which are food related such as jams, fruit vinegars, desserts to go and gorgeous floral arrangements. The lanes are lined with around 100 kiosks selling produce, dairy, and meats/seafood direct from the grower.

I take lots of photos of people and produce and color, but at the last market day, shown above, the colors of the surrounding trees were amazing. My camera battery went out after just 2 photos so I ran home to get my dSLR and returned record the incredible color.

The Sketchbook Project - Eastern Oregon

Eastern Oregon

Here's the spread with a photo taken in Pendleton last May showing a wide landscape of fields and a big sky. I found just the right green washi paper to extend the grasses in the left foreground and other bits of papers to extend the fields on either side of my photo. 

The Sketchbook Project - Central Oregon

It seems like more than 2 weeks since I last posted and I'm pushing myself to get at least one post written this weekend. This is Central Oregon, high desert country that's surrounded by mountains and topped with blue sky, a land of lakes and rivers, fields of crops, and wildlife of all kinds.  My intention for next week is to finish this Sketchbook Project.

  

My visits with family and old friends was SO good. While in Dallas my cousins and I went to the Dallas Aboretom and were amazed by the unique uses of squash and pumpkins in the Storybook Pumpkin Village. It was an orange colored vacation.

Everywhere I turned there was orange... trees, pumpkins, and the orange shirts of tens of thousands of Oklahoma State Cowboys. It was a blast to go back for homecoming and visit with college friends. We stayed with my friend from long ago and talked a bit of old times but mostly about who we are today.

In Arkansas we ate barbeque at my favorite place and in my home town we went to Pop's Pond and got in some target practice...

                                           

It was nice to see that I can still hit my target with my dad's old 22.

Quick sketch done at the local airport while my brother worked on his Ultralight, the one that broke a wheel off during an unscheduled landing.

And yes, I did do some sketching here and there. But I find it hard to make art when I'm with people; I need solitude to concentrate on drawing and I preferred to talk with those I love rather than mess with art making. I have plenty of time for that but never enough time for faraway family. However, I took lots of photos to remind me of happy times.

Jim entering his shed

Pondering the Possibilities

When I was a child in a small town in Arkansas my phone number was 255. That's it. Three little numbers. Then it became 3255, and eventually 501-6__-3255. Progress, I guess. Now I look for those numbers and photograph them when I find them. I also photograph other numbers that are the same as phone numbers or house numbers of the homes in which I've lived.  7770. 2420. 1073. 643. Like that. Someday I'll use them in a journal that's all about HOME.

I'll get to see my home in Arkansas next week when I visit my brother. Family no longer lives there but it's like a pilgramage for me when I return to my home town, a time for remembering the people and events that shaped my life and to give thanks to God for them.  Do you ever do that? Or is it only me because I'm so far away and returning happens infrequently.

If there are numbers on the house I'll take a picture.

We recently spent a couple of days at the beach and hit the weather just right. I set up a card table on the deck and worked in the sun on my journal.

Below is an industrial building in Portland that the owners have painted with consideration to their across the street neighbors. The colors give me ideas for a painting or a collage.

I'll be traveling for the next couple of weeks and will probably ignore blogging. If you've subscribed you'll know when I'm back. My intention as I travel is to capture lots of pictures of houses and trees because I want to focus on those subjects for awile in my journals, paintings, sketchbooks, and daily collages. Maybe telling you about it will make me accountable.

Travel Journal - October 2010

Cover

8x10

I'm building a new journal for an upcoming trip back to my old stompin' grounds. I used Teesha Moore's directions for her 16 page journal which is constructed from 2 sheets of Fabriano Artistico 140# watercolor paper, torn in thirds and sewn together. 
The size of the journal is just right for my carry-on luggage and the format allows me to work however I want, though I have no definite plans. I've created some borders on most of the pages, added a few pictures to make it personal and I'm ready to go. Once I've completed this journal I intend to make a short video of it to show you how it looks completed.
Here are a couple of the ready-to-go pages:

The yellow flap folds back to give me blue pages to work on. I'll probably add more colors to this spread before I leave.

I've added pictures of my grandkids in the book so I can show off to family and friends along the way. This is Amy when she was 6 or 7, half her liftime ago.