River Garden Studio

there is magic

 

 

 

 

 

 

this art that we love

 

"Watch Over Me"  is a new collage I began this week in a new art group that I started at my new school... originally it was to be an art club for a handful of 6th graders... but then some of my middle school students from last year,( and their mom!), found out about it and the group started to change.  

Another teacher asked me if maybe we didn't have to ask any of her students yet... so it was just the five of us... and on Thursday afternoon I found myself surrounded by these lovely art spirits... and I was renewed.

 

This week my son had a jazz festival up north... and I took this picture of him holding his stand up bass... he got home just in time for dinner... also renewed.  His music is to him as my art is to me...

 

Here he is playing his mandolyn that he bought for himself with money he earned this summer.  He picked it up amazinly fast...

 

This is Mandy... now in 9th grade... from our art group... I loved watching her design her page... thinking and pausing... It is wonderful to me how we all approach design so differently... some more intuative... some more planned... some just bursting with ideas...

I began the group by talking about art journaling... and I put out some supplies... pages from a calligraphy book, old maps, graph paper and colored bits and pieces from my scrap drawer... I showed them how to use medium... and from that point there was no holding back... next week I am going to have them carve some stamps and sew into their pieces...

 

These are the hands of Trish... tomorrow I will take a picture of her project and show it to you here...

 

And some of the little girls in my class...jumping and throwing crunchy yellow leaves at recess...

 

I worked on pages in my "barely there" book that was a gift from Lynne... She is now selling them at her amazing heArt shop at Etsy... The muslin pages are so much fun to work on... and the way her textures come through is wonderful.

 

And to make my week even better I received this glorious necklace in the mail from Kathleen... I won her giveaway!  The postcards are of her own art work as well... her collages are beautiful...

 

And a new canvas...small... called "I am by the river." The house is one I painted that sits across the river... and the bird a swallow that I painted last weekend, cut out and found a home for here...

welcome november days

The maple tree out front is losing it's leaves... bird feeders hang empty and need to be filled...

The chair poses between our bedroom and my studio...

The birches in the side garden turn yellow.  Long ago my mother gave these trees to us.  She had grown them from saplings from her own trees.  They were only a few feet tall then.

The little wicker chair gets more worn in the cool air and bright light of each day.

The old rusty rake leans over... hoses still need to be stored away...

and my new students make leaf rubbings over words we brainstormed of what leaves do in the autumn.  Leaves are... floating... drifting... flying... dancing...

and they examine seeds and leaves from my garden and theirs...

 

A new day... 

a gift.

a visitor to our front yard...

he returns the next day with his family...

and I work on this painting/collage... the background is layer after layer of gels and gesso... I tried it a blue-green... but it seems to want to be whitish... I had to move to the kitchen counter for this project... I'm not completely finished yet... it is like open pages of memories... but not mine.  I have never been to Italy....

and i make messy pages in a journal that began as only writing...

I was writing about how my world as an artist had blended so seamlessly together... and how with my new job it was as if each part of my life was separate... my teaching, my art, my family, my father...

Bringing plants from home and designing my own lessons for my studens helped bring the pieces of my life together again...

And blogging has kept my art alive during my adjustment these last few months. Thank you my dear blogging friends and art spirits... for sending love, encouragement and passion.

yellow

Yellow... the color of the my world right now in Oregon and most of North America. The color of our great sun... fields of grain and wild grass... The color of courage... strength... healing...

 

I can feel the strength, the love... the glow...

 

open the glass door to the October morning...

 

yellow is in the details... a part of red... a part of green.

 

the color of warmth...

 

And on this yellow day new projects begin...

 

I make a new arrangement on my desk honoring the season...

 

and work on painting that I began a long time ago...

 

Yellow is the heavy head of a sunflower ...filled with it's wooden seeds... bent and golden.

And yellow is in my traveling paint box... my colored pencils and my rice papers... I am not sure what I will do with the background...

 

and I'm not sure what this week will bring... but I hope it will be filled with wonder and energy and warmth... and the power to live my life with grace.

October winds

The winds today are gentle... but strong enough the whoosh through the trees and stong enough to send yellow leaf after leaf swirling around my house and through my mind.  

They land in a sheltered spot and rest... and my thoughts rest....and I think of other times... 

I remember being a serious little girl... standing bundled up next to the large black stroller with my brother inside, wrapped in a blanket... I was watching over him, with my one hand inside the stroller keeping warm on his chest, feeling his warmth. I remember leaves floating on water, parks with fountains in the autumn... New York or Germany or London?  

And always moving in the fall, finding new homes... making my own special place... on front steps or under a tree, at a desk under a window, drawing and painting even then. 

Walking across pale gold fields in countryside of England, the wild grass was taller than me... we stumbled across two lovers kissing, so wrapped up in their love...and then my mother hurried us away...

Why do we remember certian things when we do... is there a secret we want to discover... a mystery to solve?

I had three days off this weekend.  Time to wander around the garden.  Collecting things. Moist yellow leaves and dried flowers going to seed.  Gifts for another year...

 

 

 

time to paint...my brush swirling in a bowl of water and spriraling across the page of rough watercolor paper.

 

 

 

a page in my watercolor sketchbook...  

 

and I work on a collage, (maybe even finish it)... I call it "Lost Nights." I began it this summer at my workshop with Nick Bantock.  It is not joyous... and the colors aren't the vibrant autumn hues that I see outside of my window...   

the October winds are here... take time to remember... time to hold an autumn leaf in your hand and let it imprint itself into your mind...

take time

My newest collage..."breathe."  It started flat.  I liked the design but it needed more... so I made a grid and threaded some twine and began to weave...

Here it is before the weaving.

 

and a close up before the weaving...

 

and a small assemblage...

and another collage... still stiching and weaving... the leaves are watercolored and the background is made with oil sticks.  As usual you can click on each photo to see more texture... I don't know what to call this one...

 

This morning I slept late and made promises to myself...

 

On this day I will see the light...

 

Here is a watercolor page I did last weekend when I had a re-lapse of my cold.  I find painting watercolors of the natural world comforting... and easier in many ways than making collages.

These are creatures that are here... except the ram which used to live on the cliffs to the south-east ... and my interpretation of ancient Pueblo rock painting.

 

On this day I will take time to see the light. 

I will hold up my hair and feel the blue shower water drum on my back.

I will let my hair dry in the sun and let it curl the way it wants to.

I will be free in my art...

 

I will love my home and my family

and appreciate all that is good on this earth.

 

On this day I hope you feel the light.

transitions

The transition between summer and autumn seems to be effortless.  Each day brighter colors appear in the trees. Slowly leaves start to fall.  Seeds fly through the garden.  Mother earth says,  "soon it is time for me to sleep...listen... watch..."

Time for my art is so precious... and now only a few hours on a Sunday... On these pages of my barely there journal I took the designs that Lynne had created and accented them...

This piece, "transition" makes me think of so much... the pleated skirts I wore as a little girl... the oak trees in the Santa Monica mountains where I spent hours hiking as a teenager... the tiger lilies in the redwood forests that I collected and drew for my natural resource professor in college, (I even got paid!), my love of words... that I need more time, but really I know that I need to live in each moment

I am making the transition in my teaching... not as effortlessly as the seasons...

I need to learn so much, there is so much to prepare and so little time.  I tell myself I can do this...

The Humming birds have migrated south.  Only one little wooden bird hanging from my studio curtain is left.  Taunting my cat... I imagine her thinking,  little bird... are you really real?

 

This is a set of two collages I made for an assignment for the Nick Bantock's workshop that I took in July.  He had us cut up old Punch and Judy cartoons to make two collages.  One how we used to feel, one how we feel now... (this could be from any time in the past).  

I wanted my cards to say how I felt as an art teacher... and how I felt to lose that position.  I am hoping that soon the "lament" piece will be the past and the "passion" will be the present again.  I had a hard week. This week will be better....

she raised her hand... and touched autumn

On this day I am quietly celebrating autumn...

  

After being sneezed and coughed on for two weeks by seven year olds, I finally came down with a horrible cold... 

so today is a cherished sick day... and I start to feel better... 

I have time to reflect, time to rejuvenate, time to rest.

What gifts does Autumn bring to you? 

 

Autumn brings to me golden hues and flickering shadows...

a morning to play with paints and collage... 

an afternoon to nap... I think of the river and all it has meant to me

watercoloring... trying to lay color over color... and not to scrub...

and that I am at peace with my new job... my new role...

and I dream a quiet dance to Autumn...

I bring inside flowers from my garden... 

I think I love the asters the most.

and I finish my newest collage:

"she raised her hand... and touched autumn"

september breeze

I came home a few days ago to a wonderful package from my dear friend, Lynne filled with treasures... some old maps, some beautiful cards with butterflies from China, magazine called Heron Dance Art Studio... it is filled with beautiful art and poetry... and they even have a website!

And most special of all were these individually wrapped beads... I only wish my photograph could do them justice...

I have been making stamps, trying to get the effect of old tiles in European churches.... very fun...

And working on new pages in my Be the Light journal... here I was just beginning... and you can see other pages  here and here. 

"september breeze"

And new pages in my "barely there" journal, a handmade muslin book made also by Lynne, she gave it to me when I visited her during the summer.

I have used two of the Chinese butterflies from the cards Lynne sent me  in this book already, a photo copy of the background of a Klimt painting.... (the colors reminded me of fall and butterflies), and a little boy that was a scanned image of a painting I did in college.  

"Autumn Prayer"

this is my river morning

These mornings when I drive over the bridge that crosses the Klamath River hundreds of White Pelicans fly over me... landing in the water north before the river bends and journeys out to sea.

Before the bursts of color that will surround us in just a few weeks, honey and butter colored fields fill the river lands.  The only greens are the irrigated fields and the pines of the mountains.

The tips of the wild grasses are like antique lace.

Shadows are lacy too... dark and light... brown and gold.

White glistens like little stars...

The morning sun climbs into the textured sky. 

Flowers dry... still beautiful to me.

Light refracts on walls... a tunnel into the sunrise.

...this is my river morning...

Self portrait ingredients:  multiple layers of acrylic paints, matt medium and gloss medium, collaged birds, a photo copy of a sketch of my mothers, altered and painted over,(she later made large watercolors of her sketches...) 

may the blessing of the sun shine upon you

These three sculptures are ones that I saw at the Hanson Howard Gallery in Ashland, Oregon earlier this month.  The artists that created them are Robin and John Gumaelius from Washington State.  You can see a video of all of their work here.

To me these figures have such a strong connection to nature.  And represent the balancing act we try to achieve in our lives, and all the emotions that we feel during one year, one day or one moment.  

My emotions are in check... I have a new job, at a sweet school in Klamath Falls teaching second graders.  This week has been quite wild, moving classrooms, saying good bye to my art room and old friends. Making new ones.

Meanwhile my garden has  been flourishing... flowers growing taller and taller and then bending over...

My gardening gloves patiently wait to work in the dirt again.

My cat... watching humming birds dart everywhere...

Me grinning at my son, welcoming the end of summer and new challenges... 

 

A sneak peak at a new canvas that will be published in Pasticcio Quartz in the late fall... then I can show you the whole thing...

And new pages in my "barely there" journal... that I photographed outside under the maple.  The flickering light through the leaves from the late afternoon made it hard to find a place to take this photograph... but what a beautiful afternoon it is.  

"May the blessed sunlight shine upon you and warm your heart till it glows."

blue waters

A few days ago I drove across the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge to see Lynne.  The road I took is called State Line Highway... one side of it is in California, the other Oregon... the waters seemed extra blue that day.

We shared art projects, I love these windows in one of her journals, I tried to capture the vibrant colors here for you to see. 

I took pictures of Lynne walking on her trail by the creek.  She is like a sprite in the forest, so quick and graceful.  So sure footed even in flip-flops...

We walked along Rush Creek, which her land follows.  This area is still moist and lush.  Beauty everywhere, natural and manmade.

"She began to sing"

These are two other pages I loved in one of her linen traveling journals.  The browns in the trees are amazing, (click for a closer view). 

My heart was singing too, just to be out in nature and away from worries.

You can see more of her work and about our day here.

We came to "the green shrine tree". This beautiful old tree was hollowed out, I think by lightening, and she found these old tins and glass inside of it....

This is the tree flag she made especially for this day, this tree.

Walking back she showed me a special spot of her creek, where she had hung another flag...

Overlooking this part of the creek she had beautiful beads hanging from the limbs of the pines.  She said they were not her best, from her days as a bead maker, and I could have any I wanted... to me they were beautiful... new treasures.

I threaded them on these branches...

And these... oh I love these... I will wear them happily... the longer beads are fish and remind me of the water at rush creek.

This is one of her walls in her studio...

and a corner where she sits in the evenings...

She gave me this beautiful Barely There book that she made.  I already started working in it...

The pages I have almost finished... I found that I could easily collage on the pages using matt medium, stamps, and acrylic paint loved the surface... thank you so much Lynne!

New pages in another journal.  The pencil sketch on the left is a copy of one that my mother had done of my daughter and I, and the photo's on the left of the three of us, when Amanda was about in the fourth grade.  I have been cutting out words out of old paperbacks and making poems out of them.

These pages give me comfort.  

Although this summer has had beautiful moments, like my day with Lynn ... it has been hard for me.  I still don't have a teaching assignment for September... First, the sadness of losing my art job and now this uncertainty has been driving me crazy!

"before the sun takes leave" and "underneath the sky"

And a second painting for my "branch out" series.  You can see my my first here...(you have to scroll down a bit).

This is called "dance upon the earth."

And finally, a sneak peek at the pages I did for Jill's book in our collaborative book exchange for Inner Works... they took me quite a long time to get just "right" and I loved working on them. This beautiful book is on it's way to lovely Rita right now.

May your midsummer days be filled with soft breezes and clear blue waters.