A Musing Artful Meanders

Completing the Puzzle

2008-05-05T13:36:01Z

One of the last things I had to do before heading for the plane to Spain was to complete a puzzle with fourteen, very cool women.
The Vermont Arts Council has a new mega community arts project. It's the next progression from the Palettes of Vermont Project two years ago where 40,000 artists and individuals from school kids to grandparents participated painting a palette. This year's project, Art Fits, consists of thousands of puzzle pieces made of fine maple veneer. Adults who choose to participate will receive a wooden puzzle piece, and school kids will have one made of high quality paper.
Needless to say, when my very good friend Carol Fjeld asked me to do a

Puzzleplann

culminating activity for the Mother-Daughter book club that she helped organize nine years ago, joining in on Art Fits was the PERFECT project. These young women have been meeting regularly, choosing and discussing great books & sharing wonderful activities, with each other and their mothers, since they were in 4rth grade. Now they're all graduating and heading out into the world. I was honored to be their grand finale.
We met on a Friday night. Since it was a one shot project- we only had one evening to complete it- I had some ideas ready for them, and they went with an interlocking hands suggestion. It was a productive, creative and fun evening. Now they will always share one more tiny piece of the puzzle that is their lives, as they head out into the larger world.

Abbiemma

I was looking to link the Art Fits name to the blog, and in the process came upon a VAC webcast that tells the story of the palettes wonderfully. I'm even in the video, in quick glimpses several times at the various functions. It also tells the story of how Brandon, our little Vermont town, became a poster child for the creative economy. The whole state is on the bandwagon now, but we got it rolling in 2002 with our Really Really Pig Show. Here's the video connection: Art Fits

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Barcelona or Bust

2008-05-04T09:21:52Z

Calla-luna

Finished Calla Luna... my contribution to this year's Brandon Artists Guild project. A 21" square box which I upended into a cube so now it is about 70" tall. It's covered with calla lilies and luna moths in a magical moonlit vista, and is free standing thanks to the help of my friend Dick Kirby who is a magician with metal.

Now to prepare for Barcelona and Farrera.
a two week residency in the Pyrenees with a few days in Barcelona before. I am thrilled and terrified....
Meanwhile...

Getting out the door is always grueling and intense... These weeks have been so packed with deadlines and expectations I can hardly contemplate a time where there is time to contemplate. Gathering tools and reference imagery so that I can actually work while I am there adds another level of complexity.
There won't be any running to the store for supplies.
I won't have a vehicle and the Centro d'Art i Natura is very isolated.

Gotta get it right the first time.

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Growth and learning...

2008-04-16T03:46:55Z

The Art of Making Paste Papers

I am learning all the time.
The tombstone will be my diploma.

-Eartha Kitt
Working with children; sharing the learning process at its very beginning is an education and delight unto itself. So fresh and full of promise and discovery.

Holding the pencil strangely really helps

I've spent the last week with a wonderful group of young students in the

Getting ready to paint

studio. It's fun, it's satisfying. What unique ideas they come up with: young & old; naive and sophisticated. Growth is visible, tangible and exciting.
We worked with paint in a variety of ways, both watercolor and acrylic, and also worked with combed and stamped paste papers. My first time doing that, so it truly was a learning experience for me as well.

Now I am eager for an immersion into color.
Both on the canvas, and in the world. Spring is just barely beginning to awaken in Vermont. I know the azaleas and cherries are blooming a few hours south of here, but we still have snow in the shadows in our woodland home.
Spring travels north 16 miles a day.

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The powerful tides of cyber-change

2008-04-08T21:14:50Z

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
-Andy Warhol
This is such a fascinating process, Alyson Stanfield's brilliant Blog tour...
It's a book promotion, but also an education. I have enjoyed and learned so much reading the queries and responses that are being posted on the various blogs. Todays was on http://pocketfullofcolors.blogspot.com, the blog of Robin Maria Pedrero, a Florida artist who paints imagery with powerful pastel colors.
I already have Alyson's book,and it is a terrific, informative resource for the artist trying to figure out how to step forward in the world. There's a link to where you can get her book on my blog.
To travel along on the blog tour, go to http://www.artbizblog.com and sign up!
Pretty amazing how the world becomes more and more connected through cyber space.

Close Window

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Milky Way

2008-03-31T21:29:00Z

Flight I Milky Way

Explore.
Dream.
Discover.
-Mark Twain

What a brilliant man!

Pouring liquid colors, dark on light, luminous and translucent onto dark opaques, with interjections of texture, roughness, sparkle and energy.
It is quite a thrilling and entertaining exploration... Then comes the opportunity to juxtapose the details of life's complexity. Is it okay to have this much fun when I am working?
It's a good thing to have some flowing fun, and to labor less agonizingly every once in a while. My puritanical fore-mothers might not approve, but oh well...
I'm going for it, especially on this dismally gray New England day.
Brandon is ever-so quiet, hunkering down in glowering hibernation mode, yearning for the first green shoot to emerge from the dingy snowbanks.
Spring happens.
Eventually.

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Carson, New Mexico, March 2008

2008-03-31T03:45:57Z

Carson, New Mexico, 87517

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars-- where no human race is
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

-Robert Frost

It's so hard to explain how Carson draws me.
Even explaining it to myself is difficult. A place of simplicity for me, of vastness and survival. It doesn't frighten me, as Frost suggests. I am full of serenity when I am there, saturated by the scent of the sage; reveling in the brilliant light which illuminates the desert's excruciating demands, exquisite details and challenges. I'm challenged to look inward, and to be completely present in the moment.
It's a huge relief.
So much simpler than real life.
Me estira mi querencia... a phrase I learned in Paraguay. I am drawn, stretched and elongated in spirit towards that which I love... These vistas emerge in my art here in New England, 1500 miles away, 38 years after living there.
In this photo, taken in March I am painting in my front patio there... if that's what one can call a circle of eroded walls sprouting overgrown sage, russian thistle and grama grass.
The painting was not much, but it is the first I've done there in ever so long.

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Marlboro Arts Spring 2008

2008-03-20T21:54:08Z

Marlboro booth

The Paradise City Arts show at Marlboro was beautiful. A fascinating collection of beautiful work in every medium. I was so pleased to be included. The clientele was very appreciative of the quality, originality and diversity of the art as well.
I had put off making new covers for my booth grids, and then had trouble finding enough fabric. Thank goodness two knowledgeable friends helped me organize the sewing project and sewed and pinned many yards of the 47 that had to be assembled! Thanks so much to Karen Schneider and her friend Diane... It would have been an all nighter instead of a home at 3 am morning.
Then it was off to set up the show, and be there for the next 3 days...
An excellent time, in an excellent location, meeting excellent artists. Great response to the work as well.
Then, after arriving home in Vermont on Sunday evening late, I discovered on Monday morning that I was leaving for New Mexico that afternoon instead of Tuesday as I had thought. Forget unpacking!
Catch the plane!

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Dreamweaver Daze Part II

2008-03-09T19:24:26Z

The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

or if you choose to see the world through the eyes of my favorite comic cynic:

Life is like a sewer.
What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
-Tom Lehrer

Comparable thought, different metaphor.
It's been a week since I struggled with the indecision as to whether I should attempt to undertake an online course. It was NOT easy getting going. The good news is I seem to be swimming rather than sinking. http://www.petemyers.net is the current result, and I'm pretty pleased with it for a starting project. There is much to be done, but at least now that I'm over the first hurdle of understanding how to make it look the way I want it to- at least sort of.

Meanwhile, there are still two commissions in process, and I am VERY EXCITED about some new breakthroughs with surface treatment on the canvas. And the Marlboro, Massachussetts show is next weekend. We'll be setting up on Thursday, and I'm there until Sunday. Long days in the booth chatting with lots of people. At least I hope that's how it will be!

At least life isn't boring.

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Leaping into an Artful Event: Celebrating the Effort

2008-03-05T03:06:45Z

I don't wait for moods.
You accomplish nothing if you do that.
Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
- Pearl Buck

Pete in the Framing studio

Hanging a new show is a demanding process, and this one was doubly, triply, astonishingly intense.
Uncommon View, Photos by John Peterson Myers renewed a standard of accomplishment for us in the gallery and frame shop. Pete arrived on Saturday February 24. By Friday the 29th- Leap Day 2008, we had framed nearly 60 of his fabulous photos, and hung 33 of them all beautifully. The others will be hung in Charlottesville for his opening this Friday night at the Mudhouse.
All of this took place between his lectures at Middlebury, Green Mountain and Castleton Colleges on environmental health. Jim steadfastly kept the matting and framing process going at an amazing and exacting pace. He is a perfectionist with a great sense of subtle color. Pete and I would jump on board when we returned from the hallowed halls of academia, matting, cutting the glass, cleaning the pieces, assembling, etc into the night. Pete emerged from this process as an excellent framer as well, having traveled from Charlottesville with his matt cutter in the back seat. Precision suits him.

The opening was well attended with a crowd of people arriving from Shelburne, Poultney, Ripton and all the mountain nooks and crannies in between. It was a gathering of wonderful thinkers, and articulate do-ers. Much fun, and amazing conversation.

A corner of the show... there were lots more

In the photo with the three of us you can't see all the red dots... for those uninitiated in the ways of the art world, red dots denote sales... one form of public validation of the work. It was a success in every way...

Pearl Buck speaks to the reality that an artist can't wait for the muse to murmur in their ear. We must leap into the creative act, and persevere.

And for some reason we do.

And yet, we can't forget how important it is to take the time to celebrate the effort.

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The Thrill isn't gone...

2008-03-05T02:51:34Z

Walking into an art supply store is far better than walking into a candy shop for me. This afternoon I was in Boston at Pearl Paint on Mass Ave... Shelves of art supplies arrayed like candy tempting and delighting me. Sadly I already have most of what I need... or fortunately. But that doesn't take away the pleasure of looking at it all and dreaming about new experiments with color and texture.

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