Finds, loot, stash...from the Fancy Flea

From my last post, I had mentioned that I'd show you my snazzy finds from the Flea - so here they are...a lovely little chest of drawers in miniature size  (it's probably 18 inches tall, with little drawers).  All handpainted - you can see it on the left behind the blue candle.  Then, from the same artist, a handpainted candle holder to go with it all.  That's the one with the yellow circle with the dots on it.  So fab in the studio!

 Here we have a bumper set of chandelier crystals - just waiting to be transformed into some jewelry.  Or some "faux chandelier" treatments of my own.  See, I'd love to own a chandelier and decorate the studio with it, all Parisian attelier inspired and generally decadent.  But I live in a climate that only resembles Paris on the hottest days of summer - the Parisians install a "tropical beach" called the Paris Plage by the banks of the Seine in August just to try to make it bearable.  If you could get out of town, you would....and it's like that much of the year here.  So, practicality wins out, and a ceiling fan wins.  Doesn't have to look like an ordinary fan though.  And so hence, faux chandeliering - I'm slowly but surely adding bits of crystal on where I can and stringing it from other beads, and fishing line if that's what it takes.  Its as faux French as my command of the French language is...

 Now isn't he just looking all mysterious and evocative sitting on the top of the painted chest?

 and here it is, the piece de resistance...direct from the Fancy Flea...the typewriter.  You remember I said I was going to take a chance on buying it, because I wasn't really all that sure if it was going to work.  So last weekend, I took it out of its case (the original) and gave it a good once over with the eyeballs.  Well, pretty soon I could tell that a key seemed to be stuck in the operative position.  One that was not about to allow any other keys to do what keys were meant to do (i.e. strike paper.)   Other than this, however, it seemed to be in pretty good shape.  A couple of hours of typewriter research go by.

Who knew that there was a market for vintage typewriters in this age of technology?  Not I.  But, "Each man has his peculiar interests" to quote Lincoln, and so it goes with musty old office equipment also.  I found a place that repairs them about two hours from where I live.  Not really fancying the drive, but what can a seeker of art supplies (oh yes, that's why I wanted this baby to work, so I can use it for making vintage looking text to add to mixed media work) do?

Well, one invites one's handy husband to take a look at one's "new" typewriter.  So get this!  My husband - who took apart many of his family's appliances as a child and apparently reassembled most of them - fixed up the vintage typewriter for me!  He whisked it off to the garage, and emerged with it cleaned, oiled, and running beautifully.  I couldn't believe it.  I ordered it new ribbons this week - and it should be in pretty good shape at that point.  Particularly for a 75 year old machine.  Did you know there is a typewriter database?  Oui.  Mine is a 1936 Royal Model 0 standard portable typewriter; I'm very pleased with it.

The Fancy Flea

My new friend Kim, (who I just met this week - this very week! how fortunate am I?! ) is featured in the bible of artsy style Where Women Create magazine.  Because of her wonderful art blog Dear Daisy Cottage, I found out about a lovely, French-style flea market right in my hometown - Lakeland, Florida.

 

This pinnacle of gorgeous baubles and hip rediscovered treasures is called "The Fancy Flea" and what an apt name it is.  It's just like a flea market except much, much better because its filled with all the things that an artsy wacky chick such as myself needs.  Handpainted furniture, vintage chandelier drops, fashions from the early 60's, homegrown plants, handmade jewelry in unexpected jingles and luscious drops.

When I saw Kim's posts on previous Fancy Flea events, I thought, "well that must be in some wonderfully hip and totally artsy place, like Portland, or Seattle, or San Francisco, or anywhere that's at least a thousand miles from where I live.  Le sigh."  Turns out that sometimes artsy and fabulous can be just an hour down the road!

Isn't it interesting how you can let go of your convictions that nowhere near you can possibly be fun, when you just look around a little bit with fresh eyes?

Yes, the sky was really this blue, and these birdhouses really looked like they were about ready for me to take up residence.

 So many yummy flowers and vegetable plants for sale - even European olive trees!  How I'd get one of those back in my rather tiny car, I'm not sure, so I settled for treasures from the market that were a little more portable.  Specifically a portable Royal typewriter from the mid 1930's!  Now I just have to find somewhere to clean and oil it, and replace its ribbon.  I'm told it works fine otherwise...I took a leap of faith on this one.  It was just that kind of day.

 

I've been totally in an orange frame of mind for a while - which is funny because it's not a color I wear or anything, but somehow its snuck all over my studio at home too.  Which is probably why I got a super fab nested box of drawers painted all pink and yellow and orange and teal at the Flea.  Did I mention it was handpainted?  Did I mention it was $15?!  I do love it a lot.  I'll show you a photo of my flea market finds soon... 

And if I hadn't already spent a bit more than I intended...and wouldn't you with all this luscious temptation....I sure would have loved one of these juicy ripe purple goodies.  Intense, non?

I bet you're making mental plans for their next Fancy Flea event in your mind, aren't you?  I am!  I'm not sure exactly when the one one is yet myself, but I think it will be in the spring.  Yes, we have beautiful weather here in the spring too.  Summer is another matter, but we have gorgeous Novembers, and simply lovely Aprils.

 

Is there somewhere near you that is unexpectedly artsy and cool, and you just never realized it?  Maybe there is, and it's just waiting for you to discover, or re-discover.  Thank you again Kim - you're a treasure!  If you'd like to see more photos of this beautiful event, please stop by Kim's blog (this is the post where she talks about her visit to the Fancy Flea) - I guarantee you will be as charmed by her as I was, and her photos are much better than mine - simply to die for!

Dancing with late summer

In the part of the country where I live, autumn meanders slowly into our lives.  It teases us with the occasional day of weather in the 70's, then unerringly shoots back up to sticky before you know it.  This dance of climate uncertainty straggles through October, leaves still mostly green, grass baked from a long summer, stillness daring the cooler nip of fall to just try and intrude.


I wait for the spell to pass, as do we all.  I begin to doubt that the heat will ever break.  I swear that it has never been this hot, for this long, in any other year ever.  Despite global warming, the weatherman assures us that this is not a record.

Due to a love of ritual raindancing I decide that surely a change in the season could be prompted by my dusting off the lovely copper and plum jackets in my wardrobe.  Perhaps an attempt to don wool (and get strange looks for my trouble.)  Perhaps the conjuring works, as eventually we do (shhhh! don't scare them off!) get a few cooler days, to reassure us that the autumn change will finally arrive.

On one of those days, when you feel that you can safely leave your air conditioned home to go about touring, you might take the time to seek out the few corners that still exist in my overdeveloped state (you have to look hard) where time doesn't change any faster than the weather does.


Where the occasional sigh of Spanish moss as it drops from the live oak branches high overhead is about as clear a sign as you'll get that autumn winds will truly arrive.  Well, maybe.

Oh, I do envy the people that have four seasons.  My heart practically aches when I see pictures of fall colors on the mountains of the Blue Ridge. The misty otherness of Halloween celebrations on the Oregon coast, or my own memory of the bright dance of trees in Washington state.  But for now, this is where I am, and  it does have its own peculiar charm.  The wood creaks just a little more as the summer dampness dries, the cicadas stop their chirps, perhaps they share more certainty that autumn will finally arrive.

PS - A special note of thanks to all of you that are following my blog - I do appreciate it!  I don't post very often, not for lack of intent, but keeping up a blog is rather time consuming and if its an art blog, like this one, then even more so because, well, all those pictures! I do wish Blogger was a little less clunky in formatting and easier to stick the pictures where you want, and the size you want, etc. It's hard to retain a steady readership when you don't post often, and so then one doesn't get much commentary and traffic, so (confessional) it's less motivating to post to begin with.  I do it too - stop following blogs that don't update often.  I'm guilty as much as the next.  Anyway, thank you all for sticking with me even though I'm your friend you don't hear from too often.

The Camera in Your Pocket

Oh, so much to talk about....it's been ages since I have posted here, but I assure you dear readers, I've not been idle in the art world!  Oh no, not at all.  I think I have the opposite of a creative block going on - more of a creative bottleneck. 

I was truly blessed to have a the art trip of a lifetime this past May when I got to go to Spain and study collage with Nick Bantock for a week!  That's Nick in the picture, along with some of the other folks in the group having one of our many wonderful dinners by candlelight in the cool Spanish evening air. Just the food and wine and company were heaven itself.

Yes, it was as incredible as you would think it would be.  We went to Ronda (setting for Nick's book "The Forgetting Room") - those are wild poppies growing on the hills that you see in the photo below.  Such a beautiful town and so wonderful to go there with other artists.  To see it with the eyes of an artist and have the time to just wander the back streets with a camera and capture all the richness.  Nobody saying, "come on, Jane...do you HAVE to photograph every light post and door hinge..."

Then on to the Alhambra in Granada.

Cordoba during the Festival of Flowers. 

 This is the Mosquita - amazing..

Oh, we saw flamenco, we danced, we sung, we painted, we drank LOTS of wine. Oh my.....so, more posts to come on this one.
When I got back, I started taking LK Ludwig's The Camera in your Pocket iPhone photography course - and that has been totally fun and really got me back into photography again.  It reminds me of when I was in college oh so many years ago and was taking photography and had all these photo assignments to do - ah, so much easier now in the world of digital!

And now, a couple of weeks ago, I started Mary Ann Moss's "Remains of the Day" class - which is a shabby journal of scraps.  Now, I've been having a few technical hitches with my sewing machine to say the least, but overall this is a brilliant course, and I've been very glad I've been taking it.   More pictures to come on this.

So....lots and lots of material for upcoming blog posts to share with you.  So stay tuned!

Walking around and looking artfully at the world

So one of my favorite things about making art a part (p-ART!  hah, I amuse myself) of your life is that I think you notice things more.  Appreciate the effort that others make, or that just seredipitously happens, to make the world just cooler.   I also really enjoy the Toy Camera iPhone app - you can get artsy on the go.  That's what these photos were taken on.  Note the faux-Lomo camera effects.  Badly taken shots turn artsy!  Except much cheaper, as you aren't dealing with real film and real developing and prints as you do with a Lomo camera.  Do I want a Lomo camera?  Of course I do.  I'm also a bit cheap.


Speaking of prints, I do wish, however, that iPhone would make an agreement with the Pogo Printer from Polaroid.  Have you seen these things?  It's a little tiny mini printer that hooks up to your camera and prints out pictures directly from it. As stickers, no less. I was fortunate enough to see one in Art Journaling action at Journalfest last October, and I think it's going to add bells and stars and twinkles to journaling on the go.

Now for my other exciting bit of news - I'm going on a trip to Spain in a few weeks!!!  As you can imagine, I'm planning on using my Pogo Printer for all my art journaling while I'm there.  Delivered by Accident in Twilight - The Art of Collage with Nick Bantock. Now doesn't that sound like something you just HAVE to know more about?  It hasn't really even sunk in that that's actually me, and actually me in Spain, with the grand master of the collage world.  It's on the verge of intimidating.

In the meantime, until the way exciting tour de Spain, here were a few sightings from my local Thai restaurant.  Just flowers, and wall hangings, and rugs, but don't they conjure up images of exotic, lush art filled rooms?  The food was great too.

A few experiments with paper cloth

I've been a little bit..uninspired...by ordinary old paper lately, and I've been taking an interest in cloth instead.  To this end, I've taken a few basic sewing and quilting classes - not with the idea that I'm going to become a real quilter (not sure that I have that kind of patience - I think quilter would turn into quitter fairly soon.) Not really with the idea that I'll become a real seamstress either - I am perfectly fine with purchasing my clothes.  There is no such thing as anything being "sew easy!"

I never learned to sew at my mother's knee (I can't recall her ever sewing other than when she complained about having to sew my brownie patches onto the uniform).  So to make up for this lack of prior training, I've been taking classes at my local Joann's Fabric with the patient Miss Brenda. Me and the other eight year olds that can outsew me any day.  I'm still pretty intimidated by the women at the fabric counter, the bobbin on my machine still makes me feel a bit uncertain, but I'm slowly learning the nomenclature and thinking of small (very small) things to make.  My goal is to make an art quilt - something nicely impractical. What's the difference between art and craft - how useful it is!  Well, no, that's not really my definition, but it's funny.  In the case of an art quilt, however, by the time you've got all that stuft stuck on there, it would cower in front of a washing machine.

Anyway, to that end I've been reading the book Stitch Alchemy and have found some inspiration in the idea of making "paper cloth" which is basically muslin or similar cheapie fabric saturated in gluey water and then covered in paper strips.  You let the stuff dry overnight, and then collage and embellish - just like regular paper.  This I can deal with.  You can see a couple of examples of what I've been up to with this in the pictures.  I think this has distinct possibilities!

I'm a little concerned that this is definitely in the impractical for regular use category, as I think the dye/ink/paint will most likely run right off the second its exposed to water, but I'm going to experiment with covering it with spray-on sealant, and with sticking gel medium on it, and maybe decoupage medium.  See what sticks, so to speak.  It's some fun, very non-intimidating to make stuff though.  And it's almost like paper - paper I can deal with!

Nesting and stitching

Nesting and stitching

Swimming through the sea of reeds and murk

Watching and waiting

Listening in limbo

Wondering if the sleeper is going to awaken


Hello friends - apologies that I haven't posted to this blog in months.  I really am here; I've just been on sort of an art hiatus.  Its not to say that I haven't been doing a few things in the background here, I redecorated my studio, made the 12 days of jewelry at Christmas (guess what were given as gifts this past year?), danced around the edges of art, was fortunate to spend an art playdate in January with my good friend Sarah Whitmire . Heck, i even made a creation for submission to Somerset Studio for an Impressionists challenge....no idea if it will be accepted, but at least I submitted, right?  The issue comes out next month; haven't heard anything, but I'm viewing it as no news is good news, right?

As a note, still waiting for "Queen Isabella at the Frost Fair" to appear, this was a piece I submitted probably two years ago for Black and White challenge.  I was very excited to have my first published piece of artwork in SS, but due to outside factors beyond anyone's control, (the economy) it's publication was put on semi-forever hold.  It is supposed to be appearing in this Summer's upcoming Somerset Gallery, so hopefully it will and then will wend it's way home.  I'll be happy to see it again!

But all that being said, I haven't been feeling inspired to jump back in to art for me for months. 

I do experience these creative recessions every so often; my muse just goes into sort of a long winter's nap.  She and I normally have a very cool and groovy relationship, in which she spins and dances and keeps me up at night. But, sometimes she just needs to be the introvert like me too.  The bigger me (that's the one the rest of the world sees - has been feeling pretty introverted too.)  I have a long list of correspondence that I need to return letters to, a long list of to-do's that I need to accomplish so I'm less of a feral friend to the folks that send me letters and attempt to keep up with me.  Lord love em!

I feel a bit (a lot) guilty for not making art, but then there's other things that I also really enjoy, like genealogy, and bicycling, and gardening, and so for a while now, I've just done those instead.  And then of course, there's all that boring "real life" stuff like holidays and Christmas cards, and post-holiday hangover (not a real hangover, but I swear I don't recover from December until the end of January) and family matters and a six-week stretch of cleaning out our entire house of nicknacks and junk that have been a bit time and energy consuming. A dear lady on one of the bulletin boards that I read described this sort of thing as "nesting" rather than flying, and that made me feel a bit better about the whole thing.  The guilt and so forth.  Made it seem less lazy, and more necessary.  The creative flow stopping to pick up sticks so to speak.

But as the months have gone on, I have been waiting and wondering and listening to see if the muse is done with her nap.  Beginning to wonder if this hibernation is going on a little too long.  I listened to the very inspiring podcast by Rice Freeman Zachery (notes from the voodoo lounge) on "10 Ways to Jumpstart Inspiration" and followed her suggestion of "try something completely new" so I did a few quilting and sewing classes - way the heck out of my comfort zone.  I'm a paper artist, darn it!.  Overall I quite enjoyed them (though very stressful!  Argh! So much math in sewing!)  and I do want to get a bit more into art quilts, definitely, but I'm not sure that they are the whole answer either.  I redecorated, and I sewed a sofa cover (not artsy, in fact of all things, it's beige, but my dogs seem to love it.)

Which all brings up to today; I was out for a bike ride with my beloved, and we were talking about the-rest-of-our-lives (hey, we're middle aged, the span of time suddenly seems a little less elastic) and he suggested I really do need to get on with this art teaching and getting my art business going.  And with the conviction that spring and sunshine and birds and orange blossoms bring, it suddenly seemed like an awfully good idea. Ideas are beginning to churn around

Am I over the long winter's nap yet?  Jury is still out, but I'm feeling a bit of creative fluttering.  I hope so.

Do you have any muse nap wake-her-uppers?  Any suggestions for your fellow artist(s)?  Bring em on!

Art cottages by the sea

My art cottage that you see is from a collage (if wishes could make it real!) it represents my ideal life.  You know about that one...the one where we live in a fabulous art community of kindred spirits, and we eat lots of delicious food and don't gain weight, and our dogs come to "work" with us every day, because our work is art and we do this in an adorable cottage by the sea with the smell of roses and lavender wafts through the windows, and we can wear our gypsy clothes....

I am at least lucky to have a room of my own in my ordinary suburban house for my art studio (and that's a pretty cool thing too) and I've been a bit fired up this week to paint the boring white bookshelves in it into glorious hot pink, and mango orange, and Indian Yellow Hue gold (well, that's what Golden paints calls it) and maybe some sage green.  I got a couple of guest chairs for my room this weekend at an antiques market (nice word for maybe-I'll-find-something junk rummage) and they're already painted in adorable stripes and spots and so forth, but I think they need a little more tweaking...

Good thing it's a four day weekend, huh!  Hope you spend yours the way you want to - with family, or friends, or solitude (and that's a GREAT thing too) and pets and art and your muse!

Beeswax collage with Claudine

Parisian Collage - with photos taken by me this summer in the city of light...

Flower fairies dancing in my autumn garden...

And see that they have a queen! She loves pink flowers and rainbows, notice how her throne is crowned in them...

How fortunate I feel that I had the opportunity, on top of all the other artistic wonder that I've had the pleasure of experiencing this most artful of years, to attend a beeswax collage class with Claudine Hellmuth this past weekend at the Art League of Daytona Beach.

A nice small class, lots of one-on-one guidance and inspiration from Claudine herself - I felt like this class was such a revelation! I've had all the supplies for about four years, but never really quite had the confidence to step much into the world of beeswax collage. Now I'm very glad I did! This was the second class I've taken with the glamourous and gracious Claudine - and I just adore her. She is such a sweetie! She really keeps things upbeat and positive, but always with a wry sense of humor and a lot of patience with demonstrating and explaining things.

The thing with beeswax is that it basically renders everything with a filmy, gauzy haze of dreams - and it makes the divisions between the layers disappear. It's like working in collage heaven, all your images seem to blend and become transparent. Like Photoshop for the fingers. Ok, maybe not quite, because Photoshop has never actually burned my finger and I did manage to touch a hot iron with my thumb! Claudine observed that "I don't usually get injuries in my class..." Well, I also managed to shoot myself with my own arrow in a college archery class, so clearly when the right brain takes over from the left. Uh huh, I need supervision. But, it's a clear sign that the muse is dancing and gallivanting, and she was certainly out for a spin with the wax. I can't wait to try some more of this technique!

Pictures above are of a cigar box that I collaged the top of (I think it will be the holder for my Art Journal that I did of my summer trip to Europe) and the front of a vintage photo album that'll eventually become another art journal. The flower is just...well...a flower. But it was "rescued" from the "distressed plants" section at Lowes and I figured it might light a moment in the blog spotlight.
Wheeeeee!!

A little bit of Inspanahatation

Thank you so much to everyone who has been kind enough to visit my blog and even more thanks to the lovely folks who have left lovely comments :-)

Heartsfire asked if I could post a few samples of work from Anahata's class - I'm happy to (thanks for asking ;-) Here's a few bits and pieces of widsom in my "class notes" (a bit stream-of-conscious but there it is) that I took to remember all the outpouring of wisdom pure creative juju that was zooming and flowering in that quiet and sunlit room where some swore that they saw a blue aura around our Queen Anahata...

The journal is not a finished product, it's not perfect, it's not "precious" -during the first 20 - 30 minutes of working on the page, expect a lot of mental chatter. Don't feed that cookie monster, art friends! Banishing the blank page with some pencil marks, some pen marks, some scraps of paper - whatever you can dish out to start pushing that blank page monster away. Start to create an environment on your page - your ingredients are a character, a background where your character lives, and then play paperdolls with whatever accessories the character needs to tell the story. Keep the "sweet spot" in one area of the page (the sweet spot is where you have whatever coolness is emerging) and try to resist the urge to do that same cool effect everywhere else too. If you start to delay and question what to do next, you aren't moving fast enough, and you're thinking too much. Let your impulse rein. Do what is unexpected - if you think you are supposed to put on another layer of paint, then resist that urge. Splatter on some random ink lines instead. Dark colors push objects into the background, light colors bring the object out. So, use this theory to make the parts of your picture disappear where you don't want to see them, and make the parts you want to highlight pop.

Oh, I wish I'd had a tape recorder, or maybe it wouldn't have made a difference - maybe it was just the juicy inspirational flowers that were seemingly placed in our heads. I do know that we all created work that we had probably never done anything like before or since, and there definitely was a sense of building techniques from the first illustration (the rose one) to the second (the white background one). I had a harder time with the white background, as when in doubt, I tend to stick on more color. Even with this, I probably cheated and gave my girl red and purple dreadlocks, hey, go as the spirit moves you!

Journalfest collage and a list...

What I loved about Journalfest:

all the glorious true art sisters in my classes, dorm, and everywhere...

the food - delish, fresh, creative, great quality

walks with my companion the sea at daybreak from zen calm...

...to free, wild chop

the rainbows in the sky (I don't have a picture of them but this airplane window image will have to fill in as "nearest-to-rainbow"...they were there though)

the rich and juicy creative flow with so much inspiration everywhere

the gold and orange trees (no fall colors where I live, and much the pity for it)

the way-cool trades that everyone made, being surrounded by that much creativity was an unearthly boost!

my cozy "artist's garret" room where one could have company when one desired and solitude for introspection

wonderful, insightful classes with such lovely teachers who were so accessible and engaged

feeling like part of the "Teesha and Tracy family" with the super helpers (Ben and co.) who seemed to be at all the right places at all the right times - so organized that it made the whole event seem effortless (now that's organized!) No problem seemed like a problem at all in their capable hands

the down-to-earth atmosphere and real-ness of it all

Saturday night's party with the perfectly right grooves of Surrealized and the generous wine bar!

the stop-you-in-your-tracks and abandon your luggage Sunday a.m. sunrise - almost surreal in its orange-pink glory outlining the mountains beyond the bay in a jagged purple that felt like you could touch them. (I'm sure nature and the Moores conspired for this)

(Photo above in the banner - it was bannerworthy!)

and finally, Mt. Ranier (at times a bit shy - like for a week last summer when I was in Olympia and didn't get to see it once) even poked its head out from the clouds for the girls on the shuttle bus to see on the way back to the airport

I'm still coming back to earth from all that floating in the creative stratosphere..... and I'm journaling just about every day now!

I learned so much,

I felt so much

I'll hold it in my heart for a long time.