My Own Personal Warehouse 13

Today I got into my storage unit to make a bigger dent in my moving process. A 10x20 unit is not exactly Warehouse 13 in scope or grandeur. Though in digging through the boxes and boxes stashed on every available shelf, I did find quite a few treasures.

I am hoping that I can get some pictures in the next few days especially since I found a box full of pat work. Some of it was from school and some were from when I tried my hand at colored pencil work almost 25 years ago. The sketch of Gates McFadden in Holodeck attire is some thing that I am quite proud of since it was my first portrait and I don't typically do well with those.

And I found my gramma's Italian vase that has appeared here on the blog. Now I need sunshine to get it photographed.

Boho Beginnings

Most likely this is the house that started the love of all things purple. Since the remodel began in the late 80s, this house has been several shades of purple. I first saw it during one of our last family adventures to the Sidewalk Sale downtown. If you walk two block further down the sidewalk and one block left from this photo you are at the start of downtown, specifically, the old gaslight district. Which we don't call it anymore because Petoskey, to our north, famously calls its shopping area the gas light district. Anyway, during the sidewalk sale two blocks of Front Street are blocked off, there is little parking and you end up having to park in people's front yards to get there. One year we parked in front of this house on Washington.

I could have looked at it all day. Most of the houses around us on 11th were white like ours or muted period colors. In other words, the same old worn out colors that they had been when they were built 80 years prior.

The garden hadn't been in place then. It was just this great stucco building with a brilliant red violet paint.

When we built the house out in the country this house was my inspiration. I was going to go purple. I had the whole thing worked out. I was promised that I could do anything that I wanted. And when I said purple I was vetoed. My sketches were not even looked at. So I went blue.

And stayed in the safe mode until just a few years ago.... gosh no. That was almost a decade ago when Michelle still lived here. She wasn't afraid to try something new in her house and it was amazing. Even the bits that she decided she didn't like were amazing. So I threw myself into the things that I love even more than I already had. And so my purple fetish was born.

I think this would have turned out better if I had not been photographing on a hazy humid day. The front of the house shows all of its character. The original house wasn't stepped out like this though, it had more of a bay in the front façade. And that gave the house a taller posture, this is a little more squatty than it used to be.  But it is still adorable.

Accidents Can not Always Become Squirrels

I hate to contradict the man of legend in PBS info-tainment, but accidents are not always happy and you can not always make them into squirrels or the happy little places that those critters like to live. At least I can't since I don't paint with Bob Ross's brushes. And I have had the most unfortunate of accidents. Fellow bloggers know not to click on random links on the status pages. For the most part, if your links have a lot of weird random characters instead of "real" letters, it probably links to spam. And if you click on it you will get inundated with spammy links and they will take over your status pages so you will never know who really is reading your blog.

If I hover and right click I can pull up a properties menu, cut and paste from there and investigate a link in another window without screwing up blogger too much. So what happens if you accidentally click on the link and not the menu hovering over the link? Yes. Spam. And maybe something uglier and nastier than the electronic version of poor folk food. Ugh.....

I assume that is why I am very popular in Morocco and Turkey these days. But the good news is the each day for the last week the count for those fake sight readings continues to drop off. So, while blogger cleans up my mess for me and we wait for those people of questionable manners and unconscionable tactics get bored waiting for me to mess up again I leave you with a musical interlude.



Enjoy.

Heart Chakra

 snippet of acrylic/mixed media assemblage

Another series still in the works. I have no doubts that it will be finished. There are only 7 paintings to this series to illustrate the chakras. This is the first one that I did because it was the first one I needed to work on. Odd how that works.

I've updated the photography since I have a camera that is way better than the first one that I started posting with. And slowly my camera skills are sharpening. Photo editing software still has to help me soften up the rough spots  and compensate for some limiting lighting issues. And I really wanted to be able to do macro shots of the "cool" parts like they do with Somerset Studio. So this is a macro shot.

This is one of those things that I know I won't finish without Photoshop which is *mumblecough months away from happening. I have a very specific project in mind with the set. So while I am saving up for the software I have plenty of time to figure out what the other 3 Chakras have to say to me about their nature.

B-dazzled?

Nope. Not a B. It is the infamous German typographic symbol ß done in with a formal hand and highly influenced by my architectural interests. The exemplars list this as a Gothic style. I am not sure that I agree, but we will go with it and not argue with the powers that be.

Watercolor, pigment ink pen and sticky gems... you know, because I am getting to the age where women want to bedazzled their clothes and anything else that will hold still long enough to be emblazoned with colorful facets.

I like the top of this style the best because it looks like an arched lintel of a door or colonnade.... hmmm, maybe it needs a lion-head knocker in the bottom bowl. You know... for effect.

Unresolved

When you set aside a painting for a long period of time to be able to come back to it with fresh eyes you gain perspective. When you set it aside and years pass the chance of gaining perspective or insight diminishes. What you end up with then is more like an artifact dug up from the depths of an Egyptian sand dune.

Each work is an archive of the time in which you are creating. Who you are in the moment, what you are feeling, the tensions or joy that are a part of your life inform the work and every stroke involved in creating it. Step away for a few days to let a problem resolve itself. Step away for years and there may be no resolution at all.

I look at this vessel and see where I was going with it. I see that I did learn quite a bit about how the pigment floats through the water and settles itself. I learned how to let things manifest organically within a structure to essentially let the medium do all the work for me instead of tediously nitpicking each grain of solid within each molecule of liquid.

And I see an artifact. It is part of the past. It is a part of self discovery within the theme of the human body as a vessel of the spirit, human clay molded by experience and divine influence. I see something that I do not want to finish.

There are many bits from the past studio experience that surface as I excavate the vast amount of supplies in storage. I almost feel like I've cracked open Tut's tomb. But really, I've cracked open the resting place of an older version of myself. I think that I would like to collect all the bits, trim them down to size and arrange them somehow to be a cohesive display. Tut's treasures ask as many questions as they answer of the inquisitive mind. The bits in the studio seem to do the same with me.
What was I thinking? What were my influences? What was the grand scheme intended with all the pottering and producing? Did I have a goal in mind or was I going to work until I was done feeling the need to explore the theme? Were these works a statement on my life as it was or as it would be? Or... as I hoped it would be and knew it could not?

Ponderous. And unresolved.
For now. It could very well turn out that what I think is too much time to begin again is not enough. Only when I get to the End of Everything in My Life's Work will I know if this represents a thing that is resolved or forever a mystery.

And that it the nature of the artistic life.

Ideas Come From a Variety of Places

strawberry cabernet buttercream frosting rose cupcake top with violet
edible flakes.

 

The Geek blog turned 5 at the beginning of the month. So I made celebratory cupcakes. I knew how I wanted them to look but really had no clue as to how to do it. Internet tutorials to the rescue! It is a simple piping technique using a 1 or 2M Wilton tip. Super simple. A variety of YouTube videos abound. This is the one that I watched.



I chose the flakes at Jo-Ann's as opposed to regular sprinkles because they look like mica powders. So I figure at some point in an up coming project I will use the technique with some sort of paste and mica powder. Modeling paste or wood paste have a sturdy texture that I do not think will fall. I don't know how stencil paste will work. But I do want to try it.

You know what will happen if it works? I can lay a transparency over a damask pattern and pipe my own damn embellishments! Talk about making it your own.