grateful, yet challenging,

WOW we've had a few trying days. First the rain gave us our own river through the basement which the sump pump took care of Wednesday night and Thursday. But about 11:30 Thursday night the electricity went off due to the about 50mph winds and dozens of trees coming down. The end of our road looks like a war zone.
The photos are a little blurry, but they show the jist of it.
This is one of the sections I walk frequently, and it's sad to see all those old bull pines crushed. We now have electricity, but I'm assuming the people at the other end of the road do not.
Makes me grateful that we lost nothing, just suffered inconvenience at no fresh, hot coffee ready when I come down the stairs and no hot water for showers.
We had lanterns for some light, running water and the woodstove kept us warm.

365 Daily Haiku 2009
February 25

Scrub walls clean. Choose paint.
Thirty years in the same house
builds complex layers.


I like how this art works. It captures the dichotomy of cleansing yet wiping away memories.First, I wrote lists of stuff we washed away on the card. I used pencil. The tracing paper has a square from when I colored a piece of paper with charcoal and used a piece of tracing paper under the paper I was coloring. Before I wrote the verse,with Sharpie pen, I emphasized the square with strips of tracing paper.



February 26
Little did we know...
The long drive to Albion ME for another visit with our intended...

February 27


I went snowshoeing with a friend Jodi. We went to America's Stonehenge in Salem NH.
The snow was pretty well packed, and we were the only ones there. I'd been there several times with the 5th grade on fall field trips. For the art work,I drew some of the "stones" marking various seasonal points.

February 28
The month ends. Since it is a special month, I photo'd all the January entries and printed it out. I felt it was okay to use already created work for a new entry because of this uniqueness that February 28th has.

But as I looked back over the second month into my project, I could touch again each day, remember each event. Holding the time in my hands was a powerful incentive to continue.

remembering events and printing styles

As I've been looking at the book Masters:Art Quilts, that I got in Lowell yesterday,reading the artist's statements, I began to question why I created "365 Daily Haiku 2009".
Initially it was purely an approach to dedicate time to creating without being stressfully overwhelming.Then it became a way to organize a day's observations to help remember the year's events. As the year went by, I realized that having a daily goal forced me to be more observant of something "special" about each day to record - a sight, an image or even a word.
Also, I've always been a text and textile person, this provided a strategy to focus on text,for its content and appearance. The challenge being that I've never been able to do lettering/writing and keep it straight. One of my goals was to be able to write on art work and have the writing "work" with the visual image. Frequently I use tracing paper over lined paper to do the writing and then apply it to the collage. Because this approach was limiting, my goal for straight writing seemed irrelevant as the year passed..
Another goal was to practice collage, since practicing anything, refines skill and develops understanding. Each entry became an exercise -similar to playing scales when learning to play an instrument- to hone sensitiivity to balance, variety creating a focal point, creating textures. In other words commiting to making art each day offered opportunity to utilize the principles of art and stay in touch with the elements of art.
Text and color provide unity and variety,light and dark provide contrast for #56, done for February 25,2009
My sister, Anne, friend, Ila, and I went to Concord NH to three galleries to see art. The first stop was at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen. I cut up the postcard from that exhibit to collage in an abstraction to remember the day. The text lists the stops we made and is written on tracing paper with a calligraphy pen.

Just as a reminder, here's the bound book of "365 Daily Haiku 2009" ....

familiar travels

I drove to Lowell, MA today to see the exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum, Masters: 40 Contemporary Art Quilters. Check out the website www.nequiltmuseum.org to see a list of exhibits. This one ends on Thursday. I enjoyed working there as Program Manager for several years, before I went back to teaching. Memories come flooding back as I drive the route down 495 and into Lowell through Tewksbury. I met many wonderful people and saw quilts of all types.
The scenery is brown with bare trees and old leaves covering the ground. Mud and ice alternate on the walk through the yard into the woods.
The skunk has been active.
I'm working on another spread in my art journal. Part of it will relate to the Quilt Museum.

February 23, 2009
Yesterday's snow stuck to the sides of trees making them all look like birch trees.
The soft image for Daily Haiku was made with rice paper.The text, date and day are part of this image. I wrote with a Flair, it bled a little, but that adds to the feel of the snow on the birches.


Birches gracefully
bend with the weight of the snow.
Imposters stay straight.

holiday remnants, rituals

Roger, Deezel and I went to the beach for some good running - the dog, not us. Our field and backyard are wet, muddy, snowy, and icey in different combinations, so it's hard to get the dog running. He's pretty good at the beach, loves other dogs, but stays with us without a leash. I have a wonderful photo of him at the beach in the fall which I'll post with the Haiku for that date.
It's 54 degrees in the sun, but the clouds are coming. No new work to share from my journal.

February 22, 2009 - storm arrived about 8:00p.m

Grapevine wreaths and lights
are gone to start new season.
Short days get longer.
This entry shows the studio windows with the wreaths.I hang them around Thanksgiving with little lights on a timer to counter the short days. Once Valentine's Day has passed, I take them down, since it's still light at 6:00 and getting light at 6:00a.m.
I used the Crayola paint brushes for the colors and a white gel pen for the snow. The wreaths have tiny gold spots to represent the lights.

I hope to go to Lowell, Ma tomorrow to the New England Quilt Museum to see the Masters show.

making books

It's a bright, sunny cold day with an incredibly blue sky. We went out to breakfast and are now just hanging out. On this date one year ago I was in a class at Sanctuary Arts in Eliot, Maine with Johanna Finnegan- Topitzer. We made several small books, a portfolio to hold them, and a box.
These are the books.

My haiku entry for 2/21/2010 has a mini book with a single signature and a Japanese binding. The cover is the same Japanese floral paper I used on a book. The border is drawn to represent the handstitched bindings. The text refers to the fact that the signature was held in place with inner stitches and the outer stitches were largely decorative.

Inner binding holds
the pages in place if the
outer binding fails.

This photo shows the "portfolio"that holds the small books
.
and the silk covered box.

sight and sound,skunk trails

Skunks wander leaving
trails in the soft, new snow - troughs
with clear footprints.

February 20,2009
I made this entry with tracing paper over the card with white ink stamped lightly over it, silver around the edges and to represent the trail, another piece of tracing paper. The verse is written on parchment with Sharpie pens.

February 20,2010
Work today will explore those numbers(2x10=20) in my art journal.
I have been doing some fun art work in it.
I did two sets of pages for the vertigo,
Valentine's Day and new car intersection...

The first set has text on the left about vertigo,auditory and visual input. The left has a window with a valentine, surrounded by photos of ears, cochlea, semi-circular canals and Nissan Altimas with floating irregular colored areas .
The second spread has the valentine attached over purple cheesecloth on the right and the left is stamped with a lines done both horizontally and vertically in purple and a single heart in the upper left.
I'm working on "Harry Potter" entry. We went to see it in Boston at the Museum of Science on Valentine's Day. It has portions of tickets and brochures adhered to a sturdy piece of old water color paper.

todays' notes
The snow from Tuesday's storm has largely melted, late February sun is intense.When I was out on Thursday, I saw the same trails as I saw last year. The dog, which I didn't have last year, sniffs these trails like a vacuum cleaner.
I'm looking forward to a week off from school, even though I only work two and a half days a week.
Here's to some concentrated art making times...

velvety snow cover, bright sun

February 18,2010
The sun is very bright, brilliantly reflecting off the snow which is melting.
I made a quick trip to my favorite paper store, "All About Paper" in No. Hampton NH. She has great papers and incredible art work. She always has some new art supplies - I got a pad of "Canvaskin" - a canvas type paper for any wet medium. I also got two new markers by Faber Castell. They're sepia colored. Of course, I got some new papers. One I've used before and she had one more piece. It's a plaid with a gold strip and an aqua color. It's from India.

Feb 17, 2010 I took my first grade art class outside for some 3-d work - we made snow people. Wish I could post photos, just imagine white everywhere except for colorful snowsuits and smiling children pushing giant snow balls leaving strange, white tracks in the new snow.

Feb 17,2009
Clear two toned blue sky at sunrise as part of my favorite studio view.
This view has been inspiration and comfort for as many years as this has been my studio space - since 1998.I first posted the same view on this blog on January 11 with a journal and a small piece of fabric art.
Stark, black maple tree
stands against a sky of two
distinct shades of blue.
The sky is from a Crayola paintbrush with black. The tree is done with a black sharpie.

Feb 18, 2009,was one of those days that no image or word jumped out to be recorded. I used a stamp that I've had forever. It's a nice texture and provided some lines to write on with a calligraphy pen.
Why do I make art every day, indeed at all? One reason is to make the ordinary events memorable. After all most of life is the ordinary events for most of us.

Tomorrow is Feb 19,2010 last day of school before February vacation.
Feb 19, 2009
I used an art postcard from the exhibit at the Brush Gallery in Lowell to be a frame around a comment on the pre-vacation fatigue at school. There was no relationship between the 19th in 2009 and this postcard, but I came across it in my collection and it struck my fancy, so I used it.
The shapes and natural colors seem seasonally appropriate as I look at it today. I'm going outside soon for another snowshoe trip through the woods on the lovely, new snow.

waiting, long drive, new puppy

February 16, 2010
School was cancelled due to "impending inclement weather", which as of 9:51 am we have seen no sign of, only clouds.I hope we get some snow.I haven't looked, but I wouldn't be surprised if crocuses were sprouting in the front garden(#7)The back yard looks like late March, the knoll in the woods is bare, but we have nearly two months until spring...

Feb 15, 2009 was the day we drove to Maine to see the blue merle Great Dane puppies.
I created a "map" with Crayola brushes.

I took a photo of the one we chose. He was two weeks old.
Even though that face was already installed in my heart, I had reservations -still not over Monty's loss, the breeder seemed less than social...

Monday; February 16,2009
On Monday, at school we shared what we did over the weekend, I broke down when I
told Carol
that we selected a new puppy and that Monty had died.
I hadn't talked about his death at school.
The erratic lines drawn with a Flair felt tip depict the emotional ups and downs of dealing with loss, yet continuing with life's forward motion....

art begets art

It was about midnight last night when I realized I'd forgotten to post on the 14th...
It was a windy, cool day. I did take Deezel for a long walk on our rural road. It was one year ago today we first met him.

I met my artsy friends from school at Popover's in Portsmouth for afternoon art share and treats.We show what we've been working on or something inspirational.

Here's the 2/14/09 Daily Haiku entry;
it's a copy of the valentines I made for everyone at school.



I used red cardstock for the base, trimmed with gold using a Pilot marker. I attached a cream colored heart (I bought these already cut) and a tag cut from vellum with gold writing on it. I punched hearts out of the tag. I stamped "Happy Valentine's Day" -after I altered the stamp so the words wouldn't be straight . I trimmed it with gold dots and stamped a heart with gold. I made this stamp from an old eraser. An outline of a heart stamped in pink finishes the cards, but for the entry I wrote about the adventure Buck Wheat had when he got caught in the handles of a gold, paper bag.
2/14/10 Valentines Day
This year I made 15 valentines, I mailed five, gave away 9 at school and kept one that is being added to my journal. This photo is a bit blurry, but it's clear enough to show that I stitched hearts to a piece of felt and attached them to shipping tags.


I got the idea from Beryl Taylor's article "Sweet Heart Tags" in Quilting Daily
( Jan. 21 email article from Interweave). I had no silk, but had some chiffon, some tracing paper scraps, and cheesecloth. My fabulous Janome stitched through each collection and I added the decorative heart stitch. I trimmed the cards with red ink, added a layer of tracing paper, glued the stitched piece down and used some red cardstock for the vertical lines.


I so liked them grouped, I made a little hanging. I constructed 3 shipping tags 3" x 6" of pale parchment cardstock, glued to white cardstock to make a stronger base, with 505 Spray and Fix, trimmed with red ink. I made the felt pieces as I did the valentines , just a little bigger. I strung them together with red ribbon and dangled a pair of red hearts from the bottom with thread. And though Valentine's Day has gone by, I'll keep this hanging for a while, since today's the day I take down the grapevine wreaths and lights in the windows, I need something decorative to transition to spring.

playing catch up... giving hand crafted gifts.

Saturday, February 13.2010
After a busy Thursday ( 2/11/10)- at the audiologist's and buying a new car, followed by sitting and sleeping on the recliner - and school on Friday, I'm finally able to get back to Silver Penny Studio.
Have you ever been treated for "benign paroxysmal positional vertigo"? I had been dealing with it for about a month, primarily at night, but it made me nervous about walking the dog and going up and down stairs. After being treated, yesterday by noon I realized I was without that everpresent sensation that the ground wasn't where it should be. I can bend over to pick something up and not spin when I stand up...
I'm working on some kind of poem.

2/10/10 - nice pattern of numbers - Busy day at school with the usual classes

2/10/09


Last year, I made valentines for everybody at school (around 40). Today's art was from scraps of paper made from that project. I loved the gold on red and used a parchment that had gold writing on it for the text.

Create valentines
pink, red, ecru trimmed with gold,
make enough for all.

2/11/09 nothing like this year ...
We went to the wake for Roger's aunt, and godmother, where we reconnected with several of his cousins. Gail Bolton was Roger's paternal aunt, third to the youngest of the San Soucie family.
I used some tracing paper that had been under the red paper when I drew gold lines for the valentines. It made me think of an animal track..



I wrote on the back of the paper using a white marker and wrote the text of piece of tracing paper which I glued over everything.

Youthful family
reunions mean food, games;
with age, mean loss.
Gail Bolton 1917 -2009

We used to get together with members of the San Soucie family every summer when that generation of siblings was middle aged, now well...

2/12/09 Thursday I worked with the 4th grade on their weekly writing, they used a valentine related prompt. I had been collaborating with the 4th grade teachers since before Thanksgiving to write every Thursday morning. From the "happiness" suggested by today's entry, it was a particularly successful writing time.



I used a scrap from the paper for the tags on the valentines I made, but trimmed the page with an orange Color Box stamp pad.

And today's entry 2/13/09.....
I felt slighted that so few people noticed my handmade valentines - that sounds so childish, but it made me realize again that to give a gift truly, I have to let go of my attachment to it. I made fewer valentines this year.I'll post photos of them tomorrow.

I attached scraps in a totally ramdom order and wrote the text over them with a calligraphy pen.
Since when I make something, there's a little of my spirit in each one, I hope that spirt will touch the spirit of the recipient. But if it doesn't, my spirit is saddened.Luckily this feeling does not keep me from creating again. Perhaps the spirit of the recipient is inaccessible through that avenue.

Is this sensation parallel to the vertigo?
What's the treatment to get those semi-circular canals aligned?

more snowless events forecast for NH

February 9, 2010
Today's a sunny, cold winter day. We have a slim hope of getting snow tomorrow night. We went out in the wind yesterday to try out a new car; one that Roger's long legs can fit in when he's driving. I haven't been out much in the cold icey backyard. I'll be taking Deezel for a quick walk through the woods before I go to school.

Looking back at 2009, for February 7, 8 and 9


2/7/09 I had a haircut and a manicure on the 7th after a yummy breakfast at Popover's in Portsmouth with a friend. Then I went to Wentworth Greenhouses in Rollinsford to meet Anne (sister) and Ila and to get some visual input from the lovely orchids.
To make the art, I used the appointment card (which I did everytime I went to Portsmouth Spa). Before I glued pieces of it to the card, I wrote in delicate, fancy script with various colored gel pens. The text is in black on a piece of parchment. It lists the day's events.
My art work for 2/7/10 has to include brochures from the Bostom Museum of Science. I went with some work friends to see the Harry Potter exhibit. We took the train from Newburyport to North Station. Along the trip, the tracks divide the marshes in several places. They are silvery white from the ice that encases the mounds. Great day.

2/8/09
One of those days distinguished only in its lovely,ordinary nature. The text says it all:
Words scatter today.
A flock of birds on the tree
lands then flies away.



The art work is loose, whatever was at hand,and ordinary also. A new stamp with circles unifies the background with the heart stamped over it in lavender. There's a piece of plastic with hearts stamped out and yesterday's text on part of it. I frequently picked up the scraps from the day before and let them arbitrarily be part of the next collage.The hearts are there because I was making Valentines for everyone at school. (I'll post this year's valentines soon.)

2/9/09
The stamp with circles became the way to create a lovely, low moon, setting in the early evening on my way to class in Portsmouth. The simple lines vertically and horizontally refrence the simplicity of the Chinese brush art I was practicing.

The round, orange
moon,
an escaped party
balloon,
hangs at the horizon.

I broke the lines to fit on the page. I hadn't planned where to position the text and wanted it away from the moon , and directly on the page. I got better at planning where the text would be as the year passed. The text became more integrated with the visual art.
It looks better written with the standard three lines.
The round orange moon,
an escaped party balloon,
hangs at the horizon.
As I look at this entry, I like where my initials and the date are placed, and that the verse balances the left hand side. I still have mixed feelings about the repeated word pattern/rhyming of balloon and moon. The change to a different vowel sound and a single "o" in "horizon" alters it enough to let it work for me.

Be back Thursday with valentines that have inspired new work...

mistake ... missing snow

February 6, cold and cloudy with no hope of the snow in the mideast hitting the northeast...



I had some fun with the stress that was going through the school last year with report cards coming out late because we'd missed so much time in December, and the on-line report card system being down, and kids stuck inside because it was sooo cold.

Visually, this worked well with a piece of commercial mult-colored paper at the top and a piece of a postcard from "Fittings" in the lower left. The blue Crayola paint brush filled the middle for the blue skies. The verse was written twice once in red and then in black on parchment:
Sunshine calls us out.
Extreme cold keeps us inside.
Deadlines bring stresses.



I guess I was feeling the stress too.
Then came February 6, 2009... and I missed a day's entry totally. I did notice it on the 14th and did a "filler" page. There were times as he year progressed that I did several entries on one day, but somehow, I missed the 6th. So the text marked the over sight and the visual was a maze drawn freehand with a Flair.

PS You may notice a fragment of an entry for Feb 6 2010, which I posted by mistake, now I'm going to see if I can delete it, maybe someone can help me... thanks

sunsets, cedar waxwings, Crayola brushes

Thursday, February 4 2010
It's a bright sunny, yet cold, windy day. I'm working up the courage to take the dog for a walk.
I shared 365 Daily Haiku 2009 with the 4th grade yesterday. I get a great response from them when I share my own work and they get deeply connected to their own work after I've shared. I started with the fabric journal from 2003 about a bull pine in the woods that I've been observing, and paying homage to, for many years. Then we wrote some poems and did art on 3"x 5" cards. The kids got very involved.



I'd guess that this journal documents when I started having a fascination with the small size.These fabric pages measured 3"x 5".


2/2,3,4/09 These entries have a variety of themes and approaches.
On Feb 2, I started a Chinese bush painting class. To depict this, I used some paper I had with characters.I brushed the suggestion of bamboo stems and wrote the text on tracing paper to glue over the paper.The text is about the ink making process.
Grind stick slowly on
stone to make milky black ink,
shaded bamboo stalks.



February third shows the small maple on the school grounds. I saw and heard a flock of cedar waxwings on the tree as I left school. No such sighting this year.



I stamped the card with blue ink, glued down the commercial Japanese paper and used Crayola paint brushes to depict the tree.
Tiny tree filled with
chirping cedar waxwings on
a clear winter day.
It's missing a clear verb - should be "fills" .

The February 4th entry depicts the sunset and the shadows it cast in the woods.I used the Crayola brushes. Although kind of a cheater tool,they proved handy for any little painting I needed on this project.



Blue and orange stripes
stretch across the untouched snow,
glowing sun goes down.

I'm stitching some funky fabric and paper valentines for a selection of friends.I'll add these to the post a few days from now.

new month... new plans...

Two of my own stamps appear for the first time on the art work for February. There's a heart stamp that I carved from an old eraser for Valentine's Day 2008. Also, I carved my initials into an old art gum eraser ( the 1" cube type). I drew them on tracing paper with a soft pencil, turned it upside down on the eraser, rubbed it to transfer the letters, and cut around the letters with an exacto knife. I liked it so much, I made one for my sister also.
I made February 1st by gluing red rice paper to the card. Then I cut a cream colored heart to glue on - never can get them symmetrical without folding. The verse relates to the shortness of the month ahead and the lengthening of the days.

Twenty-eight days hath
February. The minutes
make the hours increase.
It doesn't make sense, time wise, but I like the notion of hours increasing. In reality, the hours between sunrise and sunset are increasing, noticeably now.
Our backyard looks like March; we need a nice, serious snowstorm - six or eight inches of snow would be lovely..




I did art work on mat board for the covers and dividers of 365 Daily Haiku 2009 yesterday and bound the book with cord instead of the rings I had used. This picture is on my work table. I think the book looks great. I was so anxious to bind it, I didn't photo the art work.
This is not how I had planned to bind the book. But I decided that I had to leave the pages in the sleeves, not glued together. I want it to sit in a circle when on display.

February 2010 started with a clear cold day. It's Deezel's first birthday, so here's the picture I took of him at 2 weeks. Roger saw an ad for blue merles, we called and visited two weeks later.But today's his birthday. We will have ice cream tonight with "Auntie" Ila (our dear friend).Deezel and I walked back from the garage this morning. We went through town,by the river then into the woods where he could run free. And he did.