how many ways can rain be depicted ??

It's a cool morning. I'll be taking the dog for a walk and cutting some little trees in the back of my shade garden (#2). My thumb joints are killing me and that work won't help, but I've got to keep working.

Pine pollen gives a yellow-green cast to every surface. The peonies are opening. The lupine looks good also. I thought I only had one spike, but several are opening.

A little garter snake was sleeping in my garden in the sun. For people where the snakes are poisonous, this may sound totally creepy, but for NE residents, they're great pest controllers. I'm honored when one of these creatures chooses my garden to inhabit. I haven't seen any toads yet.

Yesterday, I finished moving house plants from the studio window sill to the sun porch. Then I washed the windows and rearranged the trinkets that adorn my studio. The room has such an open feeling with all the plants gone. My book 365 DAILY HAIKU 2009 has a place of honor on a square, white platter with various treasures around it.


I'm mentally working through some ideas for my oil spill art. I've got several components in my head, and will have to play with them to get the "correct" placement. I stamped a spiral on the inside of an envelope and am cutting those to be the poisonous tendrils of oil and greed that are choking the Gulf. As I write this, the news is that the "top kill" didn't work.

DAILY HAIKU 2009
May is usually such a pretty month. In 2009, however, rain was the primary visual. The weather affects and effects me, so I depicted each day that the rain predominated. It proved to be a summer of rain. I'd purchased several grey stamp pads by this point. I used them directly for the ellipse "puddle" shape and the straight lines. The text took on a sameness -written with a calligraphy pen on tracing paper and glued midway on the cards; I even repeated some phrases. I used scraps of text vertically on each of these.



Puddles saturate
the earth and stretch beyond their
springtime boundaries.



torrential downpours
interrupted by drizzle
cabin fever strikes



rain, sloshy, green grass
bleeding hearts have gone to seed
irises need sun

good ideas in art class

Today is a perfect day. It's sunny, in the 70's and clear. Deezel and I walked 4 miles this morning. I moved more house plants to their summer spots - begonias into the shade garden- , cleaned out some weeds from the back of that garden. I have some rosebud impatients cuttings ready to plant.

Yesterday, the 5th graders helped the Kindergarten class prepare their sketchbooks for their 1st grade year. This has proven to be one of those ideas that sounded really good and is really good.

The first year I taught art, I looked at the class - this year's fifth -saw strangers looking back at me and I thought, "How am I going to get 15 children to listen to and follow all the steps for putting their names in and starting their sketchbooks???

Now, I have help. And listening to the older class describe the use of a sketchbook and portfolio to them yesterday, I thanked them profusely and gave myself a quiet pat on the back. I encourage them to sketch in each others' books to have a momento of the year.
In the afternoon, the 4th grade discussed and made art about their sadness for the loss of life due to the oil spill.
DAILY HAIKU 2009
May 27 a more-typical-of-the-2009-season-day













The text says it all:
torrential downpours
interrupted by drizzle
fade the glow of spring

The five syllables of the two words is very effective.
I used a charcoal Cat's Eye, text written vertically, tracing paper in strips and colored with pencil for the rain effect. The scrap of tracing paper for the writing is edged with the grey and the text written with a Flair pen. It covers the gold/yellow spiral of sun.

May 26
This was a lovely spring day, easy to depict in art.
this entry consists of straight stamping with a Cat's Eye pad and the edge of a square, "Versa color" green. I made the grass with both the positive and negative barcode/ grass stamps. To write the text with a pen, without problems from the ink, it's on tracing paper.

bald eagle sighting

Sunday afternoon, I spotted an eagle flying over us, two times. The second time I actually had time to grab the binoculars and see it well. I'm assuming they're nesting on Durham Point or Adams Point.What a thrill.
I'm sure I have many more iris blossoms this year than last. They are definitely earlier.
Our walk this morning was hot, even though we left around 7:00. When we got home, I went into the pool a couple times to get really cooled off before school.

DAILY HAIKU 2009

May 25 Memorial Day
The strips are from a postcard I'd used on the 21st. I wove these just because I felt like it and wrote the verse to go with it.

summer's heat in May -- into the pool

These are the clematis in garden #1:

















Here is a shot of the much of the garden:








I picked several irises yesterday and added buttercups. It's a nice bouquet. I've moved all but my most sensitive house plants outside.
A walk this morning followed by vacuuming the house and my car left me totally covered with dirt and sweat. I went in for a swim. The water is refreshing. We still have to get the pool level - probably by flushing out some dirt on the high side. We enjoy our 15' soft sided Intex pool; it's just big enough to paddle around in to cool off. It's not so big we have to spend lots of care.


Tragically, the Gulf continues being suffocated by the greed and poor foresight of BP and politicians. Two more postcards are coming and I work with a 4th grade class this week on the topic.



DAILY HAIKU
May 24
Since we spent much of the day digging and planning the vegetable garden, I used this quilt pattern from the New England Quilt Museum brochure. It reminded me of a well planned garden.
dig in the rich soil
plant tomatoes, cucumbers
for a fresh salad

May 23
We got together at my sister Anne's house to celebrate Bruce's birthday - actually we like getting together. I wrote the text in green on vellum.
The background is handwritten names of everyone there and the rest of the day's events. I used a portion of the stamp i'd used fro family get togethers. Since I took the puppy for a quick walk, I used some tissue with paw prints.

Both of these entries are examples of using some specific items to symbolize repeated events. I used the paw print paper for time with the puppy all year. Also every time we had a family get together, I used a stamp that has a patchwork of patterns around the edges - spirals, stars, hearts, diagonal lines.
I consciously planned to repeat components for similar or related events. This would expedite the work by having some decisions made. Also the repeition signifies patterns in life.

time's flying to the end of school, yet it seems so slow

As the school year comes to an end, teachers utilize a juggling act of keeping things moving and bringing things to an end simultaneously. It's easiest with the first graders, but the fifth graders are getting ready to leave for the middle school and, well it's a challenge even to my love of sharing art !!!
It's also strange that we're having cool spring weather, yet the irises and lupine are blossoming in the front garden (#6). The clematis at the front steps and in garden #1 are open. The pots of pansies are thriving. The pot of purple ones for my friend Barbara looks especially full of blossoms. I'll post some photos tomorrow.

DAILY HAIKU 2009 May 22
This entry ( dated the 21st) has the spiral stamp for the sun. The dog paws tissue is under two layers of vellum. The top layer has the spiral stamped on the back side and the text on the front. The thin strips are from a postcard for their colors. The pale green is the negative of the barcode stamps.





May 21
A spell of vertigo inspired this entry. I used a background stamp of stars and spirals, a larger spiral and the oriole stamp. The text for this is written in and around the stamping.

surprises

This morning,Deezel mistakenly ran into my friends' pond. I guess he didn't understand the shoreline concept. He went totally under, popped up and had a dog surprised look. He swam out and started running around in his crazed puppy way.I didn't have my camera, sadly.
Yesterday, I led a discussion about the oil spill with a 4th grade class. I was surprised to hear how few knew anything about it. But they did some postcard art; they naturally identified with the destruction and death of the animals. We'll send them to President Obama to express our concerns.I'll photograph them tomorrow and post later.
This is a quick study I did . I made the oil spil with $ in black to attest to oil companies' greed and the tremendous cost of this accident.
I have a couple ideas to share with the subsequent lessons.







This is the previous entry in Art Journal:

I wrote a short Haibun on green tissue. The upper left corner is a portion of a photo for May 12 and the leaf stencil I used on that entry. The leaf in the lower right is based on a motif from one of my favorite stamps. I enlarged it and made a stencil of cardstock. This one is of a piece of scrapbooking paper.

DAILY HAIKU 2009 May 20

This is test night at puppy school. How will we do?
May 19
I created two print blocks of foam and showed the 1st graders how to do a two color print. This entry attests to the pleausres of teaching art and how it can feed my creativity.

I did some basic pencil drawings directly on the card.







This is a watercolor in my Art Journal .

hurry through the morning

The morning was filled with a long overdue conversation with friend Mary, and a walk. I had to leave early to pick up treatment for Deezel.
I started the preparations for taking work home with both classes this afternoon. I love seeing them mount work, sort it and tidy up their portfolios. All this weeks' classes will be doing it. It's hectic, but exciting. Next week, each one will share a favorite piece form the year.

DAILY HAIKU 2009
May 18
This is one of those serendipitous pieces - whatever was handy. I arranged it arbitrarily. The text captures the feelings.

miscellaneous sights and thoughts

I woke up about 2:00 and couldn't get back to sleep because I was thinking about how to keep the kids moving forward and ending the year at the same time. I'm initiating a postcard project with the 5th and 4th grades to express issues around the oil disaster. I'll encourage them to mail the postcards to an appropriate person. I decided on postcards because of their size and completability in the short time we have left of school. Several media work with that size also.

I did finish reading the latest "Surface Design Journal". Katey Schultz's article about Lisa Klukak's work has some well worded thoughts about the artistic process and the artist. I was caught especially by her saying, "after releasing any personal agenda, an artist's truest self can emerge through the work created in this spirit - work that at once taps into universal themes but still carries the seed of its maker." I have had moments of working when the personal agenda got in the way. Those are moments when the solutions to completion are unclear. When I let go, I get to creating and I wonder why the solutions were seemingly impossible.
The more I stay with the work as a discipline, the more I am able to work from my truest self and not be directed by a personal agenda.

Today, I was busy with walk ( I saw a lady's slipper beside the road), vacuuming, going to the vet's and lunch with a friend. I did not photograph the new pages ... tomorrow.

DAILY HAIKU 2009 May 17

This entry consists of torn pieces of a scrapbooking paper. It is a varied grey green color with a painted effect. It has thin lavendar lines. I quickly drew the general shapes of the jack-in-yhe pulpit with a green gel pen. The verse is on a piece of vellum written with a green Sharpie pen.
jack-in-the-pulpit
a unique, mesmorizing
plant in the shadows

I find this plant marvelous and am honored they thrive in my various gardens. I feel sorry for anyone who has not seen them, but they are rare. Only on the largest of plants, the seed pods consist of red berries grouped together - the seed of the maker.

having a pedicure & manicure

WOW ! Treating yourself to a manicure or a pedicure is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful treat. My nails looked so bad, every time I'd start to work, I'd be distracted by their irregular lengths and the stains. Today I got French tips - with the white and they look great... I don't have messy work scheduled for school and did some weeding today, so I'll be able to keep them looking good for a while. Hopefully for a nephew's wedding.

I met with Dawn, Paula, and Katie (Paula's daughter, who is an art student). We shared our work that we've been doing since we last met. I had several spreads in my Art Journal. (I'll post them tomorrow.)Since it's getting too bulky to close, I'll soon be needing a new journal. Dawn had her "photo a day" collection. Paula shared some graphic designs she's done for a wedding. Kate had projects from school - a book, some photos and poster designs. Then, we went to the salon.

I'm working on some ideas to capture the ugliness of the oil spill. I had hoped to challenge some students to do that, but I think it's time to sort art work, mount anything, finish work and prepare portfolios to go home. The Tuesday and Wednesday classes have time. It may be a good lesson in art that isn't pretty, but expresses a catastrophe. Has anyone got some to share?
The entry for a year ago offers some possibilities for techniques.

DAILY HAIKU May 16, 2009

I wrapped the card in white tissue paper. Then I rubbed some paper with pencil and attached it to the front. I edged the tissue with yellow and green and did more crosshatching. This Haiku works as a sentiment and an image.
Solid grey clouds mute
the colors of spring, slow the
sunless passing time.

Sharing art

DAILY HAIKU 2009
May 15




This entry was inspired by a lovely afternoon in the field.
The verse says it all



Spring sun low in the sky
warms with full effects across
bluets and green grass


I stamped around the edge with the barcode stamp leaving the bars empty - the negative space - the sun is another stamp and the verse is written with gel pen on vellum.

May 14 Marks the day Paula, Dawn and I started out "artshare" group. The entry was made using Paula's post-it note to me I used blue scraps to go with the blue marker she used.

I covered the collage with vellum. Having an even surface makes writing easier. The edges are trimmed with the stamp I made for Paula with a "P" and a heart that she uses.

Greens surround me...

Spring and all its beautiful colors, not as showy as fall colors, but easily as rich. Each tree species has its own hue,they get closer in color as summer approaches.The morning sun at its spring angle lights up the grass and the shadows are a dark green. What are all the names for green?

Still no sighting of orioles in my yard, but they are eating the oranges. Maybe, because the apple blossoms have already gone by, I don't see them.

DAILY HAIKU 2009
May 13 the text refers to the puppy classes. On this night, I crawled through the tunnel to get Deezel to come to me; I got no treat when I crawled out the far end !!! This entry has a piece of green vellum, over the puppy paw tissue, the grass/barcode stamp and the bird stamp for the orioles. The date serves as a ground line.
delicately green
leaves flutter each its own hue
spring is here slowly

May 12 The leaf stencil was a mistake. I tried to punch the oak leaf into a piece of mylar, but could only do this much of it. It worked perfectly for the small maple leaves. The ground is another piece of vellum.

April and May connections

Another chilly start to the day. I didn't bring in the pots of pansies, but I thought about it because a frost warning was issued. That's unusual for May.

Yesterday,I finished a spread in my Art Journal.
This photo shows the spread with all of April's Haiku written in free verse, printed in spring green on vellum. The borders are of the photo with all of April's entries. On the far right you can see part of the next page because I trimmed the vellum to just beyond the printing.
The second photo shows this page and the back of that page on the left.I printed out the entry from the blog, tore off the extra part of the page, and framed it with scraps of the same papers on the entry, and a piece that remained from the paper where I glued the Haiku/free verse for April. On the left,the back of the verse page,I glued the shapes I cut from a photo of a quilt where I quilted the ferns.
The grass stamp and stencil are the "barcode" stamp & stencil. Some of the spirals are stamped and some I drew. On the right,the extra paper is folded over to secure the three pages that are glued together.It shows on the next spread.

DAILY HAIKU 2009
May 11 consists of several scraps used before -the birdy paper, brown paper and the tissue with dog paws covered with a scrap of tracing paper and the writing. I free wrote in pencil over the card before I attached the scraps to enrich the creamy background.
creativity
blocked by effects of the season
can't think of new lines.

spring notes

It's very cool for May this morning. Looks like a long walk followed by some gardening. One of the front gardens still needs bark mulch. The rhododendrons don't have many buds. Last year they were full of blossoms. I didn't see any signs of the hibiscus bush in that garden yesterday. I replaced one of the oranges for the orioles, but I haven't seen them yet. The cool weather and the systemic poison seem to have done the trick in killing the red bugs.
Yesterday I glued some elements into my Art Journal and will finish the spread later today. Since it's about the change from April to May, I'd better get it done before May ends. Paula, Dawn, & I meet this Sunday for our "art share"...
Deezel's waiting for his walk with his head in my way... I'd better get done.

DAILY HAIKU 2009
My notes for today include the observation that I sat down with no idea for either text or image...sometimes those are my "best"days...
We took Deezel (3 1/2 months) to our neighbor's house for a short visit. Her daughter's family, sister and mother were there for Mother's Day. They are all dog lovers - our past dog, Monty, was a favorite with even her 94 year old mother.

This entry combines the colors of spring in the papers, the paws on the tissue for the dog, two bird images (one a stamp, one on the paper) and a simple green line for a frame. Each paper piece is roughly a rectangle. They meet in the center. The text is on tracing paper. This became a regular thing because none of the writing tools bleed on its surface.
intersections
people, places, time, events
lovely day in May

P.S. Even though I haven't been doing any new work, reconnecting with work and describing it on this blog keep me in touch with the powerful drive to create.

Mothers' Day...

We're having another windy day,so much so I'll probably not take a long walk with the dog, even though he needs some exercise.
We moved my plants from the beams in the kitchen to the sun porch to get them ready to go out for the summer, even though it's only in the high 40's today. I wintered rosebud impatients and a fuschia.

365 DAILY HAIKU 2009
May 9, 2009

This entry shows one of my favorite techniques of utilizing daily ephemera. This is my appointment card from the hairdresser's. I added a barcode and made lines around the edges in green and purple. We had moved some jack-in-the-pulpits because we thought they were threatened. This entry and the verse take note that they were doing well. I did a light pencil drawing.

many missing days

I'm not sure why I am so far behind in blogs for this week. Tuesday, my morning home went too quickly. Thursday I went to EKES to meet Peter H. Reynolds, author and illustrator. His book The Dot was the inspiration for our school-wide project. Everyone in the school made "dots". (I posted photos on an earlier post, and will include one here.)
I attached them by class to large(4') foamcore dots and all 12 are on display in the halls. He loved them and we loved him. Everyone should own a copy of this book. Check out his website at www.FableVisionLearning.com and his business in Dedham, Mass. "The Blue Bunny".

I had a fabulous "Art Afternoon" with one 3rd grade class on Wednesday. I showed them a form of monoprinting. We used foam to make our designs on. I had 10 kids for nearly an hour then we switched and I had the other 10. It was the way every art class should be. Due to a scheduling demand,sadly it's not going to work out that effectively for the other 3rd grade class.


DAILY HAIKU 2009
May 8th I used small strips from a postcard for its color and texture as a frame to reduce the space. It's from the Hood Gallery at Dartmouth College. The simple image has the stamped sun and the grass stenciled.

May 7, 2009
An irregular scrap of grey-green paper with a piece of tracing paper over it for the text and spirals for the raindrops make this a satisfactory entry. The verse lists rain words and has the middle line in common with the 6th.
May 6, 2009
Day long steady rain
rain puddles, rain rivulets
grey, somber, sleepy.
I used a stamp for the 6 and 9 over a stencil for the same numbers. A Flair marker makes solid black lines and crosshatching.The text is on tracing paper so I could use lines under it to get straight writing.






May 5, 2009
I wrote the text using a calligraphy point on grey-green scrapbooking paper and glued them over a background textured with pale pink and green. I used a stamp with flowers on it and only inked portions. The pink flowers in each corner are from a stencil I bought.

May 4, 2009
The return to school after spring break is noted by the text and I missed my coffee date with Paula. The turquoise is from a renewal card in "Cloth, Paper, Scissors". With white and a lighter shade of turquiose it has a springlike texture. I used a fineline gel pen to make the curved lines.

orioles, oranges, sprouting leaves

We shortened our walk this morning. The air was so humid the dog was panting before we left. I braved a quick dip into the pool - refreshing. I have not seen or heard the orioles. A year ago they were here.

May 3, 2009

The entry shows the feeders with oranges hanging on the branch. the text lists spring observations.
Hosta, lily of
the valley sprout freely green
spires through the dead brown leaves.

I like the simplicity of this art work. The verse balances the tree as do the stamped birds.

summer in May

It's projected to be in the eighties today and I'm sure it will be. Our pool is full, but cool. I walked the dog this morning and did some more "spring" cleaning. Still percolating the next spread in Art Journal. Looked through all of May 2009 entries as I cropped them. I noticed a couple dated the same and I didn't photograph the whole month.
I've been hand sewing on some glasses pouches - one for me and one for Ila for her birthday. It's nice to sit on the back deck, enjoy a cold drink and accomplish something !
I finally repotted my pansies. I've not seen the red bugs in any quantity since I poisoned them. The lilies are looking promising. The leaves have sprouted quickly Got a supply of oranges for the orioles - although I haven't seen or heard them, yet.

DAILY HAIKU May 2, 2009
The rainbow is on one of the stencils I got at the Currier yesterday. I inked each line separately. The bird stamp is orange for the orioles. The spring paper is a commercial paper. I highlighted a couple vines with a gel pen and did a delicate trim around the papers.
The text is on the paper with the dots.It's a list of the day's events.

May 1, 2009
My sister, Anne, & I went to Manchester to the Currier to see David Macaulay's art work.I had some fun with this architectural drawing. I used a stencil and shaded with a pencil and a sharpie ultra pen.