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.