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.