First Attempts at Weaving...

My dear friend Copper, gave me a lovely hand loom for Christmas. I have been enjoying my first attempts at weaving. Have just been doing rows of plain stitch so far, but I am beginning to think about how I might attempt to weave something more complex. Perhaps a scene from the farm where I grew up??  Many things to learn (like, say, improved tension!) before I tackle a bigger project, but definitely having fun!

First potholder on the loom....

Potholder #1- On the Road

Potholder #2

gardening on a sunday afternoon

 rain drops. water cascading in gentle rivulets down arms and legs. hair, now drenched, clinging to head and neck. laughter. sloshing shoes.
racing down a quickly mudding path. arms full of dripping curly kale. followed by joy.

(chased out of the garden by rain!!  It has has been such fun so far, and very enjoyable to eat my own kale anc chard and... hopefully soon potatoes. once I get batteries for my camera, then pics...)

Picture of our garden space!

Copper Penne and Polvo getting the ground cleared. Our space is 10'x20' between the 2 white strips of tape

Looking out over neighboring gardens

Seeds!

And here is a link to more talk about our garden over at a food blog I have with my siblings called TravellingSpoons:  C is for... Community Gardens and Cambodian Crab Shacks

Urban Gardner ..Writer's gone Gardening

A Not so Secret Gardner by Copper Penne

The day is bright with the sun beaming  down on the earth.  Puffy white clouds float by like ships, their destination unknown to those of us looking up into the sea of azure blue sky.  I can feel the excitement in the air, as my writing partner Vanilla Bean and I begin to plot and scheme about our shared garden.

I envision Birds flying high in the sky looking down on my garden as droppings rain down, plop, plop, plop, to fertilize my small piece of the earth.  My secret garden of sorts.

There shall grow profusely all manner of vegetable delicacies.  A myriad of fragrant delights, basil thyme. And more.

The excitement is palpable, what to grow?  I do not know!

So stay tuned my amigos for an e-ticket ride through the world of gardening!

Writers.... Gone Gardening

Inkstains is about to get active again!

My friend Copper Penne (KJWilli in the sidebar), with whom I meet up often to write, drink coffee, and talk life, is joining me in another venture-- gardening!!! We have just rented a plot as part of a local community garden and have been sitting here garden dreaming.  Look for more frequent posts and updates from both of us as we have fun putting plants in the ground, as well as sharing bits and bobs of our other daily and creative ventures.

Welcome to Inkstains and Coffee Beans, Copper!

Sketchpad Assignment: Art as Communication

I am taking a (free) class over at Coursera titled History of Art for Artists, Gamer, and Animators by CalArts. If you are at all interested in creative things, I highly recommend it.  This is my sketchpad response to the first assignment- thinking about what art is to us; what art is to the word and providing two images that reflect that for us. 

Mostly I think art is a medium for communication.

 

We want to connect; we want to share; we want to feel; we want to take emotions or difficult to understand things and make something other outside ourselves that we and others can interact with or dialogue over. It can be something created (a book, a painting) or something that simply exists (the sculptural quality of iris leaves under snow). The specifics of what that “art” looks like change based on where the viewer/receiver is in their personal journey.

For myself, as a story-teller, I am in the phase of learning to mine the art/story out of myself and to somehow figure out ways to get it out onto the page, so the art that draws me now generally focuses on either capturing something or transforming something.

The piece Transformations #4 by Karen Thiessen is an example of this kind of work.

http://karenthiessen.com/series4.htm

She started with what she had (a cultural heritage of thread/fabric/quilt; scraps of “failed” earlier attempts at art; a darker emotional thought or issue with which to wrestle). The resulting piece is something finished and beautiful. As evocative and visceral as the majesty and mystery of the night sky.

For how I think the world views art… that is too big and too varied. And fragmenting more every day as art and line and form step out of the more traditional forms of work hanging at an art gallery or a sculpture in the park to take up residence in many other places of our lives. Ads on television. Brand. The covers on our phones. A printed book of hundreds of our own personal photos.

For me a great example of this kind of art, where beauty and story and brand and advertising and film and installation piece and whimsy and emotion and...basically several different individual kinds of art all come together in one to evoke something in the viewer, would be the Starbucks holiday commercial from last year with music (snow day) and snowflake kites over NYC.  It is also an interesting juxtaposition of the temporary (discardable commercial; set outside at a particular moment in time) and the permanent (film).

Sounding

An upcoming art show at church was finally the inspiration I needed to take my wall-hanging backdrop and turn it into a finished piece. I've had the background piece finished and hanging on my wall for maybe three years?, trying to decide what to put on it. This is what came.  The poem is one that I wrote specifically for the piece, as I was trying to find a way to explain what I meant by it as a whole and by all the individual different bits and pieces of stitching on it.  A couple of creating details-- 1) yes, those are used coffee filters stitched on behind the poem  and 2) I used water soluble stabilizer to stitch together the ribbons at the top  (for maybe a third of their length?) before attempting to stitch them onto the piece.

Sounding: God's Sonar

under the roar of waves
that make up
the cycle of every day

a mug of coffee
writing pages
tilting at paper dragons
rumblings of project details
last rays of sunlight over railroad tracks
late night phone conversations

nearly drowned out by the daily routines
of mundane minutiae

there is a beat, always present
like the drumbeat of the heart
in its silence and invisibility

still steady and present
reverberating down the
fault lines of self
reaching to the marrow of
bone

a reminder
a call
a hope