I’m Back~With Artful Things

So, my creativity has been at low ebb for a while. I guess we all go through this, at different times in our lives. The Day Job zaps energy and the will to create. I feel like I’ve been in a library-shaped cocoon, reading and avoiding the world. But lately, I’ve been jotting notes for things I want to write, create and, gasp (!) sew. While texting with a friend a few weeks ago, I looked up a cameo company online and bought a bunch, which will be showing up in my Etsy shop soon as necklaces and earrings and even pins (!). There’s a stash of fabric in my workroom and patterns I got on a super sale at JoAnn. And I’m even thinking of starting classes toward a general ed degree.

 

Right now, I just want to get blogging again. Expect to see art around town, book reviews (I’ve discovered a lot of new mystery series lately), new jewelry and just things I find interesting and think you might, too.

 

Last week, The Husband and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary in Palm Springs. Today, I’m going to post some art from around PS and their great art museum. The next blog will have nose art and some other paintings and sculpture from the Palm Springs Air Museum. Enjoy!

 

Here we are, posed beneath Marilyn Monroe in her iconic pose from The Seven Year Itch. This great gal, a huge sculpture by Seward Johnson, is quite a draw!

I knew you were wondering!

We saw this sculpture a few years ago and we’re still amazed by it. I keep expecting her to blink!

Full length

Her feet are so dang lifelike!

This is a performance art piece on a 12 minute loop. It mesmerized me. So simple--a woman holding a container of milk--but so fascinating. I think because it was presented as a piece of art on the wall, the fact that you could see her breathing and working to keep the container steady but dribbling on the floor and her black dress, it was like watching through a window. And she never looks up, never tries to make contact. Hmmmm, that does make me a voyeur?!

Here I am with Your Dog, in the front lobby of the musuem.

No explanation--just fun! I posted this on Facebook with the caption, “I’ll never get these dishes done!”, contributed by The Husband.

Loved this Glass House

Loved this Glass Man. His pants are concrete, I believe, but the jacket and the head are glass. The jacket and hood seems to have been painted, but the back of the shoulders and the face were left raw, creating the glow of light. Beautiful!

Face detail.

I was taken with these ornaments hanging above the second tier of the museum, even before we discovered that each of the 100 pieces holds a note or piece of artwork from artists all over the world.

And here’s The Husband, with a driftwood horse he admired.

And just to show that art and beauty are everywhere, here's a beautiful flower we saw on our way to the museum.  So bright and happy!!

Coming soon, The Palm Springs Air Museum!

Do What You Love!

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Piece by Piece Mosaics--Kay K Robinson

My friend, Kay K, had a gallery reception yesterday for her show, Piece by Piece Mosaics, at the Old Town Gallery on Main St. in Tustin. I met a couple of friends there and spent a lovely afternoon perusing her colorful work, listening to sweet harp music and catching up with Anneliese and Terry.

This gallery space is so cool~exposed brick, high ceilings, generous office/studio space in the back. And pretty soon, it will be vacant :-( The owners are moving their business closer to home...

Julio Montero entertaining the crowd. Harp music is so soothing and classy!

Glass Slippers.
Kay K started her glassmaking journey creating big, ruffly beads, which you can see as the embellishment on these shoes (more later...)

Another example of mosaics and beads (yup, I met Kay K at the Bead Society!). The leaf and stem are embellished with seed beads.

These are so intricate and beautiful. And there's so much work involved! Let's look closer...

What you may not realize and what I certainly didn't think about, is that each glass piece is hand cut, ground and fired--you don't pick up this stuff off the rack in Michaels! The examples here are the round green pieces and the dark leaves.

And closer still... Can you see the big ruffly beads and a bunch of smaller, round beads? They gave this piece amazing dimension and texture.

This humongous piece is a work in progress that's going to be auctioned for the local charity, All the Arts for All the Kids, in Fullerton. Friends of Kay K, including Terry, are working on the glass pieces, following Kay K's design, while she's doing other glass work and affixing the pieces to the base. The glass pieces for the round designs and longer leaves are glued on netting and affixed as one piece to the base. The other glass is all done separately, piece by piece, and as the design is filled in, the pieces will have to be custom cut to fit in the remaining spaces. You can see especially at the top where glass still needs to be added. Many hands and hearts are participating in this challenge and I'm hoping to see it when it's finished.

Kay K, the woman herself! One of the really cool things she does, which has taken her around the world, is costume building and repair on cruise ships. Doesn't that sound like a blast?! If only I could sew...

And I've saved the best work for last. Ta da!

This is called Breathless. My pictures do not do it justice. Another artist friend of hers did the base, which is exquisite, and naturally, she did the skull.

Again, she's using beads and jewelry to their full advantage! There's only one tooth that's real and I didn't get a photo of that. It's on the far side and it's gold!

The funny thing is, I didn't get one picture of her fish, which was the logo of her show. There were two walls of fish and when I got home, I realized I didn't have any record of those. Duh!!

If you're in the area and want to see Piece by Piece Mosaics (including the fish), here's the website for directions: http://www.otgallery.com/index.html , although Kay K's exhibit isn't on the site yet... And here's the link for the charity event: http://www.alltheartsforallthekids.org/events/index.html

And here's Kay K's own website (yes, you can see the fish here...): http://kaykrobinson.com/Mosaics_by_Kay_K_Robinson/Home.html

Do What You Love!

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Fave Etsy Shop Tuesday

I was looking for pendants and came across this totally cool item:

Here’s how it works

like a stud earring, only through the screen.

I think that’s the cutest thing! And so clever. You can find these and beautiful stained glass suncatchers and pendants at JasGlassArt's shop on Etsy.

Here are some more cool things:

Do What You Love!

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As Promised, The Contest Necklace

At last, (drum roll, please) here is Tequila Sunrise!

I took these pictures after a day at The Day Job so they’re obviously not the photos I’ll send for the contest. But they show the color pretty well.

The category I’m entering is Glass and I’d say this is 99% glass. I think a couple of plastic beads snuck in in my passion for orange. But the majority has to be glass, so I think I’m safe.

It's pretty amazing how heavy this piece is. And I love the sound it makes, like little windchimes.

I originally wanted a toggle in the shape of a sun but when I couldn’t find that, I went to a local bead shop and lucked into a brick red enameled toggle, that matched my color scheme. I was very happy to find it. C Koop is the designer.

Hopefully I’ll have the time this weekend to take some really good photos and get the entry in. I’m getting ready to meet my mom in Vegas for a week, so there’s a lot going on right now.

I also want to make an entry for the Heart category and after that, there’s a necklace I’m designing for the Orange County Fair…

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Work in Progress-Beadstar Contest Necklace

For those who follow me on Twitter, I’ve been mentioning working on “the contest necklace”. Well, here’s what I’ve been talking about.

Raw materials~~I knew I wanted a very specific color scheme, so I gathered all the reds, oranges and yellows I had and put them all in a big container, so they’d be wicked easy to work with.

I’ll be filling in all the chain up to the two red/orange beads at each end, an 8 to 9 hour process, doing each bead or bead set with a wrapped loop. I love the toggle. It’s an enameled metal I found at Brea Bead Works. I wanted a gold sun toggle but I don’t think they exist, so I was happy with this one since the color totally works with my design.

I may take off the faceted round red beads that frame the focal. They hide the pendant piece too much and for this necklace, I really do want to make sure that the focal has presence.

This entry will be in the glass category but I may also do one in the hearts category, since that’s one of my favorite shapes and I have billions of heart charms. Ok, 100’s…

Not that I want competition ;-), but here’s the link to the Beadstar contest http://www.beadingdaily.com/beadstar/Bead-Star-Rules.asp

Once I get this finished, I’ll post more pix. Wish me luck!

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Artist’s in Action

My title is more about my awkward cell phone photos than our little workshop, but that’s ok.

I took a workshop yesterday with my friend and fellow Bead Society member, Barbara Bastrup. She’s a terrific artist and journal maker and offered us a few hours of learning new techniques in a class called the Beaded Page. We had a blast painting, gluing and playing with beads and glass.

Here we are “in action”.

Here’s my project, called Laugh. You can’t read the silver heart but I took the opportunity to practice with my new metal stamping kit and had a field day, using all the new graphic stamps (a cat face, a curly heart and a star) and the letters L A U G H. I wanted to have a reminder for The Husband and I that, through all the goofy things happening to us lately, we just have to LAUGH!


Hope you get to take a class like this, where you can just bust loose and try new things. I used some new glues I hadn’t seen before and got to use some glass tiles and shiny pieces of broken glass to add some sparkle to my canvas. I used too much glue for the HA in the upper right corner but, as my counterpart in Blogland says,

C’est la vie!

It’s all good!

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