Was I There?

Monday, Monday

Monday.  But two things are making me smile....Princess Beatrice's hat (did you see THAT?)  and the thought of chipmunks drinking cappuccinos.  

Dude, you're holding the mug the wrong way.

A Katie Morag Kind of Day

It was a Katie Morag  kind of day today.  The hills overlooking the Rogue Valley reminded me of Scotland.  Dark blue glowering rainclouds but the dazzling green of spring.  

I call today a "Katie Morag" day because it reminds me of the excellent books by Mairi Hedderwick that my Scottish pal has been sending the children.  They love the stories-- even the poems (!)-- but I think I am the one who truly wants to be little red-haired Katie, living in her quaint village on an island off the coast of Scotland.

Watching the rainclouds and the rainbows afterward.

Ducky Race

Here are the duckies in the stall of the bathroom tub caddy.  It was the day they had waited for all year-- Theo's birthday--for they knew they would be put through their paces on the irrigation ditch above Liberty Street here in Ashland.

Here is the invitation.

Crown was the favored winner from last year.

But, in a surprising turn, it was the listing Cowboy who won!  And then Cap in the second race!  (That mild mannered guy-- you think he's Ritchie Cunningham but he's really Eddie Haskel.) 

The Golden Hippo of Easter

So last year Theo caught me hiding the eggs outside and asked, "Mom, are you the Easter Bunny?"  To which I could tell no lie.  This year, when Theo told Josephine that the Easter Bunny was really "just Mom," I said, "Ah, but you don't know the Golden Hippo of Easter."  

They perked up.  

"The Golden Hippo comes on Easter night and lays eggs in the woods filled with prizes for you to find."

Easter morning, needless to say, they were up at the crack of dawn.

Want to make your small kids go on a brisk hike, uphill?  Just tell them that the golden hippo's nest is up there somewhere, and they just have to persevere.  

And bring along the Meyer Lemon Pastry you made the night before, just in case you want to stop at the neighboor's brunch on the way back home.

"Put A Bird On It" : A Tribute to Portlandia

"In Portland, you can put a bird on anything and call it art!" says one character to another in the new TV series Portlandia.  

Watch them make fun of the City of Roses (and etsy) here.

I doff my hat and bird to Portlandia with my new series of plates.

It might not be art, but at least it's funny...

Bunny Quasimodo...and some links

On Saturday, we went down to see the bunnies at the Northwest Nature Shop here in Ashland.  And Josephine was, well, a bit dubious about it.  So she sat on my lap. I held the beasts and she shyly petted them.

Guinea Pigs...not so scary but still not the type of animals you want to hold yourself.

I had a great day planned: all of us meet friends Fred and Fiona and Baby Benjamin for the bunnies, have lunch, go meet some teenager dressed as the Easter Bunny at another store and decorate some cookies.  What could go wrong?  Well, me apparently, for when we started down the street, my face started swelling up with an allergic reaction. (I must have rubbed my eye with a bunny infested hand.)  I was just about on par with this.

May I add that I was brave venturing out at all given the horrific cold sore that had popped up on my lower lip the previous Friday.  My bad back which made me shuffle along the sidewalk, the cold sore, and then the allergic reaction which colored the left side of my face a terrible red and swelled my left eye completely shut-- was it any wonder (and I am NOT kidding) that people looked at me as I walked down the street, and then looked quickly away?  And that a waitress, when I dashed into a local cafe to use the restroom, actually did a sharp, horrified intake of breath as she looked into my face?

Anyhow.  I made an emergency stop at the pharmacy and went home to wash all the bunny karma off of me.  

In other news, here are some cool Easter things to check out:

• the paper German eggs I ordered and intend to paint gold and use instead of Easter baskets
• Aunt Peaches' tutorial on how to dye eggs using tissue paper 
• chocolates from Maison Bouche-- not only delicious but I love their vintage illustrations.  Last year, if you recall, I did these little dishes with chicks in red polka dotted kerchiefs.  They had been inspired by a vintage cupcake topper.  This year, I'm quite interested in the chick with the veiled hat...

 or the bunnies dueling. Hmmm....

 

 

Do you know Jack?

Here are my new plates, which would be good for any time of the year, but which are great easter gifts for your pals with a sense of humor.  It all started with a drawing I made of a jackrabbit, which has the same gleeket look as my dog Hamish.

I know I shouldn't laugh at my own jokes.

Anyway.  I made these plates and other work because I was gearing up for the Oregon Potter's Association show, which is the last weekend in April, up in Portland.  Alas, I'm not going.  Why?  Because last Saturday I stood on one leg, sneezed, and threw my back out.

So here I am again-- bad back, pots all dressed up and no where to go except my etsy store.

I've been to the osteopath three times this week and have PT next week.  And FINE, FINE I'll admit the IRONY of it: I was showing my 5 year old son this thing called "moonwalking" via the first time MJ did it.  We watched it on youtube, we went back into the kitchen, I did a little moonwalk, just a little one....and that's when I sneezed.

 

 

"The ember is in the canoe..."

This started out as three red dots.  I know because the artist, Denise Kester, was doing a demo of her monoprint method at a two-day workshop I went to at her studio a couple months ago.  Denise is a printmaker here in Ashland, Oregon.  And she not only is an amazing artist, but an insightful teacher as well.

I am going to save my ravings about Denise and printmaking for another post.  In the meantime I wanted to share her perspective of the class (and creativity and printmaking.)  This is from her monthly email newsletter, Monthly Musings:

Last weekend I had a wonderful experience with my monoprinting workshop. It was a full class and they kept me very busy. I began the monoprint above as a demonstration in the class but put it in a drawer to work on later as I had no time during class to give it my full attention. It wasn't until the next day when I was ready to print that I remembered a dream that I had on January 13th. 

work in progress on the light table before printing 

In this dream I am in a crowd of people and I hear a telephone ringing. Someone answers the phone and hands it to me and says "Its for you". I say "hello" and the person on the other end is a woman and she says. "I am calling from the Hopi nation. The ember is in the canoe. The time is now."   

work in progress without the light

I printed the monoprint by running it through my press. I then hung the print on my art wall. I began to dialog with the art to see what I could find out. This monoprint and the writing is still a work in progress but, this is what I have so far:

The canoe travels as the crow flies carrying the friends through flood high waters.

They are guided by helpers who send clues ahead.

It is a feeling of resonance that they follow.  

The friends are guardians of the precious  

ember that glows and is growing.

What is the ember? 

It is the ember that will spark the imagination, allowing the slow burn of ideas to ignite and become clear harbingers of creative solutions.

It is part of my process with all of my work to sit down and dialog or write down what the art is has to say to me.  This is how the titles and the stories come about in all my work.

work in progress just before printing

I am always fascinated by the connection between my dreams and my art. It is amazing to me that while attempting a demonstration in a class that the shape of a canoe will suddenly appear with a random stroke of an inked palette knife. I have enough experience with my process to trust the things that come through my art and my dreams. I know enough to pay attention.  

The Back Forty...A Birthday (again)

Well, I had another birthday today.  And here is another photo of me that I like.  Isn't it interesting that all the photos I will accept to be put on the internet are of me as a child?

This rhubarb one I particularly like because I so vividly remember that day.  My best friend, Andrea Hurd (aka Teeny) and I were living it up.  It was summer and we were in the high country of Colorado near Steamboat Springs.  It was the late 70s.  We had dressed as Indians (note food coloring war paint on my face and, yes, I know it seems weird, but at the time I meant it with the greatest of admiration.)  The only victims of fright, alas, were her sisters.  

But then we all took a hike to a literally fallen-in log cabin from the turn of the 20th century, the one with old-timey rhubarb growing near it.  We picked some, hauled it home for my mom to make a pie.

Here's then to when it's your birthday and I hope you remember a perfect day, a time when you felt so good in your body or felt good to be in the world, at peace with yourself. I can still smell the wild mint that grew along those old paths, see the sunlight through the aspen trees.  I can still taste that bittersweet summer pie.

Pumphouse in the Mists of Time...

Long ago, before the new studio, I worked in a pumphouse.

 A 6' X6' pumphouse, uninsulated, with the pump still in it.  

When I decided I'd like it for a studio, I spent countless hours removing the junk piled up inside and putting in a couple salvaged windows for cross ventilation.  The door wouldn't shut, so I found another one with a window in it, and painted the door bright red.  With blue-green dragonflies.

I traded some of my initial lopsided bowls for the work of a carpenter friend, who boarded up the ceiling.

Then I had a lean-to shed built to the side so my tiny kiln would be somewhat protected from the weather.  (Oh those days of trying to glaze while the rain poured down, or the sun sizzled down, or the icy wind flew sideways through the lean to opening.  I was actually learning how to mix my own glazes then and would often stand there motionless, ignoring even a light breeze, staring at an old metal scale, which I desperately willed to stay motionless so I could get a measurement of this or that exactly right, down to the last gram.)

Inside the pumphouse I wedged my mom's old wheel; this wheel actually sports a stone for the kicking stone along with a seat that looks like it came off an old tractor.

A couple shelves, a 3X3' canvas board atop an old kitchen cabinet (my platters were smaller then), some wooden boards to shove in the gaps in the floor where the squirrels crept in at night.  And I was ready.

I worked in that pumphouse seven years.  I had a lot of failures and a few successes.  But I knew I was on to something when the weekend would come and, no matter how bitter or blistering the weather, I'd find myself there.

The door to my current studio now gazes across the land at the old pumphouse.  And this is a true confession: the new studio is like a cream puff of a place compared to the old pumphouse, which has now been turned into a tool shed.

But I like the view.  I think it's good to remember where you came from, what you did for love.