What next?

Boy, it has been hard to get back to work after our trip to Ecuador, Christmas, New Years, trip to San Francisco and getting caught up with everything. Really, I'm still not caught up. I feel the need for some direction, though.

I am between projects. I have finished a couple large pieces that will be submitted for shows. I can't show them until I know if they have been accepted. High Fiber Diet has a show coming up called "What's Blue to You?" I need to get started soon if I am to have something to submit for that. What's blue to me? Good question. Blue is not a favorite color, but it has its place and connections in my mind. I just need to let my mind wander a bit. I thought I had an idea and tried a small piece, but it didn't excite me, so I am waiting for a better inspiration. Blue. Feeling blue, maybe. For the past couple days I have puttered around the studio. I made my valentine for this year. You will see it in a couple weeks. I have cleaned up and folded fabric and put things away. I have lost my enthusiasm for the small beaded work I was doing. There is an artist who seems to think I am copying her work with those little pieces. That makes me blue. She has told people I am copying her. I wouldn't—didn't, but now I feel scrutinized and paranoid and the satisfaction has gone out of that work.

I plan to continue with the shirting fabric work somehow. Over the past year I have "harvested" so many old shirts for their fabric. I saved all the labels and buttons in a cup. That is a year's worth above. Maybe someday I will make something using all those labels and buttons.

This morning in the shower I was thinking about where I might go from here and the view through my shower door didn't give me any concrete ideas, but the color sure was beautiful and made me remember that inspiration is all around if we just pay attention!

Tomorrow I will be posting this week's digital drawing from June and from me. I had a good time and made some good discoveries with this one, so I'm looking forward to sharing it. Vicki Miller played along with us last week and posted her digital drawings of her coffee mug on her blog. The other day someone said to me, " So, I see you are switching to digital art now..."  No, no, no. I am experimenting for my own enjoyment and as a new approach to my drawing practice, which is all in the interest of making me better in all that I do. I can't imagine abandoning my fabrics and sewing machines.

Right now I need to figure out what's blue to me... Ideas?

Digital Drawing Day

You know, if you've been reading this blog, that I have been playing around with drawing/painting apps for my iPad. My friend, June Underwood, is also interested in digital art and has been experimenting on her PC and her Android tablet. Last week we went to San Francisco to see the David Hockney exhibit at the deYoung Museum and we were both pretty fascinated with Hockney's digital paintings. We decided we would challenge one another to do at least one digital painting each week and we would exchange them on Sunday. Today was the first exchange. I suggested that the first one be something simple—a coffee mug. June will suggest some common factor for our next drawings. With June's permission, I will post the results here on my blog. Ready? Here are our first digital drawings!

June

This is an image of a cup. I thought I'd identify it, just in case. The writing says "La Grenouille" meaning "The Frog." The cup has a frog on it. It is not my favorite cup, because I have often painted my favorite cup and thought I'd challenge myself. I did so. This is an image of a cup.

All done on the desktop PC. Art Rage and Photoshop, the latter because at least I know the menu possibilities. Sigh.
-jou

Terry

I could have used the same red mug I painted last week, but I, too, wanted to challenge myself, so I used a mug handmade by Susan Gallacher Turner, one of the artists in the Open Studios group. The shape was challenging, as well as depicting all the decorative elements on it. My background consists of the things already laying on my diningroom table—some yellow fabrics sent to me by my friend Del and the San Francisco guidebook I took with me last week.

Done on iPad, using Sketch Club app.
-thg

Are you experimenting with digital drawing apps? Play along with us if you like! Post your drawings on your blog and send me a link, or send me your drawing and I will post it here.

Next week's challenge from June: two household items of any size or mode that "talk" to one another. Anything from tchotchkes (knicknacks) to pianos; "talk" in the visual sense.

****************************************************************
Thanks for the comments on the last digital drawings I posted. I am really enjoying this process of trying out all the possibilities of these apps to see what I like. A couple people said I was being "hard on myself" in my dislike of the first drawing. Actually I was being hard on the tool and expressing my dissatisfaction with the results it yielded. I really focus on line in all of my artwork and the quality of the line is what I am looking at. A weak, tentative line is not a beautiful line, in my opinion.

I wish I knew who the other Terry was who commented, "They do look like "tablet" digital art work but that's a good thing. It's a new media!" Oh, how I loved that comment. My sentiments exactly. And I can always count on Kristin to get what I am talking about. The "character" in the line is what I found lacking as well.

I found a simple solution to the problem of not being able to rest my hand on the tablet as I draw.

 Yes, that is a sock. It slides around under my hand and keeps it from contacting the screen and creating odd marks on the drawing. I might see if I have a small piece of fleece, which would be a little more elegant, but the sock works great for now!

The ultimate art date

My friend, June, and I have been on a lot of "art dates" over the years. We usually meet at the Portland Art Museum or at a Portland gallery and spend several lovely hours looking at and discussing art. June is very fun to discuss art with. She is a former fiber artist turned oil painter and has designed and implemented her own art education. That means, because June is June, she has read volumes and volumes about art and spends long hours pondering and thinking and puzzling out the hows and whys of it. So she keeps me on my toes. We once took a day trip on the train to view art in Tacoma, but this time she had a grander scheme in mind. "Let's go to San Francisco for three days and see the David Hockney exhibit at the deYoung Museum."

Three days because June wanted to see it three times. Don't ask. June likes to really examine things thoroughly.

It was a grand three days. We found San Francisco experiencing unseasonably warm and sunny weather, which made our travels about the city a joy.

We figured out the bus route to Golden Gate Park where the museum is. Here is June waiting for our bus. The bus route included a stop at the visitors center for the Golden Gate Bridge, so we were treated to this beautiful view on each trip. The bus was never crowded and we visited with nice people. 

Since I only wanted to see the exhibit once, on the other two days I just hung around the museum—wandering through the gift shop and sitting in the sun outside the museum. The sun on my shoulders, the sound of birds and children playing across the lawn, were like springtime in January. Such a contrast to Portland's damp, gray cold. I could hear someone playing old jazz standards on a saxophone somewhere nearby and it was a bit like being in a movie with a lovely soundtrack. On our last day we met up with fellow "twelve" Karen Rips and her husband and a friend for lunch at the museum. They came up from the Los Angeles area to see the exhibit. What luck! Such good people. 

One day we walked along a trail from Fort Mason to Fisherman's Wharf amidst cyclers and hikers and swooping gulls, window shopping along the touristy area, then trekking up the steep streets of San Francisco toward the neighborhood where we were staying. Near our hotel we had found a street of charming shops and restaurants. We ate well; we drank wine in the afternoon; we looked at art and we talked and laughed a lot. We declared ourselves the last living gluten-eaters in America and savored our good bread and pasta and snickerdoodles. 

The exhibit was, indeed, a BIGGER exhibition with something like 400 pieces. A lot to take in, but a thoroughly rich and satisfying experience. Many of the paintings were huge.  The one below (a favorite) is painted on 9 large panels and fills a wall. It would be impossible to try to describe the exhibit, except to say that it included paintings of landscapes and portraits, mind-bending videos, digital drawings using iPhone and iPad, charcoal drawings and water colors. A great diversity of work, yet there was a distinctive common thread running through it all. June decided it was all about the relationship between time and space and I have to agree. 

If you have a chance to see the show before it closes in a couple days I recommend it. Go with a friend. Walk. Talk. Eat. Ride the bus. Drink wine. You will love it. 

Two ways

I am continuing to report on my progress drawing and painting using the iPad. Last week at our STASH meeting I did a little demo and discussion because Gale was interested in using her iPad for drawing and planning projects. She was asking about whether one could load a photo into a drawing program and trace it. This is quite possible, so I have been playing around with ways of working with a photo. Pat said she was hoping to see some of the many Ecuadorean buildings I photographed on our trip, so that seemed like a good starting point.

Here is the first—a church in Ibarra, Ecuador. I brought in the photo and started by drawing the black line drawing on a layer in front of the photo. Once the line drawing was done, I opened a new layer between the photo and the line drawing and started painting the church. Because I was painting on a different layer I could see where the paint would go and it flowed in under the line drawing.

Here is the second—a flower shop that was around the corner from the church in Ibarra. I took a different approach to this one.

For this one I also started with the photo on the bottom layer and then I made a black line drawing on top. However, this time I drew thicker black lines. Then the painted layer went in front of the black line drawing. I painted the blocks of color so they slightly overlapped the black lines this time, not taking a lot of care about keeping the lines straight and uniform.

In both cases I deleted the photo layer before saving the painting.

So, here is what I learned. Making lovely, precise line drawings using the stylus on the iPad is difficult. (I think, in part, because you can't lay a part of your hand down on the iPad to steady it as you would do using paper) In the first piece I feel the drawing is weak. The quality of the line is not good and it has an awkward look. I wasn't very happy with this result. The second one has its own problems, but overall I like the crispness and energy of it much better than the first one. Interestingly, I realized at some point, that this technique is very much like my fabric art technique, where I fuse fabrics onto a dark background and allow the lines to be created simply by leaving space between the applied fabrics. I think the first painting of the church has a tight, busy feel that is common when working directly from a photo. If I were not showing you this as a bad example I would not want anyone to see it! I think the second piece is much less tied to the photo and has more life of its own.

Old dog, new tricks

I have never believed that old dogs can't learn new tricks. Lifelong learning is what keeps our brains nimble—at least that's a nice thought. I got a new iPad awhile back and decided I would really love to learn to make art with it. I researched quite a few drawing/painting apps and downloaded several and tried them out. Well. They were really clumsy to use and slow and not at all user friendly in my opinion. I decided that paper and pencil was far superior and to heck with this new-fangled, smarty-pants digital stuff! (Do I sound like an old dog?  "You kids get off my LAWN!!") Anyway, I set the whole idea aside.

A few months went by and I started noticing Pat Gaignat's blog with all her iPad drawings. They are quite wonderful! So I started noticing what it was she was using to make these. The most common app was called Artrage and she was using a New Trent Arcadia stylus. I immediately obtained both and decided it was time to try again. I really liked Artrage. It produces very paint-like results. Here was my first try (after doodling around figuring out what everything did).

I was pretty pumped by this! You can really see paint texture. Then, because it was Christmas, I tried out some of the other effects and the layers feature on this:

So many choices and features—my head was spinning! I did learn that Artrage uses a lot of memory and bogs down and becomes slow after awhile, especially since I was discarding and erasing about 80 percent of what I was drawing.

One day I was in Starbucks and noticed their free giveaway that week was an app called Sketch Club, so I took it and loaded it on the pad. It was equally user-friendly, but a simpler program than Artrage and not so much a memory hog. I will want to get back to Artrage one of these days, but in the meantime Sketch Club is perfect for learning the ins and outs of digital drawing and painting. Here's my favorite drawing, so far, using it.

You can see it doesn't have the same luscious paint quality as Artrage.

I am really excited to be going to San Francisco this coming week to see the David Hockney exhibit at the deYoung museum. Hockney has been doing a lot of work on the iPad and I am told there are some great videos of how he does it in the exhibit. He's even older than I! Maybe he will inspire me to greater heights. At any rate, I am loving the challenge of this.

As a contributor to the Sketchbook Challenge blog I needed to write something for this month's theme, "Sketching and Collage" so I made a simple digital painting/collage and posted a mini tutorial about how I did it here. I don't claim to be an expert, just an old dog learning a few new tricks.

Flavorful memories

I brought a bag of the roasted corn, in the bowl above, home with me from Ecuador. It is called tostado and is something I haven't eaten anywhere else. We had some with a drink tonight before dinner. I am hoarding them, eating a few at a time to make them last. They are very tasty. You may think they look like "corn nuts"—those rock-hard nuggets that we used to have with beer in college, but oh no. Tostado is roasted corn, but it is crispy, not hard, and has a lovely delicate roasted corn flavor. Most meals in Ecuador include a bowl of salted tostado on the table, which are eaten as snacks or sprinkled in one's soup.

This is the Ecuadorean corn from which the tostado is made. They call this corn choclo and it is one of the main staples of Ecuadorean cooking. The kernels are quite large, chewy and flavorful and boiled choclo is served at many meals. The etiquette for eating it, unlike here where we gnaw the corn off the cob, is to pick the kernels off the cob with your fingers and pop them into your mouth, or drop them into your soup. The big mid-day meal nearly always includes soup. Choclo is also made into mote (mo-tay) which is like hominy. The kernels are boiled in water with lime (the mineral, not the fruit) which boils the skin off and changes the texture and flavor. Mote pillo is mote scrambled with eggs and is delicious—a major Ecuadorean comfort food.

I bought my bag of tostado from this lady in the Cuenca market. It's in the white bowl in the back. The big basket on the left in the front is mote, the lime-treated corn.

Did you know that potatoes originated in the Andes? You find many, many varieties in the markets and the most favorite soup is locro de papas—potato soup. We love it. It is a simple, creamy potato soup that is a beautiful golden color from the addition of the annatto spice. Ecuadoreans tell me that annatto has a flavor, but it escapes me. I think it is used mostly for the color! The soup is served with slices of avocado and a generous chunk of queso fresco (fresh cheese).

You can toss in tostado or choclo as well. The bowl below, from a different restaurant, has grated cheese and chocho beans added. Every restaurant claims their version of locro de papas is the best in Ecuador.

The chochos are very unusual. They are crunchy little beans with a nice mild, nutty flavor. I found this article about them, which says they are "super food"!

Most of my friends are surprised to learn that Ecuadorean food is nothing like Mexican or Caribbean food, and not at all spicy in itself. But on every table is a bowl of aji, a hot sauce with a fruity basis. It adds the spice and is both hot and sweet.

They eat a lot of meat, especially pork and sausages are popular. At the market you can buy "hornado" which is roasted whole pig. The woman will cut off whatever parts you want and wrap it up in paper to take home. It is tender and succulent, once you get past the scary dead pig experience!

A very traditional Ecuadorean meat delicacy is cuy, which is what we know as guinea pig. We have eaten it on a previous trip, but not this trip. Not as horrifying as one might expect, but not a big favorite for me!

The variety of fruit grown in Ecuador is astonishing, and, for me, just one delicious experience after another. There are many fruits I have never seen or heard of before. This is a pitahaya, eaten with a spoon. It is very sweet and and has a divine flavor. This was Andy's favorite thing to eat when his dental work was in progress. No chewing required, though I really liked biting the little seeds, which are edible and have a nice pop when you bite into them. A bit like kiwi fruit, but softer and sweeter.

As usual we ate our way through Ecuador and enjoyed most everything! Food is such a great adventure when you travel. One meal stands out, however, and it was not even traditional Ecuadorean food. The day we flew to Cuenca to visit the family of our son-in-law happened to be Thanksgiving day in the United States. Of course Thanksgiving is unknown in Ecuador so we knew we were missing it this year. We spent the day vicariously enjoying our friends' turkeys and pies as posted on Facebook. When we arrived, that night, in Cuenca at the Molina home we were greeted with a table laden with a full Thanksgiving dinner—turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy and more. All researched online and prepared by the family for us.

Never before has a Thanksgiving dinner made me feel more grateful, humble and blessed. Food for the body and food for the soul.

My annual look back at last year

Music: Leo Kottke, Standing in my Shoes

The word

For the past five years I have been choosing a word for each new year, rather than making resolutions. Last year's word was "discover" and I did pretty well at keeping it in mind and made some good discoveries in 2013. I started changing some things about my artwork and trying something new and there were a lot of discoveries along that path. Most of my words of the year have been high-minded words of change and betterment and such a word simply didn't present itself when I started contemplating a new word for the coming year. Not that I am no longer in need or change or bettering, but perhaps I am just too tired out by all the discovering I have been doing this past year to summon enough energy for a word that challenges me very much. Some days I feel like maintaining is challenge enough. But no, I am not choosing "maintain" as my inspiration! Can't set the bar that low.

So I asked myself what good things did I discover this past year? I discovered recycled fabric and over-dying and I discovered a more spontaneous, but still planned, way of working. I discovered (re-discovered, actually) the joy of small hand-worked projects and found objects and texture. I discovered, on a trip to Ecuador, the joy of rediscovering old memories and even discovered the equator anew! I discovered yellow. Well, I didn't discover it really, but gained a new appreciation for that most inspiring of all colors. I made two quilted pieces with yellow skies and discovered that if the sky is not really yellow maybe it ought to be. And so, that is my word for 2014. Yellow.

And I added it to the studio wall along with the past years' words, so I will remember.

And I will use yellow to add hope and light and warmth to the world whenever I can. I think yellow is too often dismissed as a lightweight in the color spectrum, but I think it sheds its beautiful light on every other color in a composition. Golden, warm yellow—it's more than a color. It's an attitude and the aura I plan to surround myself with this year.

Christmas Eve

I am sitting here at the end of this busy day, eating a cookie and enjoying the tree and the quiet.

Today I was peeling oranges for the cranberry salad I make every year (my mother's recipe) and it occurred to me that even more than the smell of the Christmas tree, the sharp, spicy smell of oranges is the smell of Christmas to me. For most of the year I mostly ignore them, but at Christmas I like to have a bowl of them in the house, especially the little mandarinas.  Did you always find a little orange in the toe of your sock on Christmas morning? I did. Nuts, too. In the shell–walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, almonds and hazelnuts. I looked for unshelled nuts today. They were always in a big bin in the produce department in the grocery store. You shoveled all you needed into a paper bag with a big metal scoop.  No more. There are no bins of nuts in Portland grocery stores. Only small, sealed cellophane bags containing pecans or almonds or hazelnuts. When did that happen?

When I was a child we went to church on Christmas Eve. When we were really small we went, bundled in warm coats and mittens over our pajamas, and fell asleep in the car on the way home. The warmth of the old Methodist church, the smell of the candles, the glorious music ("for unto us a child is bo-orn...") put me into a kind of sleepy trance. And then the smell of oranges. As we left the church, headed out into an often cold, snowy night, each little Methodist child was given an orange.

When my children were small we had chili on Christmas Eve and went for a ride in the car to view the Christmas lights, then read The Night Before Christmas from my childhood copy. I wonder if there is a particular thing or smell that they most remember. Maybe the orange and the nuts in their socks. Maybe that Santa always left a new toothbrush in their sock. 

Tonight I watched my granddaughter prepare tea and cookies to leave for Santa, along with a beautifully illustrated thank you note to Santa. She is hoping he will leave her a special doll, which was always my favorite gift from Santa. I can't wait to see her happiness when she opens that gift.

And so, Merry Christmas, Solstice, Hanukkah—whatever you celebrate. I wish you the gifts of lovely memories from the past and joy in the current moment, and a delicious cookie and music and peace and—if you want—the sharp, spicy smell of oranges. It's the smell of Christmas, you know.

Home

We have been home from Ecuador for a week today, but I still close my eyes and see Ecuador and I still don't feel fully here and settled. It takes me awhile to come down from a trip like that.

On the last day we were there we went to the equator. There is a big monument and museum that is on the equator and commemorates the first Geodesic Mission of the French Academy of Sciences. We have been there and taken our picture straddling the line marked to show the location of the equator. But, guess what? Modern GPS measurements have shown that the equator is actually several hundred feet away. Oops. So this time we went to a different equator. This location is a smaller, but much more interesting attraction where we were shown a variety of "proofs" of the unique nature of the equator. For example, supposedly an egg will balance on the head of a nail right on the equator due to the equalization of the centrifugal pull of the poles.

Ray was able to balance the egg right there on the equator, but we have no idea whether the same thing is possible anywhere. There was also a demonstration of how water emptying out of a little basin into a bucket swirls in a clockwise direction south of the equator and a counter clockwise direction north and does not swirl, but drains straight down over the equator.

It seemed a fitting way to end our stay in Ecuador. That night we went out for a wonderful dinner at a beautiful old Hacienda overlooking the lights of Quito.

We think this was our 6th trip to Ecuador, but it had been 7 years since we were last there. We saw a lot of change since that last visit. Prices are higher, for one—but it is still a very affordable place to visit. The biggest changes were infrastructure improvements. The roads are vastly improved. A new, modern airport has replaced the old one. All the messy overhead wiring in Quito is being put underground and new sidewalks are replacing the terrible, dangerous old broken pavement all over the city. Things look cleaner. New construction is going on everywhere and a subway system is under construction in Quito. The buses are cleaner and newer. We were less excited to see more and bigger malls, American franchises like McDonalds and KFC and thousands more cars and jammed up traffic. But nothing is changeless, and life moves forward for us all. Life, perhaps, is better for the average Ecuadorean than it was 7 years ago. Thankfully, there is a spirit that has not changed. The people of Ecuador continue to project pride in their culture, their art, their history. It is a warm and colorful and generous culture and that treasures family above everything. You are greeted with a kiss on the cheek and a hug and great affection each time you meet.

Travel to such a different culture awakens awareness. Details matter. Life on the street is a visual feast. I always feel nearly overwhelmed by the visual stimulation. This past week has been a gradual, and often melancholy process of letting go and moving back into my own life. I sometimes feel I should try to understand and make some logical sense of the experience, but it is impossible. It exists in fragments and images, now memory. I wasn't sure I really wanted to go back to Ecuador—why not see someplace new? But we went for practical reasons and found new vision and renewed beauty. This one will stay with me for a long time.

And as for that practical purpose that took us back to Ecuador—our son Andy's dental work—it was an unqualified success. The Dr. was excellent. The work is beautiful. We are really pleased, especially Andy.

Wood sculpture in San Antonia de Ibarra

I find it fascinating in Ecuador that there is so much art being made and that each small town seems to have its own specialty. Near the city of Ibarra is the small town of San Antonio de Ibarra where the specialty is wood carving. The little town is full of shops and galleries offering everything from elaborately carved furniture to wooden spoons and kitchen utensils. The city park boasts two large carvings of fanciful birds, which on closer inspection, are actually children's play structures.

Aren't they wonderful? There is a slide inside the body of the bird.

This is in one of the better galleries with very finely carved work. And here is the studio in the back of one of the galleries. The garden out back was wild and wonderful.

We wandered through many of the shops, watching work in progress in many of them.

Then we came to a shop that produced saints and holy figures for churches. Upstairs was a workroom where old, damaged saints (santos) were waiting to be repaired.

The worn and damaged faces were haunting and beautiful.