When the words come out right...

Continuing with reposts of some of my favorite posts from the past ten years of blogging, I have been looking back and reading through a lot of old posts. Writing has become kind of a passion for me, but it isn't always easy. Sometimes I really struggle for something to even write about, or I write something, read it and see immediately that I completely missed the mark. Occasionally something comes out that feels like exactly what I wanted to say, and I am rewarded with wonderful, thoughtful responses from readers who add their own thoughts to what I always hope is a discussion, not just me talking. Here is one such post.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Selling my work

I sold a piece of my work yesterday. An old friend contacted me last week and said he would like to buy a piece of my work. He looked at the pieces posted in the tabbed pages at the top of this blog and chose one he liked and arranged to come out to the studio to pick it up. He brought his friend, an artist, to see the studio and it was a lovely interchange. At one point he asked, "When you sell a piece, do you miss it, or are you just happy to have the money?" I laughed a little at the question and answered that I am happy to have the money.  Which is true, but not really the entire answer to his question.

I actually love selling my work. The saddest thing in my studio is the stack of unsold work upstairs in the storage space. Selling a piece of artwork is the most affirming thing I know. Better than having it published, better than getting into a big show. It means someone else has connected to it in a way that means they will pay for it and make it part of their life and surroundings. That is hugely, HUGELY gratifying. And selling something that is a personal favorite of mine, is the best. I don't have as much anxiety about whether the new owner will really like it or whether I have sold him something with serious flaws that he will recognize down the road.

And the other part—will I miss the piece of artwork? Oddly, not really. For one thing, I photograph everything I do and make sure I have good photos. I can always go back to them if I need an image or want to show a sampling of what I have done to someone. But more than that, by the time I finish something it has given me all that I needed from it. Sometimes what I needed was a big, tangled messy challenge. Sometimes it is discovery. Sometimes it is finding out what does not work. It always provides the problem-solving part of the design, the pleasure and sensual joy of choosing the fabrics and seeing how they play together, the solitary, contemplative parts of pinning up pieces and choosing the best combinations and beginning to see the piece coming together. There is a wonderful smell of hot fabric, being ironed. There is the hypnotic hum of the sewing machine. There is a process of talking to oneself. "Damn, I should have used a fabric with more contrast here. No, this is probably OK.... No it isn't OK. Damn." Then resignation and the task of picking out stitches and replacing the bad with better. And you know you made the right decision, even if you did have to pick out those tight little stitches. That's a good feeling. And then it is finished and I sit and look—for a long time. Sometimes what I thought was finished really isn't and back it goes to the table for something more—or less. Then I am happy, and the work is ready for someone else to enjoy in a different way.

And the money, the other other part. That's a sticky part for a lot of artists. I know some people who just can't bring themselves to ask for money for their work. And some, who maybe are too focused on  the money, making "sale-able" a priority that overrides their other aspirations for their work. For me it is a largely unemotional issue. Making art, while it is good and satisfying work, is still work and I have a belief that most work should be paid. That is not to say I would never give a gift of my work or donate it to something I believe in. But giving art as a gift is a different experience than selling it. When it is sold you know the person receiving it sees value in the work and has chosen, for themselves, something they truly desire. And that money is something I always translate, in my mind, into more materials, more freedom to work at art instead of something else, and a greater ability to continue to do what I so love doing. Or, when things are really good, I can use that money to buy a piece of art from another artist. I would much rather have someone else's artwork on my walls than my own. Really, that is the best.

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Having my friend come out to the studio was a good excuse to clean it up, after some weeks of heavy-duty art-making. It looked good enough that I took some new photos and replaced some of the ones in the "my studio" tab above. Now that I have been working there for a couple of years it looks more like a real working studio than my earlier photos of pristine tables and storage bins. I hope you will enjoy seeing where I work.
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If you'd like to read some of the wonderful comments that added so much to this post, you can read the original post here.

Another favorite

This was a post I enjoyed writing and I enjoy going back to read again. It has been 7 years since I wrote it and I wouldn't change it at all.

The followup post is worth reading as well, I think. There were people who responded about their own childhoods, which made me stop and think about my own and where it came from. You can read it here.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

I am from

This little exercise comes from a poem by George Ella Lyons; by way of Fragments from Floyd, where there is a template; by way of Kirsty at Two Lime Leaves and others. Whew. A long way to get here, but a good exercise. I recommend it and would love to see what others come up with.



I am from The Saturday Evening Post, from Grapenuts and the Postwar Baby Boom.

I am from Maplewood Street, Elm trees, sagebrush, the Portneuf River, hot, dry summers and bitter cold winters.

I am from the desert, the mountains, the sky. I am from the sound of trains in the night.

I am from singing in the car and laughing til we peed our pants, from Grandpa Ern ("you be Frank and I'll be Ernest") and Shelton earlobes and Howard hair.

I am from handmade is better than store bought.
From "never tolerate intolerance" and "life is grand if you don't weaken."
I am from the little Methodist church and the Carnegie Library and the Woolworth and the Okay Market.

I'm from a homestead in Colorado, a farm in Montana, the foot of the mountains in Idaho, from baked potatoes and cheese enchiladas.

From Jimmy who saw Betty for the first time and said, "There's the girl I'm going to marry" and Betty who thought she "might die" if she didn't marry him; and black and white TV and a succession of Ford Station wagons.

I am from Dad's darkroom and family photos and silver dollars. From fresh trout and starry nights, the smell of woodsmoke and wool blankets; the love of books and babies and card games and road trips and a good story.

I am from love that was demonstrated daily but never talked about. I am from family

Idaho—the last installment

Now that I have shown you some of the viewers' favorite posts from the past, I want to remind you of some of my favorite posts. This post, from 2010 remains one of my favorites because I look back at the day I was writing about and remember it as a day I want to remember forever and this post does that for me. It was the final post of several about our trip to my childhood home in Idaho, and a visit with my brother and his family. We had been at the cabin my parents built, which my brother now owns, in a part of Idaho that will always be special to me. It was a perfectly, gorgeous, sparkling Fall day as we made our way from the cabin out along the Snake River and I was seeing both the present and the past in the glory of the scenery. I loved the photos I took that day.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Idaho—the last installment

I have saved the most scenic for the last and I plan to get all tour guide-y on you, so you are warned.

Quaking Aspen

Boy, do I love these trees. They so remind me of being at the cabin and in the mountains of Idaho.

Through the mountains you see huge groves of aspen. You can see one of these groves, that has lost it's leaves in this photo, across the lake. They are beautiful in every season. In the summer their quivering, silvery leaves seem to shimmer and in the fall they turn that amazing brilliant yellow. In winter they are ghostly and graceful like this grove that we saw driving along the river. 

Did you know that aspen groves grow from a single system of underground roots? All the trees in a grove, growing from that root system are genetically identical and the grove is referred to as a clone. Scientists consider a clone grove of aspens as a single living organism and there is a very large clone in Utah that may be the single largest living organism on earth. You can observe that clone groves, because all the trees are genetically identical, will lose their leaves all at once and not necessarily on the same time schedule as neighboring clones. Makes me wonder if the foreground tree in my photo is not a part of the clone. (Individual trees will also grow from seeds.) I miss the aspens. They don't grow much below 5000 feet, so we don't have them in the part of Oregon where I live, but they are the most common tree in North America.

South Fork of the Snake River

Just to give you a little context, here is a map of the area where the cabin is.

The cabin is on the west side of the Palisades Reservoir, in the vicinity of the lettering on the map that says "Bear Creek Rd.". Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons are a bit east and north of the righthand side of the map. The Palisades Dam is on the South Fork of the Snake River, and we drove back to Pocatello by way of the Snake River Rd. where all of these photos were taken.

The yellow trees along the river are cottonwoods.

Looking east toward Wyoming.

Sagebrush.

Great fishing along this river. There were fishermen out in their boats the day we were there.

Here in Oregon many of my friends say they long for the ocean and find peace and calm along the beaches and dunes. Me, I find myself longing for the mountains and the aspen and the pine and each time I visit it is like having my battery charged. I guess it is part of who I am.

Ernest Hemingway was one of Idaho's most famous citizens. He died and is buried near Sun Valley. The epitaph on his memorial are his own words, written for a friend.

Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
And above the hills
The high blue windless skies
Now he will be a part of them forever

 It was that kind of day.

Another favorite older post

Yesterday I re-shared the post, that over the past 10 years of blogging has been the most viewed. The second most viewed was the tutorial I put together for using the Liquid Thread fusing product that I continue to use for assembling my work. If you really want to see that again you can find it here. Close behind in the number 3 spot is a post from 2012 showing my completed quilt called "Fire".  It is one of several posts of quilts where I said, "I thought this was finished, but then I decided it wasn't and this is what I did." I guess that is my frequent pattern.

It was one of four for a show called "Elements" and before the show even opened Fire had sold to a member of my High Fiber Diet group. It seemed to strike a cord with people and has been pinned many, many times on Pinterest sites.  I get frequent emails inquiring whether it is still for sale, or even more frequently, if I sell a pattern for making it. So I will clear that up right here and now—no, I don't sell a pattern. Never have, never will.  Couldn't begin to create directions for how this thing was made even if I wanted to. But, thanks for asking!

Friday, April 06, 2012

Fire

Finished the campfire piece today. Actually, I thought I had it finished yesterday. It looked like this:

I don't know if you can see what I changed. The bottom foreground wasn't quite working for me. Those rocks around the fire looked too tight and somehow unnatural. And the ground itself wasn't "grounding." I added a couple more rocks and some deep shadow, which seem like an improvement to me. And then I added more sparks. Seemed like it needed those.

This piece will be submitted for our next High Fiber Diet show, "The Elements." If I can get them done in time, I hope to complete all four elements to submit. I started with "fire" because it seemed the most challenging, but now I am having a hard time coming up with any ideas for earth, air and water!

The size of this is 15" x 35". I kind of wish I had made it larger.

Looking back over the past 10 years

Next Friday will mark 10 years that I have been writing this blog. No one is more surprised than I, that I have kept at it for this long. It has been a very satisfying journey for me. Not every post has been a gem, but in nearly 1800 posts over the past 10 years I think a few stand out as favorites, either of mine or of those of you who have been reading. I decided to look back through the stats and pick out a few to share this week.

I was really, really surprised to learn which post, from all of them has been the most viewed and shared. It is one from 2009 about summer TV and doodling. Almost 20,000 people have viewed this post. I would never have picked this as a winner in a million years! Here it is again.

Monday, July 06, 2009

So you think you can doodle

My guilty summer pleasure is the TV show, "So You Think You Can Dance". It really is about the only thing worth watching on TV this summer, though I am catching "True Blood" on HBO and saw the first episode of "Hung" which looks promising, if a bit risque! I like the dance show because these kids really can dance! It is always entertaining and sometimes quite thrilling. The judges are good, say intelligent things, don't bicker among themselves; the choreography is interesting and creative and the choreographers talk about what they are doing, which I find fascinating.

While I watch, I doodle. I put my pen down during the actual dancing, but doodle while I listen to the talky part. I am continuing the doodle style I showed awhile back. Here are the latest.

I find I am now seeing patterns to doodle everywhere I go. Even peapods in the garden.

This one (above) is not a favorite. I think the center turned out looking like a little quilt with a ruffle around it—or molars around it.

Ray dubbed this one a "Martian fruit".

There is something really quite satisfying about working in black and white. I saw the Escher exhibit at the Portland Art Museum this month, and Escher's prints are really wonderful and graphic. A lot of the detail really reminded me of my doodles. And the rediscovery of my old prints has gotten me thinking a lot about the simple and not so simple process of working with only one color. I think the universe might be trying to tell me something.

Take a photo

Want to know what's going on with your artwork? Take a photo and look at the photo. I don't know why this works, but it does. Sometimes there is something not quite right, big as life, right in front of you and you don't see it until you take a photo. Seriously.

Do you see a difference between these two pictures?

 

When I posted pictures of the stitching I did yesterday something hit me. The first picture was what I was seeing and it was dead. Something was not right. The lines of stitching were too regular and static. I went back today and added enough additional lines of stitching to break up that regularity and, for me, it changed the whole feeling. Now I am stitching with more awareness of creating a more syncopated, organic rhythm in the stitching. I'm glad I saw that when I did.

I put in a long afternoon of quilting on this piece today. Tomorrow I'm helping Sofia with a sewing project, so I won't be stitching on my piece for another day or more, but I see the end in sight.

 

 

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Stitching

 

I have finally reached the point when I can begin stitching on this piece. Getting the top together was challenging and fun, but the top, alone, is a flimsy, lifeless thing, in need of texture and substance. Now the real work begins. I layer and pin baste, getting it ready to go under the needle. My machine is readied—cleaned, oiled and fitted with a sharp new needle.

 

A man, looking at my work one time, asked about the "special" machine I must use for quilting a piece. He speculated that it was some computer-driven wonder that one programs to "do all the work for you." I think he envisioned placing the layered fabric under the needle, pushing a button and walking away, leaving the machine to do its magic. Not even close. I use a heavy-duty, strictly mechanical (not digital) machine for quilting. It does nothing but straight stitch. It has an extra wide opening to accommodate the bulky fabric layers I push through it and it allows me to drop the feed dogs—those saw-toothy runners that ordinarily push the fabric in a forward motion. When the feed dogs are dropped and I use a free-motion foot, I can, with my non-computerized hands, guide the fabric forward, backward, side-to-side to create the paths and patterns the stitching takes. It is a bit like drawing by moving the paper under a stationary pencil.

The stitching is slow and laborious. Hard on one's back and shoulders, but, at the same time, meditative and rhythmic. I don't plan or mark the patterns I stitch ahead, so it become an ongoing improvisation, a conversation between the fabric and me about what the composition needs. It feels a little reckless and iffy to just make it up as I go, but also totally absorbing and the sense of time falls away. And when I finally stop, stretch my stiffened back and stand back from the work, I see that it is coming to life. That's what the stitching does.

 

I have many hours of this ahead of me.

 

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Watching the volcano

 

In 1999 my, then, 22 year-old daughter Emily was teaching English in Ecuador and she and some friends decided to climb, with a guide, to the peak of Cotopaxi, the tallest active volcano in the world. That's her on the right, at the summit. I knew nothing about this caper until I got a phone call from her, excitedly proclaiming, "Mom, Dad, guess what I did this weekend!" Cotopaxi is just outside the Ecuadorean Capitol of Quito and is a spectacular sight on clear days. Emily and her family were in Ecuador earlier this month and she posted this photo from the Air B'nb in Quito where they were staying.

That's Cotopaxi poking up near the center of the photo. As you can imagine, she has a special feeling and fondness for the mountain.

When Ray and I visited Emily in Quito in 2004, she arranged for us to visit her mountain. We took a van up as far as the road goes and parked in a big, windswept parking lot. The plan was to hike, with our guides, up to the base camp, which was visible from the parking lot. The summit towers above the base camp. When I stepped out of the van I was hit with with a wave of dizziness and my heart began to pound as I struggled to get enough air in my lungs. One look and the guide said, " No. You can't go. You must wait in the van." I seem to be more sensitive to the altitude than the others. It took no convincing for me to wait in the van. I read. I drew in my sketchbook. I slept. I moved as little as possible. Here is the sketch I made, sitting on the van's back bumper. When I look at this sketch I can feel the cold and the fog and the buzzy light-headedness that overtook me.

Now Cotopaxi is erupting after nearly 140 years. So far it is sending plumes of ash into the air. No one knows quite what to expect. One of the fears is, of course, more violent and damaging eruption. Another is that it will become hot enough to melt the glacier that covers its peak, sending massive flooding into the valleys below.

 

Photo by Henri Leduc

I think of all the times I have heard on the news of a volcano erupting in some far off part of the world. It passes through one ear and out the other, without making an impact. Ho hum. But now it's a little more personal. I have been there. I have stood, very shakily, on that volcano. I will be watching. Want to watch along with me? http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2015/08/aftermath-of-cotopaxi-volcano-eruption-in-ecuador/#1

Added note: apologies to Henri Leduc, whose amazing photo of Cotopaxi erupting was first used here without attribution. I am glad to know who the photographer was and happy to be able to give credit to him.

 

 

 

 

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I thought I was done...

I really did, so I hung it up to look at for awhile and something kept nagging at me. Something else. It just needed something else, and I kept thinking I wish I had put just a spot of something red in there. It really seemed to be crying for just a little red—a roof, or??

And there was something else that just wasn't quite right. It didn't take long to make just some small changes and now I think it is done.

Camas Prairie finished and now I'm on to something new.

What a busy summer it has been. Beth and I haven't gotten a lot of walking in, but had a good walk this morning. Our favorite walk has thrived in our absence.

The Beavers and ducks have well and truly taken over a section of our paved walking path, which has been under water long enough now that wetland foliage has begun to grow up along the new shoreline and the dog walkers have worn a new path uphill from where the old one disappears into the water.

We've yet to see a beaver, but there is plenty of evidence that they are there, busily designing thir new habitat.

 

Beaverton. I guess there's a reason they named the town that.

 

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Some make it, some don't...

This has been a busy summer of preparing work for submission to one show or project or another. Submitting is always fussy and time-consuming and, at least for me, somewhat stressful. For one thing when you make something targeted at a particular show, with requirements and themes and such there is the anxiety of meeting all those requirements and making sure you haven't forgotten something key, like the prescribed size or how to prepare the rod pocket on the back, and of course you are second-guessing yourself all the way to the moment you actually proffer your submission.  "Will this really communicate the theme?,  Is this piece going to be so far out it just won't mix with any of the other entries? Will the juror be one of those that only likes one style, or hates words on art, or thinks commercial fabrics are unacceptable, or, or, or is this just horrible and stupid????" Rejection is hard to take, but it's part of the program. At the SAQA Conference this spring, Maria Shell, one of the speakers said she feels she is doing well if she has a 50% acceptance rate. I latched onto that number and, by her standard I have done OK this summer.

First the accepted:

The Rhythm of Rain

A Sense of Summer

Both of these pieces will be part of the High Fiber Diet "Making our Mark" show, which had the requirement of at least 75% neutral color and the inclusion of a common mark which will be hidden or in plain site in all included pieces. I was so happy with both of these pieces that I would have been  very disappointed if they were not chosen. Each really does express my take on mark-making and a cool, clean neutral color space.

The not accepted (I can't bring myself to use the word "rejected"):

Anne, Patron Saint of Grandmothers

This was a submission for a publishing project and a bit of a shot in the dark. I wasn't entirely sure it met the criteria and it was constructed in haste to meet the deadline. It's fine. I'm fine. It is small and will be good for other shows and/or sales.

"We are such stuff..."

My submission for the Oregon SAQA Show and frustrating in a variety of ways.  I made this specifically for this submission to the theme "Blending poetry and fiber" and stepped quite a bit out of my box here. It is a little bit of tribute to the artwork of Corita Kent and my years at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I hated making it. It was a total bitch to put together and stitch. Maybe that alone cursed it. It looks nothing like my other work, but I still have some fondness for it. I struggled physically and mentally with this one. I hoped it would find a place in the show, but never had a good feeling for that happening. From what I saw of what others were working on this seemed too graphic, too word-y, too......much. And I failed to have my piece accepted for the last Oregon SAQA show, so that is looming in my mind as a nut I have to crack! (Is that really a reason to make art? I don't think so.)

Right now I am working on things with no particular show or requirement in mind and it is such a pleasure! And I will be thinking about what succeeded and what didn't and especially the fact that what I really loved and engaged in was successful and the ones that I was less engaged with were not. There is a lesson there, if I can figure out how to make use of it.

My Mom

 

Betty Jo van Valkinburg Howard, age 5

Today would have been my mother's 90th birthday and I am missing her today. I always thought we would someday celebrate her 90th with a big party, which she would have loved. My sister would have made her a Bacardi Rum cake. Mmmmm. She came from a line of strong pioneer women, so this wasn't an unreasonable expectation. But not to be. She and my Dad both passed away, five months apart 17 years ago.

I could tell you about her many accomplishments, and they were many,— or what a great Mom she was—and she was, or about how she overcame a difficult childhood, but what I was thinking about this morning in the shower was how funny she could be. And I remembered a particular day.

We went to visit an elderly woman—sort of an obligation, but a lovely person, who was so happy to see us. She regaled us with stories about her children and served us cheesecake, which she had made, with the help of her housekeeper. On the way home Mom said she was so glad we had gone and how good it had been to visit with this woman. "And the cheesecake was good!" I added. Mom got a funny look and said, "yesssss, but my piece had a chicken bone in it." I was incredulous. Seriously? Mom continued, " it was almost the last bite on my plate, and it had a little chicken bone in it. I didn't know what to do, so I stuck it in my pocket." and she dug into her pocket and pulled out the little bone wadded up in a Kleenex. We stared in silence at the tiny bone and then we started to laugh. And we laughed until tears ran down our faces. Then Mom would pull herself together and mutter, "not funny" then we would erupt all over again, howling and snorting with laughter. It said something about who my Mom was. She was too kind to embarrass her friend by mentioning her gross discovery, or to even leave the evidence on the plate, but she wasn't above finding the humor in the situation and enjoying a good laugh.

So, on what would have been her 90th birthday I am not going to dwell on sadness, but rather be grateful to her for showing me, over and over, that you can't take yourself too seriously. She never did. Happy Birthday, Mom.

 

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Carlos and Me

It is kind of a funny story how my son-in-law, Carlos, and I came to be exhibiting our artwork together at City Hall. Carlos, who is from Ecuador, is a wonderful painter. Last fall I urged him to submit some paintings online to be juried for a city-sponsored art exhibit that I was also applying to. When he described the submission process it sounded unfamiliar to me, so we looked online together. Turns out he had misunderstood and instead submitted to the city's "art in public places" program. A second try got him the right exhibit submission form and we both had work accepted. But he also got an email from the city arts coordinator telling him his application for the "public places" program had been accepted and they'd like to show his work at City Hall this summer! Since he had only a few paintings to show, the coordinator suggested they combine his work with another compatible artist— did he know of anyone? He did. Me. We decided my pieces that depict Ecuadorean and Mexican architecture would nicely complement his work of similar subjects. It's not a big show, but it looks really nice in the foyer of the Beaverton City Hall building.

 

As a result of the show, we were the subject of a nice story in the little local newspaper.

 

Their reporter and photographer came to my studio and spent more than an hour asking questions and taking photos. I especially like the photo, below, of us laughing. I really like my son-in-law, and I think that shows in that photo.

 

In the course of our interview, Carlos said something that really pleased me. The reporter asked, "why do you make art?" I often hear the question and cringe a little at the pompous-sounding answers that often come out of artists' mouths—"because I must..." Because it is what I was born to do..." etc. Carlos said, " it makes me feel alive". Exactly.

 

Our small show is at The Beaverton City Hall through the end of August.

You can read the interview here:http://www.pamplinmedia.com/bvt/17-features/268227-142258-inlaws-terry-grant-and-carlos-molina-both-have-distinct-artistic-styles

 

 

 

 

 

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