Pisces Moon Studio

You’ve been very kind and indulged my obsession with Jeff Lorber without rolling your eyes too much. I promise not to talk about his music again until at least the end of March.

Yesterday, Croque-Choux showed a tote bag that she had made of decorator fabric, and today she linked to a removable totebag organizer from the Martha Stewart website. That reminded me that I had not shown you this tote bag that I made some time ago.

It’s made of sailcloth and lined with a weird batik that I bought for next to nothing on somebody’s sale table, somewhere, somewhen. (I get a lot of my strange fabrics that way.)

The outside pocket is made from an odd dark blue velvet that reminds me of nothing so much as the upholstery of my great-grandmother’s horsehair living room set. I lined and stipple-quilted it, trying to change the texture a bit, but it still makes me think of horsehair.

I really like my little fishes. Most Pisces fishes that you see are swimming around in circles, chasing each others’ tails, but these… isn’t she just adorable, trying to trap him into a kiss?

On the inside of the appliquéd pocket flap, I wrote a bunch of the key words applying to the sign of Pisces.

The only thing that I don’t like about it is that I should have put pockets in the lining. I usually carry an organizer purse, and I really like to have everything where I can put my hands on it at once.

Sounds like a good excuse to make another, don’t you think?

Paying full price for the new Jeff Lorber CD because I can’t wait a week for it to be delivered from Amazon.

I’m bad. And it’s that good.

Professional baseball players have a rather cruel superstition. When one of them is having a bad slump in his game, he goes out one evening, finds the most unattractive woman available, and brings her back to his room for the night. According to locker room conventional wisdom, this — um — sacrifice will end his slump and put him back on his game in no time.

This is my slump buster. It, too, could be called pretty ugly (but I am not taking it to bed with me).

When I’m having trouble getting into working, or — as now — when a project I want to do isn’t coming together properly, I piece a tiny traditional quilt top. I concentrate on precise cutting and stitching and pressing while a fluffy comedy plays in the VCR. I let my subconscious work on whatever is preventing me from doing art while the left (engineer’s) side of my brain is occupied with meticulous busy work.

The whole thing is 12″ by 15″, and it took maybe three hours this morning to make, start to finish, including the three rows I threw away because the seams weren’t consistent and points weren’t matching.

Maybe I’ll make another one this afternoon, and by then the slump should be over.

It never works right the first time, does it? No pictures of new work today. Soon, I promise.

This morning we went to see the Tax Guy. We have a great tax guy, a CPA who is efficient, helpful with suggestions, and relatively inexpensive as CPAs go. He’s also extremely impressed with my organizational skills, so what more can you ask?

At any rate, going to see Barry means that I have to complete the inventory of What I Did and How Much I Sold last year. Although I actually made a profit for 2004, I was rather disappointed in myself when I realized that most of that had come from two fairly large sales early in the year. And there was very little new work late in the year to provide sales for 2005.

So I need to get busy again. I need to set up some classes and workshops; get some new pieces in the pipeline; update my website; and in general get off my butt and get some things done.

I noticed that several members of the Art Quilters Webring have made similar commitments to Get On With the Work No Matter What, so perhaps we can keep each other going. Help hold my feet to the fire, will you? I’ll promise to do the same for you.

Thank you very much to everyone to commented on Tuesday’s post about collage. You’ve helped me clarify my thinking on the subject and put it firmly behind me. Collage can be nice, but at this point I don’t think it’s for me.

While I was mulling over those issues and opinions, I received a package that is leading to some new work. I hope to have some pictures in a day or so.

Meanwhile, for your reading pleasure, a post from last September about a recent stroll down Canyon Road in Santa Fe.

Saturday, September 11, 2004
Santa Fe

I was on my way to Taos to teach a week-long class in surface design. Because of the high altitude, I always try to arrive a day or two early in order to acclimate a bit. This year I decided to take my couple of days in Santa Fe, a city that I love and come back to as often as I can.

I spent the morning doing some basic shopping and about 2:30 pm I went downtown. I stopped at the visitors� center to pick up my yearly supply of tourist literature. (They give away a fantastic assortment of art-related magazines and catalogs — great inspirational material!) Parked on Alameda and walked over to Canyon Road to take some pictures, then ended up walking all the way up to Thirteen Moons before coming back.

As I walked up the road, I was captivated by the display on the front of Canyon Road Contemporary Art. When a picture calls from across the street, it�s time to go look.

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This morning I am both amused at and slightly exasperated with myself. Yesterday, suffering from a mild case of cabin fever, I sallied forth to the art store in search of brushes and came home with Claudine Hellmuth’s book Collage Discovery Workshop. (I did remember to get the brushes.)

I’ve been acquiring books on collage for about two years now. I’ve been collecting all kinds of ephemera to use in collages for probably eighteen months. I still haven’t created – or even begun – a single paper collage. Hence the amusement and exasperation.

This morning, as I sat in bed reading through Claudine’s book, I tried to make some sense of why this is happening. Why I “can’t” arrange a collage in the current style. The techniques are certainly easy; just choose a collection of related images, arrange them, glue them down, then paint and distress until it’s done.

I think that perhaps it’s the juxtaposition of dissimilar images that I find unsettling and overly busy in so much of contemporary collage and altered books. I like the weathered, antiqued look of many pieces, and I like the use of words, both handwritten and printed. But when I try to think in those terms, my vision reverts to the clean and simple semi-abstraction that seems to characterize my work.

Even the one piece I did using written words is fairly simple (but I like it and it feels complete) :

I know, I should just go to the studio and play. But maybe I was just meant to admire the style and work with symbols instead of with others’ images.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments. Is there some artist’s work you admire but for some reason can’t bring yourself to work in that style?

My dear husband, who is the world’s worst about remembering things like birthdays and anniversaries, actually sent me a bouquet of mixed flowers for Valentine’s Day this year. They wilted almost immediately, which he said ruefully was just par for the course. The one time he remembers, and they die on him.

I think that the arrangement had probably been made several days in advance because of the crush of business on Valentine’s, and some of the stems just didn’t last very long.

So late last week I bought two dozen roses and made my own arrangement. I noticed the texture of the rose petals in the morning light yesterday and decided to try photographing them before they, too, go the way of all flowers.

The “beauty shot.” This is the equivalent of the Olan Mills portrait of the little girl leaning her chin on her hand and smiling at the camera. Not very exciting.

Better.

And despite the somewhat distracting background, I like this one the best. The light brings out the pale blush color of the petals as well as the soft texture.

In other news, the bronchitis is back and I haven’t felt like doing much work. I did clean the studio last week (stirring up the dust may have something to do with the lung problems, you think?), so I hope to be back in the saddle again soon.

Image courtesy of Calculator Cat.

This morning I was awakened at about 2 am by the moon, cold and silver and about a week from full, shining into my eyes as I lay in bed.

I lay there sleepily for quite a while, enjoying the sight, before it occurred to me: Wait a minute. The moon isn’t usually that far north in the sky – it normally shines on the floor beside the bed, or on the opposite wall.

I vaguely remembered something about libration – the movement of the moon through the sky due to irregularities in its orbit. But at two o’clock in the morning, snuggled into the soft warmth of my bed and entertained by the celestial light show, I really didn’t feel like getting up to research the phenomenon.

(Yes, I have been known to get up in the middle of the night to look up something that I am curious about. This is why I am the Elephant’s Child, after all – insatiable curiosity.)

But now it is mid-morning and I have spent an hour indulging in my favorite pastime, happily pursuing a subject across the Internet in search of knowledge. I found, first, that I had remembered an incorrect term. The phenomenon of the moon’s apparently moving north and south is called declination, and it’s caused by the fact that the moon’s orbit is slightly tilted with regard to the earth’s equator.

Moondance
© 2002

As it turns� out, last night the moon was at its most northward point on its journey through the northern sky. The night was clear, I was sleeping lightly enough for its light to wake me, and I was allowed to spend an enchanted hour watching it, half in and half out of dreams.

Up the mountain, about three or four miles from my house, is a simple little hamburger and hot dog place called the Tip Top Grill.

Located in a former gas station, it’s across the street from the barber shop where my son gets his hair buzzed. (The barber’s name is Les Moore. No joke. And when Jay needs a haircut, he tells me he needs to go get “Les hair.”)

The neatest thing about the Tip Top Grill is that it sits right on the edge of Shades Mountain. After I took the second picture, I walked across the road to the left-hand end of the building and took another looking out over the valley:

The rock you see just beyond the fence is known, of course, as Lover’s Leap. These next two were taken late last fall, when there was still some color on the trees:

Trains still run through the valley below and you can hear their whistles as they approach the Shannon crossing.

I’d love to have a view like this out my window at work. Of course, I’d never get anything done for watching the birds and sunsets and listening to the trains as they pass.

Two more small pieces today from the detritus of the sad Valentine orphan.

Not bad.

Not terrific, but not bad. Maybe polyester purses instead of silk?� ;)