A Celebration of a Milestone

I realize often when I share my spreads here they are often  dealing with some difficult feelings or experiences. Today I want to share my happiness with you as I celebrate my 40th anniversary with the most wonderful man. Still finding it hard to believe that it has been that long. The journey has been an amazing one- yes there was the occasional flat tire here or there but I am so very blessed. I want to thank all of you as well- because friends play a big role in our relationship.  Here is a quote that I love about an anniversary:
“The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life.”

 Hugh Walpole, Sr.

Love Will Get Us Through

I can't find who wrote this but I feel it is well said:
 Do not pray for Orlando. If you're going to pray for anyone, pray for the members of Congress (111 Republicans - 2 Democrats) who voted against hate crimes legislation to help protect gay people. Pray for the politicians who stepped over the bodies of your dead children to collect campaign contributions and kick backs from gun lobbies. And pray for the multitude of Americans, who despite yet another mass shooting, will still deny we have a gun problem in this country. Pray for them. They need it more. The dead don't need your prayers.

Such a devastating event- 50 people dead- and so many injured- scarred emotionally and physically. Had to seek shelter in my journal to process. So many are targets- women, people of different races- and LGBT people. The hate is hard to understand let alone be one of the targeted groups. Letting my friends love pour into me. I had to get my feeling put into a visual form. Hug the ones you love and be kind to all you can- The only way I can survive this is with love. I send my love out to you all.

May Already

I can't seen to get on a regular schedule of posting on this blog. I went to California in mid-April and was gone for a week.  I took a class with my art pals Brian Kasstle and Thomas LaBadia-   The class was taught by an amazing woman- Orly Avineri. https://oneartistjournal.com/.  The class was three days: The Visual Journal as Sanctuary .  I have yet to photograph the work from that- we altered old passports- the one I found for the class I found on Ebay- a man's passport from Greece 1951.  We made these into our own personal stories.  Orly teaches all over the world- this was one of the few  classes she taught in her home.  These first photos are from that.

Thomas and Brian and I spent the rest of the week together- we went to the Broad Art Museum in LA and that was amazing.  We also had time to work in our journals together.  The following pictures are of journal spreads I created while there and the last one is a spread I did after I got back as a tribute to the wonderful time.

A new Book Collaboration

I am starting an accordion book collaboration with Julia Dean.
She is a wonderful artist living in Australia. I think these book collaborations are like a collaborative journal where we both work in the books. I have done many of these and find it to be challenging and exciting. For those new to this idea- I make 2 books- one will be for her to start and I start one- I mail it to her she finishes mine and starts hers then mails my finished one back to me along with her start- I finish it and mail it back to her so we each get a completed book with both of us having worked on them. My start on the inside is my response to all the hate and hateful legislation being passed in this country. The other side is about us each carrying our own idea of what home means inside us. I will show each side flat and standing up as it can.

Fear, Anger and Sadness

The fear is from the tone in this country- seeing how many actually are supporting the evil that spews from the devil spawn known as Trump. The anger is: The North Carolina legislature has called a special session for Wednesday to overturn Charlotte's recently passed nondiscrimination ordinance that provides much-needed protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) residents.  The hate that is growing in this country is very scary.  The sadness is my husband and I just returned from being with his sister to say goodbye.  She died on Sunday.  It's hard to process and deal with all these strong emotions all at the same time.

I did this journal spread over a year ago but it still  expresses my feelings.

These two spreads were done in the last week.

Now for the other class

The other online class I took ( or I should say am takings as I am not done) was Katie Kendrick's Grit and Grace The Heart of Co-Creative Painting.  This class was an amazing class-So much content and was a real stretch for me in a very good way.  The class was 4 weeks and each week started with a mark making exercise to warm up- the there were journaling exercises- she called them journal excavations.  Good name- as they were sometimes deep with meaning and emotion.  Then the painting exercises for the week. I will share some of my work for this class.

This was a mark making pieces for one week

This was a face painting exercises- she had us use different

substrates.  This was on a piece of cardboard.

These are painting of faces-a real big stretch for me but fun.

The rest of the photos are of journal spreads I did for the class.

Snowed under

Well we have received snow over the month since I posted last but this also refers to me almost snowed under from taking 3 online art classes.  I am really being stretched  in different ways.  The first few spreads are from the Pathways and Wanderings class- this is really a book of the seasons.  I still have yet to do the two spreads for fall.

This is my second winter spread- there is a mini book attached on the lower right with quotes.

Some of the exercises include doing table top arranged collages meant to just be photographed.

This is my first  Spring spread. The bird is a block print I carved.

This is my second Spring spread.  I scanned a drawing of mine and cut it apart to use in this spread. The leaves are printed from a leaf shape block I carved and printed on green paper.  And in the lower left is another mini-book I attached.

This is my first Summer spread.  It's about memories of fishing with my father and grandmother when I was very young.  The background is  done with CitriSolv on a National Geographic spread.  The fish I cut from some wrapping paper.  I included the Mer-Man as I use to daydream about being one when I was very young.

This is the second Summer spread.  I use to chase and catch butterflies to mount- freaks me out now that I did that- I was in elementary school.