Rainbow Crows

Last year, I started participating in Raiboeliza's Postcard Project.  Rainboelza is a wonderful artist who you can read about her here, and you can visit her Etsy shop here, where she sells lino prints -- little images from the sublime to the scatological.
The Postcard Project is pretty cool and it sparked a bit of mischief in me. The theme was blue, so I wanted to use blue, but it organized by an artist named Rainboe, so I couldn't limit myself.   I've always had a bunch of imaginary creatures flying around in my brain, so last year when I started thinking of a what to do with my card, one flew out:  The Rainbow Crow

Rainbow Crow in ink and colored pencil

The story

 "Dear Rainboeliza,
I finally spotted that bird that was waking me up at 3 a.m. every morning.  It looks & caws exactly like a crow, but its feathers were blue & iridescent in the moonlight.  I watched and saw 4.  They looked ancient and flew low.  I knew I'd seen the mythic rainbow crow of North Portland.  More soon!"

I had hoped to continue writing rainbow crow adventures, but lo and behold, a whole year came around before I did, so this myth may take a long time to develop.  This year's them was orange, so this is what flew out this time:

Rainbow crow chick - crayolas and copic markers

The story

"Dear Rainboeliza:
After seasonal flooding in the Willamette Basin, I found a Rainbow crow chick on the dock.  It was bright orange, suggesting the rainbow coloring emerges later in life.  I heard mournful cawing from the forest.  I ran back to the car to get a box, but the chick was gone when I returned.  I contacted the Dept. of Ornithology, but they still insist the rainbow crow is a myth!"

This is how the cards looked after the post office contributed their part to the process:

In spite of bad spelling and lack of perspective, it was a fun project and I'm pretty sure it won't be a whole year before I find another tale about the rainbow crow.

Thanks for stopping by.

Maple Whirligigs

I got obsessed with a cluster of maple seeds and drew them in colored pencil over the past few days.  I've since learned that a group of such seeds is called a "panicle."  My panicle was not of the double winged helicopters, but single ones attached by a delicate stem to the limb.  The whole thing fell out of the tree and I found it on a walk and brought it home.  I determined to do it in all colored pencil for the detail, but then got dismayed trying to do a dark background.  After 3 layers it still looked anemic, so I inked the background with a Pigma Micron Brush marker.  You can still see some of the colored pencil lines and tints of red through the ink, and there are a few little blotchy places where the ink pooled, but over all I'm pleased with my panicle. Never knew there were so many colors in a maple seed pod till I looked very closely -- purples and reds and yellows and ochers, oh my....

Maple Whirligigs, colored pencil and ink pen

A Bird Told Me

Way back in the early part of the century, I made a whimsical fabric wallhanging/quilt called "A Bird Told Me"

A Bird Told Me, mixed media, made around 2001

The idea was to leave behind the more structured, square way of thinking, represented by the square quilt blocks, and get a little more celebratory and free.

I decided to revisit the theme as a drawing and was able to capture a foursquare quilt and the stitches pretty well.  I also was able to illuminate the message from the bird more and make that message pass right through my lady's head.  The expression is more delighted and surprised and goofy, too, I think.  What do you think?

A Bird Told Me, Colored Pencils, 2013

I wrote and posted this on Wednesday, but I'm linking it to Paint Party Friday because it was my big accomplishment of the week.  If you'd like to see more kinds of art, stop by the party and enjoy.

Poetry and Doodles

I didn't get to complete any major work this week.  I did join a doodle group -- Doodle Day May -- sponsored by illustrator writer Alison Hertz with a Facebook page.  It's simply doing a doodle a day from her prompt or from your own head.  It's a fun group.  One participant is doing it with her young daughter.  Lots of silly lines and primitive work, it's to help us just get to it with 2, 5 and 30 minute doodles.
The first prompt was a zentangle of our names, but I did a self portrait tangle:

It could be called drunk on ink too -- 20 zen minutes

I played with colored pencils in my journal this week.  I love colored pencil, especially when I'm feeling fatigued because I can just pick them up and play, instead of having to set up water and palettes,  There's also no drying time:

Turtle Dragon and bird woman

I saw the most lovely yellow tulip on a walk with a line of red around each petal

I have an opportunity to write with a poet once a week now, so I've been writing a  bit more poetry.  This one was published in my community newsletter.

On A Day Such As This

Gloom unpacked its bags and

Settled in my room for an extended stay

Instead of protesting I let it settle

But cold March rain pattered an invitation

Gloom wasn’t expecting me to answer

He tried to lure me into bed with sad tales

But I fled out, out

Into a gray rainy day

Cold seeped under my clothes

I moved toward yellow

A bright forsythia opened its fronds to the rain

Delicate cherry and plum blossoms

Fell with the rain drops along my path

A red tulip opened its cup to the sky

Trees still barren glowed with sap

Hints of yellow and green surged

Swollen nodes thrummed and pulsed

So much faith around me

Humble plants that wintered without shelter

Offered themselves up to Spring, to me --

A wretched creature without roots or blooms

I harvested a bud, then a blossom, then a limb

I brought them home to my resident gloom

To find him gone

Left behind only a thin layer of dust

I swept up before I arranged bouquets

To bloom in all my rooms.

Joy Corcoran

March 2013

Rain and gloom have cleared up.  We're having a wonderful week of balmy weather, unusual for Portland this time of year, but we are loving it.  I hope you get a chance to enjoy some art play and some Spring.  If you need inspiration stop by Paint Party Friday and see what's being concocted by art makers all over the world.

Here's a few flowers to brighten your day:

 

Art & Fear Review

 


The elegant little book Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland was first published in 1993 and it's been in print ever since.  I first read it when I didn't really consider myself an "artist," but I did consider myself a writer.  I was in my late 30s, I'd had a few short stories published in respectable magazines and garnered a few awards.  But FEAR was my constant companion -- it still is.  What I was searching for when I read this book was a way to continue to be creative even though I was pretty sure I'd never overcome fear or insecurity or blocks. 

I'd been working in non-artistic fields since I was 16 and dealing with health problems, too, so I had learned that often just showing up makes things happen, even if you're plagued with headaches, pain and confusion.  A paycheck is a huge motivator.  The paycheck for doing creative work is much more elusive and ethereal.  How do you keep at it when it feels like you have no new ideas and no one cares anyway.  All you get in response is rejection slips if you muster the energy to send things out. 

Art and Fear is like a tonic when I'm feeling depleted.   It explores the way art gets made, the reasons it doesn't get made, and the many, many reason why people give up.  It gives many compelling reasons why you shouldn't give up.  Art is part of what makes us human.  Whether it's writing, photography, drawing, painting, making collages, telling stories, carving, sculpting, sewing -- we are hard wired to interact with the materials around us, to redesign and have impact, to work with our hands. 

The authors understand this. They dedicate thoughtful chapters on Fears about Yourself, Fears about Others, Finding your work, The Outside World, The Human Voice.  There are many passages I could quote from this book, but I'll restrict myself to a few so you can get a feel for how the authors handle things:

 "Admittedly, artmaking probably does require something special, but just what that something might be has remained remarkable elusive -- elusive enough to suggest that it may be something particular to each artist, rather than universal to them all....Whatever they have is something needed to do their work -- it wouldn't help you in your work even if you had it.  Their magic is theirs.  You don't lack it.  You don't need it.  It has nothing to do with you.  Period."

"Ask your work what it needs, not what you need.  Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child."

"If, indeed, for any given time only a certain sort of work resonates with life, then that is the work you need to be doing in that moment.  If you try to do some other work, you will miss your moment.  Indeed, our own work is so inextricably tied to time and place that we cannot recapture even our own aesthetic ground of past times."

This last quote is particularly helpful to me.  It's part of what I use when I'm incapable of creating anything

Some days a doodle is all there is

that pleases me or makes me want to share it.  I'm sure I'll never create anything as successful as when I was younger. Or that  my one success was a fluke. I call it "writing around the block," although I now draw around the block, too.  It's simply continuing to practice when you don't have any inspiration at all, when you are blocked.  It's showing up and doing a little bit, even if it seems like your ruining perfectly good paper.  I need to show up in bad times because, who knows, the moment might come, and I'll have my paper ready to capture it. 

Three months ago, when my mother died, I hit a creative wall.  Of course, when a loved one dies, it causes major shifts and sometimes painful growth spurts.  I am vulnerable to blurring reality till it seems totally pointless.  Art & Fear is one of the books I reread when I am in that state of mind.  I also read The Re-Enchantment of Every Day Life by Thomas Moore, and A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman. These all help to re-focus me on the many precise and beautiful points of life.  And they help me show up for my writing and drawing practice, my writing sessions with fellow writers, my blog -- they help me show up for life.  None of them promise money or reward or even understanding by others.  They help me live my life as it is -- wonderous, confusing and bubbling with things to make and stories to tell.

The calm, thoughtful and re-assuring essays of Art & Fear help me carry my fear with me to my creative sessions, acknowledge it, and go ahead and make something.  "Artists become veteran artists only by making peace not just with themselves but a huge range of issues.  You have to find your work all over again all the time."  If you ever feel you've lost your sense of meaning and are blocked, read this book.  It will help you move into what ever new phase is waiting as soon as you go forward.

 




The books discussed in this post are all available at most libraries.  I have included links to Amazon.com, where I am an associate, and get a small, small fee if you purchase through the link.   Just click the book and it will take you to Amazon.com  Thanks!

Happy Birds

I started a new venture in everyday art this week. I painted canvas totes.  I'd seen a few and thought it was a great way to bring a little art into daily errands and excursions.  I decided to paint from imagination rather than life, though I did try to use recognizable forms.  The first one I did with birds and flowers.

Front

Back

 

Detail

There are so many pink blossoms around now that I had to do an homage to pink and the result was this bag with pink paint splattered on the background:

Front

Front detail

Back

Back detail

These bags are for sale on Etsy, if you're interested.

As for my bird woman (you can read about her history HERE), I found some great paper I though would add a wonderful texture to the wings.

very soft lacy paper

Great wing texture

But then I started to paint -- and friends, let me tell you, I learned a lot -- especially what not to do.  And also, I learned that I never know when to quit.

It doesn't have the detail and light I envisioned.  I have a lot to learn about brush control, layering and color mixing.  But at least I wound up with a happy bird:

If you'd like to see more art, please visit Paint Party Friday where you can find an extravaganza of exuberant art.

Thanks for stopping by here,  I hope a happy bird comes into your life, too. 

Bird Women

This is a small flock of bird women, a series of dolls I made between 1990 and 2011.  I made my first when I was dealing with some complications of my transverse myelitis, a condition similar to multiple sclerosis, which has caused me to have weak atrophied legs.  Although I've had it since I was 16, in my 40s I had to start using a cane and deal with constant pain.  I had tried various painful braces throughout my life, but I could never get "fixed."  It seemed I was stuck between two worlds – I couldn’t walk well, but I couldn’t fly.  I couldn’t talk about it.  I had the words, I suppose, but I couldn’t sing.  In making that first bird woman, I captured the awkwardness of transition – an absurd place to be –and I began to recognize some of the beauty of that transformational state.

I tried to use mythological and whimsical interpretations of my struggles.   Transitions are hard.  The state of our health, the person we are, can change in an instant.  If we survive catastrophic illness, acts of violence, or any life altering event, we have to have time to mourn who we were -- because, even though recovery is our goal, we are never the same.  We are transformed.  Learning to live through these transformations, learning what our new strengths are, is very difficult.  It helped me to have stories of transformation, the myths and legends of shape shifters and transformed gods, to come to terms with my own limits.  It also helped, and continues to help me, move forward in my ever changing life.

When I had my first art show back in 1990, my Bird Woman was not for sale, but a woman convinced me to sell it to her because it perfectly depicted her struggles as single, Black mother trying to work and raise a family in a sometimes hostile and crazy world.  The form showed how her battles in life left scars, but they were colorful and beautiful – even if people laughed at her.  The personal became universal and I sold it to her -- let that bird fly in its own way.

It made me so happy that my bird that can’t walk or fly right made its way in the world.  In spite of the things that weigh me down, some days I just soar.  Over the years I made over a dozen bird women.  They have got to various homes where they, hopefully, bring a sense of wonder and whimsy to those who own them.  Unfortunately, I've only got pictures of some of them.  I've never been a great record keeper and have lost pictures and slides in various moves and computer crashes. 

I used feather stitches on the outside of the body to make visible the inner workings of the nervous system which connects the heart, mind and body.    I also made visible the sacred the heart using the spider web stitch, stone attached by the shi-sha embroidery stitch and needle woven picots.

The unformed wings are lace or hand knitted cloth.  I added a few feathers to each bird.

Dove

Black Bird

Yearning to Fly

A Sacred Heart

This was made for an exhibit in support of people going through chemotherapy

My last bird fabric sculpture made in 2011

 

I began to have trouble making these elaborate dolls -- stitching through layers and layers of cloth and stuffing and bending the wire armatures.  It was getting too hard on my hands.  I moved into a small space without an art room and didn't have room to store all the elements that go into these pieces.  I also felt I'd said everything I needed to in fabric and needed to get on with my life long goal of learning to draw and paint.  

In late 2011, I began to study drawing seriously and tried to draw everyday.   I started with visual journaling.  I also started checking out every book on art techniques I could find.  I love illustration and children's books.  I one day hope to do some kind of illustrating of my own stories -- for children of all ages.   

My goal this week was to paint my first bird woman.  I only succeeded in getting the block in done, but I wouldn't have even done that, given the melancholy mood of the week, but since I am part of the Paint Party Friday, I had soft deadline that I felt accountable to -- in a good way.  I think having some sort of accountability group for any art -- writing, visual arts, even writing -- keeps me focused and centered.  So here is the block-in of a bird woman in acrylic.  I overcame my fear of canvas by using a canvas board.  However, I have to keep wetting the back of the board to keep it from buckling when I did gold paint glazes for the background color, so definitely stretched canvas is in my future.

I

The details of the form will evolve from here.  I'm not sure how I'll handle the background yet, but I've been practicing flowers and birds and feather patterns in ink in my journal.  Working on gold is invigorating.

Feathers, flowers and hands

How this piece develops will be as much a surprise to me as the first one I made in fabric over 20 years ago.  I'm glad there are so many forms of expression that I can limp into a new one and take off.

Thanks for reading.