Show opens Friday!!

I have been working a lot of evenings this month in order to get some work to choose from for this show.

I have too many decisions now and when pressed to send in information for the gallery labels, I froze and thought my head would explode!

I have picked two of my new larger plates to display. I love them both and I have found, within myself a mountain of self doubt.

When I am working alone in the studio I am in love with my work. Giggly and blissful and euphoric. Like falling in love for the first time.

When the moment comes that others will see it, I am filled with doubt.

Is it strong? Will anyone besides me like it? I will be found out, that I am a poser, a want to be.

As much as I would like to be strong and unmoved by the judgement of others, I seek it out.

As an artist, I find that as fragile as I am, I repeatedly enter the environment of judgement and base my worth off of this feedback. If it is bad, then I clearly didn't work hard enough on it. If it is good, I need to be more humble.

It is a no win situation!

But alas, it all makes complete sense in my mind.....

We put the show up tomorrow, and I am sitting here blogging instead of framing the work....procrastination. I am the goddess of that!

Eventually I will pull all my loose strings together and start measuring and cutting mat board.

Once framed, I will fall in love again...until I leave the house and put it before others.

In my off time...

When I am not thinking of art, making art or beating myself up for not making more art...I grow food.

I have had a garden, in a community garden for many years now. When we lived in Santa Barbara we lived in an apartment with no yard, and now we live in a townhouse with no earth as well...I wanted to learn how to grow my own food, so I spent hours reading every organic gardening book I could find.

When I found that a friend was having a baby and I wanted her little one to eat strawberries from my garden, so I set to it!!

I had a beautiful HUGE garden plot at the Pilgrim Terrace community garden in Santa Barbara:http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?id=490

I had 8 varieties of tomatoes, hops for beer brewing, lettuces, carrots, peas, squash, eggplant...it was my personal Eden.

It took a mere month of missing my garden when we moved to Ventura, when I starting looking for a new garden plot and found Jordan Community Garden. I was put on a waiting list and after about 4 months I had my phone interview about organic techniques and practices and I was in! The plot is smaller then the one I had in SB but I have mine planted pretty thickly. I discovered after two years of tomato disappointment, that there is a virus in the soil that kills tomato plants. So summer is a mixed bag....I try still (I am a glutton for punishment) to grow a tomato plant, but understand that my harvests will be small at best.

I planted new kinds of food this winter, turnips and parsnips and two varieties of carrots and a myriad of potatoes.
Yesterday, I harvested my turnips for a farmers market at my nieces school. I turned over 13 pounds of turnips for the sale! They were so beautiful, the colors so saturated and the turnips were huge! Some the size of a Jicama.

I find that my garden creates a sense of calm for me, when I feel stressed or sad, I simply head to the garden and after a moment or two all is reset in my mind!

I get a great sense of pride and joy from growing food for our home, and friends!

I use to take pictures of myself in the garden for my grandmother to see; it was a common ground for us and made for easy conversations during difficult times in her dementia development. I would send weekly pictures and calls when I harvested food or saw something new starting to grow. She and I would talk about food and that often lead into her telling he how to cook something or what she remembered eating at some point or another.

My grandmother died this last December, I still catch myself taking snapshots for her, but am slowly realizing that I am taking pictures of harvests to record for myself or for future memories to have with my niece or nephews.

Trying to fit in

In an effort to fit into the group, I have designed yet another card.

Mind you I have three other business cards...two for my children's clothing shop and one for my fine art work.

This card is simply a card for my inkspots group....everyone else has one, I figured it was time.

Thanks to the Photoshop class I took last October I was able to design it with little effort. A true sign of my learning curve in a short time.

My card is one sided (saving cash here and there) and totally different then the others!

I think that is what I like best about it, it showcases my style.

They are due to arrive in a week, just before the May 1st show!!

Easter Sunday

Though I do not celebrate Easter, I do respect the fact that others do. I took this opportunity for some self reflection and went to the studio to print my biggest plates yet! 5"x8".

These might not seem big to others but, considering the "one-shot" you get with Solar plate...these were a big deal to me and caused some level of hyperventilation when exposing them to the sun yesterday. (please let this turn out, please let this turn out)

I am happy to say that despite my level of exhausting, I was able to season both plates and check them out, image wise.

Solarplate requires to to "season" your plates before getting a real sense of the image. This means inking, and printing it with black ink a number of times. I print each image at least five times before I get a real sense of what the image will look like. This is what I spent today doing.

Then I came home and took a nap.

By the way, the beautiful painting that is acting as a backdrop, is by Monteve Miller-Clay

check out her work here: http://www.montevemillerclay.com/

PR for our upcoming show

Looks like the buzz is spreading.
Our group show was mentioned in LA Magazine!!
Here is the link:
http://themagla.com/cgi-bin/artmagla/page.cgi?g=Detailed/1966.html;opening=2411

Wahoooooo
Maybe we will gather another collector or two!
Keep your fingers crossed

my beautiful little canyon

With all the wind and lots of time on our hands, we took a little sightseeing in to settle our frazzled nerves and try to clear our minds.

This is my canyon...we live towards the top of it on the left side.

My town is so pretty, even when all seems chaotic....this birds-eye view reminds me of just how pretty this little town is.

I don't want to leave it.

Two birds

While my father-in-law is spending one on one time with my husband I have been able to sneak away and spend some me time the studio this week. It has been wonderful and quite productive too!

I enjoy the time with relatives but also feel pulled to continue my work routine, so I consider myself lucky to have done both this past week.

I have successfully made and inked my largest plate to date a 5x7 solar plate...I know that doesn't sound so big, but considering that I only get one shot to make the image and that the plates run about 10bucks a piece, getting a successful image on it is a true gift!

The sun smiled on my plate perfectly and I was able to get all the depth and detail I had hoped for and then some.

The divine joy of lifting the paper to reveal the image pressed into it, is still sublime!

Another great night....

Although I didn't get all packed up until 8pm, that didn't stop me from heading out to the studio for some seriously great work time!

I spent another good 4hours printing and paper soaking...the results are another couple fine images and possible items for display.

I worked on the big press last night and aside from all the bending it was a great treat to run my plates through.

I am looking forward to seeing people look at my work. I know that sounds egotistical but my intention is to see reactions, see if I am striking some sort of cord or not....that is what I really feed on...do I make sense to someone other then me.