iPhone goes Hollywood…

I have had a fascination with movie making (couldn’t have lived with my son without some of it wearing off-just last night he asked if he and his crew can (again) use rooms in my house for filming next week) but I have never done it myself. I am too old for film school…want to use the money for traveling the world, instead, so when I recently ran across Xanthe Berkeley’s on-line class about making time capsules, I thought it might be a good way to record snippets of the foreign places I plan to see. Her short films are really terrific. See more on her Vimeo site. I thought it would give me a chance to at least understand iMovie and I might have some fun with my iPhone photos.

The first project included stop frame animation so I got to channel my inner Wallace and Gromit (for years as an intermediate school art teacher I “hung” around with the guys as a special event for my sixth graders, always in awe of the masters. I could show their videos multiple times during a day and laugh in the same places each time…never getting tired of their great creativity.)

Some words about my first project: Stop frame animation is difficult especially since I did not have a tripod and my subject is kind of wiggly. There are three sections of animation, the first one on the stairs I obviously could not get back into the same place to take the next picture after moving the object. The second example, although I was seated so I was stable, my star was moving too much and I did not end up with enough usable pictures. I did not start out to try to animate the food bowl, it just developed as I took one picture, I realized she kept moving her head from side to side and if I propped my elbows on my knees, I could be stable and just snap and snap and snap. I do not think I have a future in the position, however, the crouch, at my advanced age, doesn’t seem to be something I really want to do much of. It was an intense learning curve, but really exciting…looking for my next thing to animate and next week will include video! (As you look at this please understand it is a first try!) Found my iPhone tripod and bought a timer app so I should improve!

Flowers to Art…part 1

Lucky for me, last week I was invited to go with some friends to the special exhibit at the deYoung Museum called Bouquets to Art. Floral designers interpret art work in the museum. It attracts large crowds. Good news is that they allow photos without flash, not so good is that the crowd is so massive it is difficult to get shots that don’t have somebody’s arm or leg in them. I tried to line up my shots of the arrangements with the art work and sometimes just took pictures of the flowers.
It was rainy, rainy, rainy…

We were snug inside surrounded by flower beauty.

Oh, and the bathrooms…

And since it is the year of the dragon, interpreted in floral…

A floral raptor dodging an energy windmill.

19th to 20th century chairs

John Singer Sargent, La Verne de Porto (A Dinner Table at Night) 1881

George Hitchcock, Tulip Culture, 1889

John Singer Sargent, Caroline de Bossano, Marquise d’Espeuilles, 1884

William Merritt Chase, Portrait of Miss. D, ca 1900

Georgia O’Keeffe, Petunias, 1925

Arthur Dove, Sea Gull Motive (Sea Thunder or The Wave), 1928

Raul Anguiano, Untitled (Seated Girl Holding an Apple), 1943
Part 2 tomorrow…

Happy things…

Feeling a sense of accomplishment…finished my travel journal from Italy…it has lots of flips, flaps, accordions, pockets, and envelops…

Also, ready to grout the bathroom wall I have been tiling…

Insert is recycled glass tiles…

For two days it has been raining…happy, happy…

And…the very first Douglas Iris has bloomed…

Plus, I made a journal because I will take this class…(the Mixed Media Journal with Judy Wise)

The inside has marbled paper from Florence and Fabiano Artistico paper.

Looking forward to filling this book…

The Art of…

We drove to the deYoung Museum to see the Art of Venice last Friday. The day was beautiful and clear, but since it was a featured exhibit, no photos were allowed. (You may be relieved that I couldn’t stuff this blog with more Italian art…) so when I came across an exhibit of the work of Stephen DeStaebler I thought that would be plan B, but the guard said that couldn’t be photographed either…couldn’t share the clay faces and tortured bodies…plan C was modern art that I randomly enjoyed on the visit…not third place, because standing in front of an original Wayne Thiebaud really gets my blood pumping…just happens to be what I could photograph on this particular day…although I had seen this one before (I had a poster of it in my classroom for many years…in person is better for sure…

These two that I had not seen before had me instantly, deeply in love…and there I was, as the label said, somewhere between representation and abstraction and being absorbed by the colors…

Wayne Thiebaud, Ponds and Streams, 2001

Wayne Thiebaud, Diagional Freeway, 1993
They are sooooo California…
Also, there was

Sam Francis, Hello, 1986

Robert Motherwell, Music over Music, 1981

William deKooning, Untitled XX, 1977 and

Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley No. 3, 1977
What I like about museums is that my visual cravings get satisfied even in the smallest details…down to the fresh flowers in the bathroom

And restaurant

The hand blown lights in the restaurant

There at the entrance door was a fabulous floral display using the architecture of the building and the light reflecting from the courtyard to create a sculptural visual treat for me to enjoy…

We didn’t remember a day with such great weather, so an investigation of the exterior was in order…here is the reward

The pattern of the exterior siding is carried through everything (did you notice the dots in the restaurant above?)

a cougar struggling with a snake

And a certain somebody thought they could improve on it…hey, joker, this isn’t interactive art!
A tribute to Francis Scott Key

Then back across the bridge to home…

Ready..

Suitcase is not packed yet , but my travel journal is ready.

I used the fabric I found in Portland to make the cover and then printed the photo of the Duke of Tuscany on a piece of fabric with my inkjet printer so that I could sew it on. It is like I am going to take Cosimo home for a visit. The inside pages are made from old Selvedge Magazine pages. They are such a nice weight and segments of the images will peek through under the photos and ephemera I paste in. This book will probably balloon to twice its size by the time I get through.

Lots of washi tape being used here.
This reminds me that another book that has ballooned in thickness is the the one I created from a vintage photo album.

I posted this picture of the cover when I made it months ago but never any of the collages inside.

Seeing the pages photographed helps me see how the parts relate to the whole better than when I am working with the pieces. The iPhone is such a great tool for that. Quick and easy, and I can see that the pages need more writing.
The pages…

That is enough for now, I will show you more later when I have done more writing.
The idea for binding both of these books comes from Mary Ann Moss…her Remains of the Day class and her Full Tilt Boogie class. She has a wonderful blog called Dispatch From LA.
Off to pack that suitcase. My friend Murph says to pack it once and then unpack and leave out half the stuff. That is what I will do, I have always found her to be very wise…

1573…

Cosimo I de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany

by Cellini and workshop

I took this photo when I visited The Legion of Honor last August but saved it until now because a week from today Terry and I will be flying to Tuscany. One week in Florence and one week in the countryside staying in Montalcino but daytripping to Siena, San Gimignano, and Orvieto. But since we will be on an Untour, we can make it up as we go along. As we get closer and closer the excitement gets greater and greater.

The past few weeks we have been doing a major construction project that has finally ended (although the painting of walls and trim goes on). It was chaos because we put new windows in six different places and it required a lot of moving furniture and items out-of-the-way so that the worker-men could get access and have room to work. One positive was that a lot of clean out went on. So I went through a pile of magazines that I had saved for inspiration, but they had now outworn their welcome. I was so surprised to find an old issue of Somerset Studio (2001) dedicated to Tuscany. I must have thought even back then that this would be a good place to go. There was an entire page in the magazine devoted to locations of paper stores in Florence. I plan to see if they are all still there and will report back in three weeks when we return. Here’s the list in case you get to visit there (and you like paper!)

Giannini e Figlio, Piazza Pitti 37

Il Torchio,  Via Dei Bardi 17

Il Papero, in the Piazza Duomo

Pineider, Piazza Della Signoria 13

Et Cetera, Via Della Vigna Nuova 82/r

Rigacci, Via Dei Servi 7

Carteria Tassotti, Via Dei Servi 9/11r

Ciao (I just had to say that!)

Wednesday worktable…

What made an appearance on my work table yesterday?

I do not actually have a work table because the closest thing to a source of water in my house is the top of my washing machine in the laundry room. If I am using wet media that is where I stand. Good news is that sliding doors can hide the mess and supplies. Bad news is that other people in the house have to make an appointment to wash their cloths. The machine vibrates too much for anything to be on top of it during a cycle and I really hate it if things fall behind the washer since they are almost impossible to get out. If you don’t make an appointment or ask me to clear the machine, then you risk my wrath.

On my pseudo work table yesterday were these collages getting some final touches.

I started this collage while I was taking the on-line class with Misty Mawn.

I had always tried making transfers by taking my original photo to Kinko’s and making a color copy of it to use to transfer the image. Misty demonstrated using the image printed on your own inkjet printer. Always hoping to save time and money, I tried, but was not too adept at the method (my inks dissolved and made mud) so in order to save it I took used tea bags, emptied and flattened, and gel-mediumed them on top of the three images of the doll in the back. I did use the image of the same doll (the largest one) printed with my inkjet that I had altered with PicGrunger on my iPhone. The cracks across its face come from that app. I was able to judge how quickly to work before dissolving the ink when I was pasting an image down rather than when trying to transfer an image. Another illustration that there are no mistakes in art, just new opportunities. I was waiting for an opportunity to use those teabags I had dried and emptied a few months ago! My world traveling uncle gave me the doll back when I was in elementary school. This collage done on watercolor paper is quite large for me, 18″ x 22″. Now I have to figure out how to mount it so it can hang.

This collage I had started a long time ago, but the class spurred me to finish it so it was on the washing machine, also. It is on 12″ x 12″ canvas and I used multiple layers of Golden’s tar gel medium to get a really thick coat in order to submerge the yarn. In person it looks like it has many layers and depth and the spots are actually metallic leaf.

I also made two accordion books (each from one piece of paper) in different sizes but haven’t put images in them yet so won’t take pictures until they look more completed. They have internal pockets and are very cute!

Terry went to work on Wednesday so I got a lot done. Otherwise it is two retired people frequently looking at each other with impulsive suggestions for fun excursions to make. Wednesday has now become my official work day so that I can say I accomplished something…

The elephant in the room…

or, as it is known in some circles, pondering the pachyderm…

“When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.”
Abraham Lincoln

I spent a lot of time in front of the elephants at the Oakland Zoo a few weeks ago. Since then, I have been thinking about them often. I have early memories of circuses and zoos as my father would take us as kids along  (with his sketchbook) to any circus that came through town. Many family day trips were to the Griffith Park or San Diego Zoos for him to catch up with his animal keeper friends and get some drawing done. I think I associate sketchbooks with the smell of hay and peanuts. After I entered school and questions like, “What’s your favorite color?” became pressing, when I asked my dad what was his he would say: “elephant’s breath grey.” (When I was an art teacher I often thought that the name should be submitted to Crayola for their boxes.) Even though his name was Charles, my father had gotten the nick name of Chang when he was in art school. The name came from an elephant in the zoo that was his favorite to draw and he was always known by the name afterward. He kept a record of every elephant’s history that was in the United States and wrote articles and a book on circus history. So, when I ponder elephants, I really ponder elephants from a long family history.

My parents on an early date…………….Wait for it…

My dad is just off camera holding the pole. Even though he took her into a lion’s cage, my mother married him anyway!

The “elephant in the room” is always very literal with me because I have so many on my walls…

A watercolor from 1940 of raising a circus tent:

My father also made lithographs.  (During World War II he was stationed in Texas for Officer’s Training School where he learned lithography from Merritt Mauzey.) When he got out of the war, he purchased a lithograph press with a war bond his brother gave him. (I think in celebration of them both having survived the war.) That press was always stored in our garage.

“Circus Sunrise” 1942

Babe and Jenny, 1952.

In the 60′s and 70′s he loved doing acrylic ink dry brush paintings. He used to rave about the way he could build up the tone with layers of ink. He did a lot in black and white ink, but some were in color. He also painted in oil, but I do not have any elephants painted in that medium, lots of clowns in oil, though.

The top of my piano also includes the death-defying Stella griping a rope by her teeth and a porcelain elephant sculpture by my good friend Jan Mrozinski Crooker (before she was a plein air painter she worked in porcelain).

When I was a production potter, back in the day, I often used the circus as a theme, also.

Photos of old porcelain boxes with new application of iPhone alteration.

It was a natural thing for me to use an elephant as the subject of a collage for a class I have been taking on-line from Misty Mawn.

I used every “elephant’s breath grey” paper I could find around here for the elephant plus a photo of a bird house I own that is shaped like an elephant and a photo of an exotic yellow bird I took at the rain forest exhibit at the Academy of Sciences last week. Of course, once I had taken the iPhone photo of the paper collage, I just had to start layering it with other images in my files. First with a photo of a side of a barn plastered with circus posters announcing the date of the next circus…

Then with a photo of a wheel of a circus wagon…

“Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‘elephant’.”
Charlie Chaplin

Stand still and pay attention…

I.

I Notice, I Wonder, It Reminds Me of…

A weekend of wonder at the Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival. Thursday night ushered in the festivities with a pretty fine display of pyrotechnics as the sun set on the Bay.

A spectacular way to start and it just kept getting better from there. Friday morning’s workshop was with John Muir Laws. We spent his workshop down by the shore trying to capture shorebirds on paper…

John Muir Laws is a skilled teacher who breaks down what he wishes to teach into accessible chunks and always stresses his philosophy of standing still and paying attention to where you are, and in fact enjoying, respecting and being in awe of the environment where you find yourself. This is much different from the type of birding that tends to emphasize life lists and how many varieties you have seen.  (In England the person preoccupied with a life list is called a “twitcher”). Increasing my ability to see suits me better, and anything I produced in my sketchbook, although not great, was acceptable to the philosophy of the day. If I was still a public school teacher, I would be here next summer at the Sierra Nevada Teacher Institute and I would put a sketchbook in every student’s hands.

The anatomy of a bird wing, drawn in the sand to be washed away when the tide rises.

Saturday morning down to the Cloisters Park looking for ducks and geese. Most prominently, we found a red-winged black bird and a coot. Not exotic to most birders, but Laws led us through minute observations and we noted and appreciated.

Then to Laguna Lake Park in San Luis Obispo where we saw coots walking on dry land (oh my goodness, what toes!) and we got diagrams of bird anatomy. (Birds walk on their toes, what we might think of as a reverse knee is really their heel, and the knee is up under all their feathers.) These are his diagrams:

and anatomy of beaks…

and a demonstration of how a goose shifts its weight to stand on one leg…

Laws’ movements mimicking bird movement were a highlight of the workshops.

I screw up my courage, silencing my inner critic and show you some pages from my sketchbook:

shorebirds and a discussion of watercolor names for a palette. (I never in my whole life will get the word phthalo correct without a spellchecker.)

I really had to see if I could manage all the equipment for water coloring in the field, so I tried the tree and lake with the dark blobs being coots! As John Muir Laws says, take delight and joy in the subtlety of details. Drawing is not a gift, it is a skill and the way to develop is to practice and get rid of the art critic inside. The way to see better is to make sketching a habit. And do the chant, “I notice, I wonder, It reminds me of…”

He will be offering workshops at the Point Reyes Bird Festival at the end of April. One of the other participants in the workshop also mentioned the Eagles and Agriculture event in Carson Valley, Nevada in February, if you are in the mood to observe bald eagles and other raptors.

Travel…

A many part post that begins with going on a jet plane…

The Oakland Airport has one of my favorite pieces of art. I love the way Hung Liu, a Chinese-American artist that teaches at Mills College, makes paint drip.

Once featured on Spark (KQED”s program on Bay Area art), I became aware of her work when I would look for visuals for my classroom. I was totally excited when years ago I found you could see her major mural just by walking through the airport. This time I had an iPhone 4 to capture it (paint sandwiched between two pieces of glass) still with that sense of liquidity that the drips give the piece. Cranes were painted and then the glass was fired and tempered. Pale blue glass with a satellite map etched on it was placed behind. The mural is titled Goring Away, Coming Home and was installed in 2006.

The mural symbolizes blessings and safe trip and for me that is what my weekend was. The blessings of time with old friends, safe travel and amazing visual treats that I will share in the next few posts. Skies, gardens, architecture and good friends, cannot get any better than that…