Orange Dream Monkeys Resume

My visual journaling group, the Orange Dream Monkeys, got back together last night after a four-month summer hiatus. It felt so good to be back together laughing, creating, eating, playing, and did I already mention laughing? Got some big laughs at how short I am, funny enough to get a couple of photos with me between Destree and Shelby (and no, I'm not bending my knees, in case you thought the photos were staged). Destree provided our snacks and a wonderful little handmade journal as our gift.

Our theme for this month was earthy turquoise spider, although no one used the theme as a prompt.







I futzed with two spreads I had started earlier in the summer. I felt a bit scattered, so I allowed myself to putter on my pages.



Bobbie played in her France travel journal.



I'm not sure if she's finished, but Dawn whipped together a beautiful and whimsical spread last night:


Shelby worked on a two-page spread during the evening:


Tory's pages in process, just getting started.



And please forgive me Destree, I didn't get any photos of your art last night!

Our theme for next month? Yellow Freedom Shoes. Now that's an interesting theme (in case you don't recall or are new to my blog, we draw words from three jars to establish our theme: a color, a noun, a concept).

Studio Play Time: Don't Think, Just Do

I needed a break from preparing for my upcoming show and my friend Shelby needed a dose of adult play time, so we got together for a few hours last night to play in our visual journals. We started with some blank pages . . . and from nothing created something.


Here are some of the pages I futzed with last night:





I like to splash unused paint onto my journal pages and here's what I cobbled together from yesterday's painting session.


Shelby and some of her amazing pages.

All Grown Up

I met Shelby through my friend Destree and I knew I wanted to be Shelby's friend the minute I met her. For one thing, we like the same kind of art (on the creepy side at times) and Shelby has a great sense of self-confidence and calmness that I admire. Shelby has taken many of my classes in Salem and is faithful about posting comments on my blog. We have been in an Altered Board Book Round Robin together and Shelby and I are in the same book group (and we like the same authors, too). Shelby is also a photographer and is the one who recently took a bunch of photos of me and altered and arted them up to perfection. If you want to see some of Shelby's work, just click here.

As you can see from Shelby's Art Buddy, she has gone for the crazy creepy. She didn't even name her piece, just sent the following message:

Here is my all grown up Art Buddy.

All grown up indeed. Thanks, Shelby.

O Joyous Day. Really.

One of the things I love about blogging is the connections and friendships that develop. Case in point. Carol Wiebe of Silverspring Studio (in Canada!), somehow discovered my blog and made a comment (thank you). Then she made a post about me on her blog. Carol was so intrigued with the photo shoot Shelby did recently, that she was moved to write about it (and share some of the photos). It all comes together. Carol's post was so flattering (to both Shelby and me), that I'm giving you a nifty little link to take a look at Carol's post (and go ahead and snoop around her blog while you are there - it's fun).

Carol made mention of a smaltzy poem I had written in high school, thus the O Joyous Day references. I scanned the poem as it was written (on torn and frayed notebook paper), but since it is a PDF file and PDF's are tricky to upload to Blogger, I won't be able to upload the file here. But because I think it is important to laugh at ourselves, I'm going to include a snippet of the poem.

Another Day, O Joyous Day!

My golden rods came dancing through the
elusive window
The grass below sparkled like diamonds
sunkissed with dew

Another Day, O Joyous Day!
Let us all be on our way.

The final verse goes like this:

And then the rain came hard and

fast as pellets of clear fine glass

And so I went on my way until

the rain had passed

Another Day, O Joyous Day!
Let us all be on our way.

I do believe that little taste is more than anyone should have to tolerate, so I'll leave it there. However, there are a total of six glorious sections (verses? stanzas? I'm obviously not a poet!), each ending with O Joyous Day . . . . oh brother. By the way, the poem was found tucked in a book by James Whitcomb Riley entitled Love-Lyrics. Of all the books for Shelby to pull off the shelf to use as a prop!

O Joyous Day

I've been blogging the day away (doing other things as the photos uploaded), but what should have been my first post if I was doing them in chronological order, is my last. Why? Because it was the most fun and brings me the most ART joy (I almost typed the greatest joy, but what would that say about my recent post about my grandson turning three!??!!).

So what is it that brought me such joy? And continues to bring me joy? A photo shoot with my art friend Shelby. Shelby has already blogged about it, but didn't give away too much except for one photo of me (she's waiting for me to blog before she unveils more of the photos she took). Here is a link to Shelby's blog, Love is an Institution, and the post she did about our photo shoot. Shelby is NOT your mother's photographer. She brought an old suitcase full of vintage clothes, hats, and props. She even let me 1) wear my tap shoes, include some of my dolls, and wear my wings. Here is a sampling of the photographs Shelby took.

And here's a sampling of some in black and white photographs.

During our photo shoot, Shelby grabbed a poetry book from our living room. As I flipped through the book, a poem written on lined notebook paper slipped out. It was a poem I had written in high school, entitled O Joyous Day. It was a horrible poem (it was schmaltzy and contrived), but it gave us both a good laugh. Shelby even used the poem in one of the photos she altered digitally.

You like the altered photos, don't you? Here are a few more.