February Photo a Day Challenge

1. your view today


2. words


3. hands


4. stranger


5. 10 am


6. dinner


7. button


8. sun


9. front door


10. self portrait


11. makes you happy



12. inside your closet


13. blue


14. heart


15. phone


16. something new


17. time


18. drink


19. something you hate to do


20. handwriting


21. a fave photo of you


22. where you work


23. your shoes


24. inside your bathroom cabinet (don't have one!)


26. green


26. night


27. something you ate


28. money


29. something you're listening to

Prayer Flags: No. 5

I love Prayer Flags and after several years of false starts, I finally finished a set of my own design. Several years ago I took a class on making them from Bridget Benton in Portland. I never finished my set of flags and they ended up in a box carefully labelled PRAYER FLAGS. I recently took another class, this time from Jami, who used a bit different process. So I took the two and morphed them into my own using rough, uneven pieces of fabric adding hand stitching, buttons, and found objects. I considered stamping words onto the fabric, but for this first round I decided to keep it simple.







I took my flags home one evening to do some of the hand stitching while watching some shows that didn't take much concentration or attention.



Back to the studio to scavenge for final touches and embellishments.


Done. Done. Done.








Details.





That was fun. I'm ready to start making another one, maybe using bright colorful scraps of fabric.

Virtual Studio Tour - A Link

The Portland Art Collective started a new series at the first of the year, Virtual Studio Tours, featuring a different PAC artist each month. I am the featured artist for February. Click here for a link to the PAC blog to see Alley Art Studio in a series of photos and commentary.

Modern Storyteller: Marie Watt

I have to share an amazing exhibit currently at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem that my Salem Art Group visited on Wednesday. The exhibit is titled Lodge and is the creation of Marie Watt. Here is what the Museum's web site says about the exhibit:

Marie Watt is a nationally recognized Portland mixed media artist whose work explores human stories and ritual implicit in everyday objects. Organized by Willamette anthropology professor Rebecca Dobkins, the exhibition will feature a range of work from the past decade, including portrait blankets of Jim Thorpe, Ira Hays, Susan B. Anthony and Joseph Beuys. Work also includes stacked blanket sculptures and “Engine,” a felt cave-like structure that honors the act of storytelling and the storytellers in the artist's life.

Marie was recently on Oregon Art Beat and you can view the segment here.

The exhibit is poignant as those who donated blankets filled out a tag telling the story behind the blanket. One of the stories was of a man who was sent to numerous concentration camps during World War II and his tags told the story of how he obtained the blanket and kept it all these years, gratefully donating it to Marie for this exhibit.

Here are some photos of the stacked blanket sculptures.







And then there is the cave, Engine, made of felted wool. We removed our shoes and entered, but just a peek . . . you're going to want to see it for yourself.




The exhibit will be in Salem through April 1, then it will travel to the Tacoma Art Museum for an exhibit that will run from June 23-October 7, 2012, so there are a couple of opportunities to experience this show.

Edgar

It is my Mom's 80th birthday on Valentine's Day and as part of her gift, I finished something I had started with her in mind about two years ago. While cleaning out my studio in January, I stumbled upon the almost-completed house. I had already painted it and adhered shells, seeds, and natural items inside on two of the shelves. I had partially completed the front - it had the handwriting in the background, but I had glued on a rather garish blue bird and that is obviously when I had walked away. The blue bird would never do with my sensibilities now, so I scraped and soaked it off and auditioned a pile of black birds until just the right bird was found. Edgar. That's the name of the big black crow that visits my Mom every morning for peanuts.


Come on along for a peek inside:







I had already prepared the 12 little matchboxes by painting them, but that was all I had done. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to add a photo and a story, a photo and a charm, or just a photo. In the end, I chose 12 photos - the first box has a photo of my parents before kids and the last photo in box 12 is a photo of our whole family with both sets of grandparents. The ten boxes in between are all photos of my sister and I. Awwww . . . .




Happy 80th birthday, Mom . . . and Happy Valentine's Day, too.

PS I just returned from my Mom's birthday dinner. Here's a photo of her opening her gift: