Not in LA

Today I made a mistake and almost went to LA for a meeting that isn't happening until next week. To make the most of it, I'm saying I had breakfast at the Oakland Airport. First time in my life I left without getting on a scheduled flight. Weird.

I ended up back at work and in a meeting where I did this doodle to settle myself down and work through feelings of waste and stupidity. I call it "spikey tomato."

Music is Art

Tonight, we went to see jazz at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society. It was raining like crazy and at one point, the rain seemed like it was louder than the music.

We saw The Michael O’Neill Quintet featuring Kenny Washington, a virtuoso singer with an awe-inspiring four-octave range, and special guest, Joe Locke, regarded by many to be the most gifted vibraphonist of his generation.

The BDDS has a long history of being home on Sundays to many great jazz artists who were up in SF playing on Saturday night. The list of people who have played at BDDS is impressive, including Count Basic, who I remember meeting when I was 4 years old in Ohio. It is an intimate club and with the music being in the afternoon, it is suitable for bringing along your kids to expose them to jazz.

The BDDS founder, Pete Douglas, has this to say about music and art:

The best Jazz is art and entertainment going on at the same time.

Collage Layout Decided Upon

My collage from last Saturday was "resting" all week. I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do with the images I pulled. I liked the round box, but the images seemed lost sitting inside it.

Today I went to a Treasure Mapping event. Treasure Mapping is a day to think about where you are going for the year and create a collage to guide you to that place. This group always does the most amazing artistic collages.

I was pulling out my images and looking through them, and putting them onto 7x7 pieces of paper. The lovely woman across from me asked if I was making a quilt. I got the direction I needed from her to finish my piece. I ended up with 25 squares, for a lovely 5 by 5 paper quilt.



I put each image onto a sheet of the paper, then augmented with watercolor. This was really fun and it enhanced the images. I think to finish this off I will write some lightly colored text onto each image. This may be how the image lands for me, or poetry. I'm not quite sure on that element yet.



After I got the collage squared away, I moved on to encaustics and created this 12x12" piece titled "Do you really think people who look like me play the flute?"

Today is a New Day

There was not much time for art today, unless you count bowling. I bowl once every four years, and I really enjoy it. I like the act of focusing, breathing, and then throwing the ball and watching it go right toward the pins. The strike is especially exciting. We were all whooping it up and having a great time.

When I doodle, I like to draw spheres, which are like bowling balls. I come back to the sphere over and over again. I'm not sure why it is so attractive to me. It's important that it be a sphere, not just a circle. This means it has a spot where the light source hits and a shadow opposite the face with the light on it. The cast shadow is always the most interesting part. The shadow is darkest right at the point where the sphere intersects with the table/surface. I draw a short horizontal line right there, pressing the pen or pencil hard to get the darkest dark I can.

My other favorite part of the sphere is that space between the sphere and the shadow, just to either side of the dark line part. I also like the space between the bottom of trees, like in orchards and the black dark soil. I like any crack or crevice because it represents the edge of possibilities.

Today I liberated myself. I have the whole world in my hands, like a sphere full of possibilities.

Tomorrow Is A New Day

Stumbling on Art

For a little "art break" today, I stumbled. One of my categories is art. I happened upon this site.


It reminded me of a time about 25 years ago when I was doing consulting work at a nuclear power plant in Nebraska. I was inside the plant and able to go to an area at the top floor where I could look down on the spent fuel rod storage pool. The water was a beautiful turquoise and I was mesmerized.


They are quite similar! Twenty five years ago today I took a break from that NE field assignment to meet my husband and ski in Vail Colorado for our 1st Wedding Anniversary... I met Ed Bradley on the slopes.

More Good Things About Working With Encaustic

It's really cold out right now. About 42F here and I swear it might snow on the beach - at the Pacific Ocean! So working in my garage studio is not much of an option. The concrete floor is too cold and hard, and even though initially I feel like I can deal with the temperature out there, after about 30 minutes, I am cold through to my core and it takes about 3 hours to warm back up.

So, working inside with hot wax is a good thing to do this time of year. Tonight, I opened boxes from Encaustikos (wax pellets and damar - and get this, the store is maybe 1 mile from where one of my daughters lives in Rochester NY!) and pigments from R&F Paints.

I made the base wax using the 80:20 formula in the electric griddle. I melted chunks of the damar resin first, and strained it through the cheesecloth. Then, I added the wax pellets and made a big quantity of the base wax, which I then poured into the aluminum loaf pans.

The dog will be happy with her four helpings of chopped clams for breakfast tomorrow - I just wanted the cans. Into each, I poured about half full of the wax base, then melted some pigment into each one: chartreuse, quinacridone red (hot pink - my signature color!), white and aquamarine blue.

It was like cooking, but art!

Preview of Women's Building Exhibit

A little preview of the April exhibit.


These are two 15' long scrolls titled "Always - Enough." The top one is acrylic and pencil on watercolor paper.


These are four 6' scrolls with writing all the way down each, on oakboard (like manila folders), coated with paraffin wax.

The middle painting is a watercolor on heavy (300#) cold pressed watercolor paper.

Along the floor are 16 6x6 in paintings of candles on paper and coated with paraffin.

I can't wait to get this displayed!

Sometimes Art Isn't What It Looks Like

Sometimes, doing art is the business of doing art. My "art" today was visiting The Women's Building to talk with them about putting up my art.

Here's a photo of the blank "canvas" - walls in the lobby near the entrance to their large meeting space. I was thrilled to be offered this space. I was thinking I would be offered some space on the 4th floor, near their offices. This lobby space will get a lot more traffic!

So, it is a GO for April! I'll be exhibiting six large pieces and sixteen smaller pieces. I'll have plenty of time to work on fixtures to hang and protect the art.

Tuesday - Women's Building Interview

Tomorrow I'm very excited to be meeting with the Exec Director of a non-profit in San Francisco to see if my artwork that I did while at the Women's Art Intensive summer 2007 retreat will be accepted to be hung in their space.

Since the installation is large (4 pieces that are 6' long scrolls and 2 pieces that are 15' long), it is challenging to find suitable places to put the art.

Wish me luck!

Artwork to be Donated

Well, I didn't get any art done today, and I am still at work, so that is understandable. But, I did get an opportunity to donate two pieces for an upcoming conference in July. I haven't made them yet, but I will get working on something soon, unless I find something suitable in my "inventory."

Last time I donated something, it got fought over and ended up selling for $500 to raise money for my niece's elementary school. The principal got outbid and I ended up doing a second piece for her.

MLK Day

Today is MLK day. It's dreary out, intermittently raining with cold sunshine.

This is a motel sign you can create yourself.

Paperless, portable art!

His & Hers

Here are my first encaustic painting results I'm willing to share.

I titled these "His and Hers." They're made from leftover wax scrapings I received in class last week. I especially like the pink which is a mixture I probably could not have come up with on my own, and it is a color I'm really attracted to working with.

The set up with the new griddle and sardine cans worked great. I didn't blow any fuses or catch anything on fire. (Note to self: get a fire extinguisher for the kitchen and garage. My house has a fire alarm and sprinkler system, but I'd hate to see it go off with all the water damage that would ensue.)

These pieces are 9x9 on cradled gesso board. I used the Holy Grail as a primer, then 2 coats of clear beeswax (without damar; that hasn't arrived yet). A tracing paper drawing of gears went on top of those 2 coats of wax, after a good fusing. I was able to get a very nice smooth and milky surface, which I ended up covering up, but fun to practice with the heat gun to get rid of all the bubbles.

The stripe is a combination of wax pastel overlaid with the wax paint. When I went to fuse these areas, the wax pastel broke up underneath. The detail is gorgeous - very ephemeral - but hard to capture in this photo. (Tip: click on the photo and it will pop up in a new window, enlarged. I can see the speckly details on my iMac; can you?)

Now on to a couple of little pieces on the press.

So Many Choices

Today is a day off work for me, so I have big plans to get lots of art done. But, that can overwhelm me with pressure. So instead of tormenting myself about which way to go next (small drawings for the encaustic layers, and if so, which ones?; finish the art piece for someone I am having lunch with tomorrow; browse through books trying to find my artistic voice; try the wax on a plate on the print press....) I washed my car, even though rain is predicted for tonight or tomorrow. I just know I will feel better if my car is shiny and washing it pretty much guarantees some more much needed rain.

Then, I ran some errands, including buying some tuna and sardines so I will have the empty metal cans to mix my wax paints and a griddle for warming them up. I tried going on-line to find a less expensive/used griddle, but I couldn't find anything. Luckily, the hardware store in my little 6-horse town is handy - they always have what I need. While in the hardware store, a friend called about prices to make signs for a conference coming up. I was right there in the poster board aisle, so I gave her some real-time quotes. I'm doing the layouts for the conference committee to approve, having made the logo for this big convention too.

I took a little walk along the beach because I'm trying to ease back into exercising. Last year, I was up to 12 miles a week. Now I feel pressed to walk 12 feet! I had my headphones on and did some arm-swinging walk dancing to Sheryl Crow. I'm hoping that puts me back in the mood I was last year - Best of Sheryl Crow was what I did all my walking and running to. I felt really in shape and totally capable of the 3 miles up and 3 miles back walk/run I was doing with her in my ear.

Now, I'm going to warm up some beeswax and paint it onto plexiglass and do some press runs.

That's some art for the day. I'll post the results later tonight of the wax + press.

Finally, I Take an Encaustic Class

Last week, I finally realized a quest to take an encaustic painting class. (Encaustic is a painting process that uses hot beeswax and pigment to paint on a rigid surface. Think: painting with melted crayons, sort of.)

The yearning came after I saw an encaustic painting at the International Art Exhibition at Ft Mason five years ago. The encaustic process lent a quality to the landscape, which was of a view out over the ocean, that was ethereal. Like nothing I had ever seen before.

I tried the usual "self-taught" method. I bought a couple of very good books (which turned out to be the bibles), and the materials. But there is something about encaustic that you need to see it being done to "get it." Turned out I had all the right materials, but was doing one or two critical things wrong. I was using a hair dryer instead of a heat gun to fuse the wax. I should know there is a difference, being an engineer! The hair dryer wasn't getting the wax hot enough, and in the meantime, was blowing it all over the place.

I somehow also missed the requirement to add damar resin to the beeswax, at 20%. The damar makes the wax harden nicely.

So, thanks to Eileen Goldenberg for teaching wonderful classes in San Francisco. I took her full-day course, where we learned all about the basic techniques in the morning: making the medium, pigments and how to use them, and basic set up for tools and layering the wax. Eileen's Tea House paintings using wax are amazing - check them out on her website.

In the afternoon, after a lovely lunch in her verdant back yard, we practiced collaging, which was the juicy part I really wanted to learn. In my self-taught pieces, my images were getting lost in the layers. With Eileen's expert instruction, I was instantly able to correct my errors in technique and achieve the look I was after. I feel so much more confident now, and able to move ahead to experiment with colors and textures.

I am planning to attend the International Encaustic Artist's annual meeting in Carmel in April, which will be a real treat. And, I plan to marry the encaustic technique up with my new press to make monotypes built from a waxed and inked plate.

Collage Day 2008

A group of us girls got together today - 6 old, 2 young - to do our annual collages. We started with a meditation, led by Andrea. Relaxed and in possession of our higher power's wisdom, we sat down to pull images. The little ones were probably cursing our meditation in my daughter's room. She told me flat out before we started to "cut it with the airy-fairy crap."

Here a picture of my 2008 Collage. I did a round box to receive images throughout the year. I'm not exactly sure what this year will bring - I actually never am. And, I wasn't particularly attracted to too many images from magazines during the "pulling" period of today's event.

So, I collaged some broken dollar bills that my son left in his pants that ended up taking out my washing machine pump a couple of weeks ago. I put some fish around the outside of the box with the money, after covering the box with a coat of gesso. As far as I got with my manifesting for 2008 was that I want to be swimming in money by year-end.

I also cut out some hearts and a couple of other images and put them inside the box. I'll keep doing that all year. It's interesting this year to be working in a disconnected medium (images to be put into the box) as opposed to laying them all together on a flat surface, connecting them through geometry and color.

And, it is always such a mystery what the year will bring.