Gratitiude

I went to a very moving Thanksgiving/Gratitude service tonight with friends.

I think that this quote sums it up (shamelessly stolen from Leslie Riley's blog)

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.
Edward Sandford Martin

Enjoy your holiday!

Two Items

I got this information off of the Quiltart Mailing List. It is a website that is trying to get 1 million cards to send to our military troops and families.

See the website for guidelines and other opportunities to send Holiday cheer!

http://www.redcross.org/email/saf/

I am going to climb up on my soapbox now:

Something like this makes me feel good about the holidays, which I feel have become overly commercial. Maybe, with the economy in the shape that it is, people will be less commerical this year!

I sold a commission piece! I took several pieces to the Member Art Show at First Unitarian and got a commission. This one turned out OK (I have had some bad experiences with commissions early in my art career, and usually shy away from them)

This is Frayed Around the Edges II (Teal and Orange)

OBAMANOS

If you are an Obamanos, check out this Peace Train Video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n16T35yx3nY

Bad week at work, so I am not posting much today. Hopefully I will be back on track next week!

No art, so I am giving you URLs!

This is an amazing video, please check it out....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QVQSZA9zSk

I am also cutting and pasting a great Obama letter from the sister of a friend of mine. She lives in Vienna Austria, and I thought that it was very moving! I have edited out local Viennese tidbits, but otherwise left it intact.

i wanted to write because i felt it was crucial to acknowledge that America, through its electoral process, has just participated in a massive, non-violent, political revolution!
i woke up in Europe this morning with tears in my eyes and a hope i haven't felt in years. i have never believed in a political figure, but somehow i believe in Obama, call me naive, but i realize that without faith in my political system, the idea/hope of change is insurmountable...suddenly a new world is possible and that is perhaps the biggest gift we have all received from this election, a restoration in faith; faith in the democratic process, faith in each other, faith in the possibility of change.
...
unfortunately, i will be in India on january 20, otherwise i would plan to go to Washington DC and wear my inaugural gown in the street! i have never been to our nation's capitol, but for the first time in my life i feel deeply compelled to go...instead, what i would like to do is encourage you to keep the spirit of change alive; celebrate it, cultivate it, give it, demand it. throw an inaugural party, invite everyone to wear a gown, a tuxedo and to bring seeds that can be donated to community gardens. share hopes for the future. ask everyone to make a commitment to sustaining this spirit of change...organize, volunteer, donate, blog, make art in the tenderloin...affirm, through community ritual, to hold hands in the future and say, Yes We Can! because it would seem we actually have a friend in the white house, willing to do what he can within the confines of what our current political system will allow.
and if someone wants to hold a yoga rally in Washington DC or San Francisco on January 20th, to inaugurate peace, wisdom and the pursuit of collective integrity, i will gladly send you a recording of my kick-ass play list, but you must promise to do yoga in your gowns and tuxedos!
i sat next to a woman from Ghana this morning on the metro. she was thrilled by the election, astonished and personally affirmed that a black person had not just become president, but miraculously, president of the United States...she came to Vienna 20 years ago, was one of the first black people here and knows there isn't a country in Europe where the same victory is currently possible.today i am finally proud to be American and witness the resurrection of a dream...
in prayer,sri

I took a break

I have not been doing any art since Goldie Garcia's last class, and did not do anything then as I had to go to a meeting at church. I am a member of the Building Project Task Force and we meet every other week (except for last week...)
I am very please about the election results, and attended a racous Obama watching party Tuesday night! New Mexico we blue for the first time ever!
I got a treasure from my Uncle Charlie. He had a signature quilt with 99 names on it, all embroidered. My Mother, Uncle and sister sat down and identified all the names that they could. I will post more later about this treasure!

Goldie Farcia Class Shoe Shrines

After a run to Goodwill for a shoe to alter (looking for a stilletto, but alas, no luck) I found a pair of faux alligator brown shoes (forgot to take a before picture). This is as of yet unfinished...
A hindu goddess is inside the shoe, will have to do some research on which one she is.

Since I finished early, I was fascinated by some dicitonary pages Goldie had brought, and found the Z pages. Below is the first layer of a shoe shrine (decoupaged Z pages) and I will trim with zebra print fabric that I have from my black and white quilt.

More next week, when we are doing holiday shrines. I plan on doing an Obama shrine, as eitehr way it goes, it will be historic!

Goldie Garcia's shrine class

Goldie's class started last night, and I guess after Cyntiha's class last week, the artists are just different. Plus there are 15 people in the class.

Anyway, I did not have any images that went with what I started, and guess that glitter is not my medium. But I will keep going, and we are doing a shoe shrine next week?? We will see

Two shrines made from sardine cans and glitter. The top has black velvet and dark blue glitter, with shiny star netting fabric. The bottom has a Goldie Garcia bottle cap, gold paper and diamond glitter over blue paint.

The beginnings of a new shrine, nothing is glued down except for the dictionary page and the brown paper in the bottom right. I can't see glitter on this but it does have shiny eyelash yarn in orange!

Swapbot.com

I have joined Swap-bot.com. It is a clearing house for swaps of all kinds. You have to work your way up to the goodies, so I am starting at the bottom. You swap, and then build up your ratings so you can get into the really neat swaps.

I have signed up for two recipe swaps, on postcards.

I am making an effort to recycle in my art, so I made the postcards from packaging cardboard. The recipe is on the reverse side.

Hope the post office gets them where they need to go!

Junking Part One

Cynthia Cook, queen of the found object, took us on a field trip to a pre-1900 trash dump. Treasures abounded. Here is some of what I found

The white bottle, with the cap rusted on, still has the remains of the contents (Milk of Magnesia?? maybe). I can see these showing up in a future shrine.

These are glass shards, the lilic ones are pre-1900 (before 1900 they used magnesium (??) and the glass turns lilac when exposed to sunlight). These should also appear in future work. The glass is resting on a huge rusty bit!

The whole treasure trove, including loads of tin cans and the white porcelain chunk at the bottom of the picture that looks like a dinasour vertabrae. I may never use it, but thought it was interesing enough to pick it up and carry it back to the car!

Last Class with Cynthia Cook and new Fibre Piece

Tonight we had our last of three classes with Cynthia Cook.

I was so sorry to see it end, as I had a blast in this class.

This is a small piece that is a WIP. I added the jungle print with a

cabachon from a beading class with Mary Tafoya.

I still have to cover with glass and it will go on a larger piece.

This is the yet unnamed dyptich.

This is Frayed Around the Edges in the preliminary stages.

Finished Piece

Closeup

Art from Cynthia Cook Class

More results from Cynthia Cook's recycle Art Class. Unnamed, unfinished Diptych
More additions to the Panda collage.

I was out of town this weekend and worked
on a wall hanging that I will post later.

More Rusty Bits

OK, I am finally ready to show some new work. These are pieces

for the Member Show at First Unitarian Church

Oct. 19-Dec. 6, 2008.

This piece is Fools Gold Klondyke, Mixed Media Fibre Collage,

11 1/2" x 13" $250.00

Cirlces of Life Africa, Fused Wall Hanging, 24" x 24" NFS


Fools Gold Southwest #2,

Fibre Wall Hainging with Rusted Fabric,

21" X 24" $300.00

Newest Rusty Bits fabric.
I like the pointy bit best. The white piece will have to be
overdyed, as it did not dye well.

Now I have to create some pieces to use all the
fabric that I have dyed!

Artful Saturday

Instead of cleaning house, I worked on Art all day today.

That was an easy decision.
This is a work in progress

These are inchies that I am working on.

And my lazy studio cat! Doesn't look like she could be

comfortable, but she was.

I am taking a shrine class from Cynthia Cook at Harwood Art Center

that is really great. We are cutting glass, cutting tin cans, doing collage and other neat stuff!

Two more weeks to go, and then I am taking a class with Goldie Garcia.

Can't wait for it either!

No rust dyeing today, and it was cool and rainy here today.

More Rust Bits

Yesterday, I posted the first day of the rust process.

Today they were dry and the results are shown below,

including a curious kitty!

The rust was yellowish, with some black patches.
and the fabric was very stiff (salt, maybe??).

It was also black and stiff around the edges.


Second piece, on a different rug!

After rinsing and ironing, this is the result.

This is the long narrow piece that was in the dutch oven lid,

and all of the black has washed out.

The rust migrated, and I lost the yellow cast and most of the black from the tin can lids (in the bottom right corner on both pieces). I love the stripe in the left of the piece above

This is the second layer, and is more washed out. You can still see the tin can lids in the bottom right hand corner, and some of the more yellow cast to the rust.

All in all, I think that I prefer to just use water instead of the vinegar and salt. I may try with only vinegar, and then only salt, instead of both.

More Rusty Bits

After discussions on the Rust list yahoo group that I belong to, I am trying this rusty technique. I have an old large cafteria tray, with fabric layered with Rusty Bits, covered in vinegar and with water softener salt added. We will see what happens...

This is the lid for my dutch oven, and I added vinegar to see the rust results!

Don't you love my outdoor rug (you can see it in this pic...)

It is made from recycled milk jugs!

I spent Sunday finishing up two pieces for the First Unitarian Member show that opens on October 19th. Will post pictures after the show opens.

Politics

Ok, I can be rather pendantic on my liberal leanings, so here goes some leveling:

http://www.peteyandpetunia.com/VoteHere/VoteHere.htm

If you have not noticed, I am in an art drought! So I am fudging here. Won't have any time to do art until Sunday Afternoon, but I plan on doing art all afternoon and evening

Lazy week this week, and very little art!

Two very rare pictures of my cats in the same room....

Baby Cakes is the Maine Coon and Fuzzy Bucket is the black cat.
My window cats in front of the stained glass
by my favorite stained glass guy Jon

Fools Gold 2

Stash from an artist's estate sale last Saturday.

I JUST missed buying a Standing floor lamp Ott light for $10!

I could have KICKED myself!

Got all of this Loot for $16

I have been lazy this week, had a very hard week due to a

JERK at work, so I have just been coming home and vegging out.

I have two more Fools Gold pieces (#3 and #4) started.

I am going to Dallas for the weekend and will probably

take them with me to work on, but maybe not!

I have not even rusted anything in 3 days!

More Rusty Bits

Don't know if you can see the halloween/jack o'lantern in this...
This is off of the gear

this small piece was wrapped aroung baling wire (texas term for flexible wire), I am disappointed that it did not transfer better.
@#@#@#@#@#

This is all from my rusty bits acquired over labor day. Flakes of a 55 gallon drum, the two mechanical round pieces, and the baling wire. It sat for two days and on the second day I added water and vinegar. I think that the vinegar is what caused the very orange color (it is much more orange than my camera made it)- I will have to invest in a good small camera before my trip to Egypt next March.

Message in a Bottle

This sounds like an intersting thing to do. I signed up!

Just double click on the bottle.

UGH! Disgusting!!!

Rusted Washers
results from the rusty bits I picked up over Labor Day

This was wrapped around the gear thingy (see previous posts)

This is the brake rotor(??) (Purple is from my camera, it is really on Muslin!)

I think it is time for a new camera

This is the disgusting part....

Cheesecloth, still damp

Unofrtunatley, when it dried it resembles bandages with dried body fluids!

Don't think that I will be using this in anything, but you never know.

I also tried rusting some polyester batting, and that did not work either!