"Tall Painting" Appeal is Hypnotic Precision and Unpredictability

You're getting sleepy...very, very sleepy. I wish. At 2:54 I cannot sleep.

Just a couple of months ago I was boasting to a friend about how I slept like the dead, now here I am these days (nights) up in the dark, reading, surfing the Internet, or sketching. Serves me right, but at least I was correct to appreciate a good night's sleep while it was mine.

How I found this mesmerizing video: Reading The Comeback by Emma Gilbey Keller, about women who set down their careers for a while to raise children, then pick up again later. (A la "You really CAN have it all; just not all at once.") One of the women interviewed for the book was Maxine Snider, a furniture designer, whose life (at least as described in the book) seems quite perfect. From the descriptions of her childhood, her home office in the late 70's, her successful daughters, art-savvy lawyer/photographer husband and their travels together; who wouldn't want to peek at her furniture line and website to see the public material results? For sale to the trade.

That's what I love about design, all of it: furniture, architecture, graphic design. I even delight in those fat reference books on color, filled with endless chiplets of it, arranged in tables of cascading shades and hues; and all sorts of delicious combinations. Everything about the design world -- and the people who inhabit it -- seems just, well, too perfect. Coincidentally I'm also reading a book about small dwellings in which the author refers to shelter magazines as "housewife porn," which shames me into admitting my guilt in that regard.

But art is a little different, isn't it? It's messy, for one thing. Enter the Maxine Snider blog for the insomniac's delectation.

Holton Rower's Tall Painting video is a little bit of both art and design. Organized, unpredictably precise messiness.

We all know that when you pour paint over a box it will flow down; that old gravity thing. We know, after some experimentation, when the paint is "set" enough to hold another color without mixing and becoming muddy. So we know in a sense what to expect.

And yet to watch the painting being made -- the succession of color and the lines the paint forms as it flows -- is a surprise possibly more pleasing than the finished result.

Somehow I guess that's the point. I knew if I wrote it down I would find the end of this thread so I could sleep again...

It's the process. 

Perhaps Ms. Snider would not have become a furniture designer if she hadn't stopped working to raise her kids. Perhaps she might not have begun painting and drawing in that lull women feel when the kids grow up and begin to not need Mom quite so much. Perhaps she'd have stayed in her first career (commercial interior design) forever if not for those years at home.

Although I'd have preferred eight straight hours of z's, I probably would have missed this video, and possibly a tiny moment in my evolution. (Don't think for a moment it doesn't embarrass me to say "my evolution," but it is almost 4:00 am.) Maybe this indulgence was a fair trade for sleep.

From the Roadside to the Table

This is Roger -- well known purveyor of tomatoes and peaches on Highway 71 just west of Bee Cave. He's usually there every day between around 9 and 4 or 5 (I guess whenever he runs out of produce, or gets bored or hot.)

I can get 7 nice tomatoes or peaches for 5 dollars. Let me tell you, it's a bargain compared to the grocery store!

If you've never eaten a tomato or peach still warm from the heat of summer and never exposed to air conditioning, then you haven't lived, I'm sorry to say.

I photographed the gorgeous fuzzy oranges and yellows and that tomato-y sheen on my shady back porch and then proceeded to make lunch.

As I was chowing down on the tasty salad and reading a library book, it occurred to me to stop and enjoy every blessed bite.

I put the book aside and delighted in the taste of SUMMER.

An interesting Hill Country Rock

If you're always looking down when you're outside, it might not mean you're depressed; it could just mean that you are a rock hound like me. I runs in the family. In the ten years we've lived here our pile of interesting rocks, fossils, arrowheads and other finds has grown into an impressive cache of natural history. Now that we have the new hill in Kingsland to explore, I'm sure we'll be adding to it in future years.

The kids found this rock last weekend and they are sure it's a dinosaur egg (dino do?) fossil. The cracks are unusual. While it is a gray boring rock color, its cracks make it unlike any rock we've ever found around here..."Here" being the Hill Country of Texas.

I told them that I'd take them over to the Natural History Museum on the UT campus to have someone looks at it and tell us more. We've done that before with interesting stuff we've found outdoors and the woman we spoke to in the basement level was very agreeable to explaining what she thought our find was (and what it wasn't). Usually stuff turns out to be way more mundane than we imagined.

The color is wrong, by the way. I played with the picture in photoshop and illustrator before posting it here. If you have any ideas about this rock, I'd sure like to know what it is. I'll tell you when we know.

Big Changes

A couple of days ago I finished a small quilted thing that I started in 2005.

Six years ago at my first art retreat I had signed up for a class with a noted calligrapher who painted/wrote on fabric and incorporated it into her art...Lisa Engelbrecht. I was new to creating (anything) and wanted to say so much with this little calligraphic piece.

Do you ever have the same high hopes for a course you want to take?

I read the outline of the day-long class, decided on a theme, found materials and fabrics that supported my vision (I think mine had to do with gardening) and I anticipated this class with great expectations.

While I really enjoyed the day, learned a lot about paint and fabric, was enchanted with Lisa's sweet nature...the work I meant to produce that day never took shape. I still have a few really lovely pieces of muslin with gorgeous swoops of paint and writing on them, but in six years I never did a thing with them.

Until last week.

(Oh, I know I should be working! I've started a new business that needs all of my spare time and then some.)

But I have been feeling the call of creativity that my email business isn't quite fulfilling. So last week I tidied up my craft room and found a project to finish; since I have so many of those!

I've always said it's the projects that are half-finished that will quickly get your creative juices going again. But now I've proved that there is a shelf life to every project. Sometimes you have to move on.

This is one of those projects. While I like certain pieces of this little quilt, it's not who I am. Anymore. If ever. Weird.

The original quote stated something like "[Nature still does the same old thing it always did], it is only I who have changed." A common theme, right? in nature poetry. I'm reading the poems of Mary Oliver these days; that must be why I wanted to resurrect this thing. And so it goes.

But my foray back into art fell flat, I think. I don't like the colors, the layout, etc. It seems so studied and strained. It doesn't sing. Well, why should it? That's where I am, too -- not singing.

Last night I had that old urge to create again. (Two times in one week makes me think something's a-brewin'.) Then I went to my craft room and picked and pulled at a few painted journal pages (from long ago) and made myself frustrated all over again. How can I want this so much and yet feel that there is nothing there? So I went to bed, grabbing a few art-zines from my ancient stash as I went. I snuggled in and read.

Some of the zines were published by Teesha Moore, a woman who lives her art if I've ever met one. The first issue of Art and Life (yeah, in fact that's the name of her series from oh, 2007/08 or so) is full of inspiration about being true to your creative instinct. I re-read it and felt like I could do anything I set my mind (instinct, rather) on.

Well, maybe I'm going to create something here soon. Maybe I'm going to write. I don't know.

All I know is I am a completely different person from 6 years ago. So much has changed. My kids, my country, my marriage, my prayer life, my friendships, my schools, my neighborhood... and me.

Maybe the person inside this skin wants to create in a different way from the way I wanted to create 6 years ago. It wouldn't surprise me.

Life: bring it on. I'm ready for anything.

Incidentally, if you need an email service with your own personalized artistic template for your newsletters -- visit www.MyTeamConnects.com. You can sign up for a weekly newsletter about small biz email marketing and learn about what you can do to promote your art business. (Furthermore, I'm a sympathetic artist; can you tell?) I'd love to work with you.

Stuffed Pepperdews

Happy Fourth of July!

Last night one of my new dance mom/friends hosted a cocktail hour with both moms and daughters from Katie's dance team. We spent last weekend getting to know each other at Starbound Nationals Competition and we were all missing our new friends, so we got together for appetizers and a swim.

Walking around HEB earlier yesterday afternoon, I spotted these pretty red/orange pepperdews at the olive bar. They were marinating in some sort of sweet pickling juice and the little sign said they'd be good stuffed with cream cheese. So I came up with this recipe:

Cheese Stuffed Pepperdews
Ingredients
24 pepperdews, hollowed out
24 toothpicks
1 brick of lowfat cream cheese
3 golf ball-sized balls of fresh mozzarella cheese
chopped green onions

Using a hand blender, blend the cheeses together.
Scoop whipped cheese into a plastic zip lock bag and cut a corner to pipe out the cheese.
Fill hollow pepperdews with cheese.
Skewer each pepperdew with one toothpick and place on baking sheet.
Broil for about 2 minutes, watching carefully.
Place on serving plate and sprinkle onions over the tops.

Serve with baguette crackers if you want to:
Slice baguette into half-inch slices and place on baking sheet.
Spray bread slices with olive oil cooking spray or brush with olive oil; sprinkle with a little salt.
Broil for about 30 seconds, watching carefully.

If you serve them on a blue plate you will have a red, white and blue appetizer to bring to a party. These were delish; I came home with an empty plate. Having plenty of cheese left, today I bought jalapenos and will stuff them with the leftover cheese and wrap with bacon. Can't wait.