A Note About Inspiration

I used to think art was about vision. About seeing something in your head and then having the skill to translate that into something other people could see. And since I couldn't go directly from seeing with my head to creating with my hands, I thought art wasn't for me. But art is really just taking what you see and pushing it around and squishing it and holding it up to the light to see what ELSE there is to see. With your head or hands, makes no difference.

Then when you see what else there is to see, you suddenly can see how another thing can squish or twist into the first thing.... viola. You made something squishy and twisted. :)

Little bone skulls in a seed pod, strung with picture jasper beads. Sold it at the Festival of the Cranes this past weekend. I'm happy to say this did NOT come directly from my head to my hands, it was very much more experimental squishing.

Bosque del Apache

It's that time again! The cranes are flying into the Bosque. We went this weekend and saw lots of whooping and sandhill cranes. ducks, geese, some sort of cool chirpy blackbirds of some sort in the rushes, and a huge hawk. It was a beautiful day.

Even if you don't particularly like birds it's an incredible experience. The Festival of the Cranes (there are shows at the Bosque and throughout Socorro, I'll be showing at the Finley Complex) is usually the third week of November, but you can see the cranes flying in through December.

More experiments...

I've been having so much fun lately with mixed media pieces (thanks Denise, for the kick in the ass). So far I've been doing magnets, I love the instant gratification and it lets me experiment with techniques on a small scale, but the real challenge has been to combine the beading with the mixed media stuff!

There were samples of some in my last post, but lately I've been making them like a crazy person! My favorite these last couple weeks has been polymer clay pendants. My mom uses polymer clay on her gourd Santas, and I've used it before for the Magdalena Egg Show for my Egg Snake sculptures. It's great to work with, but I'd like it to be a bit heavier for pendants... I'll have to think on that.

I want to go back to my work table but it's too cold in here! I can't wait until the construction is done. But I have two shows coming up... Festival of the Cranes in Socorro and the Cavalcade of Arts at Isleta.... Oh, and the joint show with Denise... If you don't know Denise's work, check out her website http://www.desertglassdesigns.com/ I made the website, but of course I can't get one done for myself... maybe I should do that and stay here by this space heater.

Anyway, I'm babbling, here are some photos of recent work...

First, here's one of my Mom's gourd art creations. Her favorite. Isn't it amazing? She has some of her work for sale on Etsy:http://www.redbarngourds.etsy.com/

Pics of my jewelry...