maira kalman

Maira Kalman, do you know her work? Amazing stuff. 
I watched her TED TALK (The Illustrated Woman) today while I glued. I loved the rambling and funny way she expresses herself. In this day and age of the pretty & ultra-organized Pintrest style~ I love to see messiness and rawness so boldly declared. 


p.s.~ I added a side note explaining my Remembering / Recollecting painting in my last post if you are interested. 

Remembering / Recollecting

Remembering / Recollecting 

30" x 40" 

I have sold a few paintings recently, this being one of them. Of all the paintings I made last year, this one has something inexplicably different about it. It was the first painting I have ever felt nervous to sell~ like I might be selling a part of my heart... but when the moment came for me to let it go, it felt just right.

{edited to add: My grandmother was on my mind a lot when I painted this painting last summer. She recently passed away, leaving the stories of her life imprinted on me. Most of the stories are snippets, fragments, that leave you aching for more. Abandonment at two-years-old when her mother died, Befriending the chief of a neighboring Indian Reservation as an 8-year-old, brain surgery and subsequent morphine addiction,  Hearing restored in her ear at a revival, years of being a librarian, a collector... meeting my grandfather when he shot a spitball at her at the soda fountain... 
But this painting isn't about my grandmother specifically. It is about love, and loss. And deeply allowing grief to sit on your shoulder so you can let go what you need to. }

Monday Links

Zinnia Feather Art Earrings in Gold

:: Some Monday Links ::

1. Amazing Urban Homesteader. So inspiring! We are light years away from having this type of production or sustainability. I love to see people making this happen in an urban setting too. 
2. A Visual Scope of the Universe. A friend of mine brought this to my attention. Allow yourself to feel HUGE! Allow yourself to see how tiny you are. 
3. I came across the work of Katherine Dunn this week. I love the colors and openness in her paintings. 

patterns & idea sketches

Sketches of some pattern ideas for jewelry 

In progress...

for years...


A slightly blurry photo of a painting I started years ago and never finished. (I also promised it to my Mom...sorry Mom!)

Most paintings that remain unfinished I let go of, but this one I can't seem to paint over, but neither can I can seem to finish it. 

tool shed :: part 2

It has been a bare feet kind of winter here. I truly feel ambivalent about the daffodils that are pushing up through the dirt. Where is our snow???
However, I will admit that three kids drinking cold smoothies with bare feet in the February sunshine is pretty sweet...

Meanwhile, Alex worked hard on phase two of the tool shed. It is coming right along. The chickens seem completely unfazed by the addition.

 P.S.~ Now that Seo's top molars have pushed through (Beginning at Thanksgiving and finally through this past week) he is dramatically less whiny/fussy & has been so stinkin' cute. I just want to squeeze him in sheer delight all the time. Makes me so happy. 

tiny prints

 My little studio and lots of tiny prints (for jewelry) on the clothesline. They are drying from layers of varnish and UV protective sealant. I love how they look fluttering in the breeze...

goodbye yome ~ hello tool shed

the yome:

I don't know if you have ever spied our yome (a yome is a structure that has features of both a yurt and a dome) peeking out in our pictures. You can see it from almost anywhere on our land. I have a love/hate relationship with it. 

{ + }

* It has served us in so many ways. David and Ema originally got it to live in while they built their house. * Our friend Heidi helped make the structure, and family members helped build the floor system. 

* It was a home to our friend Kurt for one summer while he helped establish our garden. 

* It has been crucial the last few years: serving as our tool and storage shed. 

{ - }

* Because it is made of canvas it is now molding, tearing, and leaking. 

* the deck is rotting out.

* It used to remind me of a circus tent in a romantic sort of way. Now it just feels like an eyesore. 

Soooo... we are finally building a tool/storage shed.

We broke ground this week on an 8'x12' shed that will be attached to our chicken coop. I am beyond excited to have a real roof over our tools! 

goodbye january

"Ode to a Crow" Earrings

Tree of Life Earrings in Blue  / Luna Moth Earrings

January was a difficult month in our household. Stubborn-stubborn sicknesses that would not (and haven't fully) go away, heartbreaking news from a friend, pink-eye for all!...blech.
And now here is February with a clean inbox and a sniffling, but recovering, family.

I spent all day today at the computer, the rainy weather keeping me company outside the window. I knocked a lot of overdue emails off my to-do list, tidied up loose ends, and best of all: spruced up the shop!
I even got around to adding a few new items. Hooray!

Tree of Life Necklace in Sepia

haircut

Gave the little one a haircut because he was starting to look like shaggy from scooby-doo.  As soon as I started the project solo I remembered how he hates having his hair cut. It was a difficult job, and it didn't turn out as I had hoped. It is quite choppy as you can see.

I guess I was overconfident. When I cut Lili's hair I just snip away, and somehow it always ends up looking cute. Strangers are always coming up to her and telling her they wish they had her haircut.
I am discovering that boy hair is a whole different thing.

Seo still looks cute... just in a homemade sort of way. At least it will be a looong time before those bangs are in his eyes again!

tree of life

tree of life design for Seed & Sky

I have been spending a lot of my time making new jewelry designs for Seed & Sky. It has been a lot of fun. It is going to be a lot of work to bring them to fruition, but I hope to have them up in the shop soon! Also exciting is the addition of necklaces coming soon as well! :)

Mr. P

Mary & Mr. P

My childhood elementary school custodian passed away in a house fire yesterday in my home town. I feel surprisingly shaken up by it considering how long ago our lives crossed paths, and how often I thought of him (almost never).
I grew up in a very small town of under 2,000 people. Our school, grades 1-8, had 400 students. Mr. P was the custodian for decades. He was always there, sweeping the floor with one of those wide brooms, or up on a ladder fixing a bulb. He was humble, extraordinarily kind, a jokester, and was in so many ways a guardian angel of my existence inside that building. I have a lot of bad memories about school from those years, but when I think about Mr. P I have nothing but a warm heart.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/01/20/beloved-couple-dies-in-andover-nh-house-fire/

process

Section of a 30" x 40"  (76 x 101cm) painting that is slowly creeping along. 

Thank you on the well wishes. They make me feel a little more sane. 

Rainy days, with a sick person taking up one of the two rooms in our house, and two whiny, conjunctivitis-infected children with colds in the other... well... there were times when I felt very crazy indeed.

There was a moment when our whole family was downstairs today, all in one boogery, coughing, cuddle (or sort-of cuddle: there was a lot of wiggling and fighting about lap territory mixed in) ~ and Alex and I looked at each other and giggled about how pathetic all of us looked.  

And that is when you know you are on the upswing. 

First thing this morning before the sun came up.

Awake and eating a Popsicle: 9:30pm. 

Rough day for the boys in our household. 

Alex has a horrible bout of the flu (which doesn't feel fair since he just had the stomach bug). 

Seo has pink eye and two very painful molars breaking through. 

Hopefully all will be feeling better tomorrow. 

xxx

barred owl art

Barred Owl art design for Seed & Sky