This is my Tuition, What is Yours? Haiku and A Toast to Artists!

Tuition

Unschooled fugitive

journeys in staggers and thrusts

makes radical lien.

I had a Zen type of moment today.  The decluttering and all the other normal but stressed out things made me search for a little space where I could clear the mind of all distractions. Deciding to work out a haiku was more time consuming than I remembered, but I did it. Everything comes with a price, cliche, but true.  This is my tuition.  A little blast from the past, to finally put things back there and lock them away.

I don't often take photos of my desk as there are gifts being made or supplies still in packages.  There is just a small space to actually work on and leave pieces to dry, sometimes for days in a row.  Maybe because I see it and it is calling out to me, "Get in here and get to work!" that I try to think of all the other things that need doing.  I want being at the desk to be a refuge not a burden.  

Because I had only one practical art class in college, a required course, I took it during the summer semester so that I could get the misery out of the way as fast as possible.  To my unending surprise, the instructor, once he got past the fact that I couldn't draw realistically, was very encouraging.  He helped everyone in the class, even me, ahhh the karma of patience. 

One day he said he wanted to talk to me, and to go for a walk down the hall.  Uh oh.  It turned out that he wanted me to sell a pattern to one of his contacts in the city.  Just getting into the display case with other patterns was a milestone, but to think it could be valuable, was he kidding?  I didn't believe him.  He wasn't kidding and was not used to people like me who did not believe in the value of their work.  I would have to work this out, my soul did not appreciate what he had said.  

In class, I hid behind Abstracts which were easier and more on the surface of my skill level.  You didn't have to explain them fully. (Che cosa significa? What does it mean?)  Plus, there was a dear older (senior) Italian man, a student, who loved my abstracts, so that helped a lot.  ♥♥♥  I haven't thought about him for years, and there he is now front and center in my mind, as plain as day. He's probably up in Heaven right now, painting in Oils. 

My high school art teacher despaired as she was of the mindset that if you can't draw, and draw it to look just like a photograph- a realistic depiction, then you can't make art.  She wasn't the only teacher who pounded this message, beginning in First Grade.  That's why I said "misery" to speed through the summer session. 

So, you see, if someone mentioned art, I would be interested, but aloof.  One of my good friends got a Masters in Art from a well known art college.  All okay for her, she could draw realistically, but during all of the time we spent together, she never expressed that art comes in other forms.  

Let me tell you this little story:  My friend wanted to make a gift for me of two framed notecards.  She showed me a selection of pretty, store bought, embossed cards.  I chose the yellow and the gray cards.  The colors appealed to me and I thought they looked well together. She delayed, hemmed, and hawed telling me it was a big mistake, a little, okay, a lot of ridicule thrown in just to establish that she was the art major, the one who knew better.  

I could not be swayed from my color choice.  Yes, she would have felt better if I acceded to her M.A., but then I was left feeling, well, you can imagine.  Funny thing is, a short time after she finished the frame, she decided to include the piece in her portfolio for a possible gallery showing.  She presented her portfolio and the gallery owner wanted my selection of the yellow and gray cards.  Bites.  She asked me to lend her the framed piece which was then hanging on my wall, so I handed it over.  From that one piece my friend received orders for framed cards.  I would never gloat.  

I carried the yellow and gray cards for many years from apartment to condo to several houses to storage.  Last week I finally dismantled it.  It was a reminder to me that sometimes those with more schooling, more experience, etc. don't always know more than the person who is leaning from the heart.  To take a chance, especially when you haven't learned all the conventional ways, the conformist ways loaded with biases, can sometimes be the best way, your peace of mind way.   But you already know that.  I've kept the cards with faded edges to maybe reuse in some new piece of mine.  The frame is in the Future Yard Sale Pile.  

I'm still learning and experimenting.  Blogging has brought more people and their art to me than all the museums and galleries in total that I have ever visited.  It helps to see their dreams and passions for their chosen media  splashed out across the blogosphere.  Bright, gloomy, day glo, sepia, and everything else, whatever they make is another day in paradise, well, sort of.  Here's to all the artists and the artists at heart! 

This is my tuition.  What's yours?  

(Go see some of my Treasuries on Etsy here. There is even a Yellow and Gray one.)   
Do you update your Treasuries?  

Adventures in Sewing Rosary Case for a Boy

Why can't you find just the thing you are looking for, when you need it?  Oh, maybe you do, but I looked all over Etsy, Storenvy, some other online sites, my local shops including the religious goods store and could not find a Rosary case/pouch/box/bag/...   I thought to use a coin purse, but they were too feminine, cutesey, girly and this is needed for a boy.  Finally I said to myself, just make it.

Now, I don't sew.  It's not that I don't want to sew, it's just that I have a hate-hate relationship with sewing machines.  It goes way back to Home Ec in 8th grade and the monster, I mean teacher that period.  "If ever a witch is one because, because, because...!  Because of the hateful things she does..."  I suppose I should say that I forgive her, even though she hasn't apologized.

Anyway, I bought some wool blend felt and steeled myself for the adventure/nightmare that lay before me.
I wanted to use red felt, it had a nice black undertone, but was persuaded to buy brown.  The brown is nice, but the red would have been easier to see.

This was pre-eye surgery, had to use the Mag Eyes, every lamp and light in the room, raise the blinds and roll up my sleeves.  I would not be defeated by a machine.  The cd player was cranking out  jazz to keep my spirit up.  Bobbin full-Check!  Pedal working-Check!  and so on... Breathe, one, two, three...I can do this!  Can I?

First I practiced on some scrap fabric. Practiced and tried making every adjustment known to womankind.  Tension, threading, direction of thread, etc...  All I got was the dreaded loopies on the back of the fabric.

Cut to the chase (don't you hate that expression?)  Five hours later, told you I wouldn't give up- I had the Mag Eyes on, holding the flashlight, leaning a mirror, using a hand held magnifying glass, wearing my reading glasses, too, and for the umpteenth time I had rethreaded the machine and IT FINALLY STOPPED GIVING ME THE LOOPIES!  It turned out that the thread was not between a tension wire/spring as it should have been.   If I had to rethread the needle one more time....  

So, after getting the machine working properly and hoping the bobbin would make it through to the finish I made a nice little rosary case with a lining.  The problem was that I should have not tried to make it and then turn it right side out, I discovered that the felt was too thick to maneuver. I should have just sewn the fabric on with the right side showing and then folded the front closed and sewed the side seams.  Live, Fail, Learn.  I'm considering turning it into a Pin Cushion.  Not a Voodoo Pin Cushion, remember, I forgave her.



The rosary case you see is the third try.  The second one was a bit smaller than I wanted. So, by the third time, I said, it's good enough.  I hand sewed on the four corner buttons, they are just decorative and put four of a different color on the back, too.  I used regular thread to sew them on, though using embroidery thread or yarn would have made them stand out a bit more.


Instead of a semi-fancy closure, I just cut a slit in the felt large enough to go over the center button.  I pinned a holy medal on to the case, but decided against it in the end. This one is sans lining.

I bought the rosary chaplet from Susan Lloyd on Etsy.  It's a beautiful piece in gemstones.  The praying hand statue was in perfect condition, I found it in a thrift store.  Statues are a little unsettling/creepy to me, but for some reason, these hands were peaceful.  I can't explain it.

What household tool or machine do you have a hate/hate relationship with?  I never wanted to use an electric carving knife, but once I tried it, I wield it like nobody's business.  En garde!  ♥

Dessert Cart Sugar and Brooches as Art

I have a small collection of brooches, plus a few long gone, but the images of them remain in my mind.  I do have one or two on my blazers and jackets.  Winter coats always have a holiday pin, usually a sprig of holly.   Holly symbolizes remembrance and especially with holidays calling out for family time, it's just a way of keeping them close.

If I wasn't sure to get glue and paint on myself, I might get dressed up just enough to wear my brooches at home. Wouldn't that be a sight?  Paint drips and bits of papers glued to my arms and then a brooch, you know, I just might try it!

Brooches are not for old ladies, just for ladies who aren't working with sticky fingers, unless they're sticky from the dessert cart at teatime.  Creampuffs!  Eclairs!  Sugar high... Neapolitans are a bit awkward to handle.

I think brooches are versatile jewelery pieces and little works of art.  Put them on a pillow, in a picture frame, as a holder on curtains, on a belt, handbag, or hat, to secure a scarf, or put a chain/cord/ribbon through the catch to wear as a pendant, etc.

Do you have any brooches or do you never think of them as contemporary?  What's your favorite dessert?

Under All the Snow

There is still green grass under all of the snow.  How do I know?  Because yesterday we had a brief glimpse of the ground, and although the grass is mostly brown, I know that it will become green again in the spring.  Winter came early and often for us here.

We haven't had a mild day for at least two months.  The nights are very cold and the daytime temps haven't gotten above 22F for weeks on end. 

I made this Etsy Treasury with the theme of, "Green."  Not for ecology, conservation, etc.  but green for Spring and fresh flowers and feeling warmer than it is here at the moment.