there was lots of food and everybody behaved themselves....whew!!!

and here is the birthday girl 86 years old!! you can see she never stops trying to enlighten the crowds

Fandamnly

My in-laws are coming over today to celebrate the birthday of the family matriarch, my MIL, who is 86 today. I have volunteered to be the host for the party and that is OK except we have the potential for some major drama. The 3rd child in the family is a man of 52 years who has not worked out some issues that he should have way back in his teen years and I was hoping he would not come....well he is...and I will have to ask him to leave if he is disrespectful or rude ....and he has never not been both...so I am not looking forward to the afternoon....why can't we just????you get the picture....my husband is out of town and he is very grateful for his job!!! I'll have to make him pay later....

No art this week cause I worked all 5 days making up for the week before and on the days I work I am sucked dry...just a husk of a girl...I have tried to pull back from pouring so much of myself into my job and the folks I am working with but it seems that is not possible...I like to give them the best of me and that leaves the ability to create in the dust...maybe tomorrow I can do a bit but then I have a gyn appt ...not looking forward to this but I am in need of some hormone adjustment and I am hoping to get some help with that....so I'l let you all know if I am still upright tonight...and maybe some pictures....

all better

I collected the renewal form from my mail and checked the box I had overlooked ...the question was " do you have any criminal charges pending against you ? " yes..or no....they had highlighted this question in case I couldn't see it AGAIN!! So...I checked the no box...who would check the yes box??? Wouldn't you check in case the charges are wrong or something??? Then I got up early and drove through traffic into Portland and turned in the form and now I am legal ...YEA!! What alot of stress this has been...in 2 years when it is time to renew I intend to be the first person to return the renewal form...I expect all you dear kind friends to hold me to that!!!

Confessions of a lowly earthworm ...this is not really art related...well maybe a little

I know earthworms a useful creatures and that is the only thing keeping my head up tonight. I got a letter on Monday telling me that the Oregon Dental Board ( hencforth known as ODB ) had not recieved my renewal application. So I called them right away ...so they said a) they still didn't have said app and b) " you are aware that it it illegal to parctice without a current lisence". I called my office and told them I couldn't work tuesday but that I hoped th ODB would get the app and I could work wednesday. Called ODB tuesday afternoon...nope still not there....I put it in the mail 7 days ago...where could it be....called the office can't work wednesday....occurred to me late tuesday night I could check the web site and see if I'm current yet...yea! it seemed to me I was ...the page said I was last updated 10/03/2005 called the office on wednesday told them it's OK I am legal again. Went to work today got a call at the office from an investigator for the ODB he says to me " you know it is illegal to practice with out a current lisence " I am completely confused...tell him I had checked the web page and it looked to me like it renewed on the 3rd...he says he does not show this in his paperwork...he says they did recieve the app on the 4th but I had failed to completely fill out the app...( I forgot to put a check mark in the box that said if I was currectly being investigated for a criminal act ...or not ) and they sent it back to me ....so my boss is very unhappy with me....I am unhappy with me this is a list of my crimes

1) procrastination in returning said app leaving only 4 days till it expired
2) failed to read and check ALL the boxes
3) can't read a web page cause the " update" date has nothing to do with current lisence just if ODB has interacted with ones file...you have to click on your name and a new page comes up that tells about the lisence status....

so I came home to the mail ...that had the offending app which I will complete...and take personlly to the ODB offices tomorrow in portland ...hopefully I will be legal...

so now I need a quilt to show how low??? Lower the earthworms....BTW they cashed my check for 140.00 on the 29th so ???

Weekend Work

At the last minute, before we left for San Diego, I threw together some small bits of collaged elements. These are a mixed bag of fibers both paper and textile. Then I put a few embellishments into a ziplock and worked on these while we sat and sat and sat...A few people asked what I was doing but most payed no attention. If I can get these photographed I think I might have time to get them to the fine focus entry ...just in the nick.....I have had some unexpected days off this week due to my procrastination at sending in my license renewal forms ...and some other office worker type stuff that we won't talk about...some of the people I love best are State workers so I know they are not all....well ...what ever...I got some art done...also looked at the blogs and saw that there is a new SSL challenge that I caught up with today...well back to work tomorrow....good night

" dancing with raindrops"

" tears of joy "

My effort for the simple still life challenge

" It was a ...."

We're back

We arrived back home in Oregon late last night. We had a good time with lots of family and it was so good to see Conrad again. I am not the best traveler though, and I am so glad to be back home in my space. At the last minute I started some small pieces that I might be done with soon and I had a great time finding interesting textures to take rubbings of on the depot base. I am sure that those military guys had no idea what to make of this crazy woman going around holding up a piece of fabric to things and rubbing a crayon on it...nobody said anything though. There was an interesting mix of people at the graduation. Some boys had huge families wearing matching t-shirts and some boys had no families at all. Conrad gets to be home for 10 days then back down to camp pendleton for combat traing then to florida for a year for school.

They all had these funny tri level tans from wearing hats ...this is the new marine...the whole process is awesome and I don't mean that to be all good...I see that they are largely confident young men who are rightly proud of having gone through this process ...and I think that we as humans need something like this to kick us into our adulthood....but ...hopefully what comes after this for these young men will not beat them down again....It does gives you goosebumps to HEAR them physically move as one organism.....

We are back from San Diego where we saw our son Conrad graduate from Marine Boot camp....that's him in the middle ...the first glimpse of him for us in 3 months ...he could not look at us ......it was great to see him

We were able to get together with my nephew Ty and his wife Kara ( the couple on the left ) and see the new baby ( my brother Rob is holding her ) and various other nieces and kids ...we met at Dana Point which was not quite half way for them but it took us forever to get there from San Diego cause of the fires and slow traffic...makes me glad I live here...

Here is the Apple hat on the head for which it was intended, MiKayla Rose...she is as beautiful in person as in a picture and a very relaxed baby as you can see.

I'm off to San Diego to see our son graduate from marine boot camp...I'm so glad to soon see him...boy do I hate graduations...I leave you with this whimsy...I'll be back Saturday and tell you all about our trip

an apple hat for baby MiKayla ....I made booties too but the hat is cuter

" the old man and the tree"

statement finished

With thanks to Gabrielle who has faithfully coached me along and Valeri for suggesting the final wording I have an artist statement that is good and says who and what I am.


Creating art illuminates and reveals a narrative story which reflects my voice.

statements

1. The creation of art is intended to illuminate and reveal a narrative story that is a reflection of my voice.

2. My intention is to create art that illuminates and reveals a narrative story that reflects my voice.

3. The art is created to illuminate and reveal a narrative story that reflects my voice.

Which one or none???

avoidance and creativity

Sometimes.....OK lots of times ....I use my creativity to avoid doing things I don't like doing very much...like toilet cleaning and bill paying and things...this weekend I did both of those disgusting things and cleaned the laundry mess out of Conrad's room (who is in boot camp and he promised to do this before he left) and swept floors and cleaned out the freezer and made some phone calls I have been putting off...but one item is left ...I need to change my artist statement so that it doesn't include "I" and "I" am avoiding that...my brain cannot even get around how to say that this is my statement without saying ME ME ME ...hum ...so I have been looking at the wardrobe for the trip to San Diego next week ( for the boot camp graduation ) and it seems lacking...mostly cause I want to make some kind of statement with my clothing like " I raised liberal kids " or something... so I gingerfied a few things including this jacket ...I like these little ladies so much they might become a " series " how do you like that you shoe gals??? ....but first I have to make that not"I" statement ....and maybe a not"I" quilt...but not right now ...I'm avoiding

back of jacket

right front of jacket

5 words that describe why I create

Narrate....Reveal....Illuminate....Reflect...Voice

I have enjoyed thinking about Gabrielle's challenge to the ring to describe why we create. I " heard " her ask me for those 5 words...I wrote down a lot of words on my 50 minute drive to work the other day and I think these are the best. Now I need to write them in a sentence!!!

" I create art to illuminate and reveal a narrative story that is a reflection of my voice. "

I am a Great Aunt...this is MiKayla Rose ....she was born yesterday afternoon and isn't she gorgeous!!!

new work

Hey!! Did you guys see the pieces I posted under the "weekend naration" there are 2 newly finished bits down there!! Just checking....

another finished piece from this weekends " creative inspired by dyeing force " we will have to shorten that to CIBDyF ..this force is palpable...and can induce strong reactions...like going through your pile of started creations and finishing them!!! really..

Weekend Adventures

I had a busy weekend of art and family. I attended a new gallery opening here in Stayton. We seem to recycle these fairly often and I am not sure why we think that an art gallery will work here. We live in a small town with stereotypical small town sensbilities when it comes to art. The same few folks assemble and try and support the effort and it seems to end the same way always....but....we had a nice evening my Mother had her art up and my daughter came and brought her harp and played for a couple of hours....we will see what this new gallery does.

I spent yesterday dyeing and creating as well as enjoying Mariah being home for the day...she played for a wedding at a county park nearby ...it rained like crazy but the park had a covered area...always wise in Oregon.

Then today I drove to Roseburg to collect a cat for my mother who hasn't felt well enough to drive any distance lately...we hope she gets over this latest bought of allergy???asthma?? or???soon....anyway these folks bought a Burmese cat from my Aunt, who lives in Grass Valley CA, about 4 years ago and due to illness can't keep her so my Aunt asked my Mom if she would take this cat, named Sophie, and it finally became my job to spend 6 hours driving to collect the cat. She is a very tiny thing with the biggest yellow eyes you have ever seen. I'll have to get a photo up ..she is pretty but very unhappy at the moment and yowled in her carrier all the way home. She will live at Mom's and will supposedly be an indoor cat ...although that will be an interesting endevor out here in the country where the doors seem to be open often...so see what I did??

This next week will be quiet ....although I must attend the library foundation meeting tomorrow night....makes an extremely long day for me ...but after that I am alone as my husband will be out of town...maybe I'll post more photos of the quilts I finished up this weekend!!!

The last couple of weekends I have been dyeing ...inspired by my fellow bloggers..thankyou girls!! I have lots of nice pieces that have pushed me to finish some quilt art!!!

This new piece has it's roots in the ideal of giving and sharing...I think I will call it " I give you my..."

I started this quilt in 2004 at the oregon dental convention. I find I can listen better if my hands are busy. It needs an oral health related title. Any thoughts?

It is our 25th wedding anniversary today....and this is an art quilt visual look at our marriage thus far...there have been joys and etc...etc

this is where I started you can see where I went!!!

realism.....

back of above piece

crayon background ...then anything from the scrap box

detail from the piece below

the background is a piece of painted fabric with bits of browm paper, tulle, and white plastic garbage bag adhered...them FME'd then the SSL applied ...the SSL is painted on with a limited palate of stencil paints then FME'd to define the individual shapes

sharpie pens then sprayed with alchohol

crayon covered by black acrylic paint then scratched off

crayon

collaged with fabric bits and FME

this is my self portrait that I am sending in to " quilting arts " it is double sided but I forgot to take a picture of the back...you'll have to wait till they publish it on the front AND the back of the magazine...HA HA

post card creation

I did a sreies of post cards for a swap with the theme of " body parts ". In my paying job I do teeth so naturally some of them had to be about that, and also I found some quotes that had to be illustrated too.

post card

postcard

postcard

post card

post card

we drove through some forests that burned last summer...this piece is inspired by that scene as the sun starts it's downward slide...it is called " after the fire "

new piece finished...called " the face of mercy" inspired form a sermon a couple of months ago

the moon 2 nights ago...so cool...

these post cards are for a swap ..the theme was color based....lime green maroon and grey

I finally finished this guy called " swimming upstream " it has all kinds of fun things like foiling and " chicken scratch " embroidery and hand painted fabric and etc....it's good I like the black and white checks for the graphic quality

A frenzy of creativity

Instead of paying bills today I created!!! Finished alot of almost done pieces and made some postcards for a new yahoo group I recently joined. I had more ideas than I could accomplish and bounced around like a ping pong ball from one thing to the next but, am I am happy with what got done. Here are a few of the finished items, I can't show the simple still life things just yet though and one of those pieces I am really pleased with.

refresh

My guests left this morning so creativity can begin again. It was 3 weeks of company cause the first week was all about getting a room ready. I had thought of putting them in the room that my son vacated but he never got around to really cleaning before he left for bootcamp and with the quitars and computers I didn't think it would be a good place for a 2 year old. And the biggest reason is that the day my cousin called to say she and 4 of her 7 children were coming, our groundsource heat pump died. So, the best place for her was the basement which meant a cleanout of the " dumping " room. The heat pump is still not fixed. The problem stems from the incorrect installation 8 years ago when we built this house and we have had ongoing issues that have ended in complete failure of the unit. I find that there is some advantage in soon being 45 with hormones that are unreliable AND a houseful of small children that keep you edgy. The manufacturer of this heatpump unit finally gave me to someone who was helpful and I am hopeful that we might be on the road to mending the whole problem at last. So I have spent a quiet afternoon re-orienting my brain and heart and I will post some photos this evening.

not much creativity going on around here...my cousin is visiting from southern california...with 4 of her 7 children....it was her birthday yesterday and we had a party!! 

dieting and boot camp

My husband and I have been dieting and exercising faithfully since our youngest left for boot camp. It is one way we can sort of empathise with him. As usual David looses much faster that I do, everyone at our party last night noticed that he had lost weight!! We have done our walk almost every day...it is quite a pleasant walk in the summer. Below are some pictures of the scenes as we walk along.

this is in the shady area 

this is about where we usually turn around and come home 

I started on the piece for the " simple Still Life" first I thought I would use this silk for the backround ...but when I got it out it just didn't do it!! so while I was in beaverton on Friday I stopped at a quilt store and stumbled across another piece that I think will work better