Past work- Gourds.

This is a small selection of the gourds that I created last year, there are two or three in the mix that I did this year, but mostly all of these are samples of my work from 2007. If you click the mosaic you can see the pieces in a much larger view.




These are all the gourds that I had in the gallery, a professional photographer took some great photos of the pieces for me. Most of the pieces for the gallery were natural woven bowls, created with materials native to Florida. For Christmas I made a few ornaments to sell there as well, you can see one little Santa ornament found his way into the first group photo there at the bottom.





This grouping is of the gourds that I took pictures of myself, I'm not that great at it ^_^ They are the more experimental pieces as well; mixed-media pieces & rims, painted designs, dreamcatchers and such. Pieces like these, and the ones in the gallery, all get taken to craft shows with me.



And lastly here is a tiny showing of all the Christmas pieces I end up making for the craft show season. You can see little snippets of the craft booth in there as well. A lot of the pieces light up with Christmas lights, or open, or hold cards. I design all my own pieces, and never repeat a design. This mosaic doesn't show the 200+ ornaments that I will paint for the show. I get very very tired of painting Santa.

This year I have a lot of highly sculpted pieces with the gourd being used as armature, I can't wait to get pictures of those!

Gourd & Paper clay mermaids, faeries, a mushroom, and a bird in a party hat.

Group shot!

I had made a lot of little mermaids and a chubby gourd bird and a gourd fairy for Ms V's Mad Tea Party... but then I killed my camera, Boo! So, with the little sister's help, I got to take a lot of lovely photos of those pieces outside. They are all gourd with polymer clay / papermache & clay sculpting, and I painted everything with acrylics and mica powders.




Chubby bird in a party hat.
(Funny, he's pink, but definately a boy in my brain.)
Gourd with paperclay beak, paper party hat, and feather tail.








This mermaid has a polymer clay face, with paper mache/paper clay hair and arms, and a paper mache fin. She's sculpted on a Tenessee spinner gourd and a banana gourd.





Gourd faerie!
Tennessee spinner and banana gourds, with paper clay... and silk flowers/ribbon/and some wire & tulle wings.








This is my gypsy queen mermaid. I used the same Tennessee spinner/banana gourd combo with paperclay and paper mache. But then I made a headdress/crown out of ribbon, feathers, beads and rhinestones and I dressed her in some fabric bits. She has multicolored yarn for hair that I styled.
Lots of glue-gun action for this.






Two views of my gourd mushroom. I made it from a banana gourd (notice a trend? ^_^) and a scrap gourd piece. It was painted with a very fun silk-dye technique. It looks perfect outside.






I think this mermaid is my favorite, or at least today she is. Same construction method as before, paperclay & mache over gourds, but I sculpted a short hair-style for her, and made a little blue eyelash yarn boa.

All my mermaids are hand-painted, I used a lot of mica powders and metallic paints for the tails, they are super gorgeous and sparkley.





I almost forgot Marilyn, sans wings, I glued them on later.

(I decided on a different pair 3 times.)

Paper mache and paper clay. No gourds! Amazing ^_^

My first Art Doll! (with wired arms, wheee!)

I just wired the arms of this sweet little art doll I made, so now they are poseable. I'm in love! I made her out of gourds, paper mache, and paper clay... and painted her features. I also hand made her outfit, no sewing because I don't have a machine, but it is glued together with tacky glue and golden heavy gel.. I constructed it like I would if I were to sew it, and glued the seams, thankfully I was using clear tacky glue, otherwise I don't know how long that would have taken! All the muslin is hand-dyed/painted/distressed and I never throw away ribbon/yarn/fabric scraps so I had a lot of miscellaneous fabrics and ribbons and buttons that I added, on her back there is a little flower I made out of fabric scraps and beads. I really like the 'shabby chic' look she has. Her hair is lamb's wool that curls up wonderfully.... but then I thought she needed something, so I added a hat, made out of the same fabric and ribbons scraps as her dress. That part was really exciting, because I've never made anything like a hat ever... its not as easy as I originally thought. I can't wait to make more pieces like this! I want to make a Santa with the frayed-edge-pieced-together look that I did here.

(The blue in the bottom photo is tape, because I couldn't decide on the exact placement of her arms when I had the camera.)

Time passes in a blur

School starts again soon, which means my younger sisters will all be going back. The oldest of my younger sisters will be a senior in high school this year, wow. Wow. I remember when I was a senior in highschool. Time flies, yes?
Roo, the youngest, was over for a week or so, there were so many things we were supposed to do... mostly we just read and drew/painted/cooked. Roo lives chicken noodle soup, so we made chicken noodle soup three times that week. We also made char siu bao, eclairs, cream puffs, brownies, egg rolls, and more things than I can think of right now.


The most fun was sitting around and reading and doing nothing together... but we also spent a lot of time researching images to paint on her school shoes. She wanted characters and worlds from Kingdom Hearts... which happen to be rather difficult to paint on the 2 inches of space I had on her shoes. I managed, she loved them.


Caitie came over with her camera and helped me take pictures of all my 3-d pieces.... but I didn't know that after 200 flickr starts deleting your oldest picture to make room for the new ones.
I should have known, they tell you, but I didn't process that info. So a lot of the professional pictures I had taken of the gourds, and my older paintings, are MIA. I hope I have the images somewhere on this computer.



I have a lot newer ones to show, which makes me happy, I keep making 3-d things, that I can't scan, and then I want to share. I just make a bunch of polymer clay jewelry for my sisters. There are a lot of pieces - necklaces and earrings, with little cute ghosts and ice creams, lollipops, strawberries, cherries, an octopus for Roo, fortune cookies, chocolates, a monkey for Caitie, a cupcake, a Jack Skellington for Kerri, well I lost track. I made a lot, they are seriously addictive... They are so tiny, and so colorful, and so much fun! I could sit around making little clay jewelry pieces forever. ( I think the octopus is my favorite, he came out so cute. Or maybe the ghosts...) Also, it doesn't take a lot of clay, or a long baking time to make them... so instant gratification! I haven't used polymer clay in a long long long time (I would rather use paperclay) so I might try to make more sophisticated jewelry pieces.

I made shoes for Kerri, with two of her favorite characters from Avatar on them.


And I have more jewelry to make, so I'm off!

on slowing down

Watercolor 1
acrylics and watercolors on paper
This painting is how late summer feels to me - like being woken out of a deep sleep, where you are still partially dreaming and slowly emerging into yourself, fully awake.


I will sit down to paint with something completely different in mind, and somehow she finds her way into my next painting. I draw, and paint, this girl and others like her often. There is something about the face, the eyes, the questioning look, the floating hair... the surreal space created in the work.... I don't know.
Some images call to me, wake me from sleep, and compel me to draw, to paint, to sculpt... to create. But mostly, it is a slow process courting these images in my mind, and translating them onto canvas. I know they are there, but they want to emerge into this world slowly and softly, colors, images words and feelings floating in and out of my mind, like dreams, the work reinventing itself constantly.

You can choose to ignore this part, and force the work to be something you want it to be, to complete it faster, to push it into a smaller existence because of frustration and impatience.

Often I do.

Every brush stroke is a decision, every blot of color, ever nuance and shift of the body while painting, every thought, every breath, every blink changes the flow with which a painting is created. It is both easy and difficult, and very Zen, painting. It is seductive and sweet and cruel, and everything, and nothing, that I have ever imagined. There are moments when everything is perfect... and then when I feel like nothing will ever work again.
Every single day.

I paint anyway.

It feels that in these moments I am growing, expanding, becoming something more, or waking and being someone new. One idea carries me to the next, one image to the next, one thought to the next... but in my impatience I miss the subtleties... I am too busy with trying to force what I want, what I think is best... As if painting were about my ego.

I repeat myself, little blog, often.
I have to talk myself through things like this... try and make them make sense. I am starting to recognize everything I do more, and slow myself down. A lot of painting is about the mindset I am in.
Everything feels larger and difficult to grasp, and still, I paint anyway.