I’ve been thinking of doing a 52 in 52 challenge … project. I turn 52 this year. There are 52 weeks in a year. Prophetic. One piece of art each week for a year. Sounds like a plan Stan!

I want to take a photo representational …or not!… for the week and incorporate it into some mixed media work. I’m thinking 6×6″ will be a perfect size. Small enough to be able to finish without too much difficulty but large enough to have space to do something. I envision all 52 hung together representing a year in the life.

And so. I continue to experiment with my camera. And photoshop.

stop.

start.

stop.

start.

stop.

… where I am.

This …

… reminds me of this …

Some of my best ideas come from my morning walks. This morning was no exception. I was contemplating this space. It seems to be a preoccupation these days. Life seems to be quite unfocussed right now. Imagery swirling in front of my face. Inspiration elusive …  or should I say CONCRETE inspiration, the stuff that moves me to make, create, get my hands dirty … ethereal inspiration? Well. If you spend anytime at all out here in the ethernet you know it is pregnant with things to see. Redolent. I love that word.

For the past two years, well three if you consider the training year, I’ve been in this giant art slump. I’ve created piecemeal. Some things I’ve liked. Other things. Not so much. Shine for example. Loved the collaboration. Even liked some of the individual pieces.

But overall, pretty slim pickings. Which got me thinking. How much of what we think of as “art” is actually a smidgen of what really is art? I know. That’s confusing. But think of a tree. What we see is such a small part of what actually IS “tree”. I seem to recall reading that for every inch of visible growth there is almost double in hidden roots and feeders. Underground. Unseen. But still very much a part of the overall tree.

For me. Art is like that. The end result …the visible… truly is such a small part of the overall piece. So much mulling and pondering and ingesting of visuals goes into the spark that becomes the finished product. And what about all the tangents that we go down in pursuit of that piece of art? The paths visualized but not taken. Or maybe the paths ARE taken, pursued at length only to be discarded because something went askew or didn’t fit or wasn’t where we really wanted to end up. It would be a wonderful journey to see each and every idea, path, tangent taken with every finished work, wouldn’t it?

So. Yes. Maybe I haven’t had as much art to show here. Of late. But the ideas, the paths, the tangents are no less tangled and exciting and prolific. I just don’t have a finished product to show for it.

Yet.

Judging by the number of assemblage-type images popping up on my Inspiration Art board I think I’m gearing myself up to get back into the studio.

What do you think?

The way things happen is often peculiar … following a far more circuitous route than we could ever imagine.

Case in point.

Do you have “Things To Do” that remain in the back recesses of your mind? You know you need …or in my case… want to get to them but they just aren’t that necessary or up-to-the-minute to take over the frontal lobe. I’ve been wanting to download all the images I had stored on Flickr since, well, forever seeing as I already pay for THIS space, I may as well put it to good use. Yes? Only. I stopped my Pro account a year or so ago. Which means only 200 images are actually accessible to me anymore. Though they “kindly” maintain links to all the other stuff on their servers. I figured I’d just upgrade to a Pro account and, at my leisure, download my images here then let my Flickr account lapse once more.

During a recent rainy afternoon I decided “Today was the day” and started the upgrade process. Flickr aka The Evil Yahoo wouldn’t let me. It kept throwing up error messages between the Paypal step and the upgrade step. And it genuinely pissed me off.

I tried to find answers on Yahoo.

Lord! Save yourself some hair and just Run! if you have to deal with Yahoo. I think maybe they employ my mother and her friends (sorry Mom!) as their UI designers. Seriously. Just. Run!  Hoping Flickr might have the answer, given I’m trying to upgrade my FLICKR account, I tried to find answers on their site. And only after much searching did I find a link to register my complaint. Which I did … “Hey guys! Trying to give you MONEY here. But you don’t seem to want to take it. What gives?” … and it took them close to …wait for it… TWENTY FOUR HOURS to get back to me. WTF?!? That’s close to a MONTH in RL time.

To make matters worse, the email they sent back was one of those “OMG we have a duffus at the end of the ether. Quick! Quick! Ask them if their computer’s plugged in!” kind of form emails. Uhm. No! I am NOT a duffus. I am TRYING to PAY YOU. Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. You should be apologizing. Profusely. Not to mention offering something FREE in return for my aggravation. Oh. Don’t. Get. Me. Started. The internet has become as ineffective as trying to find staff to help you at Walmart. Oy!

So. I did what any good pissed off internet savvy user would do … I found a 3rd party app that could download my Flickr photos to my desktop. Then I deleted said photos and downloaded the next 200. Rinse. Repeat. Until my photos were all safely on MY computer. And away from the irritation that is Flickr.

Ahem. Jen? What does all this have to do with the title of your post? Where the hell’s the nostalgia?!?

Exactly. So. Because I’ve used Flickr to post images HERE, I’ve been slowly fixing all those freakin’ links/urls. And it’s not the most FUN activity. Except that … I’ve been looking at things I haven’t seen in YEARS. Like wrapped up treasures stuffed in the back of the attic, unveiled. There have been many “Ooohs!” and some “Aaaahs!” and even an “Awwww?!?” or two.

What I know is this.  I used to be prolific.  Just finished Artsomofo posts – 1 through 35 wherein I posted every day with NEW art and the description of how I  made said new art.  Astounding! And I’m just now starting all the Art Challenges. Some great ideas and some GREAT participation.

And the comments?!? Man. I had people. As in followers. LOYAL followers! I’d forgotten. Somehow. Anyway, the whole Flickr debacle has allowed me to look back …not to mention wonder what the heck I actually DO with my time now… and revel in images of artworks from the past. Nostalgia. At. It’s. Best!

Maybe because I’ve been contemplating style.

Maybe because I’ve overloaded my visual senses with so much eye candy.

Maybe with the turn of season I’ve become nostalgic.

Whatever the reason. However the brain works. As I was sitting this morning, coffee in hand, waiting for my email to load, a name flashed across my brain, “Carl Beam”. WTF? I haven’t thought about that name in years. In fact, I had to wait once it had registered in my consciousness to contemplate exactly where I’d heard the name before.

As any good citizen of the 21st century, and because I was already connected anyway, I simply plugged the name into Google. Ah. Yes. Mixed media artist. First Nations artist. Ponder. Ponder. Brain bumble. Brain fart. Ah! YES! as I looked at the images that started to pop up from my search. And it was as if I literally turned back time. My arm hairs rose. My brain jumped on the HighTrain.

 Oh Artists! YOU know what I’m talking about don’t you? You see something that hits a nerve. Maybe musicians hear things? It sends giant wafts of pure inspirational adrenaline coursing into your artistic nerve center. Snippets of colour cross your vision path. Fingers twitch with the sensory textural overload. You envision your creation. The process. The concentration. The satisfaction of creating. The. High. Train!

It was the mid-80s … 1985 or 1986… I had secured a day to myself to drive to The McMichael Collection in Kleinburg, ON. An entire day for myself, to wander the gallery unencumbered by my littles. Unbeknownst to me, one of the exhibits was “Carl Beam: Altered Egos [Multimedia Works]“. And I remember how I felt when I first saw his works. I was stunned. It hit me on such a gut level. Here I was just starting out in the world of watercolours and what was this?!? Dripping paint. Stencils. Photographs. Pieces of paper and feathers and other…stuff! Graffiti-esque in some ways. They were SO personal. Handwritten portions. Charcoal/graphite sketches. And …angry. So very angry. The passion, the emotion was palpable. His work left me breathless. I had never seen anything like it. And I wanted to create like that!

Fast forward 25 years and I’d all but forgotten about that visit. But it makes me wonder whether deep down in my subconscious Carl Beam’s influence remained …embers burning… after all this time, guiding my hand toward the time when I was ready to create with that same passion, with that same emotion …and freedom… that affected me in such a visceral way oh! so long ago!

Is it October already?!? How did that happen? Oh. Right. That inordinate amount of swirling life busy-ness  happened. And it swept September right along with it.

I like October.

For us Canadians it starts with Thanksgiving and ends, not just with Halloween but, in my neck of the woods, deer hunting season. And that like as not heralds the grey, bone-chilling rains of November. Ugh. I don’t like November.

But I digress.

I’ve been thinking about style. Not fashion, though I’m becoming more interested in that as well as I drift through the flotsam and jetsam of the visual plethora of pinterest and tumblr. But actually about my style. My art style to be more exact. One of the most interesting things to me about both the above mentioned sites is the ability to have my own vision encapsulated on one (or more in pinterest’s case) page. It seems I’m in love with white. Which I find more than a little surprising given that much …no… probably MOST of my artwork is in the earth-tones. Downright dark. Not. White.

What’s up with that?

I pondered my own favourite works and it stunned me to realize that my Absolute Faves (yes! with capitals!) all feature white prominently. Oh. What’s that you say? You want to SEE my A.F.s? Okay. In the spirit of pinterest and tumblr here they are … all on one page!

Okay. So it seems red squeaks in there too!
And maybe not white white but whiter than say this:

Anyway. I’m wondering why my work has gotten darker and darker over the years even though it seems I am drawn to light and air and brightness …white.

Do you find that where you are and where you want to be are at odds??

Forgive me father, it has been years since I made my last list.

As I opened my moleskin earlier this summer, I realized that fact …years. I’m not sure why exactly. I can surmise. Maybe due to too many lists as the end of The Web Biz came to a close. And I needed to rebel. Or something.

Regardless. At some point I decided to make  My Giant To-Do List. It encompassed personal items such as “go through clothing” to gardening “move plants along pathway” to home stuff “change up artwork” and kitchen wants “supplies for jam/chutney making”. All with a neat little box at the front that I can check off when done. And no timeline.

That last one is key, I think, to a really good list.

As soon as you add a due date? It becomes less a list of “things I want to do” and more of a “things I SHOULD do” list. And you all know ‘shoulds’ are bad news right?

And The Giant To-Do List is going swimmingly. Thanks for asking.
But today, I created a whole new list. (I know! Two!!) Partly Pinterest and Tumblr’s fault. So many cool things to see. And do. SO little time. That I created a new board on Pinterest …”To Make”. And I transcribed them into the previously mentioned moleskin. So I don’t have to turn on my computer every time I need some inspiration. Like these fingerless mitts.  Something about the edge roll and their length that made me do a double take. I need to get double-ended needles for these. And …oh yah… not to mention… some wool.

Or how about these cake stands? Again. I’ve seen them before but yesterday I spent most of my day cleaning out (and purging) cupboards in our kitchen and man! I have a lot of dishes I never use. NICE dishes. And as I was sorting out my cookie cutter collection Christmas cookies were on my mind. Today? I’m thinking wouldn’t a stack of shortbreads on one of  these cake stands make a totally awesome Christmas gift?

And then a long ago bookarts friend, Jen Minnis, started pinning handmade book photo after handmade book photo. And that triggered the old nostalgia button. Many of you might not know that I got back into tactile art (vs digital) via bookmaking and then altered books. Which led to mixed media and eventually found object assemblage. I love handmade books. In fact, I still have a book of Jen’s on my shelf (you can actually see a similar one pictured here). I refuse to sully it with my meanderings. Much to her chagrin I might add.

So what does this all mean? I’m over my aversion to lists.

Long Live The List!

… or maybe a better title would be “Falling Down the Rabbit Hole”.
Hook. Line. Sinker.

What am I talking about, you ask?

Ah. The lure of never-ending eye candy. That would be Tumblr. And Pinterest.

Need a tasty sample?

Or maybe this?

I ..erm.. tumbled onto tumblr almost a year ago. But didn’t really start using it daily until a month or so ago. Smitten! For me, it’s a giant inspiration board. I browse through some amazing imagery, selecting the things that make my heart pop, my skin tingle, saving them for my own viewing later. And unlike many sites, I actually DO go back and look. Again. And again.

Now Pinterest is new to me, introduced (read: enabled!) by artist friend Tara Finlay. Initially I wasn’t that enamoured but then I started gathering imagery for our barn renos. See, my son and his fiance have decided to get married at Meadowood (aka our farm) and Tom decided that it just might be time to “do the barn”. We have been talking about doing the barn for years. Well, ever since we stopped having barn animals at any rate. Years. Still. Our barn is swoony. And it’s all kinds of exciting to be renovating it. Totally deserves it. Swoony I tell ya. Don’t believe me?

Can’t you just picture this as the backdrop for a wedding? Seems many other folks do too. As I found out on Pinterest! Tons and tons and TONS of inspirational barn renos, barn weddings. Yowza! And the best part? I just forward the link to my DIL and she can yeah! or nay! any ideas.

I find I’m switching between the two … quite often. Some photos I just want to see on their own. In all their unique glory. And others? I like the idea of having them all in one place. (like the barn ideas) I’ve seen some folks categorize their pinterest boards into colours. How cool is that?!?

So. Much. Eye. Candy.

Bridgette attended the opening of Come Together where our 3 book collaboration was really well received. What an exciting denouement for a lovely laid-back project! She sent some lovely photos too!  View her entire Flickr set here.