A photo from a post that I’ve since taken private. I still own this 1997 One Word Art painting (acrylic and glitter on 4×6-inch canvas) called “Seek.” The backdrop is an old necktie (folded) of Tom’s that makes me think of salmon swimming upstream.
Tag: art
Placeholder on Hump Day
Wednesday got away from me–a whole lot going on at Houndstooth Hall at the moment. I read a stunning poem by Lynne Shapiro in Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, and it inspired me to begin a character poem, but I’ll need to finish the poem later and will return to this post to add it when it’s ready. (ETA: Done! See bottom of this post.)
In the meantime, this is Shapiro’s poem.
Your Dead Mother
Dangles from the sky
Like a slim moon
Strung on a string
Silvery blue dress
Pleated like a curtain
Shimmers in your
Room at night
As cocktail gloves
And long fingers
Reach down to caress
Your sleepy head
Composing my poem also made me think of this sculpture that was our late friend Steve’s, which always has a place in our home.
ETA:
Below is the poem I wrote using the word list and title from Write The Poem. It’s a scene that’s maybe two novels away in the Neverending Saga, though it’s been planned a long time. It’s as if whoever put this list of words together could see into the future. My poem is the reason I thought of Steve’s sculpture.
Nighttime
Darkness holds a secret.
He’s in his fourth decade of keeping it.
Less than two decades since four collaborators
joined him in the shadows.
Sleepless, he keeps vigil over her in the dim room.
He wants to whisper,
“She is the one who cradles you in the moon’s crescent.
Even when the sky is moonless, she is there.”
His silence ensures she will not become wakeful.
The black secret will not touch her.
Saturday’s Crafty Wrap-up
Because of Photo Friday, I didn’t post anything about crafting yesterday, but I did work on something. As I’ve mentioned, the large sketch book where I collect my completed coloring pages will be full soon, even though when I got to the back of the book, I began putting colored pages on the backs of used pages. I wondered if I had another sketchbook as large as that one, and I do, but the front cover isn’t made of reinforced paper or cardboard, so I don’t know if it will hold up to collaging and a lot of use, like the current one.
It’s an old sketch book of our late friend Steve’s. It only has a couple of sketches he started it in, but I’d forgotten I used it back in June of 2012, when I did the 30 Days of Creativity challenge. If you were around then, you might remember that I’d sketch something on a page, then use it for a backdrop with my wee plastic ram being a director of dolls or action figures, etc., doing scenes from different movies. Like, for example, one I did for the movie The Secret Life of Bees. On Friday, after running errands, including having photos printed from those 2012 challenges, I added the photos and explanations to the original sketches. Like this.
After a visit to Texas Art Supply on Thursday, I also started something else that I finished today. I’d found sticker books there with words and phrases that could be turned into poetry (like Magnetic Poetry, but more permanent).
I love these and put together a poem in my Inspire journal (all its pages are related in some way to the Neverending Saga and its characters). I finished that page today. I’m glad I did something creative to end the week, because today (March 8) is Riley’s birthday. One of the ways to resist, overcome, and stay steady when the world is full of chaos, confusion, conflict, and catastrophe, is a far more important “C” word: CREATE. I know Riley would be the first to agree with this. His life was often a series of struggles, and that’s when he sat at the piano or picked up a guitar and turned it all into music and lyrics. And even if the world, or at least some part of the world, will never acknowledge this, humanity does need art and find it healing. Sometimes it feels like the real division in the world is between haters and healers. I’ve learned a lot about that in the last couple of months.
One more thing I did today, in recognition of International Women’s Day, is post this composite to Instagram, described as “just a few of the women who nurtured, mentored, and taught me over the years, expanding my heart, mind, and soul. I thank them and all the others whose photos I don’t have.”
National Dress Day!
The other day, Tom walked by the writing sanctuary with a pair of socks in his hand and said, “These have worn places on them. I guess I should just throw them away?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, snatching the socks from him. “These are doll clothes!”
Then today, I heard that March 6 is National Dress Day. After I got home from a doctor’s appointment, I had a few other things to do, and then I picked a model from the doll closet, named her Roberta, and designed and crafted a dress for her from one of those socks.
In honor of the day, and the late Roberta Flack, songbird of the Seventies, here’s Roberta on an outing to a Peter Max exhibit, dressed in bespoke fashion from Becks.
From the National Today site: On National Dress Day March 6, we celebrate the most versatile and fun article of clothing there is — the dress! Fashion designer Ashley Lauren founded the day to help pay homage to dresses and the magical moments that happen when we wear them. “I remember the dresses I wore to my prom, first job interview, first date, competing in a pageant, my first red carpet event, the list goes on,” she says. “This is a fun day to cherish and celebrate those memories.”
Mindful Monday
In a peaceful half hour next to the garden, I watched a Cuban brown anole lizard visit various friends, especially the Buddha statue (and a pink pig).
A couple of new additions to the garden came from yesterday’s crafting afternoon when two rocks were painted.
Love and kisses by Debby and a dog by Tom.
Sunday Sundries
The planets aligned last week (literally!). These are some of the things that happened as a result.
I went on a mending spree.
Repaired the decorative top of this soapstone box I featured last Sunday.
This ornament was already damaged when I bought it last December, but the parts were there and just needed to be glued. However, it was so fragile that even though I was able to attach the broken piece, in doing so, part of the front disintegrated in my hands and wasn’t fixable. Solution: glue a couple of gold, flowery sequins in place on the bottom right. Tom said I made a country music guitar fancy.
The first photo I posted in 2024 (i.e., last year) was of this Christmas ornament, which has always been special to me.
When I removed all the ornaments from the tree a few days after posting that photo, it was the only one I dropped. Not only was it broken in several places, so was my heart. I couldn’t throw it away. I had an idea for it and bought what I needed, but somehow it sat waiting over a year for repair and a new way to shine. Finally, last week, I put it all together.
Repaired with glue as best it could be and hanging in its own shadow box, surrounded by glistening snowflakes. Not lost; only changed; still loved.
For several years, I’ve had fifteen wooden, unpainted cigar boxes that once had a purpose they no longer served. I always wondered if I’d eventually do something crafty with them.
Yep. Paint and an old piece of my jewelry repurposed a wooden cigar box into a fairy box filled with goodies for Debby in a late celebration of her February birthday.
Paint and embellishments (including a star, the one remaining earring of a pair) repurposed a wooden cigar box into a steampunk box filled with goodies for Lindsey in a late celebration of her January birthday.
More craftiness will be shared in the coming days.
Midweek
Another from Aaron’s Garden. When the big potted plants are moved outside from the greenhouse, this very large metal bee will return to the backyard to one of those pots. But for now, it and the painted letters remind me that I’ll need to be busy as a bee to get things accomplished before the weekend. I am on it!
Sunday Sundries
I don’t think I’ve ever featured this book on here before, though I see it’s in a shot of a group of journals and other books I took in June of 2021, so it’s been around a while. The Magic of Mindset is a journal, by Johanna Wright, to be written in, so if I had filled in any of the pages (I haven’t), it’s likely what I wrote would be too private to share.
That’s still true with the page I’m featuring, where under the title “Expect Resistance,” a girl meeting a dragon says, “Oh, hi.” The text on the accompanying page says, “RESISTANCE is A NORMAL PART OF THE PROCESS. LIST all of the REASONS WHY IT FEELS impossible TO LET GO OF YOUR OLD MINDSET AND MOVE OUT OF the stuck PLACE.
Those little items on the plate are like small talismans (crystal ball held in cupped palms; a wee dachshund carved of wood; a soapstone container, lid off, to show a variety of tiny stones; a small river rock in the shape of a heart; a sunflower incense burner holding a stick of sandalwood incense) that are either from or reference people, all a part of my history, who at one time or another were a force that could either subdue my voice or inspire and encourage it.
Relationships are complicated, and more than once, I’ve allowed them to block the flow of my creative energy. This time, I want to face that dragon and make a choice truer to myself.
This week’s theme may be arriving organically on each new day.
Twenty Title Saturday
Last day of this week to directly have books as the theme. I mentioned I was doing a challenge on social media, sharing the covers of twenty books that had impacted me or stayed with me, without adding any explanation and in no particular order. Just covers. Here are the twenty I shared, beginning with Day 1 and ending with Day 20.
Photo Friday, No. 948
Current Photo Friday theme: Tiled.
Had a little fun with this theme by using several of my own tiles (the New Orleans tile was my mother’s), ringed by Sowminoes™ ceramic dominos, along with Scrabble tiles and artist Jeff Fisher’s cover illustration for British writer Louis de Bernières’ 1994 novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. (My theme this week has been books.) Some sources say the cover was inspired by the art of Matisse; another speaks of how the figures are like those on Mediterranean pottery. I read the book several years ago (I think it’s excellent, by the way), and remembered as soon as I saw the Photo Friday theme how the illustration always made me think of old tiles, as well as the way the cover figures are like “keys” to people and things in the novel.
(P.S. You’ve now seen your Daily Cow, plus a bonus cow!)