Art should be messy

Creation should come from destruction, from randomness, from the unknown.

So many rules to follow in daily life lead to frustration and depression. Stay inside the lines. Stop at the stop signs. Don’t hit others. Keep your room clean. Don’t play with your food.

One of the best possible memories of creating, of art in my early years, comes from being completely and unabashedly messy. It is still enough of an impression upon my subconscious that I’m a messy and disorganized adult now.

Having an ‘art shirt’. The old, over-sized button down shirt of some adult in my life that was used as an art smock, so as not to get my other clothes dirty or stained. Over time this smock shirt would end up with stains and smears, splatters and streaks in all colors of the rainbow.

My grandfather passed away nearly a decade ago now, and I adopted several of his work shirts when my grandmother was cleaning out his closet. Sturdy cloth, strong stitching, meant to handle grease or dirt and still be fine. They have his name stitched above the pocket and a hole in the pocket flap for a pen to reside. They’re slightly baggy on me, which is fine for layering over tank tops or sweaters. But these are my art smocks now. The familiar pride in wearing his shirt feels comforting. The random streaks of paint across the front and arms from where I routinely wipe paintbrushes makes it mine.

If you’re sitting down to paint with your kids, know that they’re going to be kids. They’re going to be messy and draw outside the lines and mix colors just because they can. Let them enjoy that freedom of creating art in their own way. Pull out an old button down shirt that they can use as their own art smock, something that they can get messy in and not worry about the consequences. Get one for yourself. See how good it feels to ignore just a few rules sometimes.

Into the New

Celebrations 'round the world for the end of a year/decade thus welcoming the new, the unknown, the upcoming.

I want to go further in the art than I have done before. Having my first show under my belt has helped give me a few more ideas to work on, things to expand on and things that I can continue to work on for myself.

The zombie sheep caught people off guard, made them pause, made them laugh, and gave me a whole new perspective on these little baaa-uugggers.

My drip/splatter paintings were received in a different way. Several people stopped to comment on them, to admire and question and encourage me to do this or that with them. I am calm and at peace with these. If they sell or if they show, I don't care. I create them because it's what I feel when I'm creating. These paintings are what comes from my visions and ideas. These paintings tell their own stories and invite you to touch them to feel each line as it was laid down across the canvas. These paintings are my art.

May the new experiences in the coming year give me better understanding of the business side of making art work for me, give me more opportunities to create them and promote them, and find the audience they are fit to receive.

As for the zombie sheep, well, they'll be branching out on their own soon enough, given their own space to roam with a website and probably t-shirts.

Writing will keep me busy as I work for one company and develop my fiction writing skills in another. Words will continue to flow, gracefully or not, but they will pour forth and return to me as complete structured sentences. And, you know, better paychecks. Hopefully with a novel under my own moniker...

Here's to the new, here's to the unknown, here's to the possibilities. Let's celebrate and create about it.

Would YOU wear a shirt with this on it?

This is one version of the sneaky Zombie Sheep. They will eat you and convert you to their nefarious Zombie Sheep ways. Suddenly you will find yourself looking over your shoulder and laughing at sheep in a whole new way.

So to further promote awareness - we'd like to share the warning of "Don't Blink!" with as many people as possible. Would YOU wear a shirt with this on it?

First Art Show : List of Things To Do

It seems I've got several million things on my mind regarding the upcoming show and various other projects. It seems that way.

When I actually jot them down, the list fits on a post-it note... if I write really small.

There is a fascinating calm to this stress.

I have no idea how to do several things, and am trying to figure them out in plenty of time. Credit cards? Yeah. I'm spoiled by paypal. Setting up the actual booth? You mean I need a plan other than to pull it out of the box and hang a few things up? Lights? Arrangement? A table, maybe? A place to put the credit card machine? Wow...

Paintings. Carvings. I don't have as many carvings done as I'd like to have. The smaller paintings need more work. I need to get the prints narrowed down from the 76 images I have to choose from and get them printed. I need to order the sleeves for them, and for the note cards. I need to work on the note cards!

I need to send out the postcards as soon as they're ready - tell everyone about the show and offer a discount to those who are interested. I need to update the gallery on heatherartworks.com and I'd like to launch a mailing list, but that may have to wait till December. I have to make a decision on the Spring shows - which one I want to aim for - how many pieces I can accomplish before then, cost, can I really do this?, etc...

It's a very, very different stress than what I was going through over a month ago. (Let's just say: I don't take orders. At all. And I'm going back to being a volunteer so I can say "No" to the ridiculous.)

This is a stress I can deal with, because it allows me to find creative solutions and rearrange how I approach things. (I'm not crying every night, so that alone is 100 times better!) This is my plan, my creativity given free reign, the way it should be.

Paintings will be finished. Carvings will get stained. Prints will be sleeved. Note cards will be bundled.

Speaking of which - the note cards are a limited edition item... come to think of it, so's everything else! When they're gone, they're gone! So... if any of the pieces strike your fancy, snap 'em up!

Now back to sorting out the list of things to do and find a place to start. A paintbrush seems a good a place as any...

tactile

Well, I've managed to go and scare myself, noting that it's three and a half weeks till the Thanksgiving Invitational Art Show thing in Fredericksburg on the two days after Thanksgiving. I need to get things printed, I need to get things painted, I need to get things carved... I need to figure out business things for the course of the two days... Plus I still need to pay the bills and clean and do laundry and do research and job hunt...

Eck. Enough about that for now. I'll post a photo or two of what I've been working on lately:


I call this series "Fall Colors, 2009". Yes, they're light purple and blues. Just the colors that came to mind when I sketched this one out. They're still not finished - more to go. They're 18 inches across and about 4 feet tall. There are four panels, each with the 'squares' in different locations. I've made a smaller one, too. If this series gets accepted for a show in a gallery, the small one, about 8 inches by 20 inches, will be touchable.



Tactile. I enjoy the texture of these pieces, and while I really don't want everybody lovin' on the big panels or paintings, the smaller one will be there just for that. To touch. To feel what the canvas materiel feels like. To feel what the layers of paints feel like. To run your fingers along the lines and depths and across the now-dry drips. This is what art is to me. To be able to touch it and experience it for myself. To share that with everybody else.

Anyway, I'll post more soon on the show at Thanksgiving - hopefully I'll have the postcard invites ready by the end of this week, get those up here. Generate some interest in coming out to see what I've got up as well as what other artist's are displaying for show and sell.

grin

You know what makes me happy?
Power tools.
You know what makes me even happier?
Using them!

It's a fascinating blend of destruction and creation when I heft that saw or drill and make the wood change shapes. The sawdust flies, chips popping me in the arm, the high buzz resonating through my body as I lean into give some balance.

Wood has a distinct scent, wet and dry, and all the variations of trees they come from. The grains shift under my fingertips, the hard and soft levels playing fast and loose with the blades as I go across. It's a beautiful and appealing feel, drawing me in and asking for more.

painting zen - 1, 2, 3 - black, orange, pink

We'll see if the viddler video upload works, because youtube tells me I can't upload a video over 10 minutes, which I think is bollocks. Whatever.

I'll do actual explaining about the pieces when the paint is dry & I've released the tape and gotten them ready for hanging.

It's two pieces - with 1 layer of black, 2 layers of oranges, and 3 layers of pinks on top.