Grand Finale!

Solstice Heat, June 21, 2014

I am very nostalgic and emotional about fireworks.  I associate them with happy memories of Summer evenings.

Do you know that moment in a fireworks display when you can hear the the swizzle sound of many rockets rising into the sky at once?

There is excitement, yes, anticipation, but also a nanosecond of wistfulness. Because you know you've reached the final minute of the display. Soon it will be over. 

I am feeling a bit that way tonight. Sixty-one days of thinking about and making art as part of Tammy Garcia's ICAD 2014 challenge are drawing to a close. I am looking back on the small, yet powerful set index cards that I've drawn on, painted on, glued on, and experimented on during the past two months.







I really made some serious attempts to use the challenge as an opportunity to try new things. I tested the waters on some new media. At the beginning, I worked very hard to stay on the daily prompt. After a while, I made up my own prompts or more often found sources of inspiration out around me.

When I created something that I thought was ugly or messy or not what was in my head, I tried to rework it or recycle it into something I did like.

Super Moon, July 11, 2014

My Super Moon card turned out exactly the way I had intended, but getting the ink spray background right took quite a few tries. My first few spray ink attempts were downright ugly. One of my glimmer misters doesn't seem to be working the way it should and the ink comes out in giant drips. I kept the card anyway thinking that I would eventually cut it apart for collage.

Turquoise Dragonflies, July 27, 2014

Later in the challenge, I found that the messy glimmer mist drips card actually made the perfect "landscape" for my dragonflies.  I gessoed over the ink to tone down the background. The other collage elements are glued on top of the gesso layer.

Golden Mushroom, stamp on Gelli plate print, July 23, 2013

         
The challenge also encouraged me to attempt some media that I had been admiring for a while. I first learned about Gelli Arts plates last year, and saw videos of the technique back in the Spring. I kept meaning to get the supplies and try it.

Finally, I bought myself a 5 x 7 Gelli plate and began printing acrylic backgrounds. My Golden Mushroom card made use of monoprints for the background and frame. The rubber stamp (embellished with ink) is one that I traced from a printed design and cut myself with a carving tool and Speedball printing plate.  I hadn't carved my own stamp since I was a teenager!

Any Route Permitted July 8, 2014

I love the layering effects that you can easily obtain by printing more than one Gelli plate background.  I know this is a media that I will work on again and again, and I've only printed in two sessions with my plate.  I made a dozen different layered prints each time.

Other days, I enjoyed recycling bits of ephemera from my trip to England this summer. I could not help including tickets, cut-outs from Time Out Magazine and other papers in my daily collages.

Now the ICAD 2014 Challenge is drawing to a close, but the effects are lingering. 

I am grateful for the support of other artists out there like me who are part of the Daisy Yellow community.  I was inspired by your work and I hope you found something interesting about mine in exchange. It's wonderful to send a tiny bit of art out into the world and receive a trickle of "likes" and comments almost instantaneously. It's nice to know that I'm not alone in wanting to make art a part of my busy life. 

Well, the last crackles and shimmers of fireworks are fading away tonight. Tomorrow's a new day. I'm feeling motivated and excited. I have a number of other art classes and projects out there waiting for me just over the horizon. 

Grand Finale, July 31, 2014, sari silk, collage, and ink on paper

Challenge: Remember what it was like to be a photographer

20 years. Two decades. Half a life ago.

That's how long it has been since I thought of myself as a photographer. I had just graduated from Art School then, and had decided I needed the intellectual challenge of an academic discipline to counterbalance the associate's degree from a technical college. So I left my "first profession" photography behind and moved to Indiana and art history.

Fast forward a generation. > > > > > 

Most people I know carry a camera with them everywhere, a smart phone that does as much or more than those fictional Tricorders that Doctor McCoy and Spock used to carry around while exploring the universe. Some people use their mobile phones to play games. Some just tweet to their peeps. My dearest Mr. S uses his phone to learn Chinese characters with a sophisticated flash card language learning software. Me, I can't stop taking pictures. 

Through an artistically-minded yoga instructor friend I found Instagram.  Instagram is an amazing community of artists and an app that lets you do extraordinary things with simple and mundane photos. For me it's like candy. 

My phone is a camera that would have been sci-fi to the Midwestern art chic I was in the 1990s. What I wouldn't have given for the opportunity to have an ultra-lightweight device that takes and stores high-res photos and could instantly share them with friends or publish them to the whole planet. Now that's the power I hold in my little hand.

Some of the fine artists who I follow on Instagram participate in a challenge begun by a photographer in Australia. Fat Mum Slim issues a challenge of one idea per day. Your goal is to find that image in your day and snap it. Upload it and hashtag it #FMSphotoaday and you are in.

Today is September the First and I'm going to give this a try.  Fat Mum Slim has posted her September prompts inspired by members of the #FMSphotoaday community.  Those who want to follow my progress may want to check my runningwave Instagram feed, since I won't be blogging here at Pull of the Tides. 

To kick off my photography challenge, however, I will share with you a journey to a quiet, cultured small town in the Blue Ridge. Staunton, Virginia is a picturesque town of that Main Street gentle Victoriana mode. Chock full of elegant buildings, upscale cafes, and antiquey-boutiquey shops, it is a Twenty-first century city of a bygone-era.  It's also home to a repertoire theatre (and I mean theatre and not theater) company that is nationally-acclaimed with some good reason: actors of the American Shakespeare Center will knock your socks off.

Here's a photo essay recap of my recent foray. Enjoy!

I  won't bog down Pull of the Tides with daily photo posts.  I do promise, although, to post my photo-a-day results at the beginning of October. 

Until then, I will keep sharing my mixed media explorations here where the Tide comes in.  I have several art journaling pieces and tags on my studio table in progress at the moment that you'll be seeing soon.

I *love* comments, so if you are stopping by, please drop me a line, or even just a few characters. Thanks so much for reading. Cheers, ~runningwave~ @ Pull of the Tides management.

Creative Projects To Be Accomplished in Fifteen Minutes or less

Part of my current art-immersion project in the past five months has been about exploring the ways that I can create as part of my daily existence. I am busy -- just like everyone else in this great wide world of 21st century global be-productive-or-die society.

be Extraordinary Tag By ~runningwave~ laid out during
my lunch break in August 2012

I spent all of last winter wondering why I couldn't get myself off my duff and be productive, even while I watched my husband sit every morning in the living room teaching himself to read Chinese with several apps and online web tools. I admit it. I was jealous of his dedicated efforts to better himself and to do something productive with every spare minute of his time. He'd be working on his Chinese character apps in line at the diner for breakfast or riding on the Metro, all because he's love to be able to read Chinese legends and folklore in the original text some day. (By the way, in his not quite two years of doing this he is already up to memorizing 2500 characters -- a person who reads Chinese newspapers needs about 3000 characters. Now, that is dedication for you!)

This listing post was inspired by a fellow artist-blogger, Aimee who over at Artsyville, with her post, "list it tuesday: 15 minute creativity."  I met Artsyville on Facebook due to a post by another web-savvy artist I love, Jill K. Berry.  (I adore how the Internet can bring like-minded people together across time and space, even if they would never perhaps met in real life.)

As I continue with my focus on my artistic life, I am looking to other artists who share their ideas to help me. It is such an inspiration to see other people out there who love their art and who think it's important enough not only to do it every day, but to share it with the world also. So big thank yous to those artists like Aimee, Jill and others who share!  

So here's my list to add to the blog roll:
  ~runningwave's~ Creative Things I Can Do in 15 Minutes Or Less

1) Collage, paint, or draw on an ATC* or other small-scale project during my lunch break
*ATC -- for those of you who don't know it means, "artist trading card"

2) Add a few more pieces to my collage projects begun at the August classes taught by Tim Holtz at Queen's Ink

3) Brainstorm for ideas on my next collage pieces

4) Paint color backgrounds for my next collage art journals

5) Organize bit 'n pieces in my studio area

6) Make Zentangle drawings in my notebook

7) Take Instagram photos or mess around with the filters for my other digital photographs

8) Knit another few rows in my current fiber art project

9) Doodle in my handy journal

10) Rubber stamp some backgrounds to be used later

11) Start making my holiday cards

12) Look around me for artifacts and objects that can be incorporated into a collage

13) Browse the blogs of artists to gain inspiration

14) Finally read a bit more in that book on maps and imagination to insights into my own mapping project agenda.

15) Go outside and enjoy the weather; breathe; observe nature

And, of course, make more lists . . .


I am working on an Autumn project to share very soon.  Stay tuned.