What Might Have Been!

I am feeling oh so excited to take a year off of making calendars!

I have loved making the calendars since 2009 but it is nice not to push with all the other activities going on.

Here are some things that would have been in the 2015 calendar and might be in the 2016 one.

RECIPES

• Fragrant Rice with Lentils
• Persimmon Pudding
• Turkey Roll with Wild Rice and Cranberry Stuffing
• Green Tomato Pizza

ART 

Mermaids Entwined in Love

Crane Pond - My Earth Day tribute. White crane with black accents standing in turquoise water with yellow water lilies and lush green marsh grasses

Madre Tierra (Earth Mother) Very pregnant native woman sitting cross legged on a leaf thrown  surrounded bycolorful flowers

Raven's Head - Black raven on top of a skull amongst scattered skelliton with a red sky and big yellow moon.

Here are the major announcements of the moment

• I am probably buying a condo with a 2 car garage which I will make into my art studio with room for creating, framing, documenting (photos), storage and display!
• I got a great camera awhile back and just need to remember to charge it and learn how to use it.
• I am thinking of experimenting with cork cut outs if I have a nice size studio space,
• I have a dream of someday having a kiln on my new covered patio but that probably won't actually happen.
• I have a show coming up in January at a local Gresham Unitarian Unilateralist congregation thanks to my realtor, 
• Most important, I sold this great piece at my Coffee Time display and that made me happy

  

  Blooms 2012 A green plant person sitting in a wheelchair  with a yellow and orange flower face and orange, red and yellow flower hands. There is bright blue sky and light green grass in the background with white sensing canes supporting vines with pink and purple flowers. The idea being mobility devices as supports to growth.

Unearthing Ancient Art

White plaster mask from the 1980s with random  patterns of red, purple, pink and blue

As I purge and pack I keep coming across old art. Maybe not ancient art but it feels "ancient" in the saga of my life. Apparently masks have been part of my art  for a long time. The above mask was created as part of a mask making class I led at camp around 1980 probably. This was my curvy meets pointy  asymmetric period of playful decorating.

Clay mask from high school or maybe Jr. High - Lovely rich dark ocher yellow with cut out mouth and eyes and raised lips, tear drops and a lumpy nose

In high school and even before HS ceramics were my fave so I went through a sculptured face phase. I remember feeling influenced by the court jester's and medieval masks that were popular at Renaissance Fairs.

Another plaster mask created at camp in Mendocino in the 1980sanother random pink and blue almost symmetric pattern

These are the only mask that survived but there were many more over the years. As I keep throwing things away in my move I wonder, is it time to let this earlier art go? I had this sculpture teacher many years ago who gave us one huge lump of clay for the whole summer. He wanted us to create art take pic and then destroy our creations and reuse the clay. He said if we were going to be artist we needed to detach from our products because it is about creating not the creation itself. 

Well I always wanted to be an anthropologist and keeping such things is important to the fossil record of an artistic evolution.

Even today I still am drawn to the significance of mask. 

M. Butterfly - a beautiful woman in a green kimono with blue butterfly wings and a yellow headdress with a feminine and masculine kabuki mask in the background.

Fragile beauty sometimes in front of the mask and sometimes hidden behind it. Transformation takes many forms.