complex deal dey

Observe your work. Put it on the wall for a couple of weeks. It may be that you can learn more from

  the study of your own work, than from others.  John Sloan

Dropped TY off at the airport and was back home drinking coffee by 7AM.  Now to clean the place up from a weekend of debauchery.  Well, not quite, just a weekend of leaving stuff where it was dropped and stacking dishes in the sink!  Poor dogies are despondent because he lets them get away with canine crimes and gives them treats if they make eye contact.  Not me, I make them work for a treat, and they don't have the run of the place with me in charge.  I talk tough.  They are both lying on the unmade bed resting up from the separation anxiety a small suitcase brings on.

And on the way home I heard that it is NATIONAL DOG DAY.  Like it isn't every day around here.  Celebrate as you see fit.  Personally I am going to limit the revelry so I don't get tempted to adopt another critter-  no more room on the bed.

FYI it is also NATIONAL DUMPLING WEEK, and don't think I'm gonna let that one slip by!

I was headed for the studio but I have a better offer to go junk-shop picking so that's how I'll spend the morning-  gotta get out of here because there is a team of Haitians right outside my window taking down a huge tree- the pieces are falling off precariously close.  They aren't acting like New England tree guys-  they have one very long aluminum ladder they sorta shove at the tree and one of them climbs up with a chainsaw that's...

oh shit, it's pugged in to MY electricity...

Meet Jerry Gretzinger, man of exquisite imagination!

For 50 years, off and on,  this Michigan man has toiled on his map project in his basement based on a deck of cards that tells him what area next needs attention.  One thing he said that resonated with me is after he has done his modifications and placed the sheet in it's rightful position he doesn't remember doing it-  exactly how I make quilts-  a zombie comes and takes over my brain and hands while I listen to NPR and then all of a sudden, there it is finished!  And always different than my intentions!

Japanese artist Kohei Nawa and his PixCell project, so named because the taxidermied specimens take on a pixilated look with the addition of the bubbles and beads, a new take on taxidermy:  By covering surface of an object with transparent glass beads, the existence of the object itself is replaced by "a husk of light", and the new vision "the cell of an image" (PixCell) is shown.

"Most of the motifs, like stuffed animals are found through the internet. I search some auction sites and choose from the images which appear on a monitor as pixel. However, the stuffed animals which actually have been purchased and sent have real flesh feel and smell, and have a discrepancy with images on the monitor. I then transpose them to PixCell in turn."   

9 Ways to Boost Your Artistic Creativity  (second last one)

8. Adjust the results you’re aiming for

Maybe you’ve created something that isn’t quite right. Or it’s not the final version of what you want to submit. Consider it a practice piece and remove the pressure of it being the final version.

Since it’s just practice, consider what would happen if you tried to wreck it. Even if you don’t actually do that to the piece, you will come up with interesting ideas that don’t come when you are treating the art piece as too precious.

Sherry Lynn Wood has one of those blogs you stumble across by accident and go WHOA NELLIE!  I love 'Modern Quilts' though it isn't something I aspire to with all the stories I have to tell in my own work, and finally I found spiritual quests and incredible work in this CA woman.  Go enjoy her improvisational work, dig around and find her tutorials, and wish, like I do, you had one of these pieces to simply roll around in.

Most of these are quite large-  go to her website linked above to get specifics and see lots more!

This is how I found her blog-  a simple little one minute video about folding stuff up after a quilt is finished.  She puts on her pants one leg at a time JUST LIKE ALL OF US!  I do have to say I never have this much stuff to fold after I finish, probably because I leave it on the floor and call it compost, waiting for the worms.

My cousin Jack found this up in Maine and sent along a snap.  It would be a nice set with my 'Ladies Sewing and Terrorist Society' shirt, coincidentally also from Maine, but maybe two decades ago!

make that 'Sewing and Terrorist SQUIRREL Society'