tales about orb

MaryBeth introduced me to James Victore's supportive creative ideas, and I feel like I discovered jello!  Some great ideas there, and I'll be mining them now and again when one its me across the head, like this one!

Creative minds are rarely tidy     John William Gardner

It took me a while to get to the studio today, seems things kept happening around here and I just couldn't get out the door.  Once I got there I found myself wrestling with the sewing machine again-  I was trying to quilt the background first to hold it all together for the foreground which may or may not be a bit 3-D so it would be tough to wrangle it around for quilting.  Ended up taking the whole bloody machine apart to pull out a huge clump of knots.  I retraced my steps, was using same thread and bobbin that I used last time but somehow it got testy today.  Well, the bonus, though unintentional, is that the machine got cleaned.  Honestly, you'd think I was new to this.

I took a break and wrapped up all 16 of the framed pieces and stuck them in a box for safe keeping- it will be at best a year before I unpack them, and by then I will be surprised to see them again!  I also prepared two quilts for exhibits-  I drop one off tomorrow and take one to MA when I go, so they are wrapped and ready to travel.  And I tried chai tea made in the Koureg and it was great-  I think it will be my summer go-to because I already drink too much coffee.  Then I got back to my quilting dilemma...  actually after I pressed it, it was fine, and I'll finish it up tomorrow after my meeting, perhaps even adding an additional layer.  After all, it IS supposed to be the floor of the Everglades.  Wish me luck.

Called by a number of names from Tree Shaping to Arborsculpture, this form of living tree art uses the time honed methods of grafting, bonsai, espalier and topiary to create incredibly imaginative forms.

A number of artists around the world have been practicing with it for years.

John Brooker of Norfolk had a horticultural vision unlike the rest of us. For the past 13 years he’s hacked and trimmed and molded the 150ft-long (45.7m) hedge outside his Frizzleton Farm property into a massive dragon complete with flowing tail and wings. 

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Bob Cobbin

Bob Cobbin

Leslie Nichols

“Art is not a thing — it is a way,” Elbert Hubbard observed in 1908 in what became one of history’s finest definitions of art. Hubbard was writing at the dawn of an unusual new art form, wherein artists were appropriating a new thing — a trailblazing technology — to find a new way of making art. The product and legacy of that is what graphic design scholar Barrie Tullett explores in Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology(public library) — a fascinating chronicle of “the development of the typewriter as a medium for creating work far beyond anything envisioned by the machine’s makers,” embedded in which is a beautiful allegory for how all technology is eventually co-opted as an unforeseen canvas for art and political statement.

Squirrel Pinafores.  Not cute.