The Wonder of Summer

I am honored to be Artists in Blogland's monthly challenge winner for July.  Thank you!  I love being part of the AIB community.

One of the things I love most about summer is watching my garden.  In the Phantom Tollbooth (one of my favorite books), a conductor leads an orchestra each morning at daybreak and twilight.  But instead of music, the musicians and their instruments play the colors of the sunrise and sunset.   Each season, as first my irises, then my roses, and then my black eyed susans bloom, it is as if somewhere, a conductor, is calling them forth.  It is pure magic, and each season, I marvel in wonder at the beauty of nature.

Coming back to New Jersey from Pine Lake yesterday, the sight of my garden lessened the sadness of leaving the lake.  Here's what greeted me:

 

In honor of summer, and my garden, I painted this canvas.  The words say:  I look in wonder at the magic of everyday life.

 

It's funny -- yesterday I felt so blue.  Perhaps it was knowing I'd be leaving the lake for a while and my vacation was over.  Yesterday, the weather was pristine -- the sky was blue and clear, the humidity low and the sun shining.  And yet, I felt dull and flat. The beauty of the world contrasted sharply with the sourness and impatience I felt inside.  No matter how much I tried to remind myself of the charmed life I lead, I did not feel blessed.  I felt adrift and without purpose.  (I hadn't painted in 3 days...hmm....)  The best I could do was stay quiet and remind myself that things change -- this too shall pass.  Thankfully, it did.  I swam some laps in the lake before leaving, and then was greeted by my beautiful garden upon returning to New Jersey.  Nature has such a way of lifting the spirits.  All was right again!

Artists in Blogland Challenge for August is "Wonder."  Anything Goes' current challenge is "Summer Days."  And Try It On Tuesday's challenge is "Anything Goes."  So I'll be linking up there.  This piece was made with 5 elements:  canvas, acrylic paint, a stencil, stamps and stickers, so I'll also be linking up with The Second Floor Challenge and Out of the Journal.

Here's a tangle for the Diva's challenge this week, which was to use Shelley Beauch's tangle "Brayd."  Zentangle is the name of the game at Inspiration Avenue this week, so linking up there as well.

 

UPDATE:  I had so much fun with Brayd, that I did another.  Again, I couldn't resist using "paradox" inside the triangles -- my pen just wants to go there...  Thanks Shelley for such a versatile tangle!

Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.

Why Crawl Through Life When You Have Wings to Fly?

If you are coming from My Desert Cottage you are in the right place for the blog hop!  Welcome to my blog.  Pics of my studio, such as it is, are at the end of this post.  But first:
12 Hours of Yoga!
I woke up today with every muscle in my body aching.  Yesterday I participated in the Garden State Yogathon.   Garden State Yoga is is the studio where I teach, and the studio gathered together teachers from all the area studios for a 12 hour yogathon (YES - 12 hours!) to raise money for 3 charities.  My team raised money for Off the Mat and Into the World. The Yogathon was very successful -- we raised over $30,000 for three terrific organizations.  Here are some pics (that's me in the pink top!).

Let's Go Fly a Kite:  

Inspiration Avenue's challenge this week was to do a design inspired by "flight."  The question posed was what do you think of when you hear the word fly or flight?  My first thought was "Let's Go Fly a Kite," from Mary Poppins.  I know it's not a particularly profound or deep association, but I over the years, I have watched Mary Poppins about 30 times (I have 2 daughters - 21 and 11!), so a kite is what immediately popped into my mind.  I had been wanting to work more on auraknot for the Diva's challenge, and this prompt inspired me to create a kite from that tangle.   As for the saying, my yoga philosophy has taught me to look at everyone around me as a holy angel, sent from "command central" to either show me the way or, through difficulties, teach me a valuable lesson.  As my teacher says, once you see everyone around you as an angel, you're an angel too.  (Here's a video link for seeing the divine in your everyday life.) So "why crawl through life, when you were born with wings?"


Here's a beautiful butterfly that was on my buddleia bush yesterday - a reminder that we all have the potential for flight inside of us.

Love Comes in Many Colors:

In 2009, a young man, Codie Blake, came to live with us.  His mother had been our babysitter and my friend, and she died on December 26, 2009, of complications from breast cancer.  Codie has become part of our family.  In a few weeks, Codie will be getting married.  On Wednesday night, we met his fiance's family.  Like Codie, she and her family are from from Jamaica.  Meeting them inspired me to create this in my art journal:  "Love Comes in Many Colors."   Because indeed, it does.  One Year in the Life of an Art Journal had sun in their prompt this week, so this design will be visiting that blog, as well as Creative Every Day and Paint Party Friday.  I also reformatted it for a greeting card for Mojo Monday's sketch challenge.  Let me know your thoughts about putting a mixed media page on a traditional background... I'm not sure if it works...

Where Bloggers Create:

Karen, at My Desert Cottage, has created a blog hop party called "Where Bloggers' Create."  We had until July 14 to spiff up our studios and photograph them.  If you click on the links in the right side bar of her page, you will be amazed at all the beautiful studios.  And Karen's is amazing! I'm embarrassed to say that mine is not spiffy at all -- I just kept going from one project to another, so when I photographed it, it was a mess.  But I create best when I am surrounded by all my materials.  So here it is:

In all the little drawers are designs created from my illustration work.  You can see stencils spilling out from some of the open drawers under my table.  Most of the books are reference books in different styles, and I have a lot of books about Jewish history, art and symbolism since that's a big part of my licensing work.  A big clean up is clearly in order!

Finally, thank you to Scrapping the Music, for naming me the winner in Challenge #202.  I am very honored.  If you haven't done STM challenges, the next one was just posted and involves the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and/or a song your mother sang to you.  I highly recommend visiting them and participating.  Song lyrics are such great creativity prompts!

Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.

PS - Here's my itinerary at CREATE New Jersey, starting Wednesday, July 18 (how nice of them to hold an art retreat on my birthday!):
Wed. July 18, 9-4: Find Your Beautiful Self Portrait
Thurs. July 19: 9 - 4:  Mini Masterpiece Canvas Journal
Thurs. July 19 - 6 - 9PM:  Scribble Paint
Friday: July 20: 9 - 4PM:  Carving Stamps for patterning
Let me know if we're in any of the same workshops!

Wednesday Mashup & Gratitude

Think how snug it'll be underneath our flannel;
When it's just you and me and the English Channel!
In our cozy retreat kept all neat and tidy,
We'll have chums over ev'ry Friday!
By the sea!
Don'tcha love the weather?
By the sea!
We'll grow old together!
By the seaside,
Hoo, hoo!
By the beautiful sea!

I had the song "By The Sea" from Sweeney Todd stuck in my head (here's the track on You Tube) as I sat down at my table on Wednesday.  I have had a set of 4 6x6 canvasses from Michael's for months, and decided I had to use them.  It's a little scarey for me to actually commit to a canvas, but what are Wednesday Mashups for?  I stared at them for a while.  They were so white and pretty.  I didn't want to mess them up....  But then, I jumped in, covering them with matte medium and tearing off pieces of paper that were left over from other projects and gluing them on.  On the upper and lower left hand squares are pieces of paper from the modeling paste experiment a few weeks ago, and on the lower right square, some paper on which I tried out some reverse stenciling techniques with spray mists.  The mists I had used were green and blue, and that tinted my water turquoise, and the squares began to take on a sea like color.  BY THE SEA!!

 

I decided to go with that theme, and squirted on blue, light blue and green paint:

 

and spread it around with a credit card.

 and grabbed whatever stencils were handy (you'll recognize Balzer Designs' leaves), as well as some bubble wrap and the plastic mesh from yesterday's bag of clementines, and laid down darker versions of those colors. 

Then I cut some whales, anchors, lobsters, and fish out of card stock. ( I've had in my mind the beautiful graphic image Julie Fei-Fan Balzer posted of a lobster sign she saw in Provincetown.)

 I sprayed and painted the cardstock shapes over some newspaper (and saved it for a future project), and also glued down some shells and beads I've been saving, and here is my collage of paintings!

and some close ups:

I'm so happy with them!!  And to illustrate my happiness (and to use up the leftover paint I had on my pallete, I painted some more! I had a background in my journal that I hadn't known what to do with.  It looked like this - yuck.  But inspired by the challenge to use lavender and lace over at Anything Goes, I added a lavender vase, stenciled it using a lace doily (apologies to my grandma...), and paint-doodled some flowers and letters to spell out "Oh Happy Day!" to celebrate my good mood.  (Obviously, I still have those Wild n' Reckless sherbert colors in my head from Summer of Color!)  Because the sentiment is the main focus here, I will enter this happy design in Moving Along With the Times' challenge to make it sentimental, and of course all the work will visit Paint Party Friday!

On a personal note, as some of you know, my dad has been dealing with some health issues.  He seems to have a handle on them and is back to playing tennis and enjoying life.  Still, it has been a sobering experience and a reminder of how easy it is to take life for granted.  And all around me, the parents of my dear friends are struggling with some much more serious health issues, like strokes, alzheimer's and heart disease.  So I am dedicating my work today to sending out love for our parents.  If you're so moved, please stop and take a moment to be grateful for the people in your lives, like parents and other teachers, who have given you so much love and support, and who have taught you so much.  If you would like some inspiration, here is a video by Lama Marut about gratitude:

Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.