Weekly Roundup!

It's been such a full week!  Here are three designs from Run With Scissors  (RWS) daily prompts.  June 12 - what are your favorite places?  I started to journal about Pine Lake Park - where I spent and still spend all my summers; Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I grew up; NYC; Antigua, Guatemala, where we do service work with From Houses to Homes and where we have a godson and family; just about everywhere in France... and then I realized that none of it would matter without my family with me.  So I gessoed over everything, and this soulful lady emerged.  (the blueprint for her face is from Balzer Designs' Maude stencil but now she looks nothing like it.)  Anything Goes asked for designs inspired by travel, so she's going there too!

Wednesday's RWS prompt was about someone who inspires you.  As a child, I loved reading about Joan of Arc.  I was inspired by how she listened to her inner voices and had complete faith in her path, even though so many people thought she was crazy or a witch.  One of my favorite paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is this Joan of Arc.  I used to go "visit" it when I was in high school (I went to the original "Fame" school - the High School of Performing Arts). 

Inspired by my friend and wonderful artist Jennifer Levine, I painted up a homage to St. Joan.   It was a challenge to stay current with all the prompts, because I am in the middle of creating a new line of "Woman of Valor" products for Aviv Judaica.  Here's an example of the new line I'm working on.  You can see the older mug on the right, and the die line and design for the new mug on the left. 

 

But in between comments and revisions on the Woman of Valor line, I was able to work on my rendition of "St. Joan," which I finally finished today. (Note the Balzer Designs leaf stencils!)   In addition to adding this to the RWS 30 Days in Your Art Journal Flickr' pool, I'm also going to add it to A Year In the Life of An Art Journal.  The June 15 "Whatever and Whatnot" prompt is "If you could be a character, who would you be and why?"  And even though I would not want to be burned at the stake, St. Joan is pretty amazing. I hope she inspires you as much as she's inspired me. 

Yesterday's RWS prompt was "what roles do you play?"  Like every other woman, I do too much.  (The other day Samy said:  "I can multitask too -- I just can't do two things at the same time." (!) This was brilliant, because really, neither can I, and neither can anyone.  Our brain just toggles back and forth between tasks until we're crazy.  Check out this book -- The Myth of Multitasking; how doing it all gets nothing done.)  I thought of the Hindu goddesses with many arms and hands -- sometimes I wish I had them, or, like Michael Keaton in the movie Multiplicity, I had a few clones of myself.  But really, what I want is to just SLOW DOWN!   In fact, yesterday, I had a moment in the car where I felt so intensely -- I CRAVE STILLNESS.  So, on my goddess arms, I wrote advice to myself.  Stop! Relax! Just Say No!  As Ellen Degeneres says, "Procrastinate NOW.  Don't put it off."  Will I listen?  We'll see...  

I really like my lovely goddess, and am also submitting her in Try it on Tuesday's Anything Goes challenge.   

So now onto a little shameless self-promotion:  I'm training to participate in a 12 hour yogathon (yep - 12 hours) on July 14 to raise money for "Off the Mat and Into the World," a terrific organization that takes the philosophy and physical practices of yoga to different communities as a tool for peace, empowerment, and community.  So if you want to help, please visit my page and consider making a donation! 

That's all for today -- thanks for visiting and please leave a comment.  It means so much to me.