Sandy Hook Auction

Welcome to my auction post for The Paint Party Friday Auction Blog Hop to Benefit the Sandy Hook Elementary School

On December 14th, 2012, 20 innocent children and 6 brave adults lost their lives in the second deadliest shooting in American history.  Like everyone else, I was profoundly touched by this tragedy.  Next to keeping our children safe at home, we trust them to be safe at school.  What happened was unimaginable.

I thought the metaphors of new growth, rebirth and renewal, were fitting tributes to the lives lost at Sandy Hook.  Because I am committed to making the world a more peaceful place, I chose Sandy Hook Promise as the charity to receive the proceeds from my auction.  The mission of Sandy Hook Promise is to:

1.  Help the community heal and provide ait to the family members who lost loved ones, to survivors, teachers, staff, first responders and to the Newton community;

2.  Bring together, in local and national dialogue, the great majority of Americans who agree that we must find common sense solutions to make our communities and our country safer. 

What I Am Auctioning:

I'm auctioning off this set of 4 mixed media 4x4" canvases. 

The backs are signed and dated by me, and the little easels are included so that they are ready for immediate display!

Auction Specifics:

This auction runs from Friday March 15th, 2013 until 

Monday March 18th, 2013 at 11:59 pm EDT.

UPDATE: AND THE WINNER IS LYNN COHEN! THANK YOU LYNN!

Shipping (anywhere worldwide) is free. 

(If painting is shipped internationally, shipping is still free BUT 

the buyer is responsible for any duty/taxes/etc.)

How to bid:

1. Place a bid (with a way to reach you) in the comments section.

2. Bookmark this page so that you can easily check back to see if you've been outbid 

(and need to make another bid).  Increments of $5 please!

3. If you are the winning bid, I will contact you.

4. Payment will be made from you to Sandy Hook Promise.

*I will not personally be collecting any money.*

5. Once you have made your donation, you will send your proof of donation (a forwarded receipt) to me at: 

jessicabethsporn (at) gmail (dot) com

6. After I have received your proof of donation (and you have given me your address), I will mail your paintings out to you! 

As you make your bids, please keep in mind that all proceeds go to a worthy cause...

Happy Bidding!

And please visit the other wonderful artists at Paint Party Friday!

Don't Be a Debbie Downer

Remember Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live?  No matter how happy the gathering, she had bad news or negative feelings to share and would bring down the mood of everyone around her.   I have come to realize that I'm a Debbie Downer when I come home from being away.  My husband and daughter are so happy to see me, but then I point out what wasn't done properly while I was away, and just kill the good feelings.

 

I'm really not sure what it's all about, psychologically, but I don't want to do it anymore!  True, my daughter might not have bathed while I was gone, or had any fresh fruits and vegetables, but in the grand scheme of things, so what?  True, she watched TV instead of doing her homework, and stayed up past her bedtime, but in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter?  My husband is supportive of my going on art retreats, or to hear the Dalai Lama speak.  He does his best, and even though it's not exactly how I would do things, in the end they are both safe and sound, and so excited to see me.  In my absence, my daughter made her lunch for school each day, got herself ready in the morning so she could get to school on time, and helped feed the animals.  So why not point out the positive?  I will try to improve this aspect of myself.  I hereby promise!

By this art journal page, may it be so!

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

If you have a quality that you would like to exorcise, share it here, and by your commenting, may it be so!

I Am Hopeful Because...

Yesterday I heard  His Holiness the Dalai Lama speak at William and Mary.  My daughter Mariel goes to school here and being able to visit with her and hear His Holiness was such a treat.  As I sat in William and Mary Hall, watching it fill up with students and visitors, I felt such a surge of optimism and positive emotion.  I felt full of hope for our planet, which often feels torn apart and desecrated. 

I had my art journal with me and took one of the pages I had collaged but not written on (it's actually a page of scraps and leftovers) and started to make a list in the blank hearts of some of the things that make me feel hopeful.  (This is why it's great to just "unblank" a few pages -- you never know...)

HHDL:  Seeing all the students fill the seats (4000 were given to students in a free lottery) made me hopeful that some of them will take his message to heart -- that it is in our own self interest to be compassionate towards EVERYONE, even our enemies, because at heart, we all want the same things - to be happy and free from suffering.  And we all face the same problems -- sickness, death of loved ones and eventually ourselves, pain and suffering.  So even if you hate the actions, feel compassion for the actors.  Knowing that His Holiness is on a tour where he is visiting many colleges made me hopeful about all the young people who will hear his message of love and tolerance.

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS:  While waiting online to go in, I struck up a conversation with two nice people.  Connecting with them made me feel warm inside.  It also made me think about how, after the tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, and 9-11, strangers pitched in and helped each other.  The willingness of people to help each other in times of need, or even just waiting on a line, makes me hopeful.

ART:  The community of artists on the retreats I've been on, and in the blog world, makes me feel very hopeful.  So many of us are doing work that taps into global concerns, or are creating work to donate, or are connecting with and supporting each other.  It fills me with warmth and hope.

MEDIA:  The ability to connect with people around the world, to see how others live, and to hear about their challenges and successes, makes me hopeful.  As the Buddha said, if you see yourself in others then whom can you harm?

MY DAUGHTERS:  I have two girls who live each day with warm hearts and open arms.  There are so many like them -- children who care about the world and who want to make it better.  This gives me hope.

What makes you feel hopeful?  Let me know.

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

Linking up with Mandarin Orange Monday,  Inspiration Avenue (challenge is orange!), Art Journal Everyday, Paint Party Friday and Creative Every Day.  Please visit the amazing artists linking up at these great sites!

Fall Fearless Challenge One, Part Two & A List!

More thinking about the future because of the Fall Fearless and Fly challenge at Artists in Blogland.  On the left of this two-page art journal spread is a very "stream of consciousness" list of things I hope to do and be someday - que algún día si Dios quiere -- as my husband would say!

How could I ever be all that I hope to be, or do all that hope to do?  Every day new, and one step at a time.

You can link up to Artists in Blogland through Sunday.  I hope you will!  If you don't, I hope you'll check in on Monday for the second challenge!  Ronda Palazzari will be our guest artist!  We're very excited.

Today's prompt at Artsyville's List it Tuesday is "I'm a Sucker for..." Here's what I did:

I collaged book pages and then scraped turquoise and white acrylic paint with a credit card.  Lots of little bits of handmade papers and leftovers from my stash went into creating the hearts, which I then doodled around with black fluid acrylics and a tiny paint brush.  The border is stamped with a stamp I hand carved in Julie Balzer's class.  I journaled my list around the hearts.  In case you can't read it, it goes like this:

I'm a Sucker for (in no particular order):

SUNSHINE:  basking in it, the sight of it streaming through the window, sun glimmering off wet tree leaves, any kind of sunshine connects me with all things holy and sacred;

ART: classes, retreats, paint, pastels, stencils, stamps, markers, pens, notebooks, and now clay!;

LETTERS: fonts, lettering, handwritten letters, old air mail stationary, old mail, letter stamps, and word eytmology;

YOGA: philosophy, classes, clothes, books, jewelry, art;

FLANNEL: sheets, p.j.s, bathrobes, quilts, blankets -- anything cozy!;

LITTLE THINGS: miniatures, collectibles, cameos, doll houses, fairy villages, decorative erasers, pebbles -- anything tiny;

A FEW FOODIE THINGS:  Cinnamon toast, guacamole, the roasted chestnuts you get on the street in New York at Christmas time, really crispy and salty french fries, and sweetened condensed milk!;

A WORTHY CAUSE - I will do anything for someone in need - which is how we've ended up sponsoring 3 families in Guatemala, 3 children through Save The Children, and our foster son;

ANYTHING MY DAUGHTERS NEED...

"If you need me, call me, I'll be there in a hurry, no need to worry..."

I realize I left off something very important to me --
ALL THINGS FRENCH:  the language, the country, the history, the food... - Alors là!

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

Play!

So much to do and so few hours in the day!  That's how I feel.  Before talking about today, here's what I did yesterday.

I spent the start of yesterday listening to a great podcast between Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and Ronda Palazzari.   Julie has started a series called "Adventures in Arting," and Ronda was her first guest.  Ronda will be Carolyn Dube's and my first guest on Fall Fearless & Fly, the "art cleanse" starting 10/1 on Artists in Blogland.  It was so interesting to hear Ronda's and Julie's perspectives on fear of failure, and what exactly is success, as this is so much what the fall challenge is all about.  As I listened, I stenciled the cover of my new stencil storage book.  Ronda had a great tutorial on her blog about this, and I was so excited to try it.  I love how it turned out, and it's so nice to have all my stencils stored in one place!  I used regular craft and fluid acrylics, and am loving all the colors.

 

When I was done with the stencil journal, I had paint left over on my palette.  I HATE to waste paint!  So I smeared it into my art journal:

and layered over the background with Julie's Leaf Frame and Dyan Reavely's Distressed Harlequin stencils:

Smeared more leftover red and green paint on copy paper and then cut the papers up to make hearts, stems and leaves, to create this page.  Yesterday, I only had 3 students in my 4:30 yoga class because it was back to school night in our area.  Because it was such a small group, we were able to really take time and delve deeply into the poses.  I was able to give each of them a lot of individual attention and hands-on adjustments.  I felt like I was of great service to them -- I helped them get a better understanding of their bodies and breath through very detailed work.  They were so grateful, and I was so grateful.  And this made me happy.  Love truly grows by giving.

Two days ago I received a monthly package from Scarlet Lime studios, which contained a set of Maya Road chip board doorways.  I haven't used chip board in my work, and was a little mystified as to what to do.  So I did a little online research and found this great tutorial by Natalie Kalbach for this beautiful canvas:   

 

I took a canvas I had previously painted but didn't like, and added some stencils, sponging, splattering, etc.  I was pretty random with this.  I knew this layer was going to be behind, and peek through the openings in the doors.

 

Then I used a sponge to texture paint onto 12 doors:

I typed this saying:  "be an opener of doors...every exit is an entrance to somewhere else" using the American typewriter font and printed it out on white card-stock.

 

I added black and white detail on all the doors and windows, as well as some stenciling with TCW's mini-heringbone and mini-hexagon stencils (designed by Balzer Designs),  to add more texture.   

The numbers across the top are plaquettes by Tim Holtz.  I used "82" in honor of my dad - who is a young and vibrant 82 and still plays a mean game of tennis!  (I didn't use one for my mom's age because she likes to keep that a secret.)    UPDATE  - I want to make clear that this is my dad and MY MOM - not me!  I know it's confusing - I am lucky to look a lot like her!

I am busy setting my table and polishing my best silver for the Fairy's Tea Party on Sunday. I hope you'll visit me and all the other artists participating.  One of the commentators to my tea party blogpost will win an original watercolor - you can see and read about it here.

As always, Happy Paint Party Friday, Creative Every Day and Inspire Me Monday! 

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

Face 3 and ATC Swaps

29 Faces:  Here's face 3 for the 29 Faces challenge.  This is my attempt at a self portrait (lol!).  Because the summer ended yesterday (I know not officially but it's back to school time for us), and because it was the second to last page of the journal I started on June 1, I thought it would be good to review what I learned over the summer.  It turned out to be quite a bit!  The design at the bottom and under my neck is Copada, the Diva's weekly challenge tangle.  We'll see if I can tackle my September goals!

Organizing Challenges:  One of my goals is to get better at organizing the challenges in which I participate.  Do any of you have suggestions for how to keep track of challenges, links, etc?  I find it all a little overwhelming! 

Upcoming Challenge:  Speaking of challenges, my friend Carolyn Dube and I will be hosting one beginning in October at Artists In Blogland.  Make sure you follow us and AIB to get all the info.  It will be about setting intentions and clarifying our thoughts to enter 2013 as our most fearless selves (and there will be cool prizes and give-aways)! 

Hot Off the Presses:  I will be teaching an all-day art journaling class at Rock Paper Scissors, a wonderful craft school and store in Montclair, NJ (only 15 miles from Manhattan), on Sunday, October 14, from 11 - 5.   It will be limited to 10 participants and the cost is $90 (not bad for 6 hours!).  This is so new that it's not even on the RPS website yet, but you can email Beth at info(at)rockpaperscissorsnj(dot)com to reserve a spot or for more information. 

Mini Canvases:   I created this 4 square set of flower canvases to illustrate various quotes I've been collecting.  I hope you can see all the yummy texture, which made it hard to paint the words on them!  Even though they are only 3 inch squares, they took me forever!   I'm going to enter them in Anything But a Card's September challenge. 

ATC Happiness:  One of the only good things about coming home from the lake was finding ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) in the mail.  Check out these gorgeous cards from Heather Santos:

 Arnoldo L. Romero:

and Lilian Reyes:

I'm loving the cards I received and doing these trades!  I have a few more, if anyone wants to swap.  Question -- how do you store and display your Artist Trading Cards?  Let me know!

Also linking up to Paint Party Friday, Creative Everyday, Artists in Blogland, and Balzer Designs.  Visit the artists there and share some love!

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

A Special Place

"If You Could Be Anywhere" is the theme of the challenge at Inspiration Avenue.  Here's my entry:

The swell of the cicadas is the harbinger the end of summer.  If I didn’t before, I feel an urgency to go to my beloved lake.  Not just “the lake,” but “my beloved lake.”  This water has a particular appeal for me. It is a signature green – a color that I welcome as it sticks to my swimsuit. Here and there a flurry of fish, a surprise of a snail shell underfoot.  The water seems to hold the magic of birth, rebirth, healing, and all sorts of other special powers.  Even today as I swim, the water feels like a caress, an embrace, holding me up and propelling me on.

There is a moment today at the end of my swim where I float on my back, coming as close as I can to stillness.  Above me, the sky is blue and white.  Beneath me, the water supports me with invisible hands.  With my ears submerged, I hear the song of the water.  In that moment, all is perfect.  Nothing is missing.  I am one with the lake, one with the sky.  “This is what it feels like, before the beginning, and after the end.”  I know this without thinking it – a moment of absorption in all that was, all that is, and all that will be.

As soon as I become aware of this thought, the moment passes.  My feet touch the sand underneath as I stand up.  Looking back at the beach, I see the people who came before me – translucent, moving in fast-forward through my memories.  There, walking down the path, is my grandmother in her bright orange robe with her crocheted bag full of treats for her grandchildren. Sitting back towards the fence, my grandfather reads his paper and then folds it away to talk to his friends.  There are the tables of people playing bridge, my dad doing dips on the old ladders, my mother running after my sister and brother as they toddle down the dock, my daughters passing their swim tests for the very first time.  So many memories.  So many imprints in this place we call Pine Lake.

Someday, perhaps my daughters will see a ripple in the water, and see an imprint of me, swimming back and forth in “my beloved lake.”  I hope so.  If I have a choice, this will be my heaven.  In the outside world, the shares of Facebook crumble; miners are shot in South Africa; Syria disintegrates. But here, the water is calm and still, and basketball always begins at 1:30 on Saturdays.

Linking up to my favorite haunts - Artists in Blogland, Paint Party Friday, Creative Every Day, Out of the Journal, and Art Journal Every Day at Balzer Designs. Please check out all the amazing artists who link up at these sites. 

The Diva's challenge this week was to draw your own string with your eyes closed.  I tried it, and after I finished it and turned it this way and that, it reminded me of a snake.  So I gave it a pomegranate to bite into!

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

I Will Find My Way Back

I am in love with Artist Trading Cards!  I previously received adorable ATCs from Marcia Beckett, and then on Friday I received these beautiful cards from Michelle V. Alkerton, who does digital photo-painting with her original watercolors.  Aren't these cool?  Thank you Artists in Blogland for hosting this swap!

This weekend I had an ATC party with me, myself and I, and made these!  I'm ready and willing to do some trading so let me know!  These are all made with bits and pieces of original watercolor paintings and are one of a kind, never to be repeated!

The end of August is approaching, and I still had a design I wanted to create for Scrapping the Music's 5th Anniversary party.  There are 5 songs to choose from, and I've already done two.  (See here and here).  But the song "Summer Paradise" was also calling me.  That song perfectly evokes the longing to go back to a special time and place.  I had a very special summer in 1973, falling in love with my First True Love the summer I turned 15 at Westchester Music and Arts Camp.  For years, I pined for him and for that summer.  Thanks to Facebook, many of us who were at that camp found each other and had a reunion a few years ago.  In the Harlequin novel version of my life, my FTL and I would have walked through the old camp grounds, felt like we were teenagers again, and then run off together. Instead, we shared a lot of laughs, as well as photos of our spouses and kids.   

Here's the painting I made:  first, a collage of scraps and pieces of a background page I didn't really love, so I ripped it up and glued it down:

 Then I knocked it all back and blended it together with some gesso:

 Think I'll use these stamps....

 Until it looks like this:

Now for some stencils using acrylics in sea colors...

Add some warm colors.  

And a fish and a face!  

The text says:  someday i will find my way back.   I will be listing it in my Etsy shop after I resin it!  (LOL!)

The memory of the summer of 1973 prompted me to create this art journal page.  Thinking about the trajectory of my life, and how all of my experiences led me to this moment, with my wonderful husband and two amazing daughters, I am forever grateful.

The picture of us is from a few summers ago -- I asked Freddie to bleach his hair blond for the summer, which is how he wore it in his 20s when he was a lifeguard at Orchard Beach, and he did it!. (Awww)  The photo with my girls is from a trip we took to Florida in 2002.  Samy was such a chubby baby -- so cute.  Here we are now.

I'm linking up to Artists in Blogland, Paint Party Friday, Creative Every Day, Out of the Journal, and Art Journal Every Day at Balzer Designs.  Thank you for visiting! If you are so moved, please leave a comment. Hearing from you means the world to me.

Failure: Important

Failure: Important:  Lately, I've been painting a lot on canvas.  When I took Cindy Wunsch's class at CREATE in July, she kindly resined all of our canvases.  It looked so amazing.  That layer of resin just made everything all shiny and the colors richer and more intense.  I wanted to try it.

Paul, a sweet friend of my older daughter Mariel, came over to help me do the first piece.  I am always nervous to try something new by myself -- especially if it includes mixing combustible liquids and having to use a blow torch!  Paul's an engineering student with resin experience.  He helped me with a small canvas, and it looked so pretty and seemed so simple, that after he left I decided  to do ALL of my canvases.  The prudent person would have waited for this first one to dry, and assessed the situation.  But one of my mottos could very well be: "Instant gratification takes too long."  So before you could say "take a deep breath and count to ten," I had spread newspaper all over the floor of my studio, and was mixing and pouring away.

Resin is messy -- it is goopy and sticky; it drips and clings.  Having not thought this through, I didn't leave myself a good path for moving around my studio and essentially resined myself into the corner farthest away from the door, trapped by a goopy, sticky mess; by the time I inched my way out, there was resin on the bottom of my shoes, my canvases were resined to the newspaper underneath, and many of my painting supplies, which I hadn't put away, were sticky and gooey.

The next morning, it took me nearly 3 hours to cut away the newspaper from my canvasses with a box cutter and exacto knife.  The good news is that they look SO PRETTY and SHINY!  Also, I learned some valuable lessons:

1. When instructions say to test out a small area first, test out a small area first.  If you're like me, you have probably had disastrous experiences with hair color because you failed to follow this direction.  Ahhh - when will I every learn?
2. It is very important to elevate your canvases before applying resin.  The resin will drip and adhere your canvases to whatever is underneath.  Then you will have to spend time cutting the canvas away.  This time would be better spent doing just about anything else!
3. Use plastic, not newspaper, to protect your surfaces.  The resin that dripped down my canvases went right through the newspaper and glued a lot of it to the floor of my studio.  Now, I have little triangles of shiny, hard newspaper speckling my floor.  
4. Make sure the area in which you are working is well lit because you need to see the tiny bubbles that rise to the surface of the resin that you must annihilate with your blow torch.  Resining at 1AM with just a desk light doesn't allow you to see these pesky bubbles.
5. Be patient!  The resin takes about 7 hours to cure.  Poking your finger at your canvas after only an hour because you think the directions must be overstating the drying time will only result in fingerprints and poke-marks on your canvas!

It was very apt that I had recently started an art journal page around two partial newspaper headlines I had cut out:  "Merging Textures" and "Failure: Important."  I learned a lot!  If you decide to resin your work, go to ArtResin first and watch their videos.  I wish I had!

Live in Love: 

Last week, the bulb on my special daylight worklight blew out.  My husband promptly volunteered to go out and get me a new one.  Sometimes I take for granted how sweet he is and how much he supports my creative life.  Right then and there, I told Samy, my 11 year old, "make sure when you get married, it's to a man who will go out and get you a replacement bulb if that means you can keep on painting."  If I ever forget how much he loves me, I have only to look at the carpeting on the stairs and hallways that connect the three floors of our house.  This is my "Freddie loves me" carpeting.  Not many husbands would let their wives do wall to wall leopard!  As a thank you, I made a painting inspired by my kind, sweet, supportive husband. 

 

I'm linking up to Artists in Blogland, Paint Party Friday, Creative Every Day, Out of the Journal, Inspire Me Monday, and A Year in the Life of an Art Journal, where the theme this week is kindness.   I hope you'll visit some of the links on these pages -- there are so many wonderful artists showing inspiring work.

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