Equal Time, A Book Review And Some Bragging

It's a dreary, cold, rainy day here on Delmarva so I decided to pull some nice Springy, bright sunshiney day pictures out of the archives to lighten things up a bit and to give equal time to my point and shoot.

For the past 3 years I have been using a point and shoot, also known as a super zoom, the Panasonic Lumix FZ-18.  Now there's a lot to be said for this little workhorse. First off the pricetag, way under a DSLR at less than $300. makes it very appealing. I don't think twice about throwing it into my bag and heading out the door.   Next it has a 18x optical zoom lens which is the equivalent of 28-504 ! As you know, a camera is only as good as the glass you have on it (lens) and in this case Panasonic teamed up with Leica and it has a Leica lens which accepts filters and attachments as well.  I always shoot with a polarizer on it.  It's the closest i'll  EVER come to owning a Leica!

Of course by now it's already obsolete, they change models faster than I can keep up so I think the replacement for it is now the FZ-40 which has a 24x zoom 14.1 MP and video and a few new features.  If you are considering a camera in this category I can't recommend this one highly enough, it has served me well.

1/125       ISO100    f 4.2

1/500      ISO 200    f 5.6

Just look at the incredible detail on these dragonflies

1/320      ISO 200      f 4.2

Let's give the girl a hand

1/160      ISO 100      f 4.2

Can you see the butterfly within the dragonfly?

1/400     ISO 160  f 5

1/250      ISO100    f 5

1/250     ISO100    f 5.6

I love close-up nature shots

1/200    ISO 125     f 4

1/250    ISO 100  f 5

One last look

1/200    ISO 100    f 4.5

Can you see the lady wearing the sunhat?

1/40      ISO 400     f 3.6

Ferry arriving in Ocracoke, N.C.

And now on to the book review.  

My muse is all about photography right now, what with the new camera and all and taking the class at Big Picture Classes with Elisha Snow. So while I was in B&N the other day picking up the latest copy of Artful Blogging, this book jumped off the shelf and into my arms and boy am I ever glad it did!

It is one of the most well written, easy to comprehend books on photography and digital cameras I have come across in a long time.

It covers everything beginning with a breakdown of the camera and it's functions, improving picture taking, design, light, people, nature and post processing. It's also not so technical as to make me read and reread a paragraph , it is written with the average camera user in mind.  Great book. Great inspiration.

Last of all, I wish i could post the picture but alas it is copyrighted- but I invite all of you to jump on over here to see a picture my brother Andrew submitted into a photography contest at BetterPhoto.com and received the editor's choice award! WooHoo!

They also have a lot of cool looking classes i just may have to look into in the future.  Happy shooting!

Follow your bliss!

I'm off to ArtBliss, a new retreat , to meet old and new friends and take some great classes! These are the charms I have made for our "leaf" charm swap. The backgrounds are images of Van Gogh's trees and I have attached patina'd leaves to the back of the charm and wire wrapped Czech glass leaves and flowers to the tops, there are 22 in all, each different. I will post about my adventures as soon as I get back!



All The Comforts Of Home

OK, if you've been following along, you know that before I went back to school I had a business called Comforts Of Home where i made custom quilts.  Well, one of the classes I took while in school was ceramics which rekindled in me a love for all things clay.  The same year that i stopped going to school, my parents retired and moved from New Jersey to Florida.  One of the things that i purchased from them before their move was my Mom's old hobby kiln.  This is when i was making porcelain dolls for everyone and every occassion. 

 But my attention soon turned to historic pottery, predominantly redware. I loved redware. I took every opportunity to study historic pieces, travelling to museums, reading books, anything i could get my hands on.  I even timed a visit to Plimoth Plantation to coincide with our trip to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island so that i could take a pottery workshop there! Through trial and error ( lots of trial and error, there are no how to books out there for redware) I found my way through and soon hit upon a signature look. I formulated my colors and glazes and techniques to give just the appearance I longed for.  My Dad is a woodturner and made some of the wooden molds that i drape my plates over.  Soon after i began to make some of my own molds for larger pieces.  I started doing shows to sell my work and eventually in 2000 started selling online at Ebay.  From there I created my website.

My husband and I renovated an old store near our home and i moved my studio in and began working there in 2002.  I enjoyed everything about what I was doing and the ideas flowed.   Time would disappear while I was there. 

I prided myself in making original designs with lots of historical flavor and would get so annoyed and discouraged to see others copy my pieces. I guess that's what's happens when you put your work out there on the net as so many artists have found. But I had a loyal following and was very grateful for everyone's support.  One of my original ideas was that i would do patriotic pieces and fire them in the kiln on the 4th of July each year. These pieces all were marked with my original Fire-Works signature. It was the only time i would do patriotic themed pieces.

 My pottery actually carried us through a dark time when we had the fire at our restaurant in Nov of 2003 until we reopened in April of 2004.

 I continued to work in my studio along with the restaurant until 2008 when my second grandchild was born.  My daughter could no longer work in the office with the 2 children ( my grandaughter would come to work with her, but 2 would be too hard to do).  I couldn't do both anymore either. Pottery takes a considerable chunk of time that i no longer had.

Feel that wind blowing again?  What did John Lennon say "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans"?  I have always loved that saying,  just never expected it to be my theme song!!

If you were to go into my studio this day, you would find pieces of pottery, drape molded trenchers and plates and other goodies just sitting there on the table awaiting my return!

I had to find a new creative outlet, one that would allow me to work a little here and there , leave and come back to it and not lose the piece as I would with pottery.

I started to learn jewelry techniques and am expanding on my skills all the time. I have learned lampworking, metalsmithing, cast and fused glass. I have 5 kilns to my name.

This is where you came in...with my first post, here on this blog in June,  "just who do i think I am?" 

In recapping my life thus far i have found out certain things.

• I Love all things historical
•  I love glass in all it's forms, mosaics, lampwork, glass glazes on clay, glass enamels on metal, fused glass, stained glass, roman glass, czech glass,  sea glass, you name it, glass wins me every time!
• I have to be authentic, original
• I love to learn
• I. have. to. create. something. all. the. time.
• I am strong. determined. ambitious.

Now to take everything I know and find my direction!

P.S. I had a small epiphany last night after writing this post. I started to see very clearly why I am finding myself  unsure of my direction. My husband has questioned whether I may be in the wrong medium. I considered that as well but I think it might be more this- as i look back over everything I have done, with each endeavor I started with an idea, a vision, a passion.  I did all the legwork myself, teaching myself what i needed to know and finding my way through all my ideas. 
 With jewelry it has been just the opposite. I have started with classes, instructions in techniques and all the technical aspects of the trade.  I am struggling to find my own way with this medium.
The one series that I did that was original work of mine, Vintage Metamorphosis, I created in 2008 and had copyrighted in March 2009.  I want what i had with all the other work that I have done, a look of my own, identifiable as my own, not just as a student of someone else. Perhaps this will require nothing more than what i gave to everything else, time and effort. I used to have a lot more time to "just be" in my studio. I think that is what is most needed here. Time alone in my studio to think through ideas and find my own way again. With this medium or maybe even another, who knows? That is where my muse resides and I trust she will guide me yet again.

Backstory Next Chapter

I had hoped to complete all of my backstory during the course of the summer, but if I plan on keeping that promise to myself I have a lot of catching up to do!

When I last wrote I spoke of changes afoot.  I decided that I wanted to pick up a few classes at a local university, some things that would help me take my design ability up a notch or 2. So I enrolled as a "non-traditional" student and signed up for 2 classes, Color Theory and principles of Design.  I figured I could apply both of these to my quilt design. The year was 1990 and my son was just 19 mos old and my daughter was in elementary school. I would drop her off, head up to school ( an hour away) and be back in time to pick her up. 

 As it turned out, these were the best 2 starter classes I could have chosen, I LOVED them!  At the end of the semester, my professor approached me and said" I would like to see you apply to go out for the Fine Art program, I think you have what it takes to be really successful.  "Who Me? Are you talking to me? Really????  It would entail getting a portfolio ( Oh yes, say it's true!) together of my work and submitting it for review along with the application.   Happily I was accepted.
The thing that separated the Art degree from a Fine Art degree was the degree of work involved! Each semester I had to do an independent study that i received no credit for but which was required.  My Area director as he was called, told me he would like to see me advance my design ability by either making non traditional quilts or make traditional quilts in a non traditional way.  What??? He suggested I sew quilts out of paper or something like that.  Uhh, I don't think so, not for me. But I pondered the suggestion over the summer and came up with an idea of my own. I would make quilts out of my own handmade paper. 

Transforming from traditonal to non traditional

In those days not much was available concerning handmade paper and the books that i had to search and learn from were very old and very few.   Step by step i experimented with different materials,  tweaking and refining my methods until I found what worked.  My first piece looked like a sheet of dryer lint!  Once I hit on the process I was off and running. The designs and ideas were just flowing through me and i couldn't realize them fast enough.

At the end of my second year in school, my area director told me he felt I deserved a show of my own and arranged for me to meet with the gallery curator who agreed. I was set to have a show of my own at the start of the new school year in the university gallery.

Please forgive the quality of these pix as they are scans of the originals taken at that time.

It was my so called 15 minutes of fame. The local TV stations came and interviewed me, articles were written in the local papers. I was entering shows and winning ribbons, it was all very exciting. And very exhausting. I was being torn between following my ambitions and keeping my attentions on my young family.

I wasn't willing to compromise on anything.  I was trying to juggle being the perfect mother, wife, housewife and artist.  It was only a matter of time before I hit the proverbial breaking point.  I was set to start my 6th semester when I came to the decision to stop going to school. It was 1993, My son was about to turn 4 and would only have one year before he was in school full time and I felt I was going to regret not being home with him more.  It wasn't the amount of time I was attending school, it was the demands to do all the extra work. I was distracted half the time with projects and reports and homework so that even when i was here i really wasn't all here with them.  It was one of the hardest decisions i have ever made in my life and to this day a part of me regrets the decision i made. Not because i chose my family over my own ambitions, but because when i was there I felt i was in my element, I belonged there. I belonged to be doing what i was doing. I was good at it. I left school with a 4.0 GPA.

I continued to learn and create on my own. I was a member of the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Old Town Alexandria and was juried into many shows, winning ribbons and a place in what was known as the Bin Gallery there.  Every month a friend of mine from school and i would go out there, work the jurying process for our membership and come back home the same day.  I did handmade paper, silkscreen prints, Polaroid image transfers, art quilts, Ukrainian eggs, & porcelain dolls. I went into the schools and taught what i knew, handmade paper and Ukrainian eggs to classes from second grade to high school. I always taught my children any new skill I had acquired.  Both of them won acclaim with their image transfers and photography.

It wouldn't be long before the winds of change would blow through my life again.

Backstory -continued

The loose definition of a backstory is this: the experiences of a character or the circumstances of an event that occur before the action or the narrative.  A prequel. The history behind a situation.

So, I guess that's what I'm doing here, giving all this background info on my life for 1- to let you the reader know more about who i am and 2- to help me remember from whence i come and help me to see clearer where i am headed.

That being said, I will move now to the next stage, the college years.  The most memorable parts of my first college career in the nursing program was submitting a design for the t-shirts to be worn by the health technologies division during the field day events and being chosen.  I also founded a newsletter aptly named "Nurses Notes". I was spending all of my free time taking the 35mm camera that i received for my high school graduation and going on photo adventures.  Everytime I got extra money I bought photo equipment, developing supplies, paper, film etc. Remember the Christmas lists i told you about? Now it was lenses and filters.  I even squeezed in a class on sundays at the college in photography. I was in love!  This was my medium. 

I remember sitting on campus, waiting to head to my next class, anatomy and physiology II where we were to dissect a cat and identify parts when I spotted a group of students, giant black portfolios in hand, heading to their class. I wanted to be them.  So I went home that evening and over the dinner table told my parents I wanted to quit nursing and go for Marketing, Art and Design. A hush fell and my parents thought for a moment , looked at each other and then proceeded to persuade me to finish nursing, after all I was halfway to getting my RN. With that i could go anywhere and always find a job.  And they were right, so finish I did.  To this day I maintain my license.

That's me, 1979

Shortly thereafter while on vacation here in Chincoteague, I met my husband and after graduating and taking my state boards I moved to Virginia and was married a year and a half later. My parents were right, down here I would have never gotten a job in a marketing art and design field in those days. In fact they were so short of nurses that my first job was as a nursing supervisor at a nursing home. From there I tried the health dept and the hospital where i was a charge nurse of a very busy med /surg floor until the birth of my daughter 5 years later.  All during this time I taught myself to quilt and do other needlearts and crafts and always had a project that I was working on.  I attempted to return to work when she was 13 months old but that only lasted 5 months as child care here was virtually non existant at the time and babysitters were too unreliable.  But I had a problem, I had always worked, always had my own money, and I didn't like "being dependent".  What to do?

You know, a creative mind can be a dangerous thing when left alone! One day while food shopping I picked up a new magazine called Country Sampler.  I came home and read through cover to cover and promptly called the editor directly at the time, Mark Nichols, to ask "how does a person get into this magazine?" he asked what i did and I told him quilts. He told me he was trying to find someone who did quilts to add to the magazine. PERFECT!  All I had to do was send in $575. for a years' worth of advertising, the same ad for 3 issues, send the quilts with the written copy and they would photograph them in a room setting.  Great! Now where am i going to come up with an extra $575. to do this with?  I wasn't in the habit of borrowing money but my muse was screaming "you've got to do this!"  I called my grandfather, explained the situation, he agreed to send it to me and i told him if it didn't work out i would go back to work to repay my debt.  I called my state tax office and applied for a tax number, picked a name and when my husband came home from work I announced to him " I'm going into business!"  Everyone thought I was nuts. " what do you know about running a business?" I don't know but I'll do it.  And so i did. The year was 1984 and Comforts of Home was born and i made custom quilts and continued to advertise with them for over 4 years until the influx of cheap quilts from china and other places made it so that i couldn't compete. I couldn't even buy the fabrics for what they were selling a finished quilt for!   It was also during this time that my husband and i purchased an old run down restaurant (1985)  spending a year renovating and opening in May of 1986.  Again i felt the tug between what I wanted to be doing ( my quilt business) and devoting myself to helping get his dream of the ground.

As with so many women,  a recurring theme in my life is choosing between my own ambitions and dreams and those of my loved ones. Devoting my time to them or me?  I always wanted to be a stay at home mom and when i chose to, it was an unpopular thing to do.  But to have a cottage industry, to be home with my children raising them AND to be able to follow my dream was a perfect combination.  I designed quilts using graph paper and prismacolor pencils (no computers with fancy graphics and quilt design programs back then!)and put fabrics together and worked while the kids napped (my son was born in 1989) , wrote my ads and created a brochure and it really fulfilled me. You see, Marketing , Art and Design.  I felt very blessed to have this but it was apparent- change was a comin'.

Flashback

It was late 1960's early 1970's.  There is a picture of me with peasant top, bellbottom jeans and "frizzed hair" the style of the times, I would braid my hair in as many braids as i could and then let it dry and unbraid it for effect.  Yeah, I was cool.  Artist in training.  I stood in the picture amongst my best friend and siblings, all who looked quite "normal". My Nanny cringed at my independence and free thinking.  She would tap me on my bare belly when I wore short shirts and very low bell bottoms and lecture me about how I looked.  It didn't matter. I knew who I was then and it didn't matter to me what anyone thought.  Boy those were the days!

In junior high we had all the required classes to take in a specific order, the usual curriculum, plus the girls had home economics (sewing and cooking) and the boys had woodshop. I loved home ec. we all had to sew an apron, mine was a purple calico with a heart shaped pocket with the word love embroidered on it. It was one of several chosen to be on display during a PTA luncheon for all the Mom's. ( my apron round robin friends will enjoy this)  Invaluable lessons were learned in those classes and I feel sorry for today's students who because of budget cuts and other reckless decisions don't get to experience this.

Then came freedom.  We could choose what we wanted to pursue further. well, I wanted woodshop. The times were just starting to change and it was a whole new experience to let a girl into woodshop.  The first day of the new semester, I was on my way excitedly to class when I was met at the door by the teacher, my guidance counselor and another student, a boy.  well it seems they overbooked the class and a choice had to be made. I knew as they all stared at me as they told me of the dilemma that they expected me to bow out gracefully.  Sorry fellas, not happenin. So it was decided to flip a coin, i won and promptly excused myself and went in to take a seat in class.

My mother loves to tell the story of how at Christmas break, all the boys got off the bus with a jewelry box they had proudly made for their Mom's for Christmas. Me? I got off the bus with an end table!  I loved woodshop and continued to take it until I went to high school where it was no longer offered.  In addition to the end table, I made a coffee table, 3 legged stool,  a reproduction of the art stools in our art class, a baseball bat on the lathe for my brother, bowls and mini woodturned vases.  I spent every available minute in that shop, even skipping lunch to work there.

At home I was embroidering on my jeans, making candles and in general probably driving my family crazy with my next "project"

My muse was loud and strong and I followed her with conviction.

In high school things changed though. The art teacher was intimidating, you could hear him yelling all the way down the hallway. It was a known fact that he only liked students with "real" talent, so i never signed up for any art classes. I would walk down the art hall, with the metalsmithing studio and the art studio and wish i was in there. I envied all those students who were. But I didn't feel "good enough" for the class.

OK, so i'll pursue that nursing thing instead. I got on the college prep track, became a candy striper in my free time and set my sights on my future.

In my first year of high school I was grounded for 2 weeks for spending the night at a friends' house so that i could go see the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was told i couldn't go and I went anyway.

So I spent my prison time painting the ceiling in my room. My bedroom had a dormered ceiling and i painted a scene of the Emerald city with the yellow brick road on one side and the hookah smoking caterpillar on the toadstool with Alice and all the beautiful flowers on the other all with my acrylics.

I still wore my independence proudly, making clothes that were my own style, wearing my hair the way I wanted but my muse was being silenced. Little by little her voice was growing more faint.  I started to conform. I was growing up right?

So here I am, all grown up, desperately trying to find my muse again, needing to follow her on MY path. I know I am heading in the right direction. This blog is my connection to her. There are moments now when i can hear her screaming in my ears but the words are still undecipherable. I have faith though. I am just so grateful to know she hasn't left me completely.

Crayola Moments

There are few things in childhood as pleasant to remember as a brand new box of Crayola crayons. So full of promise, all those sharp points, perfect for outlining and then filling in, bringing a simple black skeleton of a picture to life with all the imagination of a young child.

Who am i kidding? I STILL love a new box of crayons, this one pictured here is mine, Oh yeah, I said that I bought it for the grandkids to use but in truth....mine. And yesterday i got to use them, legitimately. I had high hopes of coming home from work in the morning and doing a little picture taking and uploading, posting here on my blog and then getting ready to return to work having fulfilled a little creative urge.

It was during the picture taking in my garden that my grandaughter spotted me and wanted to come to "Nanny's" house. Well, wanting soon turned to wailing and so the plans changed. How could I refuse????

"Can I color?" Sure you can. "will you color with me" I'd love to!

When I think back on my childhood, art and creativity was always an important part of who I was. The story in the family goes like this.. when i was about my grandaughters age, 3, I am told that when i met my Aunt Elaine i promptly told her that I was going to be a nurse and an artist when I grew up. I remember waking up in the morning and playing with colorforms in my bed. Not the kinds you see now, but the originals, the ones that just had colored shapes with which you had to build your own pictures. As I mentioned earlier, a new box of crayons and a beautifully illustrated coloring book was a treat.

At Christmas we were told we could ask for something special, not like kids nowadays whose lists are endless with mega electronics and everything that goes with them, no we could pick something special and then maybe a few smaller things. My list ALWAYS had some form of art supply that i HAD to have! There was the year i got REAL artists oil pastels and a REAL artists' easel and canvases. Then there was the REAL wooden artists' box complete with REAL oil paints and turpentine and linseed oil in the small glass bottles. Can you smell that? That's the smell of a REAL artist! Next came the acrylics and the watercolors and the calligraphy sets and pens with nibs and the ever exotic India ink. There was the year of the battery operated pottery wheel which was great until I tried to actually put my hands on the clay and form something, the pressure slowed the wheel to a complete stop. One day I will get a REAL wheel I promised myself! There was sewing, and cutting and pasting and saving everything in sight because "I can make something out of that, Mom!" There was no place that we went that i didn't inevitably come back with something that i was going to "make something" out of. Not much has changed but I'll leave that for another post!

I always wanted artist lessons, not something a young growing family can afford so i signed up for a program at a local library when i was about 8. It was on Saturday mornings. The last project we did was to illustrate a story. Each of us had a part, I don't remember the story but the part I had to illustrate was the melting of the ice cream mountain! Perfect! I had just the pastels for the job! I think I used everyone I had, colorful melting ice cream mountain. We were actually critiqued and i remember the instructor told me my technique was like Salvadore Dali and i should research him.

The first real validation I felt as an artist was when my Aunt Elaine asked me to do an oil painting for her. Really? Yes, she wanted something Jackson Pollack-esque. Just go outside and splatter brightly colored oil paints on a canvas. Are you sure? That's all? But the cool part was she actually hung it in her living room, for like a long time, not just to make me feel good. It was really part of her decor. Thank you Aunt Elaine!

So my point with all this rambling? As children we seem to instinctively KNOW who we are and what we're meant to do. It's as we get older that we lose our way, we let the everyday get in the way of our true purpose. We let the voices creep into our head telling us, "you can't do that, you're a grownup now, you have responsibilities" " what makes you think you are an artist?" Stop in the middle of the day and color? Nonsense.

Well, I say raise your box of crayons, declare "I am an artist" and toast to a hefty dose of nonsense!

Just Who Do I Think I Am???

"Just who do you think you are young lady?" I remember hearing that as a child , most likely after having said something smart or seemingly disrespectful to an elder, and clearly at the time the answer was "a smart ass kid who was getting too big for her britches", but I would promptly answer "nobody" for fear of what would come next.

Well, I just turned 50 at my last birthday and I find myself asking this very question of myself. I feel as if I have had to redefine myself for the umpteenth time. Every stage brought with it a whole new definition of who i was or was supposed to be. I am now at a point in my life where i feel sort of lost. I hope to find my way through journaling here and with the support of dear friends by my side i know i will arrive at an answer. I firmly believe that I can't know where it is i am going until I look back over where I've been. So I will look back over the different points in my life that have brought me to where i am and hopefully along the way i will rediscover who I truly am and where I need to be going.