what does your home say about you?

i'm doing a house renovation ... not too big .. but not small by any stretch ... the tricky bit is building stairs to the attic .... which was just a pull down .... to me, that's what made it seem like a big deal .... you're going to cut a hole how? where? what? .... but ... we are one month in now, and i can see that we've made the right decision to renovate (the whole process was mr.e.beck.artist driven .... i was dragging my feet for a few years) ..... so now i'm doing things like buying toilets and counters and light fixtures and " why on earth do we need THAT many knobs?" ... and why does knobs start with a k? i'm most excited about colors ... i kind of want some whacked out colors in my house ... lots of colors ... and bright ones .... raise your hand if you know my favorite color.... and should that bold and bright be my kitchen? my family room? .... i hope i'm brave enough to follow through on loads of colors ... that i don't freak out and paint something taupe ... even the word is ugly! ..... so anyway, an astonishing number of hours a week are spent thinking about house things ... and clearly it is reflected in my art .... this house is a rocket ship .... your starting spot for a life of adventure ... what does your home say about you? (just don't tell me it's taupe)

informal poll ... do you like sushi?

here is the sunlit picture of the fish ... yesterday's version was off color .... 

my new favorite thing is to let mr.e.beck.artist name my paintings ... he named this one florida keys ... har .... 

so ... for day two of a fish picture, let's talk fish ... raw fish .... i had sushi for lunch ... was actually celebrating a girl friend's birthday ..... most of us ate sushi ... 2 could not, would not, oh my gosh NO sushi .... 

when i told my family that i'd had a sushi lunch ALL of them made gagging sounds, rolled their eyes into the back of their heads and acted like i'd just made THEM eat bugs .... 

so...you? what do you think? are you a sushi eater? or does it seem as bad as eating bugs?

fish wish

oh heavens! this picture did not come out true color at all .... it is much brighter and turquoisier .... but i took it just now in my dim family room in the brown rental home ... so any color at all is thanks to photo editting ... but clearly, not quite enough! .... i'll retake tomorrow .... i hope! ... 

anyhoo ... excuses, excuses .... the bulk of my day was spent in allison's studio painting .... i finished three paintings .. all of which had been in progress for a few days now .... 

this fish, above, is the one that i put on my inventory list a week or two ago ... yup, before it even existed it was on the show inventory .... oops! so it goes .... i've only known about this upcoming show for a year and a half ... 18 months and i still had a deadline crunch .... clearly, planning ahead wasn't meant to be for me ... 

and again, on that planning ahead thing, i never took pics of my 3 new paintings in daylight ...even though it was a GORGEOUS day here ... so you'll have to return tomorrow to see more ... 

if you could wish on a fish, what would your wish be?

sometimes it is hard to come up with a clever, catchy title for a blog post ... but if i don't put something up here at the very first, i forget to ..

the day started with a lovely walk in a balmy, yet damp, 62 degrees .... and it just got colder and wetter all day long ....but no dampening of my spirits, cause it's wednesday .... and on wednesdays i go to pottery (good wednesdays, anyhoo) .... and today in pottery i learned something new .... or newish ... i'd done it before, but not recently enough to wrap my brain around it without instruction .... click here to see some of my pottery from the last couple years ..... today i did a slab rolled tray ... and then used glycerin to make the underglaze slip slidey (that's the technical term, i'm sure) .... i did an orange background, green and yellow dots, and a stylus to do swirly bits (another techno term) swirly bits through the dots .... quite happy .... procrastination played a big part in my morning ... i got 8 bisqueware pieces back ... that i could have glazed ... but ... ya know? i just wasn't feeling it .... so next week, i'll have 11 bisque pieces to glaze ... oh wait ... i'll be in florida next week ... when will i get to the glazing!???

after pottery i had an important girl friend lunch ... edamame appetizer .... my love of avocado ... 

after lunch, i had some art time in my basement... the procrastiation fish .... still ....

after art time, i had a meeting with my groovy contractor ... hvac, windows, plumbing, steel beams .... 

after the contractor i had a meeting with a very supportive english teacher... organizing ideas, editing, those pesky book reports .....

after the english teacher, the kids needed donuts ... half glazed, half choco frosted .... 

so that's how my day rolled ... easy peasy lemon breezy, not to freezy, a pinch of squeezy ... 

didja notice i had two art times? pottery in the morning ..... painting in the afternoon .... and tomorrow i have blocked out some art time as well .... so even on this damp and dreary day, things are sunshiney around here ..... (did you click that link? it's my favorite song ... and has been since 1985 .... saw them in concert ... concert is a loose term, i saw them live in a bar in new haven.... and i call my littlest one "sunshine" all the time .... and sing this to her ... all the time .... and did you hear the bearded lump of guy sing it on american idol? ...horrifying! ... )

so...your day? easy peasy lemon squeezy sunshine? or dreary, weary, bleary, blah?

one week from today? driving to florida with a car full of art ... for a show ... anyone want to come?

commissions are an astonishing thing ... they are an exercise in procrastination and faux-deadline-self-trickery .... and then my usual "keep it in the family room and study it for a while" method of critique doesn't apply .... this piece was commissioned a while ago .... i put it off for no good reason ... i finished it today ... and now it is already gone from my life ... our relationship was fleeting ... at least i snapped a photo .... i've done a couple of commissions that, relieved to be done, i deliver without photo evidence of their existence .....so ... here's a painting that is officially out in the world now ..... don't grow attached ... love it, and let it go ....this next one, however ... feel free to grown attached .... it too has a deadline .... that is not a faux deadline ... but the deadline is being mocked and ignored anyway! .... next week, i have a show in florida with my mom ... i drive on tuesday, help hang the show on wednesday ... and the opening is on thursday .... this piece below .... is unfinished!!! but it is listed in my show inventory!!... the inventory was due last week ..... tricky thing that .... 

the art show is called interpretations ... and we have some themes ... and we both painted our interpretations of each word .... this one is meant to be fish ... so ... unless it is the elusive invisible fish, i still have some work to do ..... 

next week, i'll blog from florida and give you some interpretation shots .... for now, hold your breath til i get this painting done .... or ... wait ... don't hold your breath ... i don't think i can get to it until thursday ... and that's just too far off ... you might turn blue .... 

i have pottery tomorrow .... and a lunch date ... and a meeting .... all crammed into not enough time ... what have you got going on?

finished a piece today .... and toilet news ... and pursuing happiness....

i'm living in a rental house while we do a not-that-small-but-we-say-it-is-smallish-to-delude-ourselves-renovation .... the only thing left in my real house is my art studio in the basement ... it hardly looks like a studio cause everything that didn't get moved for whatever reason, was stashed down there ... so ... big mess ... but, still useful art space .... when we planned the reno and the move to the big house of brown, i imagined myself dithering away my happy days in that basement studio ... but instead, i spend most of my big art days in allison's basement .. which is perfect ... and i just spend shorter spurts in my own space ...that no hvac thing in this overly cold winter is not working for me ...... but today? today was how i imagined this "keep the studio" thing would work ... after a morning of shopping (one toilet, two bathroom sinks, a kitchen sink, a dishwasher, faucets, a microwave, some lighting ..... who knew that *i* could be a shopper... wait .. that's another post....) ... after a morning of shopping, i went and worked in my studio ... and it was great .... and then i picked up little.e.beck.artist ... and brought her BACK ... so i finished my painting chores while listening to her happy chitter chatter loveliness .... it was great .... really great .... just what an-artist-renovating-her-house-and-still-working-in-the-basement-cause-the-brown-rental-house-might-be-giving-her-hives wants .... 

here's the painting that i finished today ... 

... pair .... a pair of pears ... pears in love .... lean on me .... you are the pear of my eye .... be very, very pearful ..... i'm not sure what i'll name it ...though i will name it in the next thirty minutes or so ... i always do before i load them to my flickr .... you can read about the background in yesterday's post .... and i do think this one is going to get donated to the school auction .... unless i make one i like better before then .... 

tra la la ... i'm going to allison's tomorrow to paint .... what happiness will you pursue tomorrow?

blue and green and this and that ....

here's a groovy background that i've done this week .... it has all sorts of groovy papers ...then acrylic washes ... and then some acrylic stamping and stenciling .... i'm not certain about the foreground ... but am considering pears .... or .... well ... pears ... oh ... or maybe a branch ... or pears ... i think pears in love actually ....and i think i'm donating this one to an auction for my kids' school ....

here's a detail of the above background ... i'm showing it specifically to blogger very.mary .... she sent my some tickets ... with a tag on them that said Enjoy! .... i stuck the tag, and the string, in this collage ....can you see it?

and in this one below, you can see the tickets that lovely very gave very me .... well... i can see them ... can you?
what else can you see? let's play eye spy .... 

friday night blogging ... we're living large now ....

mona lisa is flying off to florida .... just for a short jaunt .. no luggage, you see .... and she's just wearing her smallest butterfly wings ... so surely it's just a small trip ... 

this mona piece was done specifically for the topic FLORIDA ... for the show i'm in next month ... 

and then this one ... was not specifically done for the show in early february ... perhaps it is for the show in late february? regardless .... it was done because i was in an orange mood ... which is, clearly, better than being in a blue mood .... 

i spent most of my day today at allison's house painting ... two days in a row there because my studio is MUCH too cold ... though it did get up into the sixties today .... but once that basement studio is cold? BRRRRRR .. it stays cold!

so ... at allison's, i worked on four canvases ... the florida mona, i finished yesterday ... the nest, i finished today ... and then, the other canvases, i will finish .. um ... soon?

what's your next art project?? mine is a turquoise canvas .... 

aw man .........

i did art today ... 

at allison's ... 

i finished a painting ... 

and i left it ... 

at allison's .... 

bummer! 

so ... i am having a photo-free blog post .... 

but will tell you ... 

the painting i did will go in the art show i am doing with my mom early next month ... 

the show is called interpretations .... 

and one of our interpretations?

florida ... 

today, i finished florida ... 

and ... in case you were wondering .... 

i would file my florida painting in this flickr set ....

...so ... 

due to my ditziness ... 

you only get a clue ... 

not a photo of the actual painting ... 

the good news? 

i'm going back to allison's tomorrow to paint some more .... 

and will most certainly finish another painting .... 

and will most certainly remember to bring at least ONE of them home ... 

good thing my head is attached .... 

i might lose it, otherwise...

have you done anything foolish today ... 

...enough said ....

click here if you don't quite get why this makes me so happy .....

red and tall

yesterday was six juicy pears ... today is one extremely tall pear .... at the peak of ripeness, i believe ..... 

it is on pages from a music appreciation book ... that i have put onto a canvas .... jeannie, i used up all the music you had given me, so i was thrilled when i found a big fat book with a nice combination of text and music .... the pear is from the index of an atlas ... so it has a long list of places ... chocktawhatchee, florida being one of them ... i just looked .... this is currently hanging in my temporary house's family room ...on a nail that was already there ... just waiting for a tall skinny juicy pear of c cities .... 

considering all my deadlines ... and the fact that i have two commissions ... and a number of 18 inch squares i am meant to be working on for the upcoming show.... this pear may LOOK like i'm working hard ... but it is really just a cleverly camouflaged bit of procrastination ... again .... 

so it goes ... i'm not doing the art on my to do list ... but i'm doing art ... 

pears anyone?

juicy, juicy, juicy, juicy, juicy and and so juicy ...

i have a really great family .. my newest painting was met with remarkable enthusiasm .... the twins each had a basketball game this evening ... and by the time we got home it was late and everyone was a titch tired .... but, this rainbow of juicy pearness was propped up in the kitchen ... and girl.beck.artist saw it immediately... "oh mommy! i LOVE this .." ... the mr.e.beck.artist had nice things to say ..... which was particularly nice since he'd recently told me that i needed to move on to my next thing .... grow! change! be different! expand your artistic horizons!  ..... the boy.beck.artist is usually kind of closed mouthed ...but he said he really like it ... and then little.e.beck.artist walked around this bland rental house trying it out on different walls ....."this'll look great in ANY room, mommy ... but especially in the dining room .... " .... 

all that said ... when i painted these pears, i wondered if it was too goofy or gimicky or hokey .... i knew i liked it ... but i wasn't sure anyone else would .... at least my family does.... 

and then ... a titch of an update on my new year plan .... i've now colored in nine days of artistic endeavors for the year ... not bad considering the first five were an artistic desert...... 

so i spent from 10 to 2.30 doing art .... that's a good lump of time ... i worked on some other pieces as well .... come back tomorrow .. i'll have another finished piece for you for sure .... 

what did you do today? did you work on a resolution?

wednesday art

i had pottery today .... hooray for that .... it most certainly counts for my artistic endeavor of the day .... i did three slab rolled plates .... two squares, one rectangle .... and i carved trees into them ... so .. they'll get bisque fired this week ... and next time i go in ( i have to skip next wedn.) i'll have these three and the four from last week to glaze .... if you've never tried pottery before, i highly recommend it .... it's kind of magical that wet damp mud can turn into something so splendid .... here's a peep at some of my pottery from other classes ..... and for those of you who haven't been reading me for the life of my blog, i do pottery for my hobby ... art, collages, canvases, painting ... that's what i'm trying to do as my job .... pottery is a fun extra ... the nice bit about that is that i end up using pottery bits in some of my assemblages ... like this one , or this ... or here's another .... all with ceramic bits giving some dimension and texture to my canvases ...

then i also finished this painting to the right ... and yes, i know ... it looks remarkably similar to other paintings i've done ... here's a whole heart set of paintings on my flickr .... towards the bottom i have loads of heartstrings ... but ... here's another, cause they sell so well ... and i have (not one, but) TWO shows coming up ... and a remarkable lack of art to put in them ...how does that happen ... 

i am doing a two man show in florida .... with my mom! imagine that ... mother/daughter interpretations ... we have a series of words and each of us have a painting to go with the words ... like we both have paintings for blue and fruit and joy ... and such .... so, i have those and then an extra wall of paintings ... so 30 or so paintings? or more? choices to put small canvases in cases .... and an inventory due before january is over ... and ... 

whaddaya know? i signed up for a show that i participated in last year where i sold a good bit ... so ... i need to get cracking on the painting! cause i'm not sure i have enough paintings to cover one show, let alone TWO ... eep! ... and really, if you want me to induce MORE stress on myself, i'll just say it aloud ... type in black and white .... i really need to take a fresh lot of paintings to lola's gallery ... eep! what's a girl to do? well .. a girl should get painting .... 

and that's my plan ... i'm spending the day at allison's tomorrow .... painting the whole time ... i've actually already packed my car up, so dixie the wonder dog and i can get a fast start ... i'm taking six canvases that i have started .... and hope to finish two of them ... ok, three of them? ... and ... happy shack kelly? i'm taking a wee canvas in hope of getting a start on your commissioned piece ... 

OH ... and one more bit of art news in my life ... last post? i asked which monopoly piece you liked best? the potential buyer like the largest one best ... but wished it had a blue border instead of red .. so i've got myself a commission ... a big one ... rah on that!  

so i think that's all of my artsy news, i think ... what's your news? 

rah ... painted the day away ....

i spent about four hours painting today ...not quite the same as what i can get done when i live a stairway away from my studio .... but not bad at all .... i'm staying pretty motivate and working hard while there ...not doing my usual dawdling quite as much ... i think i could be a psychological case study for procrastination .... let's talk about that later .... 

so ... here are some of the things i worked on today .... 

this, below, is a bit of a long turquoise canvas ... i'm doing a heartstring painting on it .... and instead of my usual thin washes and glazes i used super chunky acrylic .... 

i got some groovy texture .... the tricky thing for me is that i want my pieces to sell .... and my heartstring pieces sell so quickly and easily .... but i don't want to just churn out the same thing .... so i try to make them different .... the difference here being the texture .... i so love doing the backgrounds ... did this one not knowing what i was putting on it ... then decided to do the heartstring ... and blobbed on fat paint .... way different effect ... i think i like it ... it was fun to do anyway ... i'll tell you tomorrow if it worked out for me ..

and below are the chunky hearts that are going to be haning from that chunky branch ... i though i'd finish this piece today, but, ya know, i didn't factor in how long the fat paint bits would take to dry .... so ... lots of work, yet alas, no finished pieces .....

and below... more chunky paint ... branch in fact ... once you do one and it turns out cool, you try another .... the disembodied branch bit is where the nest shall sit .... but again ...that pesky drying issue had me slowed down on the art completion ....

look at the floor above here .... lots of paint and mess ... maybe i should redo the studio... including painting the floor ... hmmm ... i'll put that on a list .....

next we have a tree ... and ... yes, you guessed it ... chunky ... think impasto paint ... i think that's what you call it when you don't spread it out smoothly ...... ( i couldn't stand not knowing ... i just looked up impasto ... i was right, spelling and all ) .... this photo is quite indicative of me ... off on the left you can see the diet coke, the mints, and the pink iphone .... not to mention all the other mess! 
and last, i have three monopoly paintings ... all picked up and taken away by a decorator to show a client .... we'll cross our fingers on that one, right?  which one would you buy if your cute decorator brought them to you ..... i know, i know .... most of us don't have decorators ... but just play the game ... which one would you pick and what room would you put it in .....

tomorrow i have pottery and a plan to finish at least one painting .... and do laundry, go to the bank, exercise, buy a space heater for my studio, go to two basketball games, cook a divine healthy dinner, blog, catch up on flickr, read my book club book that i'm woefully behind on ...... i could go on ... but i probably won't get much past pottery done on the list!

happiness to you and yours! doing something artsy ..... 

somehow mondays always turn out to be grand art days ... something about starting fresh off a weekend ....

let's start this blog post with a recap of the weekend .... dessert! .... with two family birthdays in january, it is really all about the desserts ... and how many we can have in as short as possible a time span .... did i tell you that on january 1, in utah, for dinner that first day of the year, my family had ice cream? for dinner ... really ... ice cream .... and it's been one long sugar roller coaster since then ... lots of cakes and cookies and brownies and sundaes and more cookies ... we're cookie people .... so ... before the  art pics from my day, here's my best dessert pic... a banana split:

and on to less caloric pursuits .... the first thing i did in my studio this morning (at 8am!! she says pridefully) was put another layer on each of these four canvases .... here they are flung aside and drying ....
while those 4 18inch squares dried, i worked on this long and lovely canvas ... 10 by 30 inches :
with my extra paint today, rather than just cleaning off brushes and palettes, i painted papers to use on future pieces .... i set the wet paint papers on cut open trash bags ...  if i'm just doing a bit of paper painting, i just put them on the floor under my table ... but i did a bunch today .... 
i was happy with how this long blue canvas turned out .... so i decided to take a picture of all the blues i used on it .... so i have photo documentation at least, should i decide to do something similar again .... plus i just like how that pile of blue looks ...
then ... another long canvas .. with a swath of florida across it .... 
here it is photo cropped ... prior to glazing it a blue ... sky blue actually .... with the intent to actually do something landscapey on it .... 
and here are the two long canvases i've just shown you, as well as two more ... i did all of them this morning .... papered them and glazed them .... tomorrow i'll get some lettering on them, i hope ....
see that long one up there on the right? .... it is 12 inches by 48 inches ... and i used to use it as my DOG gate .... i had it propped across the doorway during the potty training days ... 12 inches tall and it towered over dixie the wonder dog ..... she could get over it now, but only with ingenuity and her grand jumping skills .. she's not even 12 inches tall .... anyway ... the dog door is now going to go back to its original purpose in life and be a painting .... dixie won't mind ... 

then ... my finished piece today .... the red canvas that i posted about last week .... jeannie, i finished it since you were so excited about it!  hope you like it .... or, at least, thanks for paying attention! 
so, 18 inches square .... without a name yet ... i'll work on that .... i'll put it up on flickr in a few minutes and always get a name going for that .... 

so, a recap .... i got to my house and my studio at 8 ... right after dropping my kids off at school .... and my studio is the only sane place in my whole house (we're getting renovated, in case you aren't quite caught up with the life o' me,e) .... the demolition appears to be done ... the kitchen is ripped out down to studs ... stairs have been built to the attic .... a giant hole-that-will-be-a-dormer appeared in the roof .... crazy stuff .... so ... my work pace was different ... i couldn't dawdle and go up to the kitchen for a snack or lunch ... i couldn't go lounge on the couch to check my email ....i could have checked my email, but i didn't! i was trying to be disciplined and productive .. that's a first! .... i drank the soda i'd brought with me, but i didn't even eat the banana i had brought .... so, at a bit before noon, i cleaned up ... really! ... i tidied my space and prepared for tomorrow's artsy endeavors .... i then went home to my brown rental home and my lovely dog .... the dog was confused about such a big walk in the middle of the day, but that might be our new normal....art first, exercise later .... i'm still looking for the routine that's going to work for me these six months .... and lastly, just like in the real house, i put the new art over the fireplace so i could study it ..... so far it is standing up to scrutiny .... 

can you see that my christmas cactus is blooming? that's two christmases in a row .... not bad! .... my rental house mantle is indicative of the rest of the house ... more than a titch dated! 

tomorrow, i plan to be painting by 8 o'clock am ... that's good right? and in tomorrow's post, i'll tell you why i feel like i need to paint 30 paintings in the next two weeks ...i'm not going to .. but i feel like i should .... 

how'd your week start out? 

brownies on friday, sundaes on saturday, cookie cakes on sunday ....

little e.beck.artist turned 8 today ... 

how does time fly so fast ... 

that's all the energy i have to post at the moment ... 

you'd think i could do better than that with all the sugar i've eaten this weekend .... 

three days in a row! rah!

i colored in a third box in my grid of 365 opportunities to do art .... 

here's a titch of what i worked on today ... the same canvases i started yesterday ....

i'm quite happy with both of them ... i can imagine them becoming something ... i might tone down the red a titch .... my color scheme in my own home (real home, rental home, any home) is a hodge podge of colorfulness ... but this one might be too red for most people .... we'll see how i feel about it tomorrow ... 

i'm planning on having an artful day tomorrow .... and then tomorrow night, i am going out with mr.e.beck.artist and some pals ... to celebrate mr.e.beck.artist's birthday ..... how 'bout you ... any good plans? 

(hey mom, mr.e.beck.artist says thanks for the present .... he'll take it to work, i suppose)

two squares filled in ...

two days ago i made a groovy 2009 chart .. and now? 2 boxes are filled in .... i'm not sure why i didn't post yesterday's art yesterday .... life just got away from me, i suppose .... we aren't quite back settled into life from the holidays yet ... 

but ... here are pics of yesterdays art doings:

above is a shot of my primary work space ... it took some major doing to get it cleaned off .. between christmas mess and moving mess, there was not empty surface for me to work on .... but ...
once the space was cleaned, i filled it up ... with three 18 inch square canvases .... that i covered in maps .... this pic, above, is the side of my basement i never show you ... it is not my art side ... it has a tv, a treadmill, some chairs, a dollhouse, some toys ... but at the moment? it just has mess .... i think that is allison's umbrella .. and there's a small footstool with a huge gash across the top ... that i've been meaning to do something spectacular to for .. oh... two years .... anyway ... big ole' mess! 

and here, below ... more mess ....on my working side of the basement ...pitifully, it doesn't even look that messy to me in this picture ... but in real life? just a wreck .... it's been on the long downhill slide since november .... my messes are totally cyclical .... here's a close up of some mess ... it's just piles ... and piles .... and piles ... cause i haven't put anything away in two months .... 
now, above, back to the canvases .... i painted them ... usually when i work like this, it is more in series ... but i did these three quite independently (even washed my brush in between canvases ... i never do that ... i'm always cross contaminating my paint ...)

here are all three ... the red one is red because ... well.. because i told my mom i'd do a red painting for our show .... i don't think i know what is going to be on it ... 
the blue one is going to be oceany ... a fish or multiple fish ....

and this orange one is just cause orange is my favorite right now ... i think i knew what i was going to put on it when i did it ... but now i don't quite recall.... something cool, i hope....

so ... during this whole art process ... i sometimes use a blow drier and hurry up the canvases ... but sometimes i hop on the treadmill .... but i couldn't do that cause i couldn't get to the treadmill .... and sometimes ... this time ... i tidied ... i worked then tidied then worked then tidied ... or ....i might be saying that wrong ...i painted, then worktidied .... then painted ... then worktidied .... 

anyway, i got the other side of the table relatively cleaned up .... so i'm on my way to being productive .... it's interesting trying to figure out a new art routine ... now that i LIVE somewhere (in a rental house) away from my studio (in the basement of the house i'm renovating) i really have to schedule the time i am going to be working .... so far (for all two days) it has worked fine ... it should only get better and easier as i get the place back into complete working order ..... 

so that's my art day ... yesterday ... 

today i didn't go to my studio .... 

wanna know what i did ... it was WAY artsy great fun .... 

i started a pottery class .... 

i've been a potter for eons ... but took last quarter off .... 

it felt just grand to play in the clay today .... oh ... i like the sound of that ... to play in the clay today... too bad it's not may, jay... hey, hey .... 

clearly i'm giddy and bed bound ... 

happy artsiness to you ... tell me what you've been up to ... 

hooray! it's january ....

i just adore the notion of a new year ... let's make a list, a plan, a resolution or two .... 

i have so much to show and say and do ... but i shan't ... i haven't downloaded all the photos ... so i can only do things bit by small bit .... just like lists and plans and resolutions ... bit by small bit ... makes it much easier ... 

so .... those of you who have been reading for a

 bit (or a year) know that i like resolutions ... i like the idea of a BIG idea for the new year .... i like the idea of doing something big or new or different or fun for an entire year ... no lose five pounds (or 25, 55, 85) that's not FUN .... no stop smoking (not that i ever have) that's not big, new OR fun ..... 

so ... i've been having trouble with my resolution .... eat more fruit sounded 

like a really good one ... from a lovely, dear sister in law.... i do like that one ... and it would be a good one ... and i could get my kiddos on board for it ... and i could even get a fruity tooty journal going for it .... 

that was one thought .... 

another thought was .... the kids were talking about resolutions and the little one thought it was like lent, giving something up ... like sweets .... or chocolate .... (one year mr.e did give up french fries, so she's not completely off base) .... so in this conversation boy.beck.artist said he wanted to eat MORE pizza ... i said impossible, he is maxed out on pizza eating already ....but we could keep a pizza journal ... a year dedicated to trying new pizza places, pizza deliveries, and pizza recipes .... we try new crust recipes about every time we make pizza .... no one was interested in this one except the boy who wanted a more pizzaful life .... (why on earth is pizzaful not spellchecking as correct? how should i spell it?) 

the next thought, was a step past the pizza journal and onto a dinner journal .... i'm a HUGE advocate of the family dinner: set the table, all sit down, all eat the same thing, all chitterchat ....so let's document these family moments .... no one else liked that so much either ... fine ... keep thinking ... 

so today, jan. 5th .... just back from utah (oh! such a grand state!) i have time between loads of stinky laundry (ski socks should be disposable, not so expensive and not so easily stunk up).... i finally have the time to consider the resolution .... so .... i browsed last year's resolution ... 100 canvases in 2008 ... and i did more than 100 ... success ... see it all in this flickr site ... or look at this photo mosaic of just a bit of my artsily productive year (artsily should so be a word)

so i made the mosaic and studied the photos of art ... and tried to figure out what made me happy ...what was good ... what worked .... what i should work on .... 

and this is what i came up with:

i made a nest mosaic .... i like this series ... prior to 2008 i hadn't done a nest before ... and i made loads of them .... more than even pictured in this mosaic .... and most of them have sold ... that's good, huh? it means someone else liked them too .... but i think it was the working on them that was good ... making another and another and thinking about them and approaching them in different ways .... that's what was good for me ... so .... 

here you go ... 

are you ready ... 

my resolution .... 

to pick one iconographic image and doing 20 canvases with it .... ok? does that sound good? 

i only picked 20 because i don't know what the image will be ... it might take me a while to find something i want to do 20 times ... right? bananas, hummingbirds, mountains, bees, angels, shoes .... what will it be? we'll have to wait and see on that one ... and in the meanwhile, i still have to do other art work too .... (remind me to tell you in some other blog post just exactly how much art i have on my to do list right now...yikes!!!!)

so ... that was my resolution ... and i was really happy with it because it was going to make me work and grow and think and expand my boundaries as an artist .... and then i saw the grooviest coolest flickr girl .... 

this is her flickr page ... 

this is her gorgeous resolution for this year ... BE .... 

and this was what she did in 2008 .....

she did art SO many days in 2008 .... and i want to be like her ... maybe i DID do art as much as she did last year ... but i want to be able to see it on a colorful happy tidy little page .... so ... tonight, not in a journal, but on a word doc, i made this:

i think it will be absolutely happy and lovely to fill in a box each and every time i have an artsy day .... yippee ... i am SO excited ... almost excited enough to give up that 20 painting set  .... but i won't ... that 20 piece series will be my resolution and filling in boxes will be my joy .... 

and look:

look ... there's my joy right there on the fridge ... ready for me to fill in a square ... already, five days wasted and white .... but tomorrow! look out tomorrow! i'm going to color in a square! 

yippee! i am resolved..... are you?