ok ... now i'm back ...

i went to the bahamas with mr.e.beck.artist .... the week before that i took the three wee e.beck.ones to hilton head for a week with cousins and grands .... now i'm back .... and it is raining ... and my toes (with lovely blue polish) are cold .... and i have ninety seven pounds of laundry to do .... and i've played 34 games of monopoly deal (favorite card game) with little.e.beck.artist instead of trying to get my ducks in a row for a post-vacation get-life-back-in-gear ... what if i don't want to be back in gear ....do i have to unpack when i just want to go back to the beach ... any beach ... and,no, i don't have my next beach vacation planned ..... what if i prefer life with soggy bathing suits and sandy flip flops?

tomorrow is monday ... i hope to paint ... but i might just sit by my ott light in my flip flops....

so ... tell me what you've been doing in my absence ... in the hopes of getting me back in gear ....

jammies on the beach, family togetherness and an onion volcano .... no art ... unless that onion counts as photographic artsy brilliantness .....

... apologies to the art fans ... no art blog for you at the moment ... i'm a travelling girl ....

just a peep into my quirky life .... here are my toes on the beach at hilton head .... i was wearing my pajamas ..... jammies on the beach were ok....it was early in the morning ... like nine or ten o'clock or so ....
hard working mr.e.beck.artist didn't come with us on the trip ... he was working (someone has to) .... but it's just as well, he's not partial to that whole make-your-family-wear-matching-clothes thing .....

that's my mom, dad, a brother, his wife, his three kids, my three kids and me.beck.artist .... i'm the one in green ....

and here .... the tallest onion volcano ever ... nine layers ... and it stayed lit forever ...

i tell you .... an onion volcano is definitely one of the finer things in life ....

i now have four commissions that i am OH-so-slowly plugging away at ... i could get more painting done if i'd just stay home, huh!?

what have you been doing instead of what you are supposed to be doing?

does your family have vacation peculiarities?

do you ever wear matchy matchy with anyone? how did i not outgrow that? it was not my idea (this time) but i also did not protest a bit ....

making time ...

you can't really make time ... you get what you get .... it's what you do with what you've got that you can tweak .... i've been un-tweak-able ... i've been tweak-less ... i've been not getting done what i WANT to get done ... when i don't set aside at the beginning of the week, the fifteen or twenty hours that i'm going to be artsy, it just doesn't happen ... all the nooks and crannies of my time get filled up with other things .... fine things... happy things ... busy things ... but not art things ... 

usually when i'm less artful than what i want to be, my studio needs cleaning ... and WOW it really did .... i spent time cleaning it up .... which is always a PSA on what procrastination can do for you ... i clean, i paint a canvas ..... i clean, i decide to carve an eraser into my own rubber stamp... i clean, i search for more erasers to carve ... i clean, i dream of all the stamps i can create to add to my art .... i clean, i find yet another project started and unfinished .... i probably get more art done while i'm cleaning than when i'm not ... cause i'm filling in all the nook and cranny moments .... 

my best thing i do for me is pottery ... i do it once a week ... two favorite girlfriends are in my class ... it's fabulous .... i love that class ... and it is scheduled artsy time each week ... plus, plus, plus .... 

here's some current pottery ... since i just couldn't make myself take before and after pics of the mess of a studio ... why embarrass myself like that, huh?

below is a second angle .... so you can see three of them are bowls .... two are platters ....
so .... the day i brought these five (above) pieces home , i was talking to mr.e.beck.artist on the phone ... he asked how my day was ... great .... how was pottery ... fabulous ... did you bring any pieces home ... (he's well trained to ask the right questions) ... yes, i'm bringing home five .... do you like them (very well trained) ... i think i love some, but i know i like four out of five .... fast forward to that night, the pieces are on the kitchen counter (because it seems like i'm eight and really don't like putting things away when there's a counter just right there waiting to hold something for an hour, a day, a week, a year) ..... mr.e.beck.artist saw my five pieces, picked one up and said, so, why don't you like this .... ahem .... i DO like that .. oh, i thought you said you didn't like one ... i don't ... but that's not the one ... so ... now i know which one HE doesn't like ... he backpedalled and said he did like it but was just guessing that i didn't ..... not a fair question to you, because you can't touch them feel them, study them ... heck ... i'm not even giving you five close ups .... but, wanna guess which one i don't love ... or even like?

moving on ... i did a big piece ... much larger than usual ... planning for it to be a table centerpiece .. more decorative than functional ... though it is functional and dishwasher safe ....

it is very textured and has five different glazes and two kinds of clay .... and currenty is sitting on my family room coffee table .... though i sometimes cringe for its safety there ....

see the penny and the quarter? i wasn't sure the penny would show up on the floor .... but that give you a size idea ..... it's about 16 inches across, i think ....

and here below, is more of my usual size bowl .... see how much bigger the penny and quarter are?

this one has two kinds of clays, marbled with blue glaze throughout the clay ..... and is probably 8 to 10 inches across ....

i count blogging as art time .... since i'm generally blogging art ....but that's assuming that i've made the time to make art to blog about .... such a little circular problem there...... 

off to paint ... or clean my studio ... or, you know, walk the dog .....