happiness is ....

happiness is ... that's a seventies thing i think ... didn't we all have tshirts that said "happiness is ___" ... my recollection is of the peanuts' linus ... sitting there with his blanket .... happiness is a thumb and a blanket .... that might have been on a pillowcase ... mom, do you remember that? (we'll see if she's reading) .... or lucy ... happiness is a warm puppy ... and she's hugging on snoopy ... who doesn't look too into it ... right?

i think palmer sondreal was a journalist .... and i think he's trying to tell us to stop worrying about happiness and just be happy ... if you have to think about it and wonder about it and worry about it, you probably won't be that happy .... he's clearly not of this era, where everyone (including MOI) talks (or blogs or tweets)  about happiness and thereby they are probably thinking about whether they are or how to be more so ....

elton john ....

.... this would be a nice one for somebody to buy as a valentine gift ..... does the one you love listen to elton john? are you planning on giving someone a valentine? do you hate valentine's day? do you like it?

personally, i very,very, very much like valentine's ... i like to decorate for it most years ... i like giving my kids valentine's .... i like helping them make valentine's for classmates .... though two of them have outgrown that now .... i like giving something to mr.e.beck.artist ... i like that mr.e.beck.artist does something sweet for me on valentine's .... i also REALLY like those conversation hearts ... really ... more than chocolate even ....

... love that ralph ...

ralph waldo is such and old fashioned name ... i really love it .... i read a lot of him in high school ... and a little in college .... he was considered a religious wacko in his day ... ok ... that might be overstating it ... but what he thought was certainly no mainstream ... he thought all things were tied to god so that all things (and people) were of god and should be appreciated .... it seems easy for me to agree with now ... but some are still not of one mind with him about the divinity in creation, the miracle of a snowfall, the magic of a budding flower ....

it is nine o'clock, and i am such procrastinator (being silly, honest and kind, mr.emerson), that i decided to do a blog post right now instead of planning my sunday school lesson ... which starts in an hour ... oops! ... i have read the material and kinda know what i'm doing ... i just have to find and mark the bible passages and gather some supplies .... and now little.e.beck.artist is asking me to play wii with her before church ... hmmmmm .... what to do what do do .....

direction

this quote to me is kind of like the whole "it's the journey not the destination" thing .... you don't get happy once you get there ... you are happy on the trip .... all the little moments of happy are what make the big happy ....

gretchin rubin, the happiness project author, she's always analyzing the ways and means of happiness ... this quote makes me think of her .... have you read her book? i have ... and a pal of mine recommended it to me last week or so ... so she and i got to talk about how much we love the notion of happiness being analyzed ... dissecting what makes you happy versus what makes other folks happy ....

for instance?
-pickles ... great joy for my dad .... the anti joy for me ....
-college football ... great joy for mr.e.beck.artist ... does nothing for me ....
-chocolate... great joy for my sisterinlaw roberta ... great joy for best pal dana ... good for me ... not on my great joy list though ....
-mario kart game on wii ... great joy for boy.beck.artist, girl.beck.artist and little e.beck.artist ... and ... well ... great joy for me too .... i'm going o have to make some time for that this weekend!

yup ... i love video games .... and not chocolate ... isn't that weird? but it's nice to be able to recognize your own happiness ....

what's making you happy these days?

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

i am writing this post on friday ... one of the nicest days of the week .... i was lucky enough to have an exceptional day full of friends .... lots of them ... lots of fun ... tons of laughs ....friend for a morning chore, friends at pottery class, friends out to lunch for a birthday party, friends at a basketball game, friends at dinner ....  when mr.e.beck.artist and i got home from dinner out with pals (we had driven in separate cars) he said, that was really nice, huh?  ... yup, about as nice as it gets .... is there anything better than two families having dinner together and everyone is happy .... happy for nothing ... happy for everything .... laughing .... i did not waste today, e.e.cummings ....

how was your day .... now it's saturday as i post this ... or some other day as you read this .... have you been laughing yet?

happiness and laughter to you ....


(editorial p.s..... late night FAIL.....i tried to post this tomorrow and it posted RIGHT NOW TODAY ... so i have two posts today and ... well... perhaps none tomorrow ... or maybe we can double down .... hmmmm)

dirty paintbrushes and mistakes .....

yesterday was a fabulous day for an artist ...
by the time i got home after a morning of obligations, it was after nine and i went right to my studio .... where i then painted for five hours .... i haven't had that many uninterupted hours in a long time ....

the picture above is of maps i painted .... those are the colors of the poppies on one of the paintings i completed .. i did a yellow map ... then added orange so got a yellowy orange map ... then added red and got an orangey red map ... and then did just red .... all because i don't really wash my brush .. i tried to just use up the paint... the next map, had i done one would have had to be pink or purple ....or back around to an orangey red .... 

after my five hours of painting, a decorator came to see my paintings (all the ones i had to show, and four new ones) ... and she took four of them off show a client .... so the giant poppies got finished and then immediately left .... she also took a brand new nest ... and a bingo flower and a monopoly flower that i didn't do yesterday .... 

interestingly, whichever of these she buys, if she buys them, need to be redone, because they are all on my inventory for the show i'm doing next week ... and i turned in the inventory already .... it is easier to do a painting though when you know the size and subject already .... when you don't have to bounce around inside your head and see what you feel like painting .... it is less angsy to paint what you are "supposed to paint" versus trying to feel what you want to paint .... it is also not as fulfilling/joyful/creative ... but that's ok...

yesterday i started ZERO paintings ... i worked on ones that were already begun ... i finished four .... and i destroyed a fifth ... it used to have a luscious turquoise background but i wrecked it ... it took me along time to realize i had wrecked it ... and to decide to quit trying to fix it .... and then i painted the whole thing green just to get the mess covered .... so next time i paint, i'll go in with white or buff or yellow to lighten it up ... cause right now it is too dark .. but at least the too dark bit is hiding the disaster! many years from now someone will look at it and say, she really built the canvas up with paint ... it's so thick .... we won't tell them it wasn't on purpose ....... 

darn birds

a bird doesn't sing because it has an answer .. it sings because it has a song .... and i credited it to lou holtz .. because that is what it said where i found it ... but the more i looked at it, the more i wondered ... i thought it was maya angelou ... and sure enough ... i did a little research ... it is credited to each of them in most of the quotey websites ... but, maya said it in 69ish i think .. and holtz (a football coach) said it in the early 70s .... did he steal it? he was a motivational speaker ... and maybe when he said it (a lot) he attributed it ... but then people heard him say it and quoted him .. instead of maya .... oh dear ... i'm thinking that the person who buys this painting will wish it said maya angelou cause she's way more recognized and inspiring that an old coach to most people .... sigh ... back to the drawing board ... or paint ...

dum dum

 on my new favorite website, pinterest, i saw dum dum topiary ... a big ball full of dum dums .... and i LOVED it ... super cute and cool and candyliscious ...

and then .... a series of sendipity events ....

i took little.e.beck.artist and some girls to a pottery painting place ... and i chose to paint a pot in a valentine sort of  way ... for the sole purpose of putting a dum dum topiary atop it ...

that same day, little.e.beck.artist got a michael's gift card ....

the next day we went to michael's and (among other things) i bought a big round styrofoam ball ...

and, we found a 1000 dum dum bag and bought it ...

and, i couldn't wait to make it ...

so i did....

alas, i have yet to go back to the pottery spot and pick up the valentine pot that i mean to put the styro-dum-dum-ball on ... so i put it on a candlestick ...

and there you go ... dum dum joy ....

all you have, is all you need ....

this is 24 inches square .... big, bright, happy .... it says: be grateful for the home you have, knowing that at this moment, all you have, is all you need ... sarah ban breathnach ... she wrote simple abundance ... i think she'd appreciate the simplicity and joy of the collage ....

color color color color color color

i went to lowe's... 

hi, i need some paint chips for an art project... 

is that ok? 

ok with me.... 

thanks .... um.... is there a limit to how many i can have? 

nope... 

thanks ...  

i don't usually work here, but i'm sure it's fine .... 

thanks....

oh, wait!

(that's where i thought uh oh)

yes? 

just don't leave any spaces with none in them, ok? 

ok, thanks

major score on all sorts of color joy for me.... with permission no less ... 

when my kids were little every time they went to a hardware store they got to pick a few colors ... 

we'd take them home and use them in art projects ....

guess what i used them for? 

did you guess? 

if you guessed, you can look at the next pic ....

it has a hint ... 

 yay for color 

spots and dots and circles ....

do you remember these? 

 i showed them to you last week ... they are recycled wood and plywood that i've covered in old papers and glazed in pretty colors ....

now they look like this?

i used some circle stencils on them ... i used some titan buff mixed with raw umber .... then i glazed them all with more umber to tone down the brightness of the original paint ... i was so happy with how they turned out ... i had that stutter stall moment of "oh no i like them like this, how can i possibly put anything else on them and cover up their lusciousness?" ....  i wish they were a quilt ... or an installation ... or pieces on a canvas ... but they are not ... they are individual pieces that i plan to put in a show coming up ... so i better get on with it ... i better get brave ... i better do the next step ...

what makes you happy ....

i have seen colorful keyboards on the web for years ... and i always think OH how i love it ... but then never ordered it ... i am not sure why ... i just liked it but certainly didn't need it ... didn't want to spend the ten dollars or so ... didn't want to pull out the credit card ... liked the idea of liking it from afar ... if i had seen it in the grocery store or target or lowe's, i probably would have thrown it in the cart just for the ease of it ... but no ... didn't buy it until this year ... when little.e.beck.artist told me she wanted to buy me a cling/sticker/skin for my computer .... and could she order one and me help her without knowing what she ordered me ... she ordered me this ...

do you know the story of the giving tree? so that's how my computer looks now ... i love it ... love it ... so i thought, ya know, e .... i'm going to get those rainbow stickers for my computer .. and then i'll have the cutest computer ever ... the giving tree and rainbow keys ... yes ....

so i ordered the rainbow stickers ....

and then, i gave the rainbow keyboard stickers to little.e.beck.artist for her birthday .... she had my old mac ... it is a sloooooow hand me down  that she was slow to embrace as her own computer ... but once we got those rainbow stickers on the keyboard? all hers .... she is very, very happy ... and has the coolest computer in the house ....

not so good and pretty good ...

 here are two large canvases that i've been working on .... i don't love the top one and think i'll white wash it .... it won't be white, it will just tone down the garishness of the yellow .... the yellow somehow got too saturated on top of the blue ... or the green of it in combo is too sharp ... so white washing might make it all pale yellow green ... or i think it will ....

and the bottom one i do like .... i think i'll do some stamps and stencils on it next ... and a few collage elements ...

i have at least 15 started paintings in my basement ... time to get finishing some, right?

cupcake happiness

little.e.beck.artist had a birthday last week ... our sweet neighbor gave her two GORGEOUS fancy cupcakes ... are cupcakes all the rage near you too? i think cupcakeness is everywhere now, right? we watch cupcake wars on tv ... i think it is the food channel ... i watch for the artsiness ... mr.e.beck.artist likes cooking shows and doesn't love cupcake wars as much as little.e and myself do ... not enought cooking/baking ... too much fussing over frou frou ... i like the fussing over frou frou bits the best ... look at the cupcakes in the pic .... the frosting is piled mile high .. and it was delicious! .... i am not, among other things, a cook, a chef or a baker .... i cook dinner for my family every night and have gotten MUCH better at it in the last few years, but it is still not something that is very me ... so i can really admire someone who can make a cupcake look as gorgeous as these were ....

here's another peep into my pinterest world .... my fun and fab food bulletin board .... kind of a pipe dream .... i won't even ever attempt any of those things probably ... but they are nice dreams ... yummy dreams ....

are you a foodie? lots of people find an artistry in food ... do you?

miracles

there are no miracles for those who do not have faith in them ... this is a piece i did last year ... maybe six months ago? and i didn't love how the words looked .. so i repainted that bit, redid the words, and donated it to my kid's school auction .... after yesterday's garden post, or lack of garden post, or lack of green thumb post, maybe you can see why i'm so drawn to flowers in my art ... unrealistic paintings at that .... it's so much simpler when you don't have to worry about watering them .... and there too you can understand why i'd put a miracle quote with some flowers ....

how does your garden grow ...

do i keep going on about pinterest ???... i just LOVE it ... love, love, love ... it's kind of like hoarding without the mess .... electronic hoarding of images ....here's an example of how nice it is .... how dreamy it is ...

above, you have my version of gardening ... i have two avocado pits that we are trying to root .. mine is starting to split, little.e.beck.artist's is not .... so, competitively speaking, my avocado pit is winning ...then to the left of those, you see a tiny smidge of christmas cactus that has been rooting since little.e.beck.artist was in third grade ... now she's in fifth ... it has two more joints and leaves than it did two years ago ... sloooooooow going that one .... going clockwise, past the christmas cactus, you can see scallions in a small white pitcher ... i love cooking with these easy green onions and love the notion that i sorta grow my own ...you see, i buy them in the grocery store, use them by cutting off the tops  with my kitchen shears ... then i pop them in some water and grow some more .... after the third or fourth cutting the bottom end in the water gets limp and the new growth is less green and super spindly, so i toss them and buy more at the grocery ... next along the path is a large red pot ... it has paper whites in it ... my sweet sister in law gave them to me at thanksgiving ... they bloomed just before christmas and lasted well past christmas .... and now i have them still growing.. tall green leaves ... i'm going for height ... at first they tipped over and i tied them with a big bow ... then they fell over again because they are so very tall ... my solution, (don't tell mr.e.beck.artist) i got out the longest grill tool we have ... a large forky poker ... and jammed it in the pot ... and tied (with a white satin bow) the stalks to the bbq tool ... only one person in my family has remarked on my ingenious use of the tool ... and she did indeed say, does daddy know you're using his stuff? ... my paper whites are yardstick height now .... the longest green onion is about 18 inches .... the two year old cactus sprout remains at less than two inches ... i'm thinking those avocados could grow to be taller than a yard ....

and that's how i garden ... i have a yard ... i grow grass ... i have other stuff .. crepe myrtles, hydrangeas, knock out roses, irises, random bushes, pachysandra (are you impressed with my vocabulary ... except for the random bush crack) .... but they all just come and go year after year without me worrying about them ....

but .... if you look on my pinterest, i have a garden bulletin board ... full of extraordinary, artsy, fab-o garden stuff .... cause i'm dreaming about dreamy gardens ....

do you garden?
do you pinterest?
do you sprout avocados?

"a little bit of not knowing is good for you" e.beck

 so, my plan is to  be art busy, busy, busy ... so i'll have plenty to blog about in the next few weeks .... and maybe take sundays off from blogging .... so to get six posts out a week for the next three or four weeks ....

so ... these two pics are 24 inch canvases ... textured with gesso ... ready for some collage ....

the texture is newer for me ... new as in i've done a dozen paintings like this rather than hundreds ... so i'm still trying to figure it out a bit .... that makes it fun ... just a little bit of not knowing is good for you .... that'll be my first quote once i'm considered quotable .......better get cracking on being famous if i want to be quotable ...

nine starts ...

here are nine small boards ... plywood and two by fours ... that i have covered with dictionary papers and glaze .... i am thick into making the beginnings of paintings ... and not so much into finishing them ... i have about 20 paintings that are begun ... most further along than these at least ... not sure what it is about finishing .... i'll have to finish a lot of them soon  because i have the trinity art show coming up soon ....

do you start things and not finish ... do you get lots of things going at once ... do you like dipping into lots of diffrent things .. or do you hunker down and start and finish all in one fell swoop?

fridays rock .....

pottery season has begun again .... it is the first day of my winter quarter class at spruill .... i love pottery class ... i love the excitement of not being exactly what sure what something is going to turn out like .... and then picking it up from the kiln room and being wowed ... yay for the mystery that is ceramics .... 

 this pot was made last semester ... and then the holidays started and my pal picked it up for me ... and told me it was great ... and then kept it in her car til we saw each other again .... finally she was tired of it being in her car and she came by my house and dropped it off ... she might have just been clearing out her car to make room for her costco purchases, but i was still SO happy to get it .... do you know there is a costco about a block from my house? that's crazy right? and a wee bit dangerous for the budget .... five pounds of animal crackers? 96 rolls of toilet paper? 18 bananas?

 so this piece was made from chocolate clay, which just makes you love it more, right? and i used mexico point green .. which is turquoisey .... and i rubbed some glaze away to make the brown chocolate goodness show up ....

and here's a good peep at the letters that i always love to put onto my most textured pieces ....

hope someone at the auction needs a giant bowl from chocolate clay with turquoise goodness ....

love

today's painting is a donation to the school's auction ... redux ... it's a similar painting to one i've done .... but the other i think i sold before i even snapped a pic of it ... or, my photo filing system on my computer is so weak/disorganized/discombobulated that i can't find it .... so .. here ...

it is a 24 inch square canvas that i textured with gesso .... i piled on the gesso thickly than put a plastic bag across it (target bag, not that it makes a difference) .... pulling the plastic away leaves hills and valleys and textures ... i then used brown paints to highlight that texture .... and a little more plastic bag action to pick up some of the paint ... i was left with a rich brown monochromatic canvas that i hated to cover up .... so i just told a little story in the corner ... the rest of the world and life is going on, but look, there's a bit of a love story down here .... the people in a love story think they are all that's going on, right? but there's always so much more ... and the story is ambiguous, as love stories often are ....

what's going on in your world? are you keeping an eye on the big picture? are you focused on just a bit?

a succession of art posts ...

i am going to do a series of art posts as i paint every day to get all my backlogged work ticked off my to do list ....

 ... i am hopeful that this is day two of many art posts in a row .... i spent hours and hours in my studio today ... i ignored the mess and just painted .... i won't be able to do that too much longer cause the mess is a mess ... a big ole crazy mess ... crazy crazy mess .... like dig down to last summer mess ..... but i just stayed at the surface ... and painted ..... i think i worked on five or six very large canvases ... about ten small boards ... and one cross ....

the cross was a request ... i have two girlfriends running the auction at little.e.beck.artist's school .... and they are auctioning off a home blessing ... they have the priest but needed a little somethin'somethin' to go with it ... and knew i had made crosses in the past .... so, i just happened to have this one in my studio (and i found it in spite of the mess, just had to dig) .... i painted it with some turquoise thick acrylic, leaving the white clay showing ... and then i muddied it up ... er, aged it a bit, with some fluid acrylic brown .... so it wasn't so bright .... then i added some fluff, which just happened to be out on the counter behind my painting spot .... after i cut off some bits, i actually put the yarn box away in the cupboard where it belongs ... i know, right? i said i wasn't going to clean up, yet i did ....

so when you do projects, do you clean up as you go? do you do one activity and then clean up? do you just keep going and imagine that one day fairies will come and do the tidy for you? my kids believe in those fairies... and judging by my studio, i do too ..... once i get it cleaned to less horrifying, i'll take a before picture ... and then i'll really clean it and do the after picture ....

tomorrow, no studio pics ... but more art pics ....

800

today is my 800th post of this blog .... that seems like a lot, huh? i bet in this calendar year i'll get to my thousandth post .... i like that ... big round number that it is .... 1000 .....

i am full up on deadlines ... and falling behind ... and really doing everything but the deadliney things .... which will have to stop soon because ... well ... because deadlines are deadlines ....

so ... this friday ... (OH yay, my first pottery class of the year is this friday ... how dare i sully it by having a deadline on that day ... darn ... ) so ... this friday, my auction art is due to be turned in .... my school has a big auction that i'm donating stuff to:
a. a metal embossed picture frame that i lovingly (ha, more like hurriedly) helped fifth graders create .... oops ... 20% done (at least the kid part is done)
b. a giant ceramic bowl ... yay, pottery pal cw brought it by ... don't you just LOVE her for picking it up at the ceramic studio for me? i certainly do .... 100% done (whew)
c. lollypop flowers on blue ... i have words on this painting and one of the words looks blotchy to me ... so i need to paint over it and then redo the word ... 95% done
d. "love found" ... 10% done ... a good idea and a gessoed canvas ... eek ....
e.  a ceramic cross to put in a house blessing package .... i have the bisque cross ... but need to paint and embelish it ... 50% done

so i am going to finish them ALL tomorrow ... ALL ... truly ... ALL ... please hold me to it .... oh ... and i'm going to finish them all tomorrow before three o'clock because it is little.e.beck.artist's birthday ... and i'll want to give her my undivided attention after school .....

then ... next week on the 18th, i have an inventory list due to an art show .... so really, it would be good to knock out a few more paintings for that show .... so, between now and then how many can i do? that's a big question .... and actually, the inventory list (i believe) is due the 20th .. but i'm giving myself an early deadline to minimize the stress of last minuteness ....

i haven't had loads of art on this art blog lately ... it's been more of e's life ... the november nablopomo ... the december joy posts ... so for now, back to art .... january is art month ... actually, can we make it arts and crafts month? cause since i've joined pinterest i've wanted to get all DIY and crafty .... have some things in my head i want to make ... so ... let's call january artsy crafty month, ok?

come back tomorrow for some art ....
do you have any artsy plans in your future? how about some craftiness?
if not, quick go to pinterest! you'll find something awesome for sure ...

hello, january ...

i blogged every day in november ...
i blogged a long series of joy posts in december ...
and i'm getting a slow start to january ....

unlike calvin up there, i LOVE new years resolution ... they get me going .... they get me to change behaviors that aren't great, or, more usually, they add something to my life that i was missing ...

2011, my resolution was to chronicle the books i read .... and to menu plan before each week started ....
and i did both ... just by luck, i read 100 books EXACTLY in 2011... the resolution made me keep track, helped me plan better so i always had a couple books in the queu, and i like looking back and knowing what i read ... and i have a dayplanner 2011 that you could look through and know what my family ate every night for dinner, i usually planned sunday nights with family input ... or on monday mornings before i groceried ... i know it made us eat healthier, and out less often .. i think it also saved us money, partly for not going out so much, but also smarter grocery shopping....so ... both of those things are habits now.... and i shall continue on with both for 2012 ......but i haven't quite hit on what i want 2012's new resolution to be ...

i should have one about art ... because that's been kind of languishing lately ... i'm painting and selling work, but there's no unbridled enthusiasm with it ... and i've been writing, and editing a floundering novel, but there's no grand gumption there either ....

and really, the two resolutions that i'm drawn to are SUPER dull .... i want to catch up on photo books (i say it, but don't feel it) and i want to organize and purge the junk out of the house ... every drawer, cupboard, closet, room, basement (oh no, not the basement), garage .... (i feel it, but pretty sure i'll run out of steam before i accomplish it) .... neither of those are blog worthy .. they are hardly blog mentionable ... boring .... so ... maybe i'll recycle an old one ... like 100 paintings in a year .... or 15 art blogs a month .... or maybe just make my art studio user friendly again ..... in the meanwhile, i'm clearing out drawers and donating all the extra that has accumulated in my life ...

how 'bout you .... what's your resolution? what should mine be?

happy new years ....