After working solely on the monster that was “Upward Thrust” for several months, I went ahead and spent an entire month building panels for subsequent works. It’s been a nice change, having a beautifully primed panel sitting there just waiting for me to grab and get to work. Current pieces are sitting, drying, waiting… and I’m plowing right ahead with the next. It’s a fantastic time in my studio, I just have to convince myself every night that I DO have the energy and DO have the drive (see previous ‘motherhood’ post). If you’ve kept up with my website or other social media (uh, yeah… facebook. just facebook.) you know that I recently finished a large-ish mixed media piece with resin. It’s pink! It’s got bees! It’s lovely! It’s also the last one I expected to finish of the four that I was working on, but it somehow got ahead. The rest are trying to remain patient while waiting for layers of oil paint to dry. Damn oil paint. Here’s a visual of the layering that’s going on:

First finished one, beginning to end.

Next piece (currently taking its time drying, dying for the next layer…)

See? Dying for more layers!

And one more…

I’m really loving the layers so far on this one. The overlying ink drawing is made and ready to go; hopefully I can pour the resin and embed the drawing tomorrow.

And that’s what I’ve been doing all these weeks! If you’re in the area, please come out to the Southern Open on May 12 at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA. My pieces “Force of Nature” and “Memento Vivere” will be there.

Feeling scattered, oh so scattered.  Just when I think I’m really focusing in, on the right track, narrowing my gaze, or any of the other platitudes that just mean re-hashing the same idea over and over, it occurs to me.  Nothing really goes together.  My images don’t make sense.  I’ve jumped…  again.  Left scrambling to pull a single thread to tie everything in together, I know I’ve slipped off the rails again when I start sorting ‘series’ and ‘shows’ by color scheme. 

Y’know, it’s not that I lack discipline or committment or focus.  It’s only that one thought leads to another, and new associations are made, new images arise.  I submit that I’m not unfocused, I’m inspired.  I’m not undisciplined, I’m perspicacious.  Try to contain the stream of consciousness that leads me from New Orleans to architecture to family to friends to unrequited love to my children to birds to bees?  Impossible! 

I also reserve the right to moan, groan, complain, and generally bitch when gallerists don’t see the connections.  Try telling them the intelligent mind is prone to leaps.  Huh.

Okay, let’s do it.  Time to address the elephant in the room.  Wait…  you can see him, right?  Am I the only one who sees him standing right there?  Well regardless, he’s real to me and this here is my blog.  So I’m going to admit something here in my ‘professional’ [heh] space, something that others have suggested I hide as if it is shameful…  I am a mother.  I am an artist.  I am a mother AND an artist.  Oh what?  You already knew that?  Well damn, I thought I was doing a good job of covering up that little tidbit.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve done an astounding job of integrating both aspects of my life.  One has become so immeshed with the other that I couldn’t pry them loose to save anything, even my career.  I never gave it a second thought.  I’m an artist, I wanted to be a mother, so there.  I’m an artist and a mother.  No biggie.  It’s taken a bit of outside perspective to perceive that it’s a problem.  No no, not MY problem…  but a problem nevertheless.  Apparently.

The first cues came in the weeks and months following my son’s birth [he's now three!], when friends and relatives innocently asked “do you still do art?” or “I guess you’re not painting anymore, are you?”.  As if it is a choice or a hobby, as if it isn’t what I DO.  I don’t know how else to explain it to them.  It is what I DO. 

The second hint that motherhood is something dirty in the art world came from a harpy of a gallerist, who tsk tsk’d over how very YOUNG I am and how very HARD being an artist is, and that artists work A LOT.  [Golly gee, you mean I need to paint on more days than Sunday?]  All while giving me the appraising ‘I’d bet a thousand this young mother doesn’t pick up a paintbrush again by the time her baby is six months old’ look.  That was, of course, three years, four separate series, countless group shows, a Creative Capitol workshop,  and new gallery representation ago.

That was one particularly eye opening experience, and since then the issue has evolved to become very near and dear to my heart.  Naive relatives are one thing, and gallerists sold on the illusion of the Bohemian Artist is another, but the one that really gets me every time is the disdain I so often encounter from other artists.  And ohhhh it was bad when I was pregnant!  Waddling around, unsure of how I was actually going to care for two children [I'd be outnumbered here at home when Claude is working!] and ever get a second in that in-home studio again, I’d be met with the ‘oh I don’t know how you do it.  I’ll NEVER have children, I’m focusing on my art.”.  Okay, that’s all well and good and I of course respect and applaud your choice.  We all have them, choices.  The thing that always got me, and still gets me, is the inherent assumption and insinuation that I am NOT focusing on my art.  That I am NOT serious about what I do, how often I do it, and on what level I play. 

You know what, all of you doubters out there?  All of you who question my level of committment, my ambitions, and my drive?  I’m doing the damn thing.  Every day, over and over I’m finding my way. 

Are you?

My sudden sculptural inclination may be getting out of control. No longer satisfied with small resin pieces, I am now pushing out to include large scale [well... large for me] plaster and mixed media. Now of course I have no idea the best practices for using plaster, so trial and error it is. Having created the perfect wooden base for the hollow boxes I’m trying to build, I’ve already had to chip plaster from the length of my base. To my credit, I did try using a release agent. It just didn’t work. This may be a very poor idea indeed, but the current plan in progress is a newspaper wrapping over the wood, with the plaster applied to the newspaper. Because it won’t matter if the newspaper remains inside the plaster box. Or something. Well anyway, here it is in progress.

Wrapped

Plastered

I imagine it’ll need another coat or two… but who the hell knows. I’ve never worked with plaster! Updates to come.

As part of The Billboard Art Project, that is.

so after a bit of finagling, i’m finding that there is sooooooooooo (SO) very much i can do with the resin.  and my latest results are actually pretty good!  and getting better!  i guess you could say i’ve been easing myself into it; testing the water with the tiny (awful) sculpey casts, stepping partway in with the lovely yet craftsy fleur de lis casts, and now starting to think about “real” work.  “serious” work.  although…  it’s a bit hard to think of it as “serious work” when you raid hobby lobby for their glitter & beads.  just sayin.

so as i’ve been working on these fun, funky little fleur de lis casts i’ve realized something.  i’m enjoying the crafting aspect of creating these.  i KNOW they’re fine craft, not fine art…  and i’m totally okay with that.  maybe i just want to create something pretty.  maybe i’m having so much fun in my studio it feels like kindergarten again.  maybe i have so many “serious” (such a heavy word) ideas percolating, developing at a nice slow pace, that i’m getting my artistic aggression out in a surprisingly mild way.

Finished resins

see?  glitter!  sparkles!  copper leafing!  what fun!

now, along with this kick i’m amused to note that i’m also working on more birdhouses, a’la my “birdhouses for breastcancer” piece.  hey, it was a natural extension of my current work…  and well, to tell you the truth i enjoyed making it.  simple as that.

finished birdhouse, for karyn mannix’s 7th annual birdhouses for breast cancer auction:

so here’s two more coming along:

and to wrap it all up, here’s a sneak peek of some of that “SERIOUS REAL ARTWORK” i’m mulling around concurrently:

ink drawings

where they’re going (currently in mold)

oh, can’t forget a quick plug…  most of the fine craft i’ve discussed can be bought (affordably!!) from my etsy store

ooh, it’s resin time!  just the time i’ve been waiting for, biding my time until all the hot marshy louisiana humidity left for the summer.  thanks to tropical storm lee, i can almost believe that fall is here.  low low humidity, windy crisp air, temperatures not hovering around 107…  time to put on the gloves, think guiltily about the respirator still in its package, step outside, and whip up those resin pieces stuck in my brain! 

but oh.  uh oh.  all those hilarious “first attempts” took their toll.  not enough resin to make even a semi-respectable first layer on one of the molds i wanted to try out.

son. of. a. BITCH.

warning: this may be painful to view. it’s bad. but a little bit amusing.

first off, the very first resin casting piece that i attempted came out okay. not great, but generally intact and approximating the vision i had in my head.

see, not terrible. not great, but not terrible. WELL… check out the side by side of the positive sculpey piece and the cast resin. can we say shrinkage?!

it’s like, less than half the original size! i’m fairly certain this is due to using an inferior molding brand…. and creating said mold 9 months ago. you know why. Resin Queen lauri lynnxe murphy suggests using a silicone mold in the future, and graciously offered several other tips that will help.

so. getting on to the next piece. here it is in progress, when i was feeling pretty good & excited about it. it was still trying to gel, still inside the [crappy] mold.

cool stuff, right? got my screen printed butterbees, got some glitter… lookin good. and yet… and yet. 24 hours later, i’m still waiting for it to ‘cure’. it’s still gellified. see?

the whole thing feels more like a slightly porous, very wet rubber ball. and it stinks to holy hell.

you can somewhat see my butterbee floating inside there, but not really. it’s been determined that it’s likely due to the high humidity, a true artistic hazard of working outside in the louisiana summer heat while the gulf is churning up a tropical storm. eh. that being said, i think i’ll be tabling the whole resin sculpture bit for a few months. or at least wait until the torrential tropical rains let up a bit :/

artist friend mark phillips has a wonderful concept for a project illuminating the gift of organ donation.  problem is…  the project is larger than his equipment can handle.  this is an issue that is near and dear to his heart (as well as mine), and deserves to be realized in full.  please visit indie gogo to contribute funds towards the creation of his lovely artwork.

My preliminary sculptural experiments, which I’m finding out are a bitch to photograph.