Grow Your Own Food

The drawing I just finished for my Saving the World Series seems particularly relevant this time of year – and specifically today – as I just picked another basket-full of zucchini and tomatoes from my garden.

We pretty much have zucchini coming out of our ears. If anyone’s got any extremely creative ideas, I would love to hear them. We’ve been sneaking zucchini in wherever possible: zucchini on pizza, zucchini wraps, zucchini sandwiches, zucchini bread, zucchini lasagna. My dad suggested zucchini jam (jokingly, I think), but I can’t quite wrap my head around that one.

Anyway, here it is; my ode to the miracle of growing your own food– the only way you’ll ever completely know where your food came from, and get to literally eat the fruits of your labor:

“Grow Your Own Food,” 8 x 10, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

Mission Accomplished

My How to Save the World Sketchbook is done and on it’s way to the Arthouse Co-op for their sketchbook show! The opening is on August 22 from 7-10. Now, I’m just crossing my fingers that mine actually gets there! I wish I was able to go see them, but sadly it’s not in the budget right now. If you live near Atlanta, Georgia, stop on by and tell me what the show is like. Here is a picture of my finished sketchbook:

I may be finished with the 30 small sketches that make up my little book, but I am still working on enlarging my favorite ones. Here is one that I did today:

“Value Your Time More Than Your Money,” 8 x 10, pen and ink

I wanted to create a drawing about appreciating time instead of stressing about money, because a shortage of money always seems to be rolling around in my head. Money always seems to be a problem– whether you have a lot or a little, but sometimes you have to make a choice to have less money, so you can have the time to do what you love, spend time with people you love, and live the good life (which I think really has less to do with owning objects and more to do with quality time spent). Prints of this drawing will be available over at my shop momentarily.

Keep an eye out for more peeks at my sketchbook. I will be posting larger drawings and possibly, some scans of the small pages.

Also, I have heard that people might be having some difficulties leaving comments on my blog. If you could, drop a comment here, and then I can see if they’re going through. Thanks for looking.

Triangles

Just a little messing around with triangles here. I started out with the white triangle, and ended up with a rocket, which cried out for the expression “Blast Off” next to it.

Have I told you before about my love for triangles? A lot of my abstract drawings start from those simple three-lined shapes. Triangles are very interesting to me–I think because of the odd number of points, and the possibility of making the shape look so different just by changing the length of the sides. Also, triangles are pretty much arrows, which can point any number of ways.

Just Drawing

To be honest, I’m having kind of a down day– you know those days when you just don’t feel so great? But, it is a Wednesday, and I am lucky to be working on my art all day today. To give myself a little free drawing time (away from projects), I got back to the geometric, patterny style I haven’t done in a while.

Currently Untitled, 5 x5 inches, pen and ink

The Letter “A”

What better way to pass the time at work, while the IT guy was fixing my computer, than to draw the letter “A”?

Just in case you think I’m entirely crazy, other than the fact that I love letters, I have been working on different incarnations of all of the letters for an alphabet book of food. I came up with this idea a while ago, and it is slow going, but every once in a while, I pick it up and work a little.

On another note, I have been starting to put originals in my Shop, so check it out when you get a chance. I am putting them in slowly, so stay tuned– many more originals (and prints) to come.

I hope you are having a wonderful beginning to the week. I am very thankful for a wonderful breeze this evening–it made walking my dog so relaxing and cool.

Open Up

“Open Up,” 8×10, pen and ink

Another drawing from my How to Save the World series, hot off the drawing board. I also put the print version for sale in my Shop.

As you may have guessed, this one is about opening up– not in the dentist sense, but in the “open your heart and mind” sense. I don’t necessarily mean you need to start sharing your deepest, darkest secrets- I am trying to say how important it is to open your heart and mind, not even to people, but to the world in general.

So often, we all go along with tunnel vision (I am a compulsive “to do” list writer), thinking only of what we need to accomplish next, what we need to do now, how we can maximize our efficiency. But for me, when I start really thinking of what I want to make my life about, it is not about money or big accomplishments, or being the best at anything– I want to make my life about appreciation: appreciation of this world, of the people in it, of the miracles of being human, of those small moments and things that make everything worth it, of laughter about being alive.

I know it’s a cliche to say we should appreciate each moment, but cliches are often based in truth. Those moments when my heart laughs itself open in the sheer pleasure of being alive, are worth building a life around.

This theme seems to be developing through all of these “How to Save the World” drawings, so I apologize if it seems like my explanation for each one seems the same, but I’m beginning to think I can’t hear these things enough. I suppose I am making these drawings to define and remind myself how I want to live.

I may have said this in my first explanation of this drawing project, but I think that Saving the World starts with saving yourself. That may sound egotistical–it may be egotistical, but it seems to me, that the only person you can really change is yourself, and when we are able to be the best version of ourselves, we are able to really give.

Writing Practice

As you may have noticed by now, if you have been reading my blog for a while, I like to write. It’s funny, I picked up blogging not really thinking about the writing aspect of it, but more for a place to put my art. It’s not until recently that I’ve realized that, maybe subconsciously, the idea of writing random thoughts for a wider audience than myself was really appealing to me. But I’m here today to talk about another type of writing I do, more like meditation than communication to other people: journaling.

“Keep a Journal” 8×10 inches, pen and ink

Journaling can have a bad reputation as some daily duty to get down everything you’ve done that day– like trying to keep a journal while on a vacation, but I got serious about journaling a couple years ago when I read a very well-known book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. This is a pretty serious self-help book, but what is wrong with self-help? If we don’t help ourselves, who will?

Anyway, I will admit, this book changed my life, and I really mean it. I’m not a religious person, but beyond the spiritual aspect of this book, Cameron gives creative people concrete practices to tap into and trust their creativity and develop a life that supports their creative pursuits (instead of strangling them).

One of Cameron’s methods is daily journal writing, which she refers to as “morning pages.” She requires that anyone who makes a serious commitment to following the book (for the allotted 3 months) must write 3 pages, long-hand, every morning. I’ve been doing it ever since, with some small lapses in the year and a half since I picked the book up, and this practice continues to deepen my understanding of myself and help me deal with anything that comes my way. These pages are not about writing, they’re about dumping all of your worries out of your brain to make room for the good stuff. For me, this writing has become increasingly about choosing how I want to live each day.

Not surprisingly, I have included “Keep a Journal” as one of my How to Save the World series. I think that if we really take the time to know ourselves, we will be better able to create meaningful relationships and a meaningful life. I have put the print of this drawing up for sale in my shop too. Thanks for looking!

Who You Are

I was just drawing and thinking about how easy it is to be someone you’re not. Sometimes it just seems easier to be what people expect of us, or what would please someone else, or what society attaches value to, instead of being who our hearts shout out to be. While I was thinking, this poem by Mary Oliver kept ringing in my head, and I thought I would share it with all of you:

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

About Town

I’m just getting back into the swing of things after a wonderful, long relaxing weekend on the northern coast of California, Sea Ranch to be exact, where my boyfriend’s mom recently moved (the product of vacationing there every summer for more than 20 years and her retirement dream fulfilled). So much relaxing and cool sea breeze– it was an especially grumpy Monday morning back to work.

Hopefully I will get to printing some of the pictures I took there, but I thought I would share some pictures I finally printed from the spring first. I haven’t shared much black and white photography on this blog, but traditional darkroom b & w photo was my main art all through high school and college. I have gotten a little away from it, but I still love it.

In recent years, I have been most interested in experimental photography, which for me means photography focused more on trial and error conceptual results, often using non-standard equipment, and less focused on large fine prints. One example would be the pinhole photography I did quite a while ago, and also the photos I’m about to share now, which I took with a Holga Camera: an inexpensive, 120 size, simplified camera that is known for producing uncontrolled results with light leaks etc.

The camera feels like a plastic toy, has two light settings (sunny or cloudy), and four focusing settings illustrated with small pictures (mountain, group of people, three people, one person from shoulder up). I really like throwing my results up to chance. Just like with pinhole photography, it’s a miracle to me that I actually capture a photo.

Anyway, here are some photos around my neighborhood, taken with my Holga, I was very interested in sun and clouds that day:

Something New

I’ve been thinking about circles for a while, and finally, I sat myself down and drew something. As you have probably noticed, I love repeating shapes with variation and playing with negative space. I didn’t really know where I was going until I was there. The title I came up with towards the end of the drawing is “Many Moons,” but it could be so many things that I hesitate to label it. This could be the beginning of a circle series–we’ll see. 

I’m off to the northern California Coast tomorrow for the long holiday weekend. I hope to have some peaceful ocean pictures for you next week. Happy 4th of July!

 

“Many Moons,” pen and ink, 5 x 7 inches