The Challenge of X

Well, I did not save the hardest letter for last in my Natural Patterns Alphabet series, I saved it for second to last.

“Xylem,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints now available in my shop

The letter X is hands-down the hardest letter in the alphabet—have you looked in the dictionary recently under the letter X? There are really only a couple handfuls of words. I wanted all of the pieces in my Natural Patterns Alphabet to be easily recognizable natural elements, but for X, that just wasn’t possible. So, you will only recognize Xylem if you’re up on plant nerdology.

Xylem is one of two types of transport tissue in vascular plants (the other being phloem), says Wikipedia. Essentially, from my basic understanding, it transports water in the plant. You might be wondering, what is a vascular plant? Why, ferns, clubmosses, flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, of course. Since I would need to spend several hours to try to unravel an entire understanding of xylem, I will now open the floor to any plant nerds out there, if they feel like enlightening us further. I think the xylem may actually be only the large shapes in this pattern, and the smaller shapes are the phloem?

Now back to my kind of nerdology—isn’t the word “xylem” a cool word? I do love x words, perhaps because of their rarity. The word “xylem” comes from the Greek “xylon” which essentially means wood, alluding to this best-known xylem tissue (thanks again Wikipedia). I thought the pattern was quite interesting, reminding me of an anatomy-inspired drawing I did quite some time ago.

This drawing is a little bit different from my other natural patterns, as it is microscopic and pretty abstract, but really it gets to the heart of my interest in natural patterns: the actual patterns themselves. There are so many interesting details in the minutiae of nature—you just have to look.

A Tease of Buttons

Here’s a little teaser for something I’m up to and hope to be unveiling next week. For now, it can be a nice little still life from my desk.

Don’t you just love buttons and fancy papers?? I do. I pretty much drool when I go into the art store and see the racks of handmade papers, and I have a little bowl of buttons on my window sill. How will these two elements combine in my art world? In a very sneaky way—a little pocket of inspiration perhaps? Stay tuned!

I is for Ivy

One of those pesky invasive vines creeped its way into my Natural Patterns Alphabet series today:

“Ivy,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

Shortly after starting to work on this drawing, I remembered that we have Ivy mobbing a tree and part of the fence in our backyard, so here’s a look at my in-process drawing table:

As I keep saying, I’m pretty excited to be so close to finishing this series—just two more letters left!!! H and the dreaded X. It will be really fun to see them all together once they’re done! If anyone has seen someplace selling a square black frame with a mat with a 5 x 5 inch opening, let me know—it would save me from having to hand-cut mats for all 26 of these drawings.

Life as an Artist: update 2

Why, you may be asking, is there a photo of my ugly, dirty, sneakers at the top of this second post about being a full-time artist? Well, this morning when I was jogging with my dog, I got to thinking, as I often have, how jogging is a metaphor for my new career (and any career for that matter, or life in general).

You see, I don’t really like jogging, so I often find myself thinking while I jog about the nature of my relationship with jogging, and why I find it so hard to get motivated to jog. Don’t get me wrong, I like making art a whole lot more than jogging, I love it in fact, but the elements are the same: some days you wake up and feel great, you go out on a run, and you feel like a well-oiled machine. Other days, you can barely summon the motivation to put your sneakers on. This is life—it will always be like this, there will always be up days and down days, and how do you get through it? You put one foot in front of the other.

It is the importance of “putting one foot in front of the other” that I have been realizing so much about my art career this week. As I mentioned in my last post on this subject, this week was my first full week of being a full-time artist. How did it go? Some great moments, some scary moments, and a lot of in between—just the doing part of the art (the putting one foot in front of the other).

The great moments can be summed up by: “I can’t believe I get to do this all day every day (and not set foot in a boring office job for one second of the week) and “Wow, I’m really doing this!”

The scary moments can be summed up by: “Oh gosh, what will I work on next? I don’t want to do that. But I must, because I’m doing this all day, every day.”

The in between moments can be summed up by lots and lots of little steps and uneventful, but wonderful consistent work that helped me bridge the gap between the great moments and the scary moments and come out feeling successful. I am struck again though, by the jogging metaphor. I think we all focus a lot on big accomplishments, but I realize, especially during this week, that it’s the little accomplishments that are amazing—being able to say, “I finished this small step, now what’s next?” and then actually succeeding at going onto the next part.

It really hit me earlier this week that I am now the master of my own time, for better or worse. I have to face myself head on, every day. It’s completely up to me now, whether or not I get the work done—there are no more excuses like another job getting in the way. This is no surprise to me, but the reality of it is different than just thinking about it before it happens. Your neurosis don’t vanish, they exist, and you have to learn to work with them, or around them, or despite them. This is where “putting one foot in front of the other” really helps: when things get overwhelming, I just remind myself, “all I need to do is take one little step, do one little thing.”

And now I will salute all of you self-employed people—I have so much respect for you, especially now that I’m living this reality.

In summary, this was a wonderful week of learning about myself and creating. Unfortunately, many of the creations I am working on are not bloggable at this point because they’re part of larger projects that I will unveil all together when the time is right, but here are some ideas of what I’ve been up to:

-greeting card designs for a greeting card company that approached me in the summer
-a small book (chapbook/zine size) I’ve been scheming for some time and now actually have the time to work on
-some tiny artworks for the upcoming holidays
-one other new idea percolating about a way to expand Blue Bicicletta in a little bit of a new way

That brings me to one of the things I love about being an artist, and now being a full-time artist: you can build your work around lots of different, wonderful, creative things that you love.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is fast approaching for all of us in the U.S.—woohoo, I do love this holiday of rejoicing and eating. A while back, I started thinking about that age-old Thanksgiving question “What are you thankful for?” and here is one of my answers, in a card:

I know that we all don’t say this enough, you can never say it enough. I am thankful for all of you reading this blog, and for my amazing friends and family who are always there, no matter what, and for all of the people I see who are making life happen, because they are inspiring me to make my life happen. I mean it! If I ever doubted that people are out there to support me, my recent wedding (see this post about it) proved it to me, big time. I mean people came out of all corners of the country and worked like crazy to make my wedding happen. It was amazing.

I have often been asked about where I get my ideas for art, and I have to say (and have probably said it here before) that most often I make things that say something I need to here. This is one of them. So get off your bum and thank someone. Give them a call, send them a letter, text them for gosh sakes. Or you could send them a card!

These cards are now available in my shop—great for Thanksgiving, the holidays, or any old day of the year!

October Love

The weather here is so fine—I wish I could put some in an envelope and send it to you, but this is the best I can do—greetings from by back yard.

I hope you are all having a wonderful day and appreciating the out of doors, rain or shine.

Closing in on the Alphabet with Yucca

I’m really closing in on my Natural Patterns Alphabet! I only have three drawings left to complete the series, after this new one:

Yucca, 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

Yucca, what a very strange and pokey plant, with an equally strange name. In fact, with my very brief research, the name came from Latin, but is of unknown origin. Hmmm. What an enigma!

I think the most distinctive species of Yucca is the Joshua Tree, but I decided that the pokey spears were the most distinct feature of all species. I would not want to fall on this plant, but it is fun to look at.

On Tying the Knot

I promised a photo from our wedding once I got them, and here you go—there I am, in the white dress just after tying the knot. The handsome fellow on the right is my new husband Mike.

We got married in a beautiful park on the edge of the golf course in Aspen, Colorado, where my immediate family lives. The weather was absolutely stunning that day, after a week full of rain and gray skies. Family and friends came from all over the country to join in a whole wedding weekend of events, including a couple’s shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding day, and day-after breakfast.

Some especially unique wedding tidbits:

[disclaimer: I got a bit long-winded below---I won't be offended if you don't read every word---but there might be some interesting thoughts on alternative wedding ideas for those of you getting married soon]

1) The park we are in for the picture above was our third ceremony location site! Months before, we had reserved a park in downtown Aspen, but when we got there the week before the wedding and finally got to physically stand in the park, we realized it was too loud with downtown traffic, and to be honest, just not what we had imagined. So, we switched to a park a few blocks away (a cute little park with a little grassy hill), only to find out (two days before the wedding and thanks to Mike’s mom who saw “No Parking on Saturday” signs in front of the park) that they would be doing construction on the street in front of the park on the day of our wedding. Many calls later this info was confirmed, and my sister and brother-in-law (Aspen locals) suggested the park above (Tot Lot Park), and that saved the day. The park has a beautiful view of the mountains and was very quiet and calm. My main lesson learned was “be flexible.” The day turned out so beautiful, despite the last-minute changes.

2) All of our “wedding services” were done by family! How lucky we are to have so many creatives in our family! We had the reception at my parent’s restaurant with catering done by us (My dad in the lead, along with various other family helpers, us included), my mom did the cakes (we had two–chocolate, chocolate and carrot), my cousin Rose did the flowers (she actually does wedding flowers professionally), and my Aunt used to be a portrait photographer, so she did the pictures. Also, my brother-in-law’s father was our officiant (anyone can marry you in Colorado). It was wonderful to have people who know us doing all of these things! It really gave things a personal touch, and I loved going to the reception and seeing the food that we helped make and the tables that we helped set.

3) Mike and I both walked into the ceremony at the same time with our parents. It was important to me to emphasize that this is a joining of our lives, not me being given away to Mike.

4) E.E. Cummings made an appearance at the wedding—the lovely Era and Jaja read this beautiful poem at our ceremony. It meant a lot of me to have poetry, and two of my favorite poetry lovers in the ceremony.

5) We had a very informal reception set-up. I put this in here for anyone out there who is planning a wedding and is torn between wanting to have an informal/non-traditional reception and feeling they’re supposed to have a full sit-down dinner. My parents’ restaurant is on the small side, so we tried to keep the numbers small–we had about 60 guests. Still, the inside of the restaurant is not big enough to accommodate that many people, so we split tables between the inside of the restaurant and the patio, which we tented in for the occasion.

We did not have assigned seating, and all of the tables were smallish–many were set for 4 people, with the highest number of seats at any one table being about 8. We had two buffet tables that changed throughout the evening from appetizers, to a pasta course, to the meat and vegetables (lots of salads and a whole pig, in addition to fish, prime rib, and grilled vegetables), to desserts (including lots of cookies and two cakes—no tiers or traditional wedding cake—just wonderful, delicious cake).

The whole reception had a very relaxed feeling with lots of movement. People had time to eat and time to circulate, and then we naturally progressed into dancing on the patio (which was so much cooler). Mainly, we wanted an intimate family feeling, and we really had that. I think it’s important to decide what your priorities are and to let go of other expectations (or what other people will think) so you can let yourself have the wedding you want.

6) We wrote our own ceremony based on other ceremonies we read. This is not that unusual, but I will say, it was more meaningful to me to have picked the words. The ceremony was very short and simple, and also very organic—no music, just some kids ringing bells to announce the beginning. I remember thinking, “It’s so quiet” as we walked in. I don’t think I even noticed the audience. The ceremony just flew by. I really think the part that had the most impact on me was the readings—having people we know read things that mean something to me really felt special. In addition to the E.E. Cummings I talked about above, we had Mike’s step-mom read Kahlil Gibran’s chapter on marriage from The Prophet.

7) I did not wear make-up and I did not have my hair done professionally (I mean, I barely have any hair!). I did get my nails done, and I wore a cute headband with fresh flowers on the side (any brides out there with short short hair, feel free to contact me, and I can describe the headband better). I really wanted to throw this comment in here because there was some pressure on me to wear make-up, but I never wear make-up, so why should I wear it at my wedding? Is the groom wearing make-up? This is a very personal choice, but I just wanted to say to anyone out there like me who does not want to wear make-up at her wedding, have courage—just say no! You will look just like you’re beautiful self without it.

Now, I will tell you the one reality I realized, at least for me in the form of advice for people getting married in the near future: chances are, there are going to be some challenging bits, especially in negotiation family relations. It’s going to feel a bit crazy and stressful. People will say it is your day, and it is, but there are also a whole bunch of other people there, and they want to share your day with you. I’ll admit that both Mike and I got stressed at times, but in the end, it was exactly what we wanted, and we were happy that we stuck to our guns on the things that were most important to us (like keeping it small and family-oriented), and let go of others (like our ceremony location and many wedding traditions that weren’t so important to us).

Edible Escapades

A view of my breakfast for you this morning. One of my predictions/hopes when I started planning to quit my day job and do art full-time was that I would have more time to do other things I love: like cooking. Well, this weekend that hope began to come true, as I embarked on one of my first edible escapades on Sunday afternoon. After ripping out half of the recipes in the October and November Gourmet magazines, I decided I would make some muesli and yogurt for my breakfast this week.

If you’re unfamiliar with muesli, it’s a type of breakfast cereal, kind of in the same vein as granola. I’ve made granola before, and the main difference I can see is that muesli is looser—no clumps from gooey honey mixtures. In fact, I thought it was easier to make than granola for that very reason.

I got my recipe from page 123 of the October 2009 Gourmet, called Kajsa Alger’s Muesli from Kajsa’s menu at her restaurant Street. The recipe doesn’t seem to be online, but here’s a quick version:

2 cups rolled oats and 1.5 cups puffed millet as the grains, 1 cup raw almonds chopped, 1 cup raw sunflower seeds and 1/4 cup flaxseeds as the seed component. You just mix all of the above together with 1 tsp kosher salt and 1 tsp cinnamon. Then you add 1/2 cup canola oil and 1/2 cup light brown sugar. Then you toast it for about 20 minutes, until golden brown (on two foil covered and lightly oiled cookie pans) at 350 degrees F. The recipe says to add 1 cup dried currants and 1 cup chopped pitted dates as the fruit after toasting, but you can see by the picture above that I deviated from that—I left the fruit out (I’ve had problems in the past with rock hard dried fruit in granola—I think the grains suck the moisture out of it), and I just added some raisins before eating.

Muesli is one of those things, like granola, where you can really put anything that you like in it. So I plan to experiment, but the above recipe is pretty yummy!

The other component of my breakfast is homemade yogurt. I went through a cheese-making phase a few years ago at which time I found Fankhauser’s Cheese Page. One of my first dairy-related escapades back then was homemade yogurt, which was quite fun and pretty easy. So, I’ve embarked on a little food science fun again as you’ll see from the four mason jars of yogurt above. The process is so simple—you take some milk and add a little yogurt to it (introducing the yogurt bacteria), and then the bacteria works away to make all of the milk into yogurt. The only challenge is getting the milk to the right temperature, but you will be well rewarded when you open your mason jars at the end and see that you have turned water into wine (or milk into yogurt). And imagine—a whole gallon of yogurt essentially for the price of a gallon of milk!

There’s also a great recipe on Fankhauser’s page for Labneh, a Lebanese soft cheese made from yogurt. It’s so simple—you just drain the liquid off the yogurt and voila, it’s cheese! So if you make all of that yogurt and then wonder, “what am I going to do with so much yogurt?” you can make a great soft cheese. Last time I made it, I mixed the labneh with some garlic and spices and made it into a great cheese spread.

Happy experimenting! More good eats to come, I promise!

Life as an Artist: update 1

Since this is my first week as a full-time artist, I thought you readers might be interested to see how it is going. Granted, this is only a partial week (I returned from vacation on Tuesday), but this week seems to be a good week to start sharing this experience with you.

If you’ve been following my blog, you may have read this post a few months ago when I announced I would be quitting my office job to do art full-time. Since there are so many creative people out there, many who are wondering what it would be like to do their creative pursuits full-time, I though it would be fun to try and document this experience more specifically than just the occasional mention in a blog post.

In answer to this, I will start making some “life as an artist” updates (all tagged “artist life”) on a semi-regular basis. To clarify, these will not be about the business and logistical side of things, although I might mention such things on occasion, but they will be more about what it really means to make this shift, from my very personal perspective.

First, I would like to say that returning from vacation this week was a totally new sensation for me—I was actually excited to get back home and get to work! What an amazing feeling this was, after many returns from holidays where I found myself dreading my return to work, almost (sometimes actually) to the point of tears.

In fact, the entire experience of this week is so new—one of my main dreams was to have enough time to really pursue creative ideas, and also time to breathe, as I always felt like I was doing double-time when I was working and doing art after hours. I find myself having to teach myself how to relax into the time, how to not be in frantic mode—trying to cram every creative idea into small windows of time. I find that this whole shift is so much more than a career shift—it’s a life shift—a letting go and slowing down. Learning how to let things happen.

While there are still many, many questions about how this will all work out, especially financially, right now I’m feeling pretty good. I’m looking forward to so may new things in the coming weeks. Next week will mark my first full week as a full-time artist, and I’m excited to see what I learn about myself and what this new abundance of time brings out.

The picture above is a pretty good idea of what I’m doing in my art work right now—I have lots of ideas for both art and art business that have been in my head for many weeks, especially as I prepared to make this shift to full-time. I am a major list and note maker. Little scraps of paper everywhere. The list though, is a good point of questioning about the “slowing down” I mentioned above. I often struggle with whether lists make me more or less frantic. Sometimes the act of making a list can feel like a huge weight off my brain, but sometimes the act of having an existing list can make life feel frantic because there’s a never-ending list of things to do. Right now, I think lists are helping me—especially with this new expansive time it’s nice to have a reminder of new things to work on. As always though, I continue to evaluate what things work and do not work, especially when learning how to manage my time as a full-time self-employed person.

In other news, happy weekend! I wish I could put some of this weather we’re having in an envelope and send it to all of you. It’s gorgeous fall weather here—the kind of weather where you want to take long walks in the sunshine, crunching leaves. I’m glad to have returned from vacation to this. I hope you all are having lovely weather too.