Just back from the Folks Fest in Lyons Colorado- 3 days of camping with loved ones along the river & listening to great music- my favorite “new to me” band was “Girly Man” While at the Folks Fest, my friends & family kindly posed their eyeballs for me to support my new interest in eyeball portraits.

Each eye is unique & beautiful. There is a woman who has been coming to the folks Fest as long as I have- 18 years- one side of her face is disfigured and the other side is very pretty. It got me to thinking how if we were only judged on our appearances by our eyes that everyone would be considered beautiful. If beauty is seen in the eye of the beholder then is beauty in the EYE of the beholden? (is that a word?- the one that is beheld?) Beauty is defined by the way all the pieces of our face or body goes together. Yet, taken individually or out of context each piece can be seen as beautiful. I am thinking it would be interesting to take eye portraits then nose portraits then lips, feet, hands etc. and show them all over a big room where the viewer can map out the beauty.Meaning shapes seeing. And there is glitter eyes…

I’ve decided to take photos of my friends eyes only at parties this year, next year I think it will be ears or noses or feet? what do you think? after all the eyes are the window to the soul.

Don’t ya make my brown eyes  blue

eye on heaven laughing eye

Did y’all happen to catch the “Next Great Artist” reality t.v. show on Bravo? It offered really great insights I thought, into the making of art and what contemporary gallery owners & curators are looking for in art.

I don’t know if it is a Libra thing or a human “thing” but I always feel like I am juggling to find balance in my life. Winters in Estes are almost too quiet socially but are filled on my days off from work with time in my studio. Summers it is one social activity after another- sometimes there are 2-3 events I want to do on the same day and then there is the gardening that I love to do and the weeding that I don’t but is a necessary evil of gardening, the company that visits in the summer when the weather is glorious and my day job intensifies with 26 employees versus the 4 I have in the winter and then I try to fit in time for exercise, reading, solitude and a social life- plus occasionally cleaning house, grocery shopping, paying bills and ART.

Last weekend we went to the rodeo on Friday night- with it’s lump- in- the- throat patriotism:

cowgirl bling:

rodeo princesses

bucking broncos

goofy, politically incorrect rodeo clown humor

trophies bigger than the young kid “Mutton Busters”

mama horses and their babies- raised for their buckin” skills

and the romance of cowboys and the west…When I first moved to Estes in my twenties and fell in love with an adventurous western man I made this stained glass window- dripping with the romance of the west- She is pulling back the white lacy cabin curtain as he rides up on his white stallion as the sun sets behind them. One of the things about experiencing life and being an artist is that the art work often reflects those experiences. My art is not nearly so romantic any more…. seeing shapes meaning.:)

then on Sunday off to the opera, “Madama Butterfly” by Puccini in Central City- what a tear jerker it is!!!

Joe & I got a kick out of the wide range in cultural experiences the opera and the rodeo represent and how much we enjoyed both!! So my social life is in balance but I am missing that studio time. How do you find balance- or do you struggle like I do?

Joe & I headed up to the Snowy Peaks mountain range in Wyo. to camp over the weekend. The flowers & scenery of the High Peaks with lake after lake after lake was soooo beautiful!! These “Old Men of the Mountain” flowers always face toward the sun:

What perfect days- hiking, reading in the cozy camper during the afternoon rain showers and working on my art work at a picnic table!

Life is good and in balance!!

“To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid.

Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge.

Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CD’s in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year–people whose names you may or may not even know but you’ve watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they’re not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year?

It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to.

Now that part, more than ever.

It’s mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88’s until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don’t and promising yourself you will next year.

It’s wearing frightful color combination in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who–like clockwork, year after year–denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one.

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once.” Chris Rose author of “1 Dead in the Attic”

You know how I love making costumes!? – well living out my formative years in a Mardi Gras culture definitely influenced me!! We visited the warehouses of Blaine Kern where many of the Mardi Gras floats are made – it was awesome to see so many floats all tricked out and how they make the big figurines- either out of fiber glass or carved styrofoam with paper mache on top- then painted.

I love to visit quirky small museums while traveling & New Orleans is the perfect city to have the Museum for the American Cocktail:

and a La. Food Museum where there was a jacket made out of a La. diet  staple (besides the daiquiri): red beans and rice:

New Orleans was the home of America’s first licensed pharmacist. Pharmacies used to put these beautiful colored liquid filled glass bottles in the window as a symbol of their business.    They also sold products such as these:

and voodoo powders or “gris-gris” were popular in New Orleans. You still see some voodoo influences today:

Joe & I visited thee arts district on Julia Street but frankly, after visiting Santa Fe several times a year to see the art there, the art on Julia Street was disappointing. However, as far as living life in a way that stimulates the senses- the food, the music, the architecture, the southern culture & ambiance and quirky sense of humor I would say New Orleanians  deliberately arrange these elements in a way to affect their senses or emotions- they understand living life as art.

Wikiipedia defines art as “the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.”

Last week Joe & I went down to New Orleans for my Behrman Bees High School Reunion – here’s my “old” gang:

“The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet & dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat & the only way to get that aspect of Nawlins off is to eat it off…beignets, crawfish bisque, jambalaya, shrimp remoulade, red beans and rice…” to quote Tom Robbins in “Jitterbug Perfume”:

Taking Tom’s advice, upon landing, we drove straight to a po-boy place on Magazine Street:

Where I happily devoured a soft shell crab po-boy “dressed”!

So many of my memories of living in New Orleans involve eating and not just eating but eating really, really tasty food and discussing the merits of seasoning back in the 60’s & early 70’s-way before the new foodie craze took root in the United States.My first date in 10th grade culminated in eating powder sugar coated beignets & drinking cafe au lait at the Cafe du Monde and then walking in the mist shrouded French Quarter where my date plucked a magnolia blossom for me from an over hanging branch. Sigh…

and then there was the shrimp & crawfish & gumbo…

& oysters at the Acme Oyster Bar- oh my!!

(and heart felt conversations concerning the effects of the oil spill in the Gulf!)

I took another trip down memory lane at Brennans for breakfast where I had fresh strawberries in a thick sweet triple cream, followed by poached eggs on lump blue crab meat topped with a brandy cream sauce and topped off by Bananas Foster which was invented by Brennans- ahhhhhhh sheer bliss!!!

New Orleans is such a fascinating city- and the people there have developed a life style that feeds the senses. Living to eat competes with Living in beauty- the beauty of architecture as Bob Dylan describes it:”Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonades- 30 foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole world…”

In the French quarter Music feeds the soul- on every block- from the blues to Dixie land jazz to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers. We enjoyed Miss Sophie Lee one evening while drinking daquiris       and Hack Bartholomew  while eating beignets & sipping HOT cafe au lait while sweat trickled down my back- which reminds me that my Mom used to admonish me “Horses sweat and ladies perspire!”

and then there is Mardi Gras and the Museum for the American Cocktail and the quirky Pharmacy Museum and voodoo- to be continued next blog.

invention: idea in, vent out.       I’ve been thinking about portraying heaven & hell -do they exist?- what do they look like?- where are they located? how does one get in? or out?

A vintage postcard that I have in my collection:

It says:
“God made the world, and rested seven days
God made man and rested seven days
God made woman- and neither God, man
nor the devil have rested since.
Here’s to Woman”

Not exactly politically correct -what is these days as far as portraying heaven and hell through ART?

Symbology in art- meaning shapes seeing-I am not sure why there are bags of money around the globe holding the candle next to the man wiping his brow- do you?

The night before departing for Taos & 8 days of a process painting workshop with Michele Cassou at the Mabel Dodge Luhan house, my friend Suzy Foy, who has taken many of these workshops, commented: “This workshop will change your life!” The impact of Michele’s workshops speaks for itself upon meeting the other participants- some of whom have done up to 20 plus workshops, some of whom make it an annual practice, most had flown in from all parts of the country and one from Spain and quite a few from Canada. Only a few of us were close enough to drive. Being a “newbie”, I was intrigued by the many returnees greeting each other warmly and felt a little like I did as the new kid in school with the many moves I experienced growing up. Curious, excited, nervous, a little scared…The workshop started with dinner- the workshop included 3 meals a day of the freshest, most delicious food imaginable! YUM!! and then a meeting with Michelle afterward and her co-teachers, Debi & Kathy. The premise of the workshop sounded really simple- it was not product, technique or subject matter oriented, we were to try to not use our intellect or imagination to create, but instead to paint like a young child- from the heart or soul; it was a safe environment- no judging of our own or other paintings-we were to allow images to flow onto the paper. After the meeting I was surprised to hear Michele say “We will go to the studio and start painting!” What!!?? we just got here, I don’t know what I am doing, it’s 8:30 at night. OMG!! Down to the studio we went:

The tempera paint colors were laid out for us to use. (this is the only art workshop I have ever taken where the only thing we were asked to bring was an apron) I went to the colors- hmm what to paint? that is intellectualizing- okay, pick the color that speaks to me and just start. Easy right? wrong!! After 3 days of sort of understanding Michelle’s philosophy, as presented in the morning gatherings and in the studio trying to answer the non leading questions asked by Michele, Kathy & Debi, that help one unblock or open up to the creative spirit I had a break through. I felt pure joy & passion and emotional release. It was a defining moment for me. My experience of process painting is that it was sort of like writing in a personal journal combined with meditation and feeling in the flow all at the same time. I plan to make it a regular practice so that I can explore all those nooks & crannies of my inner landscape. Michele made a comment at one of our gatherings …”that an explorer does not just put her tent down in one place and then stay there.” I like that!

Here’s a photo of the famous New Mexico orange light looking from the studio back up toward the Mabel Dodge Luhan house.

So, now it is back to reality- its been snowing for 5 days in a row, at work we had over 300 girl scouts arrive for the weekend to craft – unexpected & only 4 of us working, 26 new employees of mine are arriving on Wed. and no one at home to cook gourmet meals. LOL

On the road again: Leaving snow behind in Estes Park, Janice & I took off for what we hoped would be spring time in  Taos, to participate in an 8 day process painting workshop with Michelle Cassou.

“Michele Cassou has designed a revolutionary way of unblocking the creative potential: The Point Zero Method. This unique self-questioning method leads us into the wild, untamed place within us where there are no judgments or rules. This is the place where we can feel fully alive and creative, a place where we can express and explore the mystery of our lives.”

The magnetic pull of a few antique stores along the way garnered some assemblage materials:

The workshop was held at the delightful Mabel Dodge Luhan House:

Entering through the front gate, we were charmed by the cooing of doves in their houses just behind the gate.

To make a long & titillating story short, Mabel was a wealthy patroness of the arts who moved to Taos & started a literary colony. She left her 3rd husband for Tony Luhan, a Native American. After she died in 1962 Dennis Hopper lived there & wrote “Easy Rider”. You can only imagine the wild stories this house has to tell. Looking up from the courtyard you can see Mabel & Tony’s bedroom on the tippy top with views out to the mountains and across the sage brush toward the Penitente Church where I took a quiet sage scented walk one day during our lunch break

.To get to the church, I walked through a little neighborhood with cool house that had interesting details like this one with the adobe block roof (and wonder of wonders blooming bushes and tulips!! Yea spring!!!) Los Penitentes are perhaps best known for their songs of worship, called alabados, and for their ascetic practices, which included self-flagellation in private ceremonies during Lent and processions during Holy Week which end with the reenactment of Christ’s Crucifixion on Good Friday. I flashed on the “DaVinci Code” while walking there.

From the church, I walked down a long dirt road to the second cross, the smell of sage so pungent, little pink wild flowers in bloom! At the base of the cross was a simple wood burned offering of the Virgen de Guadalupe. It was good to see her there!

There is a little graveyard near the church that I wandered through

Then back down the road to Mabel Dodge and plumbing the depths of my being in Michele’s workshop- more about that next time.

Joe & I zipped (and I mean zipped- down on Sunday after work & back on Tuesday) to Santa Fe to meet up with my brother, Win, who is selling his house there & wanted to give me a carved post from India-shown here and a carved panel from a Pakistani dowry chest and a set of mesquite doors. My son Paul asked, “What are you going to do with those!?” (implying that I have too much stuff already!) but as Joe 2 says “That is not the point!” (one of the reasons I love him- he “gets” me!)  I did make plans though, for everything on the 8 hour drive home- mostly revolving around making a new garden- using the doors for garden gates & the Pakistani carved piece for the front of a garden tool shed- the post will go in my kitchen. I love to just sit & think & plan while driving in the car with wide open spaces all around- it gives the head a chance to “breathe”! And this time of year out in Colorado, we are all obsessing about gardening- which for me, at 8,000 feet, can’t really happen until after Memorial Day- unless I want to take the chance that everything will get frost bitten!

We spent the night at the old (right on the Old Santa Fe Trail)Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico- newly renovated & beautiful with 14 foot ceilings, antique furniture, old photos of the area- quite charming!

If I had 5-6 million dollars I would buy up a bunch of cool old buildings there – like the Navajo Textile Building & turn them into galleries, artist studios, antique stores and restaurants.

We poked around town in the morning & discovered a coffee shop/weaving studio, a lovely book store and an antique store filled with all sorts of goodies. My heart raced faster when I found a 1950’s red leather bound book with “wonders of the world” maps in it, for assemblages. One wonder was a picture in the state of Iowa of an old farm truck spraying insecticide on the rows of vegetables- now that does make you wonder how that got into a wonders of the world (!) book!!

On to Santa Fe where the trees were in bloom and

the margaritas & green chile were savored down to the very last bite! I was happy to get a chance to catch up with dear friends & family.

As we headed out of town, my heart & prayers went out to the families & friends who lost their loved ones- teenagers- at this roadside site that is marked with these typical New Mexican memorials. When I pass them I say a prayer for them and one of gratitude, for me, for still being in this beautiful world. I also want to put it out there that if I do die in a car accident that I would like to have one of these memorials with lots of pinwheels!!