Oct. 25th is International Artists Day October 25th has been selected to honor artists and their contributions to humanity. It is not coincidental that this is also Picassos’ birthday.

I started my celebration by reading the latest copy of “Art Calendar“- the business magazine for visual artists- I always learn something new about the business of art and am inspired and uplifted by many of the articles. This month, the article “demand Grandeur” by Eric Maisel really spoke to me.

He asked, “Got Grandeur? Think about your own life. what last stirred feelings of grandeur in you? Was it something you saw on some reality show episode, or something you experienced at a tedious meeting? Probably not!

My hunch is that you were last stirred by music, a film, or a haunting piece of art. You stopped, listened to the music, and said to yourself, “How beautiful!” or “How powerful!” You were transported. In the back of your mind you whispered, “I should be creating and doing work this strong.”

Very inspiring- it has made me rethink a painting I thought was done but also feeling a little unsure about- so I will go back into the studio and take another look at it- what do i need/want to do to make my intention for that piece more meaningful?

My wish for you on Artists Day is that grandeur presents itself to you through a work of art that you either experience or create today- enjoy!!!~

I love to mess around…with assemblage. I have drawers and bins and shelves full of broken, rusty, interesting junk. I have doll heads and broken bits of pottery & old rusty tin cans that I had to “sneak” out of a dump. I have the habit of scanning for good junk on the sides of the road, sidewalks and gutters. This habit is particularly fun when I am in a foreign country like Mexico or India. In India I started carrying a large plastic bag in my purse to hold all of the treasures I would find daily. I did get a few weird looks from the locals watching the crazy American lady pick up trash off the road!! The funny thing is that when I was in Oaxaca, Mexico for a Day of the Dead artist workshop with Michael deMeng last fall, when a group of us were headed out to the cemetary we found ourselves all diving for the same piece of street junk. I loved it- these are my people!!!

Last year my sister, Hollis & I were laughing about the occasional broken sentimental things that guests might spot in our homes and wonder why in the world we were holding on to that. (meaning shapes seeing: what we hold on to and what we let go of) Hollis was getting ready to move & didn’t really want to pack up the broken china dog that her kids had loved to play with and had broken when they were little but somehow it didn’t feel right to just toss it- so she buried it in a secret place out in the yard. I came across 2 broken ceramic rabbit heads that fell off the baby spoons my boys had when they threw them on the floor as babies- I didn’t have the heart to toss them either so I made them part of “The Shrine to Sentimental Broken Things”. This one sold at the Open Studios Tour.

This shrine is my “Welcome Home Shrine”. Looking for “home”; being welcomed “home”, “home is where the heart is”, these are repetititve themes for me. I have a longing for that safe, loving place where I live my best life- as I know many of you do too- it is a feeling that is just there- I don’t think a physical “place” is what will satisfy that longing- I think it is a place within my soul. When I am nourished/in balance- exercising enough, feeling connected to the people I love, being creative, getting enough sleep, having time in nature, eating right…then I am at “home”. There is a heart, a key & the words”Welcome Home” hanging from the top. The nest with the baby birds represents our home/nest and there are birds painted all the way around with crowns on their heads- the crowns represent being in our power/balanced state.

     This is a piece that I started at a Michael deMeng Workshop at the Artist’s Nook. The center post turns around. It is called “A Shrine Dedicated to Gratitude”. There are the 4 muses that I am grateful to on top- one with a guitar for music, one with a palette & paint brush for the visual arts, one with the comedy/tragedy masks for theatre & one with a book for the literary arts. The post in the center that turns has 4 small candles in the nichos dedicated to the 4 elements: earth, air, fire and water. There are prayer flags on top and “pages” on the sides & inside background that represent prayers of gratitude. The knob that turns the central post has a blank journal wrapped around it & it is tied with a green ribbon so that the owner may write their own prayers of gratitude on it.

I had a wonderful, wonderful birthday last Saturday. Joe 2 & I started at the Boulder Farmer’s Market in the morning. The colors of the fall fruit & vegetables and flowers reminded us just how lovely life is!! We bought a gorgeous multi colored bouquet of zinnias, honeycrisp apples, the last of the colorado peaches, ruby red beets, spicy argula, a bottle of my favorite Colorado chardonay from Bookcliff- ahhhhh… life is good!!

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is along the street where the farmer’s market is held so we ducked in there to see what the current show was. Whoa- it was a very powerful show by Erika Wanenmacher called “The Science Club: The Boy’s Room, Now, Forever, Then, part 1″. Erika synchronistically found tissue sample slides from the U.S. government’s secret radiation experiments on humans that occured from the 1940’s-1970’s, at the Black Hole, a lab surplus store, in Los Alamos, New Mexico.While researching information on the experiments she came upon a project that was done on children in Massachusetts at the Fernald School. Out of this “stack of heinous reading” the Boy’s Room was born.                                                      Having raised 2 boys, I found the boy’s p.j.’s particularly poignant. Meaning shapes seeing.

Everything in the room is black & white & shades of grey exceprt for 1 thing- the greenish glass of juice on the t.v. tray in front of the “Roadrunner Cartoon” playing on the television.

 It is a powerful and moving piece on the observation of the inhumanity of mankind for the “greater good”. It was a bitter sweet contrast betwen the beauty and abundance of the Farmer’s Market and this show about the deplorable actions of the U.S. government against its own citizens- question authority!!!

A friend of mine, Sally, who came to the fall Estes Park, Colorado Open Studios Tour asked me a really good question. As she looked at my painting”Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” I explained that when I was thinking about how to express the idea of feeling fear and doing what ever caused that feeling anyway,  that I started thinking  “what would the perfect symbol or postcard be of that we, in general, are afraid of?”- Once again: meaning shapes seeing. Most people are afraid of snakes, spiders and flying in an airplane. aha- I had the perfect airplane card. I thought that women nonchalantly jumping naked out of an airplane would be a fun expression of feeling the fear & doing it anyway.

As Sally turned to leave she asked me “Why did you choose the postcard at the bottom?” I thought that was a great question- I have at least 400 cards to choose from- mountain scenes, lake scenes, ocean scenes- why that particular one? Well…I chose it for several reasons- one: the perspective-it is a scene shot from above so it tied in with the women gracefully floating down; two: the stadium sort of looks like a target- a good place for the women to aim for a landing and three:  “exposition” postcards always show the futuristic looking buildings that would seem very alien & perhaps frightening to the public who went to view them- so it tied in with the theme of feeling the fear. I always appreciate thoughtful questions like that because sometimes I am not conscious of why I chose a certain postcard or color or shape -I often work intuitively- so it is fun to explore the why behind my choices and the answer sometimes surprises me too- but always makes perfect sense.

We had a beautiful fall day in Estes Patk for the Open Studios Tour! I so enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new!! I had a drawing for one of my vintage postcards each day the tour was on. Congratulations to Jackie VanDer Bovenkamp and Vicki Henderson- they were the winners.

I moved some furniture around and cleared off spaces to get set up for the tour. Here is what my living room looked like: