Artisitc Media: Bikes and Clothing

One can encounter inspiring expression in the way people use themselves as canvases to be adorned.  This was the theme of the bike ride with the Tucson Bicycle Belles this week as we rode to the Loft Cinema to watch a movie about a street fashion photographer from the New York Times.  The film was called Bill Cunningham New York. It was sweetly inspiring to see this smiling modest man live out his love of finding beauty (for over 50 years) through the lens of his camera, whilst riding his bike about the city. He does not discriminate between high fashion and quirky ensembles, the rich and famous and the common commuter.  It was also Kylie's B-day -Happy Birthday Kylie!!

To get in the spirit for the film, many of us dressed up (something I simply can't pass up) .

 

The Yetman sisters - bright and refined!

 

Kristen in her tiara with the b-day girl, 

Kylie in a fabulously flowing dress. 

 

Yep, that's me rockin' the leopard print.

Phoenix took this pic before I headed out 

to meet the group at the gastropub Wilko

 

One of my favorite local artists, Janet Miller, 

who encouraged me to share my art blog 

with the Belles after sharing my enthusiasm 

with her about taking photos of the styles & event.

Janet has a great vintage, lace hat on and one of those 

neat antique style face silhouette necklaces to go with her stripey 

dress. See her innovative skirt guard on her bike!  I first met her when 

I joined in helping the bike decoration stop she organized at Cyclovia in 2010 :)

cute helmet fashion :)

 

Bicycle Belle with Bike Beau

 

the ride to the theater 

the desert summers are kind by giving us cool nights

 

another colorful pretty site 

our bikes all lined up before the theater

I sincerely see dressing up as an opportunity to articulate my joy of colors and my love of uniquely configured style. I enjoy days of tuning out of the material life as much as many folk do, but then there are those days where I am glad I have a closet full of playful and fanciful items to mix and match-  collected over time.

The Bicycle Belles are a new Tucson group that has Kylie and others have formed to create fun ways for women to ride fun places together and share great resources. I was excited to bring my camera along because I love the aesthetics of Tucson culture and was inspired by Bill to document our wonderful displays of life. Everyone looked quite lovely! I think I will join them again for their next picnic!

Flora and Polinators

This post is for all the peeps who like to wear a little something special to liven up or get them through the day.  I see you out there and I know the uplifting feeling of adding a touch of extra you-ness to the day. Enjoy today your way! So, here is a little something I like to craft to brighten my outfits too...

Busy Bee Minding His Beeswax Business

Pic above- I took in Arroyo Seco NM.
Real life inspiration for crafts to wear with you all day.

My June Bug below: Perfect to wear as they come out this summer :)

Accompanied by a button rose I bought at Conspire.
Gotta support artists when I am inspired by their craft ideas.

Dressing up for work makes the day simply more fun in the morning and keeps it going all day long.  Dressing up with flowers helps keep me being my best self. It helps makes life feel splendid and charmed.  And but of course every flower needs its pollinator... it's only natural.

A different June Bug of mine, made of a stripey silk tie and an old muslin curtain and seashell button. Coupled with felt flower mom gave me for Xmas with awesome quilting like stitches gone crazy. I think she got it at an Etsy street fair. People are always commenting that they love it, ma! xo

A bedazzled bumble bee with a crystal from a broken vintage bracelet, polka-dot ribbon and felt.  Peace lily courtesy of SpellMonster Creations (the fantastic Alexandra)... one of my favorite types of flowers in real life and in paintings. I will have to share a pic of the felt broach ones I designed one day. Jenn gave me a great metal wasp pin once which for years I wore for luck some days. I think missing it motivated me to create more :)

Broaches- check! Sundress- check! Boots- check! 

And now I'm ready to go out!

 

And there's more where that came from!  Life is simply sweeter with a silk flower in your hair. You can get half a dozen at the dollar store for a satisfying assortment of choices when getting dressed.  I stitch bobby pins to mine which can also be clipped to clothes.  I wish I also had more of my grandma Hazel's old broaches and costume jewelry. You know what that also reminds me of? Shoe clips... aren't those just wonderful!  I need to make me some.

Supply Source

The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show deserve a mentioning, for it is the main source and major opportunity for beaders around the world - in our own back yard!! It is the biggest show of its kind in the world.  My mom and our friend Nancy come down each year for a few days; plus my aunt Joyce and neighbor from Phoenix, Sherry, come for a day as well.  They are experts at finding the good spots and leading me to them.  A few local friends come along each time as well.  Lots of people I know here head out to the shows several times a week after work during the month - Dedicated!  It is a frenzy here.  Some folk at work even take days off for it.  It is really hard to pay full price for beads or jewelry, most people say, after you have been to one of these shows. I also recommend going to the workshops.  Mom helped pick out a fun felting class this year with an artist who came to town. Last year we learned to work with glass, paper and resin. I hope to get to keep having that kind of fun with my ma every year!

Next year I will have to take a picture that truly shows the ridiculously overwhelming amount of supply, table after table, tent after tent, mile after mile (that was starting to sound like the Gansters' Paradise song there... chuckle).  I started to like the smaller shows that show the smaller, finer artists' hand-casted beads and hand-torched glass, like Best Bead Show and To Bead True Blue.  I frequent these now not only to support them, but because I needed less choices to reduce the shock of knowing where to start! I have finally honed it down to getting a few new things a year to refill or delve into new colors. I think these photos are from 2009 in the big tents that go up each year. Imagine massive tents of gems and minerals sprouting all over the city!

 

We used to buy a few items for Toad Hall (a boutique a friend owns in Oregon) but now that my mom runs her own art business, Bloom! an Artscape, we can can get in to the wholesales for some fantastic deals through her own business license. Some shows don't require that, but it does help you get bulk price tax free deals.

So that is where I get my fancy pants beads. Ta da!!

the art of organizing our nests

whimsicals

 

 peaceful beauty

This thought is dedicated to those who use the placement of things as an art.  To Jenn, who I always thought was very artistic in her particularities about how things should be organized.  Like a science, a practice and an art.   Cady's houses always have such thought put into every decoration, with tidbits and creations carefully thrifted with frequent visits to second hand stores to build a feel of treasured history or forgotten heirlooms. And dedicated to mom, for helping me set up my place with sweet aesthetic touches that take time to decide upon, and she puts the time and love into it. Of course all the Holland-Mier's are fantastic at using their home as their palate.  And there are many more inspirations out there that I have helped show me how to to value this within myself - to appreciate the how the way we organize our material details serves us.

The whimsicals on my shelf are my little mementos reminding me who I am.  Yes, I am that forgetful.  They take me to places I have been and the relationships that have helped form me. That is the artform of memory.

xo!

Poloroid!

 

One nice thing about Poloroid is that it is not a digital camera.  You have one shot to get the photo you want. And now that you had to search ebay to find film and it is hella expensive... you really don't want to waste a shot.  You really have to think about what you are planning to photograph ahead of time. I took these photos above while Phoenix and I were on our road trip up the west coast last summer.  Since they were vacation shots, I asked a lot of different people to take the photos of us, and have to be brave to ask them to get a certain angle or brave to just see what happened.  I love them all!

Another nice thing about Poloraid is that it is just like a digital camera.  You get to see it instantly! So satisfying on a printed paper too.  Plus I love shaking and waiting a little bit while it morphs before your eyes.  It doesn't feel that long ago, though, that they were more common, but I do like how it has an old feel now.

In the last photo, you can see the old camera, that I got at a yard sale down the street, hanging from grandpa's vanity in my room. Works great!  And, it is awesome 80's pink & grey no less. 

Altered Images

This is me and Loosey, daydreaming. 

This is impossible love.  

This is Loo and Roo in Wonderland.

  

I have missed having Photoshop.  I used to use it at my job in Flagstaff and my boss, Neil, let me install it on my own laptop.  It was so fun. Although I missed it when that laptop died when moved to Tucson, I made the most of using PowerPoint to play with images. I like using a program to the limit... making-do brings a very satisfying kind of creativity to the table. 

So...  for the image at the top of this post, I used a mural which I took a photo of in Bisbee.  The mural is on a motel up the hill, which by the way, allows dogs.  The mural painting was based on a poem, but I have forgotten what the poem is.  Using PowerPoint, I chopped my photo up into my favorite elements, repeating some of them in different sizes, added feathers and a bike with side-car... vintage of course, put that Amelia Ehrhart hat on Loosey as I have always wanted to see her in, and dreamed away, imagining her ears flop in the wind. Yes, I am wearing a Rainbow Brite costume. In the real photo, I think I am dancing with Alexandra... but of course! Do you see the tiny version of us?

The second image down was made back when I did have Photoshop. I stuck together about 7 different images- all stolen from a google image search for key words... sorry original artists!  The originals included images from some of the first Valentine cards produced.  I think I was going for a punky vintage look. This was before I knew steampunk was a word, but it does remind me of that a bit.  The Victorian people seem to have some troubles, and where you see the acrobats, there is some risk taking and saving going on, but I found my creation to be some how representing some kind of strained endurance that sadly represents just about how relationships seemed to have to be to me at the time. But I believe it is a piece of art I am proud to have created, for the pretty end-results and valiant efforts... on many levels.  I love the creative feel of the plush carpet and really enjoyed making wallpaper from an image I found into the frame.

In recent news, Stuart helped me to buy a student version of Photoshop recently. So, Yay! I shall indulge again!  The last altered image is a favorite shot I took of Loosey and Roofrauff when they were housemates in the Flower house. I individually swirled and pointed everything and then overlaid some effects to the whole image.  Stuey is going to teach me some tricks soon too, he said.

Mindfulness of the Body

 

Wright recently posted an article on mindfulness of the body with Buddhist practice which was a nice reminder of why I love yoga so much.  It tunes me in to balancing my life in the present, living as much in my front body and with mind on the future as my back body with memories in the past. It reminds me that I hold my tensions in on my own and how to consciously let them go.  You too?

Resting between my grandma Hazel's curtains in my bedroom window are my daily yoga reminders.  I made these yoga cards after realizing it would be a lot easier to paint them than to get Loosey to do all the sun salutation moves in photos (a true effort of mine;).  They were going to be Xmas gifts for everyone last year, but I ran out of energy and ran out of the will to repeat myself after making 3 ... ha... sorry.  I enjoyed making the yogis look like Chinese characters, somewhat, with fluid paint motions.  I used colored masking tape to make it look like ribbon holds them together into a sun salutation. Thanks mom and Alexandra for the pretty paper!

Clouds

 

with love to Phoenix for encouraging my cloud photography by getting me this cheerful mobile for me to hang my favorite photos from

This post is dedicated to clouds. To me, clouds are the flowers that we take time to smell.  Looking up rather than ahead or behind.  They are our connection to nature, in a way that reminds us that the world is much bigger than us and works on its own time table.  It is a reminder of seasons coming, yet they ground me in the present moment, appreciating my life where it stands, a person without an agenda. One nation, under clouds, with liberty and justice for all. (Hehe, my dad taught me to say that when we said the pledge in school;)

Doodle- It's good for you!

 

troubedors

 

LooLoo and Looming Clouds

 

Prickly pear pads with a wee bit o' dimension

My favorite style doodling is the kind where you don't let yourself lift up your pen.  I end up outlining shadows and  capturing shapes that I didn't notice in people's features before. More than that, drawing a sketch or playing with paint colors is like meditation. I love a day that is slow enough to immerse in portraying something beautiful we are thinking about.  It's a chance to delve into the spatial and visual parts of our mind.

What is more inspiring than ma' dog !?

Lucia de Guadelupe
wondrous and crowned with glowing sun ray warmth
regal, wise and discerning
my desert babe swaddled by nopales e estrellas
love endorsed by roses sweet
with la luna as her partner deity
and Tutuli cheerful cherub

Loosey is my muse, as she is in so many of my photos as well! Because she is a goddess, you know. Tutuli is the little cherub. heehee 

I have been drawing and painting again lately.  Hurray!  I am so happy to be giving myself time, space and energy for art and relaxing in my life.  It is so wonderful to crack out the craft supplies after lugging them around and collecting more, move after move for so long- always dreaming about my craft space.  It is starting to be realized!!  It may have been a year and half since I have drawn - amazingly enough, but I am not too surprised because time flies as usual and I continue to dabble here and there with other musings happily.  But it feels great to break out the water color!  I think I have forgotten what techniques I used to love to use in order to get gradients and layers, but it is coming back to me. I think it is all about the timing and drying.  Well this pic didn't quite do all that, but it does celebrate Lu through color.  I started it with a line drawing of the sort that you don't pick up your pen much.  I enjoy that style, where I draw outlines of shadows instead of shading. I do love to paint dogs.  Along with yards and nature, it the thing I think I have painted or drawn the most so far.  If anyone wants a pup painted let me know!