Marble run marathon

I am about ready to fall asleep and it's only 8:30pm--indeed I've hit the moment in the semester when all the meetings and to-do's crowd out thought and slower consideration. I do believe next week should slow down a bit, so I'll catch up then on posts and studio work and slowness.

To think about tomorrow--

Symmetry

My dialogue with Bryan has encouraged an exploration of symmetry--of all things.

Shapes from a shape (3)

Shapes from a shape (2)

Shapes from a shape (1)

Making a shape

A friend and colleague of mine asked me to contribute to an upcoming exhibition of his. Bryan works with paper and idiosyncratic shapes as I do, so the pairing of our work makes sense. We've decided to not simply keep our work separate but to begin an exchange. I pushed some of my shapes under his studio door last week, and he then reciprocated with some of his. Very exciting (seriously!).

The above image is the first "successful" outcome of the collaboration, and perhaps I should not be so hasty to define success in terms of a product I like or am interested in. Because when I began looking at what Bryan gave me I was completely flummoxed. Not because the shapes were uninteresting to me. Bryan's fragments are captivating, BUT they are often outlined and they are generally solid in color. And I don't do outlines and solid color in my work--at all really--this may be obvious to everyone else familiar with what I make, but the realization came to me as something of a revelation last week. So the above shape is the first successful physical result--and it is not yet in a finished painting or drawing--but the success of our collaboration appeared the moment I understood the specificity of my tendencies--and then began asking why.

Orange Climax

I will not subject you to ALL the pictures of dirt taken over this last weekend. Amidst balmy breezes and unblemished blue skies we began to turn over the garden. Our dirt is ORANGE (hence so are our white socks now). I have actually never lived in a place with such distinctively hued dirt, and so I am romantically inclined to think about the color BURNT SIENNA--which supposedly comes from the color of the earth around Siena, Italy right? (Or have I been misleading my students all these years.) So might we christen a new color and add it to our palettes.
Orange Climax.

Light

I am usually at my studio on Friday afternoons, but yesterday's half day of school for Alexander found us all at home--uncharacteristically. The day was warm and brilliant, doubly so due to the spate of frigid temperatures we've been enduring as of late. (Our Pennsylvania skins are getting thin, oh so thin.)

I found myself buoyed by the tapestry of light shifting ever so slightly over the surfaces of our home--on the yellow chair, across the floor, over the plants. The shapes created by the sun seemed like gifts--REAL hope predicting Spring. I wandered about, seeking those shapes out--as many as I could find, ever so glad for the light.

Studio wall--

I am making lots of smallish drawing/collages these days--
1. rows
2. half ellipses
3. holes
4. re-purposed "grounds"
5. reconfigured "figures"
6. marred initial intentions

Lovely amalgam of a plant/thing

Saturday morning over coffee, Dean (a visiting friend/artist from Virginia) asked me (with an accompanying fairly incredulous look on his face) something to the effect of, What is up with that plant upstairs?

I've not really thought about our potted-composite-of-this-and-that-succulent-allowed-to-just-GO, grow! But it is a little odd actually--kind of seems a plant version of what I like to make in collage--a little of this, a little of that...

What I love (Six)

Roba Henshaw is a quiet, elderly gentlemen who was a member of a painting class taught by my husband a few years ago. Roba made the painting above--now hanging against the white wall of our upstairs bathroom.

I do not recall any explanation behind the painting--but there is this wonderful matter-of-factness to it which I love and rather envy.