It's just a jump to the left...

It's 6:35 a.m. and I am at work. How did I get here so early? I thought I got up when the alarm went off at 5:30, but it was weird that the alarm had shut itself off just before I reached for the clock. I got up, did my sit-ups (OUCH! My back!), got dressed, walked the dog, packed my lunch, and it looked like the clock said quarter to seven - all very normal. I got into the rental car. Clock said 6:02. Must've been wrong - somebody didn't set it right at daylight savings time. (Although it had been right when I drove Emily to work yesterday...). Wow, no traffic. How could I have gotten out the door an hour earlier than usual? Time warp?

Grateful

'Tis the season of giving thanks. I am thankful for life's many blessings:
my darling girls
my amazing boyfriend
my loving family

my dear friends
my fuzzy family members
the art that enriches my soul
a roof over the head and food on the table

and I am ever so grateful that I was able to walk away from this wreck!

Yep, that's my car!
Beware of black ice!

It happened on my way into Portland on Thanksgiving morning.
Robbie and I were going to go to the snow.
Life had other plans for me.

Be alive,
be present,
feel gratitude,
and don't take a minute for granted!

Regrets

She wanted to go to the meet up,
to share her visual journals with strangers,
but the rain fell hard and plenty,
newly filled lagoons had to be crossed,
and traffic stood still.
One hour to go three miles,
time did not bode well.
The driver drifted off to sleep at the wheel;
she dreamed of life,
death,
warm places,
and missed opportunities.
It was time to go back even before she arrived.
She wanted that life,
those friends and experiences,
but she just couldn't get there.

Little Miss Spooky

Picture yourself one dark lonely night

Suddenly frightened by something in the light...

Little Miss Spooky brings out the inner goth in me! If I could, I would do this to my hair.

And I would wear clothes with such adorable details!

And then I would sit and dream of ravens.

Little Miss Spooky will be taking a trip to my etsy shop soon.

Is this scary week?

Rob just asked me if this is scary week! Could be...

Miss Spooky is done, but I'll wait to take photos of her tomorrow. I'll try to get home while there's still daylight to do it!

In between various tasks on my doll, I bounced between a couple of other paintings: one I've been working at off and on since summer. It has completely changed, from a peacock into this guy. (I will only show this detail for now. He's very scary to me!)


The other is today's journal entry, reflecting on how I felt this morning. Yeah, it was just one of those mornings.

Don't worry - the day got better!

: ) lulu

Holly jolly Christmas, anyone?

Oops! My Etsy shop is no longer empty, and will have more soon! (At least, that's the plan!)

Yesterday Deirdra, Gay and I had studio fun at D's house! Miss Spooky is almost ready!

xoxo lulu

Spontaneous combustion

Came home earlier and worked on the previous blog, but midway fell into a long winter's nap. Woke up at 11-something, finished blog, perused other blogs which led to some you tube videos...

An hour or so later I heard la Shoobie click-clicking on the floor downstairs and decided I should get up and take her out for a p-break.

Mmm, the chill air refreshes, the quiet dark soothes. Remember how I used to love so much being out in the night air, trusting the world, feeling free?

Went to grab the camera and the tripod... and the hula hoop (because new acquaintance Kaci has introduced me to the world of hooping!)

It's not so easy hooping with my parka on, so I took it off,
in the cold dark night,
and let the hoop
spin me 'round

Headlines in the paper the next morning: Police converge on gyrating 51-year-old woman in the night

: ) lulu

Launching the new space

Wednesday at school we all happily anticipated our mid-week day off. "Got any special plans?" I was asked. YES! Art all day! In my new happy place, no less - time to launch the new studio to see how she floats.

Color is but the first layer of personalizing a space. I brought with me a tiny little part of my supplies from home to adorn the shelves.

The saying goes that God is in the details. So is the persona who inhabits the space.

A few works in progress sit perfectly on the shelf rail. I'm so tempted to leave their faces unpainted now because they looked so perfect this way against the raspberry wall!


My loyal studio mates accompanied me for a good portion of the day: la Shoobie by the shelf and Robbie's big dawg Roz - she's a sweetheart!

Working on the big table: deLIGHTful!

I love how the room is sparsely furnished and not cluttered with junk mail and the other accoutrements of real life. This scene may look cluttered, but only the materials I might use on this one doll are present.

In conclusion, working in the new space was fabulous! YAY!!!

Inspired

On Tuesday I came home from work dead tired. I mean really, I was literally falling asleep on my feet as I walked Shoobie, and all I wanted to do was to curl up in a warm bed for a nice long nap. That makes it sound inviting, but the sensation inside me was heavy, leaden, and I was feeling the early winter sadness, the change of time into the darkness and damp chill sitting on my shoulders like a cold stone gargoyle. Urgh.

Into the house I trudged, shedding rain boots, coat, scarf, dog, hauling my self upstairs one slow step at a time, approaching the bed... oh, wait - go back to Willow's room to grab the computer to check email before dozing off. On the bed I laid back, grabbed the laptop, decided to check ye olde blog spot before email. Wow! Six comments! It was so nice to get that feedback from people after being absent for so long. I had to go see what everyone else was up to. Thank you Deirdra, Janne, Karin, Lisa, Gloria, and Miz Katie! Your work inspired me, revived me, poured a bucket of ice water on me! I popped out of bed, ran downstairs and got BUSY!

In my journal, sometimes I just want to push paint around, you know? I found this page where I had sketched a very sharp-angled face months ago. Time to flesh it out.

Sometimes I like not knowing where it's going to go, what or who is going to appear.

Angles askew, textures now creamy, now rough, play of color and light. She reflects the way I was feeling, but now that feeling has been transformed.

A page to remember and acknowledge, to share gratitude.

Activity bounced from the journal page to another leaf in a different journal, to Miss Spooky. Miss Spooky is a doll I had wanted to finish in time for Halloween, but that didn't happen. She waited all silent and primed, hoping to join in the holiday fun, but while I feel free in the journal to let things grow organically, sometimes with the dolls I have an idea and then I become afraid I will not be able to produce that very vision. Poppycock! Let go, let loose, PLAY!

I love her, tee hee!

Today I am at my home-away-from-home studio. Robbie has gone out to run errands while I stay and play. I'll be working some more on Miss Spooky, and who knows what else. Joy.

xoxo lulu

A Room of One's Own

Following up on my list of 51 things to do, I've decided that November will be the month that I complete one project per week (list item # 2). On Saturday I finished the first project, that actually took a couple of weeks to do. The project: a studio space for me in my sweetie's house.

I've been spending a lot of time at Rob's on the weekends, and I confess that at times I've felt discombobulated and detached from myself, a visitor in someone else's space. After sharing these feelings, Rob called me one day to let me know he was clearing out one of his spare bedrooms, and wanted to know if I would like to come over and paint it. I understood right away the gift he was giving me - a room of my own for a studio in his house! Is he not the best boyfriend ever?!?!

To appreciate the generosity of this gift, one needs to understand that my sweetie is quite the collector, a connoisseur if you will, of estate sales, bon marchés, and all manner of things practical and otherwise. In other words, he has a lot of STUFF, and over time it has been packed into the spare rooms, to the rafters, in fact. Photographic evidence, Exhibit A, the Room Before:

In Exhibit B, one can see that before becoming a storage unit, the room was used as a male sporting bastion - see wall decor:

If Exhibit B did not state clearly enough that this was the testosterone zone, I offer Exhibit C:

"No Women, No Minors"

We dug through the boxes, transported them to a far away region of the world (across the hall to another spare room), and unburied treasures long ago forgotten:

A beer-slinging foosball cowboy??? YEE HAW!!! How could I not want this to be the focal point of my studio away-from-home? Well... Cowboy had to go, but the foosball table had potential. I did not see it at first, but Robbie did. (He's a creative genius - that's part of why I love him so!)

With all the boxes finally cleared out, we set to work on priming the room, making quick work of it with rollers, brushes, and the greatest wall painting gadget ever: the edger. (See, it's good to have a man in your life who is into collecting all manner of things!)

After the priming had dried, we set about to painting. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted - a sunny yellow like I have at home. I brought over the same color I have on my living room walls, set about to thinning it and sloshing it on to a dappled effect, and it looked... awful! In this space my sunny Mexican yellow looked heavy, dark, and blotchy. So we looked through Rob's stash, found a similar but lighter toned yellow, and started rolling it on. I was thinking at this point that I didn't care about any special effects via painting technique, I just wanted to finish the thing and start making art. Yeah, right. We left to go out for a bit while the paint dried, and driving along Sandy Blvd., something or things, caught my eye and suddenly I had a vision of what I really wanted. So I asked Rob, tentatively, "Would you be upset or think I was crazy if I wanted to paint over two of the walls and add a couple more colors?" He laughed, and then said, "I was wondering why you painted it all one color to begin with." (Aww, he already knows me so well!)

So on my next visit I set about on my secret mission - I did not show the new colors to Rob, and I shooed him away from the room while I primed and prepped. He'd have to wait for the big reveal!

Ok, silly me. I primed the wall adjacent to the window wall, and the one opposite to it, leaving the window wall yellow. So, I was going to have yellow flanked by two strong darker colors. Ew! It would be so much better to leave two adjoining walls yellow, kitty corner to these complimentary analogous colors. Yes, I repainted one of my newly primed walls the same yellow I had just erased! But in the end, I'm glad I did. (Although I would have been gladder if my brain had been more functional in the first place!) Ready for the big reveal? Here it is:

Ooooohhh, pretty! This is my favorite corner, where sunny yellow meets raspberry! I love how the morning light colors the walls. The room is spare (for now), and has a subtle funky Asian feel to it, with slim, black bamboo poles holding up sheer panels of purple around the window. More poles are bunched together and combined with a string of wire fireflies to make a sculptural light accent over a second work table. And check out that table - could it be the coolest light table ever? Have you guessed what it is?

If you figured out it was the foosball table resurrected, you are correct! Robbie removed the little foosball men, then we added rice paper, holiday lights, and a heavy slab of hockey rink plexiglass as the table top! It's a great height for either sitting in tall stools or standing, as I like to work sometimes. What a great table for tracing patterns!

The studio is ready. Time to get busy and creative! But for now, it sits like a newly dug garden - the soil is resting, and soon will be sown. I hope to spend some time working on this week's project in this new, wonderful space.

Thank you so much, Robbie!!! I love it!!!
xoxo lulu