Category Archives: art

What I Made This Week

art, books, creativity, tinkering,

While I have a little “real” work to do, it can be done in an hour or so a day or a one-day sprint, which is my preferred approach. My syllabus is ready for my graduate class, I have finished up a project for a client and I get to spend next week vacationing with family and friends.

I have committed to do some kind of creative work each day: doodling, journaling and lots of paper craft from books to cards to gell printing. Being part of a monthly book making group has provided inspiration and motivation as we share resources and then do show and tell at our meetings.

This week, I worked on my art journal, using a combination of paper and sewing to create quilt-inspired art:

Mixed Media Journal

I also ended up making an accidental craft: I planned to sew together some crochet squares to make a box. But I thought it might benefit from some cardboard on the inside. Then, I thought it would be nice to at least cover the cardboard. By the time I did that and assembled the box using my own design, I realized it was too cool to cover up. It needs some tweaking so the lid is either held in place with side pieces or can go all the way back. That’s the beauty of making: designing and tweaking things using knowledge you have gained from others and other projects. Here’s the box:

Simple Box

At our August book club meeting, we made books using Japanese stab binding. I brought the directions and everyone worked on their own project. I didn’t take a picture of my little notebook but here are other examples of these kinds of books I have made:

Japanese Stab Binding

I am grateful to have the time to lose myself in this kind of work.

Grumpy Old Childless Cat Lady

art, politics, thinking out loud, ,

I am going to keep this short and sweet: the notion that I don’t have a stake in the future because I did not give birth is laughable. Also, I am not miserable. I certainly do not want others to be miserable. What I really want is to be left alone to make personal, private decisions.

I could go on but, thankfully, Moira Donegan from The Guardian said it perfectly: we are looking directly into the face of patriarchy.

Meanwhile, I am actually feeling more optimistic than I have for some time. I have made creativity a priority this summer so spend less time doom scrolling and more time creating. I turned some of my gel prints into zines, and then was inspired by a variety of Instagram accounts to add interactivity. Here’s what I created:

Grass & Water

art, creativity, thinking out loud

I spent a lovely long weekend with friends, playing games, listening to live music and sharing stories. I didn’t make any art but I did save lots of videos and pattern ideas. My friends live on a lake and I was inspired by the blues and greens. I made three version yesterday: two watercolors (one watery, one dry) and one acrylic using a printing block and stencil I made out of foam. I like that one the best and am finding myself drawn to printing.

Making Art

art, thinking out loud

I have been experimenting with watercolor and colored pencils over the past few days, drawing designs and flowers. Today, I tried out an idea I had seen a couple different places on social media: stained glass painting. I used watercolor to fill in the sections created by the tape. Before I pulled it up, I designed to outline each section with a black marker.

Most of the examples just kept the white spaces white but I thought they were too wide so experimented with filling them in. The black spots were made with the eraser ends of whiteboard markers.

One of the ideas behind the #100DayProject is to choose one thing and experiment with it. This idea of taping and painting and embellishing appeals to me. There are lots of possibilities: thinner or even thicker tape, different designs in the margins, perhaps a background besides just the white paper. I could use stamps, make doodles or write quotes over the shapes. Or cut out the shades and reassemble them.

I am calling it, “I Don’t Hate This.”

100 Day Project

art, creativity, Making

This past week, Christians marked the first day of the Lenten season known as Ash Wednesday. For many, it begins 40 days of fasting, prayer or other spiritual practices. In his meditation for that first day in Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, Richard Rohr writes, “It seems that we need beginnings, or everything eventually devolves and declines into unnecessary and sad endings” (p. 13). Lent is the new moon of the Christian calendar: a chance to reconsider, reflect and reset.

Today, just a few days later, marks the start of The 100 Day Project, a global online art project that encourages participants to commit to a daily creative pursuit of their own choosing. The project began in 2008 as part of a graphic design workshop for graduate students taught by Michael Beirut.

I have been considering participating in a formal (public) way, going as far as subscribing to the newsletter and making a small donation, but I haven’t been able to decide what I want to commit to doing every day. Part of me wants to focus on professional work including writing a textbook/workbook for my graduate class and diving deeper into AI. But the project is more about making art so I have focused on that area.

Here’s part of the problem: One of the joys of semi-retirement is already being able to do pursue daily practices that would be perfect for the project including meditation, writing and paper crafting. I would like to spend more time on the latter as it tends to get put aside first in the face of perceived priorities. In particular, I want to just give myself space to try stuff out: watercolor works nicely with books, and I want to experiment more with integrating crochet and book making. I may find a watercolor tutorial to help with some guidance but did not hate what I created yesterday by just fooling around.

As for crochet, I have these lovely mini balls of thread crochet in beautiful colors. Just enough to make a few squares. I used two of them as book covers and think they could also make interesting additions to the book pages including as pockets. I have a guide with lots of different designs for crochet squares, and it would be fun to make an album of them. I could easily crochet one square a day, working my way through the book.

I am also wondering how I could use crocheted pieces with paint to create designs for book covers either as stencils or stamps. My homework for the Handmade Book Club group is to create two large pieces of art on paper. Another member will add their design to the other side and then we will cut it up to make books. I will admit to being out of my comfort zone but I have a few weeks to experiment.

So…what I really want to do for the next 100 days is just explore: crochet a little, paint a little, combine the two, do projects for the Handmade Book Club, and have fun.

The challenge is free and very flexible. There are no prizes, awards or medals. The challenge organizers suggest starting small, something you can do in 5 or 10 minutes as day and mostly from anywhere depending on your travel plans. In the end, however, they openly admit that the rules are made up. This is my kind of of challenge!