This is probably the last Friday I'm going to celebrate "Drink & Dunk". Its a traditional activity that takes place at/in the bay, at night, accompanied by a good friend, live music and some alcohol. Bathing suits are optional because there is no one else in the water. Safety first! Its only about 3 feet of water and we always get a ride home.
The amount of alcohol depends on the temperature of the water and the air. At the beginning or the end of the season (late May to late September), or on rainy nights, a shot to tequila is sometimes required. Most Fridays its just optional. One of my very favorite things in life is swimming at night in the bay. Its a truly transcendent experience where I feel like am part of the water and the sky, in a place I grew up on and have a strong connection to. Someday soon I will take the last dunk of 2015 and I will look forward to the first dunk of 2016 nearly every day.
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Why does the prospect of stepping up to my table to create every day scare me? Every day? I was hoping that by now (day 21 of my art every day challenge) I'd get a little bolder. A bit more confident. I was hoping that the structure of showing up every day would make the process of creating art easier. That hasn't happened yet.
I'm just as anxious and as much of a procrastinator as I've always been. The main difference is that I'm letting my anxiety be my excuse any longer. Its become more like the process of jumping into cold water that actually isn't so cold after all. Once I get started and get involved with a project I'm able (most of the time) to feel comfortable and get into the flow. When I decided to create a collage a day on September 1st I was not expecting that I would be making a big leap into painting and mixed media. My collage work has been imaged based so its been a surprise detour to work abstractly.
My comfort zone in terms of a color palette is neutral/green/blue. That's why I decided to choose red for the theme. To my surprise this piece practically created itself! It was so much fun to create all the different red textures with magazine images, acrylic paint, fabric and oil pastels. Although I'm not especially knowledgeable about the Chakra centers I definitely felt energized during the process and have fallen love with red. . Dreams can be very elusive. Sometimes I wake up and have a feeling about a dream that is very strong, but I can't remember any of the specific details. I may be able to recall a few vague images for a few moments before they slip away.
I've made a commitment to make a collage a day, inspired by Randel Plowman's wonderful blog Collage A Day. I've just started the project and, of course, life got in the way and I got behind. My cheat was to use the scan only project featured in this book The Collage Workbook. I gathered a bunch of scraps on a shoebox top and placed them on my scanner without any pre planning. It was pretty difficult to plan the placement or predict how the collage would come out so I just gave up trying to. I did several in a more neutral palette but found that using bright colors gave me better results.
Do you have a preconceived idea before you start a project? I usually have a general idea of a theme or a feeling I'm trying to convey. Occasionally I don't notice I'm working on a theme until I'm finished with a collage. In this case the theme is clearly "pointy things": fork, high heels with pointed toes, birds' wings, a streamlined plane and neatly filed nails but I didn't even notice until a friend pointed it out.
I never go on vacation. There are a number of reasons: financial, the fact that I rescue dogs that no one wants to take care of and that money is usually tight. I was talking about it with a friend yesterday and I think the number one reason I don't go anywhere is because a vacation is guaranteed to cost money and not guaranteed to be a good time. It's a gamble, right? I made this collage inspired by my fear of vacations, and to make fun of myself a little bit.
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