Making with Heart

The Rebel Craft Rumble is happening tonight - it's a big fundraiser for SCRAP. I'm one of only four contestants competing for the chance to go up against last year's Craft Master, Sister Diane. It's quite an honor - and quite a challenge. One of my competitors, Miss Demeanor of Criminal Craft fame, has been talking some trash on Twitter about me . . . in a friendly, may-the-best-crafter-win, get-my-goat kind of a way. (To be fair, so has Sister Diane. And I haven't exactly been a shy flower). So, now I'm just gonna make it official and throw down the glue gun gauntlet right now.

What the heck makes me think I've got what it takes to compete with the top crafters Portland has to offer? Well, besides an incredible amount of hubris . . . perseverance and a willingness to try a lot of crazy stuff until something works.

A few months ago, I was working on an installation for Mad/50 with the theme "The Commons." I struggled with this thing. I was working with the idea of common space, the spaces and places that we share and hold in common. National parks, sidewalks, monuments, and even churches. I started off with this.


I like the trees and the background maps of Mt. Hood. They set the tone for the kind of common space I was looking for . . .


But it just wasn't workin' for me. The two women talking over the fence? Nope . . . too literal. Cheesy. The big church window? I liked the idea of it and set it aside. What the piece needed was heart, soul, some kind of center.

So I tried to make a heart - home is where the heart is, and that's the real common space. I really went for it . . . I went dimensional, used plaster, paint, cord . . . the whole nine yards.


Yeah. It looks like . . . well. Some kind of dead squid thing. From a bad horror movie. Needless to say, it didn't make it into the final version. I kept trying to work with the church window . . . but it was just too big. In frustration, I went in a completely different direction. Circles, connected.


By a slightly less frightening, but still symbolically open, heart.


And here I am with the final piece where it was installed at SE Madison and 50th in Portland. Yup. I kept at it - through the crazy squid heart phase and all the things that didn't work. I kept at it. So look out, Miss Demeanor. It's you and me in the first round, and I am Gonna. Keep. At. It.

And if I'm lucky, I'll make it work! May the best crafter win.

Great Expectations

I have had some pretty intense expectations for myself this month: I was going to blog every day, use travel as a theme, finish the work for two shows, hang two shows, apply to Portland Open Studios, teach Artmaking as Playful Prayer, work on a bunch of things for my marketing group, start on revising my book, and on and on . . .

Well, let's just say that I haven't exactly met my own expectations. I've managed to miss blogging on 8 of the 16 days this month so far (on the upside, I did blog 8 of the 16 days, and managed to tie most of them to travel - easy, since just about everything connects to travel!). I completely screwed up the deadline for Open Studios (what? they need me to mail the checks? I thought I could fill out the whole thing on-line at the last minute!). I got the shadowbox done for Mad/50, but had yet to finish four pieces by the time I had to go hang the show at CubeSpace. Yesterday afternoon. Oh, and one piece broke on the way over. Uh-huh. So, spent the day finishing up a few pieces. And getting a few pieces ready to finish tomorrow.

I've been letting myself down. I still haven't moved my database and my newsletters into Constant Contact. I haven't updated my website in a few weeks. I have a to-do list as long as my arm. But damn, even though I didn't finish everything, I had a great time in the studio last week! And the Mad/50 install went really well . . . I really like the way it looks in the space, even though I really wasn't sure about it at first . . .


There won't be an official "opening party," but I encourage you to take a walk in SE Portland and visit - maybe drop by MUSE at 4224 SE Hawthorne for some art supplies, then jog up a few blocks to Madison and 50th to see the shadowbox installation.


But oh boy, expectations are dangerous. I almost didn't enjoy myself in the studio because I was so busy beating myself up for what I wasn't getting done. I forgot for a moment to listen to what I was working on and what I really wanted . . . This happens, too, when I start a piece sometimes . . . I have too many expectations for what the piece is supposed to look like ("Oh, it'll be brilliant!" or "It must work in this particular space" or "Oh this piece is going to be about blah") and I forget to pay attention to what the piece is telling me.

It's sort of like being on vacation and getting so caught up in the fact that the shower runs on salt water, and that the airline lost your luggage, and that breakfast only includes toast and forgetting to look out the window and see the ocean. Glowing.

Maybe I'll just let go of the expectations. For a little while.

Mad/50 and a Mad Dash

I teach a class at PCC tomorrow (Basic Beading) and then at 4 am on Sunday, the Sweetie and I make a mad dash for the airport and a little sunshine in Tulum, Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula . . . I won't be posting for the week I'm gone, but you can look forward to cool travel photos of Mayan ruins and lovely beaches when I return . . .


And this is the Mad/50 shadowbox shrine as it stands now. I have a feeling there are a few more details to incorporate, but the basic structure is there. I used an old family photo given to me by Vicki Lind, as well as found crow feathers and old keys . . . it ended up being a very hopeful piece . . . in keeping with its installation on the Spring Equinox.

When we get back from our trip, Spring should be well on its way. Every year, the cherry blossoms are out by March 8 (International Women's Day) and even if the weather is crappy, Portland's celebration of this event - almost always on the Sunday closest to March 8 - feels like the beginning of hope!

The Mad/50 Shrine: Progress Notes

I got quite a bit done on the Mad/50 shadowbox shrine project . . . I made a few sketches to capture some of the ideas that had been racing around in my head.
Normally, I don't do a lot of sketching - but I've been wanting to record my creative process and understand more about how my ideas develop. So, I attempted to capture some of the ideas that were floating around as the project marinated. Naturally, as soon as I attempted to get them down on paper, they changed. Even the medium - simple pencil on paper - dictated changes in the designs.
Then, I got into the studio and started playing around with objects and materials inside the freshly gessoed box. I found some things I'd forgotten about, like this mylar map of somewhere "outside" in Washington state.



I also took a little birdhouse and covered it with parts of an architectural drawing I had outlining plans for a heating system. The map of Portland added some color, which I liked. It seemed appropriate to have a little color given that the installation will happen on the Spring Equinox.

I certainly don't have the layout finalized - I doubt very much that the finished project will end up looking like either the sketches or the sample layouts I did. In fact, as often happens, the objects I found during my experimentation have already spawned two new and different shadowboxes - items that didn't work for the Mad/50 project but cried out to be used and still related to the "home" theme. I completed one of these "spawn projects" today (it utilizes an x-ray I got at SCRAP a few days ago, a Monopoly house, and some hand-printed fabric) and the other is well underway. I'll have pictures of those for you in a few days . . .

As for the Mad/50 project, I committed to using the map, painting over parts of it and extending some of the lines to make it feel more like an integral part of the box. I'm considering actually building a nest, because I don't think the birdhouse is quite right . . . and there's another shadowbox that seems to need it!



And here it is in context - the studio!

At Home: Memory

I recently finished reading a book by a friend of mine, Jill Kelly, called Sober Truths: The Making of an Honest Woman. It is the story of one woman's struggle with addictive behaviors, a struggle I could definitely identify with.

In her book, Jill Kelly says:

"Memories are not necessarily the truth. But we tend to live with them as if they are. They create those stories, those beliefs that govern our decisions."

Anyone who has ever tried to fill an internal void by drinking or eating or shopping or any of a hundred other things has a story about that void and how it came to be there. The fears, the pain, the loneliness, the emptiness we are trying to blot out . . . and the memories that serve as our rationalization for how we choose to cope with it. Memories that grow sharper and yet more blurred around the edges the more emotional we are about them.

These memories are what I deal with in my art. Visual, visceral, emotional. And only true in the sense that I remember them and they have shaped me.

I stopped believing in absolute truths a long time ago. Truth is largely a product of time and perspective. It is almost impossible for a human being to report on an event objectively; we are hardwired to assign meaning to what we observe and experience. That said, I do my very best to be honest . . . and I find that it is an incredibly complicated thing far more frequently than I would like. Real life happens in the gray areas.

All of these thoughts have been jostling in my head as I've been thinking about the Mad/50 shrine installation over the past several weeks. Home. My memories of how it was and how I thought it should be, my longing for it, the empty place that was my lack of it, and all of the things I did to feel a sense of belonging, to feel at home, somewhere, with someone.

That sense of home and belonging is something I am only now - at 37 - beginning to feel on a regular basis, and it is still intermittent. Fleeting.

Mad/50: Shadowbox Shrine in Process

I'm diving head first into a big project this weekend - a drawer-sized shadowbox shrine for installation at Mad/50, the groovy outdoor community art space at the corner of Madison and SE 50th in Portland. Here's the space, which I photographed this fall at the opening of the Day of the Dead installation.

It's protected from the elements, and the installation space for the shadowbox shrine is about 20" x 26". I'm working with a drawer, this drawer in fact, as the base.


The drawer is about 15" x 19", giving me a little bit of wiggle room if I want the shrine to extend outside the confines of the box. Which I probably will. So far, I have the box gessoed, and have been playing with some imagery and elements.

The theme is "home." It's a theme I've been working with a lot lately. Reconciling my desire for a home with a desire for freedom, trying to figure out what really makes up a sense of home, of being at home, of feeling at home. At home in your body, in a place, in a family or community. Needless to say, there are very few places or people with whom I feel at home. Hence the exploration.