Art Frenzy

Okay...so I am now in what I would call a art frenzy. I am to leave next week Tues. to Portland Oregon for the Art and Soul Retreat. I am very excited, yet it seems that once again I have left myself short on time.

We were shipped a special item to paint, embellish etc.. It is ceramic fish. The theme for the year is Romancing the Sea. Soooo..my fish is still just as blank as the day I received it in mid August. Must make time to give my fish a makeover. I'm thinking of course about encaustic wax and a bit of mixed media which would be my usual. I really don't have the time to step outside the box but I'm most confident that it will turn out just fine.

I am going to this retreat with 3 girlfriends as I have mentioned. We split up some of the supplies as to cut down on the load of paints, papers, brushes, glues etc....My friend Keli and I are in need of 3 each 8x8" deep cradle canvas. Well, I just ordered them this morning online at DickBlick.com and yes...I will be paying a premium on shipping. I am aware that I could have ordered them 3 weeks ago, but then I would not be doing right by my very random procrastinating personality.

Yesterday I spent the morning with Rachel...the most incredible artist friend. We walked all of Old Burien asking the shop owners if we could put up posters for the November Cove Art Show. This would be another part of my frenzy, since my muse has been a bit out of sorts. Must get going on the art since I only have about a month when taking into consideration the days I will be out of town. Yikes!

Other good news is that I just made reservations for my husband and me to take our 2 sons to Italy in April...I am out of my mind excited. We are going to Venice, Florence, Siena and Rome. The planning has been a bit intense with all the Internet hotel searching and the time it took to score 4 round trip tickets all on Alaska Air partner miles...I have never been to Italy, never corresponded with the lovely people who run the hotels in this far away place, nor have I planned train hopping between cities or vaporetto rides down the canals of Venice, but I actually have enjoyed it. The time difference is a bit of a lag and I now know that 4/9/09 is actually 9/4/09. Very silly. The thought of seeing all that incredible art is a bit overwhelming...where to start, what to see and truly, how many places will I be able to drag my boys. Each one of us will plan what to see in a city. Should be interesting to see what my 13yr. old will plan out for us. Won't be giving him Rome, that is for sure.

It is now almost 5am....been up for a few hrs and need to be up for the day at 6:30am. So back to bed I go.

Peace, Lory

Hellooooo...

Yes, back from vacation, school started, work started, my studio is a disaster and I have artwork due. Help! Summer was great fun, questionable weather towards the end and now the sun is out and I love the warm fall days.

As far at Art goes...I finished my "fatbook" page, made 60+ good copies of the same page and then embellished all 60 pages. The Theme is Romancing the Sea, so I did just that. The first side of my double sided 4x4" page is a encaustic collage of my grandparents in 1919 when they were falling in love and Matilde followed Cyrus from Belgium to the Great NW to marry and raise a family. Photo of him, her and the ship she rode in on...The back side is my parents Herb and Esther in 1945 when the fell in love and married in Seattle. They went off to San Diego for several months where my father was stationed and worked on a ship called the Porterhouse. Photos of my parents(mom is now a mermaid) and my dad is popping his head out of a porthole which has the name "Lory's Lines" on the rim....I do love it, but will never again chose do do bead work as my embellishment on 60 pages. I really am not good at that much detail and given the fact that I am in need of reading glasses over the contacts, it was not such a good choice...Learn from our past I guess.

Today is clean the art studio "again" and get ready to focus. I only have a few weeks left before I am out of town for 5 nights in Portland for the Art and Soul Retreat. I am going with 3 friends and we had a meeting last week to imagine how much fun we will have being creative at the hands of others...I love that someone else is going to give me the inspiration then my lovely little muse will hopefully take over. My classes are: Vintage Metal Treasure Decks, Transfers and Transparencies, Gocco a Gogo, So you want to sell your art and Funky Found-Object Canvas Village . Can't wait!! Art, friends and cocktail hour, what more could you want.

More later, I'm off to organize. Lory

On vacation

Just a quick note because I only have a few min. left on this library computer. I am on vacation without Internet service, so library it is...I will be back on 23rd. But I did want to thank Stacy Freeman for the "I love your blog site award"...Yeah! check out my favorites under An artful life for Stacy's work. The award is so sweet and appreciated. Peace, Lory

A Grand Wedding...

No, it would not be my wedding...because I still have that same strapping young man from almost 22yrs ago and do plan on sticking with him. But I did want to share that my art is being featured on a new website called "A Grand Wedding". The owner of the company contacted me and we had a phone interview....It was kind of fun and hopefully will bring some traffic to my website. I would love for you to check out the interview and the site. The direct link to the article is http://www.agrandwedding.com/FeaturedArticle/Default.aspx?a=10

Besides this excitement, life is crazy as usual. In Oct. I am planning on spending a week at the Portland Art and Soul Retreat with a few friends, very exciting and we are all starting to anticipate the fun we will have playing with "organic" art as one friend mentioned. So, through this retreat I signed up to produce one 4x4 double sided art page with the theme "Romancing the Sea"...sounds pretty easy I think to myself, besides then I will get an entire "fatbook" with 60 pages of all the artists that contribute....Very Cool! The only small problem is that I am now in a time crunch to finish my page, get 60 good quality copies of this page on heavy card stock and then embellish all 60 pages...Holy Cow! what was I thinking. I know I will get it done, always do, but will likely be crazy for a few days. I have until Aug. 23rd to have them shipped off, should be fine. So keep me in your prayers that I get a huge creative surge soon and finish up that page.

Baby News! Again, not mine....My niece and her husband are the proud new owner of a 7lb. 1oz. baby boy named Noah....born 08-01-08. Fabulous year, and he is an amazing little thing. I was very blessed and was present at his birth...Wow! I can't believe I did that twice. She did an incredible job and she, baby and dad are doing great. 17hrs. is a very long time even for those who are not giving birth.

Well, the sun is out and maybe to stay for a bit, so I must go get something done....likely won't be heating up the 200 degree wax today, but must do something creative.

Have a great day...Lory

Best Birthday weather ever!

Today is my Birthday, won't say how old I am, but just that the body is starting to have these odd occurances of pain. Not quiet sure what that is about. My husband suprised me with 2 kayaks this morning on our front lawn. Funny how he gets a gift too, just so I have a friend to tool around the puget sound with. We took pictures that are here on the site, WoW! what a great day! The only casualty was my camera case which fell in the water and then got lost amongst the boats, logs on the beach or who really knows where....since I lost my keys for 5 days last week, this doesn't suprise me.

The art front has been a little slow due to my attempts to relocate my studio to another part of the house with more ventilation. This seems to be a slow process. Summer is crazy busy anyways, much less when it is 80 degrees out, who wants to fire up 200 degree wax?

My niece is so very close to delivering her first baby....A Boy! and I am going to be lucky enough to be there at the birth and experience this incredible gift. She is so totally ready, but I guess the baby really is not. Would have been nice if he decided to come today so we could share a birthday, but a birth month is good enough, since I'm the only July/Cancer in the family. Can't wait to get the call, yet the long hours of labor seem to take forever even when you aren't the one giving birth. This I know since my great niece was born just 3 months ago and I was there for that birth too. By the time the baby came out we were pretty rummy. 3AM is a crazy time to deliver a baby.

More to come on Boy Baby Birth!

Hope you have a spectacular week wherever you are, enjoy each nice day we get.

Peace, Lory

New Elements to Blog

Today I updated this blog...Added an amazing thing called a Badge off Flickr. Yes, I am shocked that I was able to do such a thing. Well, 17yr. old son helped a very small amount. So, if you click on a photo on my badge, Presto....it can be enlarged and there are even captions. Now that is a beautiful thing for me. Also added a few new detailed photos of my art and even some new sites to my blog roll.

The Grand Wedding site should be up and running next week..Keep fingers crossed please. I am working on a 2nd custom wedding art which will have some photo transfers of the bride and groom. I'm pretty excited for the site to go live with my interview as "wedding vendor of the week" so keep checking agrandwedding.com. The last time I checked through Yahoo, even though the site was not up and running yet, my blog came up as #3 because I wrote about the new site. So, right there was a perfect example to me of how this blog site expands beyond my little world.

Last weekend I went to the cabin with youngest son and his good friend. The weather was lovely, took some photos, which are on my flickr and I very much enjoyed my solitude as I kayaked along the shore of Vashon Island. Did I mention that I love the Sea???
The sun is out, sky is pretty clear and this truly makes me happy.

Lory

Back on the Board...

I just realized that it has been a bit over a month since I have written in this blog....I just knew that this might be one of my greatest challenges....keeping up with the writing. My creative side says Yes! write, play art all day, peruse the art stores for new ideas, buy brushes and fun pigment colors...But, my unorganized, mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend etc......(yes, many hats to wear) Well, this side tells me otherwise. It seems that the end of the school year, and the many mini crisis life have taken over. There are books to buy for next year, tutoring to set up, receptions that need to be organized for those of us who are crazy enough to be room parent....Wholly Cow, where does my day go?

Well, it is now officially summer break and I have a plan, maybe not the most organized plan, but a plan at that. I have purchased a very large chalk board from Pottery Barn...It is lovely and with its stainless steel rim so it will look smashing in my kitchen once it finds it new home on the door which leads to the garage. The door we go in and out about 100 times a day. The door where we will look at the lovely chalk board and say "oh my, I have some tasks to do", "do I have everything I need to survive this daily outing?" the to do list for car which usually gets lost, dry cleaning, snacks, swim team & play practice for youngest son, purse, cell phone and possibly my mind too...I like to take it along for the ride most of the time. This lovely chalk board will not only tell us what we need to bring, but the best part is that it will tell us what we need to do before we embark on the big town of Burien. I am certain that whatever I write on this board will get done. Yes, the daily reading, lizard feeding, bedroom cleaning, teeth brushing and dog poop scooping. I'm sure I have forgotten something, but once it gets on the board, it will get done...Right? Well this is the grandiose idea that I have floating around in my head....So today is a new day even if it is only 4:30AM...I have high hopes for new levels of organization for the
summer.

Back to that art thing....I actually have been doing some behind the scene work on that too. In the next few weeks I will have a feature story about my Hand-picked "Wedding Vendors of the Week" custom art for weddings on the new website "A Grand Wedding" agrandwedding.com . I will be one of the Hand-picked "Wedding Vendors of the Week". The service I will provide will be custom mixed media encaustic collages. The size will vary from 8x8 up to as large as 16x20 and will have the opportunity for the bride, groom, in laws, bridal party or just friends to capture that special day in art. Somewhat of a time capsule right on their wall. These paintings will include photos, mementos from the wedding, hand made papers, wedding announcements, paper clippings etc....which will all be sealed in time with the encaustic wax. My website has a sample under custom creations. This particular piece is a wedding invitation that created into art for my niece Kaela and her husband Jon last August. They have it hanging in their family room so they can be reminded often what it is all about...

Your task I am leaving you with (imagine it is on the lovely chalk board) check out agrandwedding.com and weepingwaxstudio.com for more information about the custom wedding gifts.

Have a great week and pray I don't run out of chalk,
Lory