New Work in Progress

I had an out-of-town visitor this weekend but I was able to sneak in some time to paint. Company's gone home now, but I'm trying to stay off the computer too much for what remains of the evening.

I wanted to share what I'm working on really quickly! Here's a small canvas (6in x 6in) that I started yesterday afternoon. Collaged elements from an old book about birds, and acrylic. I just need to add some more details to jazz it up a bit. What do you think?

Knit Graffiti

I saw this entry on The Daily Green the other day about knit and crochet art (much of it pretty tongue-in-cheek) and I just had to look at the slideshow, even though their site is horribly slow and I consider slideshows to be painful. I mean, come on, just make it scrollable already. Anyways, I thought I'd share some of my favorites from the artists and groups featured in the article, so that you can see the goodness without dealing with the slideshow.

Knit graffiti courtesy of Knitted Landscape, an outfit that tracks knitted additions to our world via their website. Scroll through their images and you'll see knit flowers rising out of snow, crocheted cozies over rocks, and trees wearing something similar to legwarmers. The site encourages people to contribute their own modifications to their surroundings. Guerilla knitters of the world, unite!

Artist Lauren Marsden set out to cover the street signs in her hometown with knitted replicas. Over two years she outfitted the signs of every street she'd lived on in Victoria, BC. You can follow her trail here.

Knitting as a form of protest? The craft's image of home, warmth and grandmothers contrasts with this ambitious project by an artist whose first name may be Marianne (the Daily Green didn't attribute and I couldn't find her name through Google).
Volunteers knitted together pieces submitted by people all over the world. Her website states that she intends to continue with more variations of tanks until the Iraq war is over. If that's true, I can definitely spare a pink square....

And then you have Knitta Please. The originator of this whole knit graffiti art thing. I mean, how could you not love it based on the name alone? Behind Knitta is one Magda Sayeg, and she's finally joined the blogging world herself. There aren't a whole lot of posts yet about her crazy-wonderful guerilla artworks, but we should expect to see lots in the future.

Thanks, Magda!


Hope you enjoyed this little round-up of some of the funnest un-commissioned public artworks around. Keep your eyes peeled, you never know when you might come across one of these some day!








All images courtesy of the artists and websites mentioned herein.

Final (Late) Entry to Best of '09 Challenge

Yes, it's now 2010 (thank god - good riddance 2009) and this entry is definitely a day or two past when I intended to write this. I swear, I really need to kick this tardiness habit I have this year! No, I didn't make it through all the daily prompts, and yes, I chose to forgive myself for this. Just resolve to do better now when I can and not beat myself up for the past anymore. Good resolutions, no?

But I really wanted to respond to the last entry, as a record for my future self, if nothing else. December 31. Resolution you wish you'd stuck with. I started out 2009 with a few things I wanted to accomplish in addition to the fairly-standard "lose weight, do yoga more often, take vitamins, etc" that I end up ignoring. I accomplished just one, a big one. But of the all the resolutions I abandoned, the one I regret the most is not opening up an Etsy store to sell my artwork. {I confess to feeling silly about even stating this here. Bashful guilt.} I'm sorry not because I think the world would beat down my door to buy my stuff, but because I didn't open myself up to risk & give myself a chance. The point would not have been to sell a single thing, but rather to make the effort. And to have more faith in myself. So, I'm making this my top resolution in 2010: Believe.

Gwen has a great round-up post of the Challenge on her blog. She's also planning something big for this year - looking forward to joining in with this one. I'll be following & posting entries on these daily prompts on my other blog ninja haiku. Observations, frustrations, and random thoughts will be blogged there. Art, art, and more art, will be posted here. No more filler on this blog, I need to hold myself accountable to practicing & talking about that here.

The end of 2009 feels like a turning point & I think this new year is going to be a good one. Here's to a wonderful 2010 for all of us!

A failure begets a lesson

So, I didn't keep up with every day of the Best of '09 Challenge. Obviously, as evidenced by the week-long silence here. Sidetracked by too much contemplation, as usual. Thank goodness Gwen said we could write - or not - as we're inclined! I do feel I've let you and myself down a bit though. And I really don't like that icky guilty feeling.

One thing learned from this Challege was how I stretched big-time in a couple areas this year, while stagnating, perhaps even atrophying, in others. Like the "stretch" was at the expense of all other pursuits, maybe. Has anyone else felt that way this year? If anyone's out there reading this now who's participated in the Best of '09 Challenge, has going back over your year in this way brought about any realizations, that you may not have otherwise had?

Overwhelm

I truly believe that some of the things that happen to you in life are a direct result of what you've been ignoring. For example, getting sick when you've been pushing yourself past your limits. A series of clumsiness when you're trying to speed through 40 minutes-worth of activity in just 20. Continually losing things when you're purposely avoiding dealing with an issue. It's life's little way of saying, "Hey! Wake up!"

Therefore I wonder if there's an underlying cause behind my stomachache today, or my disinterest in the upcoming holidays. It's not that I think every illness or bad thing is the result of some superstitious cause & effect. But sometimes, there's this feeling, this intuition, that it's more than an ordinary occurrence. And I do know, that when small things start to feel like yet-another-monumental-obligation in a long string of obligations, it's not a good sign.

I hope to be back here tomorrow, in a better frame of mind. And with some more Best of '09 goodness.



 

The Year of Getting Back to Basics

Yesterday when I thought over that day's prompt for the Best of 09 Challenge, I was unimpressed by my own choice, at first. It wasn't until I started thinking about today's prompt that I realized why so many of the things I chose over the course of the past year were decidedly un-glamorous. Old stand-bys have a great deal of appeal for me right now, and I'm thinking it might be the same for some of you out there as well. A really bad economy like the one we're going through now makes people rethink some of their choices. Perhaps you'd rather spend your money on something tried and true, rather than risk it on something you potentially won't like.

December 16. Tea of the year. My favorite tea lately has been Lady Gray from Twinings. A perfectly reasonable tea at a reasonable price. It's similar to the familiar and comforting Earl Gray, yet a more delicate variation. Not too strong, nor boring. A tea that you generally can't go wrong with - the kind of dependability that's comforting.


There's been so much written this year about how everyone is worried about their finances this year and how this is ushering in a new era of frugality. Some people have even claimed that the new frugality will last (I don't agree, but that's an opinion for another time). This year I've had to re-learn how to live within my means. This has nothing to do with the economy or job (in)security, this is purely a coincidence... it would have happened regardless of all that. In January I set a target date for getting my own apartment, and it was the only target I hit all year. Nothing was going to get in the way of this target, but, there were some financial compromises that will affect me for a long while.

A bit of advice to anyone who is planning a similar move: if you can stay in your current situation awhile longer, stay & get your debt paid off first. All the way, not just to within a threshold you're comfortable with. Had I waited 5 months and not taken those two short vacations, I'd have paid off my credit card completely and still have some savings. It's pitiful to have to turn down nearly every invitation for dinner, events, drinks, movies, lunch - you name it, if it ain't free I can't afford it.

So about those old stand-bys and living within your means...
December 17. A word or phrase that encapsulates your year. "2009 was about getting back to basics." Because if the first half of the year wasn't about the basics, the second half sure hammered that point home. Be frugal. Plan. Focus. Cut out the excess. Keep, buy, and do only what you absolutely can't be without. Things will get easier someday, but do what you gotta do now, and that will set you up for an even better future.


P.S. Monday I find out my raise for next year (if I even get one). Wish me the best, and I'll be wishing the same for you. I hope everyone out there gets all the prosperity they need and deserve in the next year. Now that would be something worth toasting on Jan. 1!

December 15. Best packaging.

The funny thing about coming from a family that has a tendency to be packrats is that, when you move a lot as we did, you get used to never fully unpacking. Having stuff in boxes in the garage. The things inside are just not essential to your everyday living, and so you leave them boxed to be dealt with later. I had no intention of keeping stuff in boxes after my latest move - I would live as though I planned to stick around for a while.

One of my boxes had some gorgeous porcelain bowls that had never been used. Heck, they'd only left the box they were delivered in once - to be looked at and wrapped right back up in the box for safekeeping through another move. And another. And after this move, I finally unpacked them for good. I remembered exactly what they looked like - delicate turquoise glazing and all - but I'd forgotten that inside their box they'd been wrapped in paper. Not any old packing paper, I'm talking richly textured, seafoam green and flecked with silver, good quality paper. Definitely not the kind of paper you toss aside! The sheets of paper now reside in my collage scrap collection, I know that they will make their way into a piece of artwork someday. One I'll keep for myself, because it matches my bedroom! Now that's a true "gift with purchase".