Illustration Friday: Song

February 23, 2006

Here’s my drawing for Illustration Friday and Yankee Doodle Dandy — that’s the song. You may remember I started this drawing for a quilt long ago, around the fourth of July, but I never got around to explaining it.

One summer during college I got a job delivering singing telegrams. I usually wore a tuxedo jacket, shorts and tights and delivered a balloon bouquet as I sang birthday, anniversary and happy secretary’s day lyrics that my boss wrote for each occasion. Sometimes I even got to go into the state legislature when someone wanted to embarrass some elected officials. But never anything risque - just silly.

The craziest assignment I ever had was to sing “Oh, he’s a yankee doodle dandy…” to an Iranian man in a red-neck bar called Club Brassy Toe in Brazito, Missouri, population 68. He had just gotten his U.S. citizenship and his friends hired me to jump out of a red-white-and-blue cardboard cake dressed like Uncle Sam, waving a flag. I can barely remember what the bar looked like though, I guess because I spent most of my time in the cake.

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Annual Planning Retreat

February 22, 2006

This is where we’ve been for the last two days — holed up in a little cabin in the woods. So nice that it snowed for our adventure, the only snow we’ve had this year! Made the whole thing more romantic.

Russ and I always take a little retreat early each year to examine our lives and goals. The first day we start by reviewing the previous year accomplishments and financial stuff. The second day we look at our artistic dreams and commitments, also personal and family trips we want to take. This year I typed up a calendar of important dates - it may be one of our busiest years in a while.

We’ve been doing this retreat every year since the early 90’s, and it’s taught me a lot about the difference between important and urgent things. Every day we are all pressed to respond to urgent things, but sometimes they are not the important things. Important things usually don’t knock at the door or come in your email box. They are things that you choose to define yourself and are your compass in life. And sometimes it’s good to check that compass, especially in the partnership of marriage.

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Does It Still Work?

February 18, 2006

Wow, thanks for all the great compliments on the card. It helps to have encouragement on my design as I get ready to present it the museum curator.

However after sleeping on it, I started to doubt my little kokeshi dolls in the corner. Although they match the color scheme of the card, they aren’t representative of my work in the show. PaMdora now has fans, and maybe if they see her face, they will notice the card and come to the show. So, does the design still work with the new image?

It’s been an exciting week. Lots of things happening…I got a rejection letter from Crafts National on my first entry into a national multi-media show. But it was more than compensated by my acceptance letter to Quilt Visions 2006! I’d rather be in Visions anyway.

Yesterday I received an email from Alyson Stanfield that she’s going to feature my quilt in her Art Marketing Newsletter on Monday. And I’m starting to get the jitters because now it’s only two weeks until the Wisconsin PBS crew comes to my studio to tape for an art quilt documentary that will be released in 2007.

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New Directions

February 17, 2006

Sometimes when you don’t work for a while and then you come back, things just fall in place really easily. We need to have a postcard design for our upcoming group museum show in April. I was going to just send the museum some single images and let them pick. But a single image wouldn’t accurately portray the variety in the show. Then I had this idea, and it came together fast.

My idea is that you’re not seeing any one full image — you have to go to the museum for that. The images run off the page in every direction because we’re all going in individual directions. But the images are “stitched together” kind of like quilt blocks just as we are individuals sewn together into a small community of artists.

“New Directions” because we’re all pushing and experimenting, moving in new directions. But we’ve all supported and helped each other do this, so the dotted lines are also like pathways that meet and cross. As I looked over the list of submissions for the show, I realized that most all the work has been done in the last year. At each monthly meeting, I’m astounded at the amount of artistic growth each of us has made in a relatively short time.

Emmie helped me with the title, and she says she’s going to make this her desktop background. I think it would make a good book cover too! Well, we can dream, can’t we?

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What to when You’re Sick?

February 11, 2006

Emmie was half right! Rita, Penelope, and George were based on real people. Matty and Tish were completely made up.

It’s been a week since I posted anything, because I’ve been sick and in bed all week. Haven’t done anything except read and draw my new Valentine’s Day header. Here’s some books I read that you might enjoy also:

Quilt Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East by Yoshiko Jinzenji. She creates a wonderful portrait of her life, dyeing silk with natural dyes made in her “grass house” studio in Bali.

Jun Kaneko by Susan Peterson. I got this book as a gift in Mexico, but had plenty of time to study it at home. Wonderful photos and inspirational story of a Japanese artist who moved the USA as a teenager knowing no one and no English. Today he’s one of the most important visual artists in the world, and his work really makes me want to get back to the studio.

The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but it’s good for me to go back and study his drawings again and again. His work from the 40’s and 50’s is still fresh and inspiring.

Other things: watch the Olympics (check out Bode Miller’s website), look for funky watches on the internet (check out these Paul Frank watches). Time to get back to work!

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I Brought Some Friends Home

February 4, 2006

I’ve been thinking that PaMdora needs some new friends, so I sketched some while I was in Mexico.

Some ideas came from this cool retro clothing book that I bought in a museum last summer. Other drawings are kind of vague caricatures of real people.

Can you tell which ones were drawn from real people and which ones were from pictures?

And here’s an old “friend” that I also brought back from the trip. Sadly it’s true — another bad cold! This one’s so bad, I have a swollen eye and have to take antibiotics.

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Really I Have Been Drawing

February 1, 2006

I’ve been doing a series of drawings to somehow show how it feels to do yoga on the roof. This one is an arial view. That weird-looking thing that sort of resembles a vacuum cleaner is a round boombox I’m using to play yoga-ish music via my Ipod.

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