Transition, Transference, and Trimming it all up

Last Berg - taken this a.m.

Winter is a long haul in a mile high city, and I'm happy to say we have finally rounded the bend on that one. All that remains of a mountainous heap of snow and ice in my personal corner of paradise, is this lonely little ice berg, slowly receding into the rest of my yard. Hallelujah. With the retreat of snow and ice begins the annual and very necessary clean up of elemental damage - yesterday, I hauled off 7 top-heavy loads of spruce and fir needles along with heaps of dead pokey branches I trimmed away from underneath the canopy. And I'm not talking about those cute little wheelbarrows that come in various colors and have a shallow little bed - I'm talking about a construction job-site wheelbarrow with a big wheel in front, massive handles, and a deep folded steel bed that holds one whale of a lot. Oh, how I love hauling away the dregs of winter and letting the light of spring into my yard and into my life. As I work, I think metaphorically of all that the trimming away and letting in of light means; to me, for me, and for those involved in my life.

Where does your path lead? What are your priorities?

When I started my business, Thea's Bee Beautiful, I thought I could successfully run two completely different businesses. It has been several years now and I still find that I trudge guiltily past my sunny studio door way too often with the ticker-tape inside my head reading, "Studio Time = 0. Again".  I kept telling myself things like, "Once X happens, THEN I will have more studio time". Well, as you can guess, X would happen and then the next X would pop up and so on until weeks would slip by with no studio time. This spring, I finally made the decision to phase Thea's Bee Beautiful out of my life and work in my studio full time. I realized that if I had spent all the time developing my art business that I've put into TBB, I'd be...  well, who knows. The point is, I want and need to give it a shot. Art is what I do best and I keep shoving it to the bottom of my priority list.

I was not looking forward to talking to my daughter, Anna, about this decision. It's been a decade since she and I first started conceptualizing this business when my late husband and I were looking at small organic farms to buy in Eastern Oregon. The plan was to grow our own flowers and herbs for use in skin care products. Anna had started collecting formulaic research and we were all excited about our prospects. All these years later, many things have changed and Anna and I have kept working on the skin care line. She has a lot of vested time and energy in this business already.

Much to my surprise, when I broached the subject last week, Anna grew very excited and exclaimed that she thought she and Dustin (her fiance') might like to take it over. After a consultation with Dustin and friends, Anna declared her interest in becoming the new owner/operator of Thea's Bee Beautiful. In the words of a friend of mine, what an elegant solution.

Anna and Dustin, Scott and I, are in a time of transition with Anna and Dustin purchasing their own little organic farm and deciding to marry, and Scott taking a job in the back country that keeps him from home Monday through Friday. The transfer of my business to Anna and Dustin makes sense in this context. It's as if we've come full circle together.

Anna makes her 1st Batch

The last three days, Anna and I have gone over many aspects of the business and spent a full and long day making Fancy Face Cream and Everyday Hand and Body Cream. It was a joy to spend that time beginning the process of transferring knowledge and technique to her. I even found myself laughing out loud and told her once that I felt so simply and thoroughly happy - and that feeling of simple happiness tells me this is the right decision. It seems to be a rare thing that decisions made are met with such clarity and sureness afterwards.

Measuring Hydrosol

As we sat side by side in the "work room", putting the finishing touches on over a hundred jars of product surrounded by my distiller and all the Things that go into Thea's Bee Beautiful, I found myself wondering what this room would look like emptied of all that once we move it to Dustin and Anna's place. All those empty cabinets and empty work table...   then I had an AHA!! moment. I've been looking over my studio wondering where on earth and how on earth I was going to manage and organize all my paints, mediums, and paint table in addition to all my fabric based stuff. Wonder no more - it will all transfer nicely and neatly into the old TBB workshop! It is a perfect and wonderful solution.

I sign off here today feeling happier and lighter than I have for a long time. I'm feeling so good about all the changes in our lives and the way we are handling them. The dovetailing of my business into the life and business of Anna and Dustin, along with their upcoming marriage, makes my own life seem more complete even while I am trimming it up. I'm simply trimming it up so that it can expand in a new direction. It's so exciting.

Linen from Greece - hand embroidered and appliqued

P.S. Today is Anna's Birthday. One of the gifts I gave her is a gorgeous linen tablecloth and napkin set sent to me by her great grandmother in Athens, Greece, upon my own marriage to Anna's dad. It arrived with a few stains and I enjoyed thinking about the dinner parties that put them there. I added a few of my own and now pass it along to her so she can add hers.

Elementary, My Dear Thea

5th Grade Art in the Gym

I just completed my 3rd year of teaching 5th grade art in public schools funded by Idaho Commission on the Arts. It is such a rewarding experience and I am feeling especially grateful this year that the project is completed.  My classroom teacher, our local art's commission director, and I decided on a very large project this year that demanded a lot from everyone involved. The theme was Stream Restoration and Trout. The project was a 3' x 5' banner involving the topic and yards and yards of fabric, hand sewing, machine sewing, and lots of fast moving hands, elbows, and crawling around on the floor. Thank goodness, an empty classroom provided the space for all of us to get down and get to it. And thank goodness for all the people who donated time, materials, and encouragement! Yikes. I had one very scary moment at the beginning of project construction. Preliminary sketches were done (I'm always so impressed with the variety and imagination shown in my student projects), all the banners were stretched out on the floor ... big, blank, muslin 3' x 5' canvases waiting to be covered in colorful, large (yards and yards and yards!) swaths of fabric. I panicked. I did NOT have enough fabric to cover 19 such large projects! I started searching for donations as soon as I left the school that day and was humbled and gratified by the generous response. Particular thanks go to Granny's Attic here in McCall, Flight of Fancy in Donnelly, and Keep Me in Stitches, also of McCall. Without you, this project would have gone through a redraft or two!

On Night's Plutonian Shore

Each year, too, I am reminded of the enormous responsibility our school teachers have; not only to provide their students with an education, but also to guide and assist them in all manner of topics and situations - often on the fly - that require flexibility and creativity in their responses. What an accomplishment it is to complete an entire school year!

Plutonian Detail

During my teaching time, I kept my own art projects small and just did things spontaneously. I had always wanted to do a piece based on Garrison Keillor's annual Halloween reading of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" - when Garrison says the phrase, "... on night's Plutonian shore..." in his low, gravelly voice, I just swoon. This image is what I came up with - no preliminary sketch, just making it from: commercial prints, hand dyes, glitter flat ribbon, black leather sequins, charcoal glass beads, mica chips, and some hand stitching in black pearl cotton. It was more fun than should be had!

Another project made me feel just plum happy to be working on it - bright springy colors and a photograph printed on fabric that I took last summer canoeing up the North Fork of the Payette River:

Hollyhock Detail

Hollyhock

 And this next one? Don't know yet! Just know it will be really fun to do because I have been wanting to use pieces of hornet nests in my compositions for years - now is the time. This will be a warm up for a much larger piece I have in mind. It's good to practice with new materials a bit before you go whole hog. The photograph is one I took in my yard last fall and you can just see a hornet nest swinging in the upper right corner in an aspen tree - that same hornet nest is now in my studio, a piece of which you see in the lower left of this photograph. Beautiful, gray, striated papery stuff that just yells to be used in my fiber art!

Fabric and Nest Material

Rsolution

Tired Tree

Sometimes, by the last day of the year, I feel a bit like my Christmas tree... a little bedraggled, limbs weighted down and drooping, and the baubles that hung brightly and cheerfully at the beginning of the season now seem like they are trying too hard.  It is also true that we have given the season our best - we reached this state of bedraggle-ment by giving it our all.  And so, as the tree will be rejuvenated by being stuck in the snowbank outside tomorrow,  I will also experience a sense of rejuvenation through the time honored tradition of reflection and resolution.

A few days ago, I was hard at work in my studio drawing a full scale blueprint for a new fiber art piece for a client.  I was in that spot in the process that every artist knows...  how will this piece resolve?  Continuing on, that word was in the forefront of my mind.  By the end of the session, I could see where and how resolution would occur.  With this knowledge came a sigh of relief and flood of happiness.  I now knew where I was going with this work. There is a kind of peace that comes with this knowledge.

Journal Page

Writing in my journal this morning (a nearly daily ritual), I noticed I had - poetically - reached the last page of my current journal on the last day of the year.  Another type of resolution wherein a type of conclusion is reached.  This inspired me to look the word resolution up in my battered and beloved old Random House Dictionary.  I found that there are 18 definitions for this strong and useful word.  You can see that I jotted down abbreviated versions of each one in my journal.  It seemed a very fitting way to close out the year and my journal.

On this last day of the year, what will we decide was the resolving moment in the year past?  What will we determine to be our resolution for the coming year?  Will we feel a sense of peace when we attempt to resolve the past with the present and future for ourselves?  Or will we feel dissolution within our hearts?  Each of us defines this for ourselves.

I leave you this cold, clear and brilliant winter day with a segment of a poem sent to me by a dear friend:

I broider my life into the frame,

I broider my love, thread upon thread;

The world goes by with its glory and shame,

Crowns are bartered and blood is shed;

I sit and broider my dreams instead.

- Arthur Symons

Payette River, McCall, Idaho

Christmas Season Snapshots

Christmas Card Project

I think that for many of us, December goes by at Warp Factor 7...  it seems like yesterday I was making my Christmas cards in a leisurely fashion, feeling I had all the time in the world...  and suddenly I was realizing that I needed to cut those cards post haste and get them in the mail!  And the packages!  And open an Etsy store!  And..   and..  and..  and so it goes.

Front Porch Decorations

Daughter Shoots the Ice

Today, I am reflecting back on all the fun visits I (we) had, the gatherings, and the expeditions across rare sheets of fast-forming lake ice that provided so much artistic fodder for me and my daughter both.  AND, we took many of those photographs together, which makes it even better.

Ethyl and I focus on our work

The ice formations were so remarkable this year, I devoted several afternoons to taking photographs.  I'll let the photos speak for themselves as I include a few here...

Hoar Frost and Bubbles

Photo taken by Daughter

I could post many many more of these types of photographs taken on Little Lake east of town here...  I will be using these in future art quilts and can't wait to get started - right after I finish a commission or two!  Many thanks to photographer Joy Hamilton for the fun photo of me and Ethyl "on ice".  Please click on the link to view the many fine photographs that Joy and her husband Howard take all over the West.  Their website is worth a visit.

I cannot resist adding another ice shot or two - these are from Big Payette Lake.  My Little Family and I were walking along the shores of Ponderosa State Park yesterday afternoon and we could see that the ice had just frozen within the last day or two.

Trapped Lake Trout

This lovely 12" lake trout found itself trapped between the sandy lake bottom and an icy ceiling.  After I took a few photographs, I stomped on the ice behind the fish and coaxed it along until it swam out into deeper waters.

Frozen Wave

Last, but certainly not least, I spent part of December creating a new hand and face cream called "Backyard Rose" made with rose water I distill myself from Idaho wild roses, rose essential oil, sweet almond oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil and thickened with beeswax.  It's fragrant, but lightly so, as I do not add any fragrance - all you smell is the rose water and rose essential oil!  I've already heard back from several customers and one comment was:  This is the nicest thing I've ever used on my face - my skin finally feels hydrated!  My other Thea's Bee Beautiful project was to reformulate my popular Gardener's Healing Hand and Body Cream.  The result yields the same great cream for hard working hands, but in a much lighter cream that sinks readily into your hands so you can get back to work faster!  I'm working on my ETSY store to make these and all my other products readily available.  It just takes so long to create all those pages, as anyone who has an ETSY store front knows...  and like most artists, I am happier making things than writing about it.  So...  it will be soon!

Backyard Rose 2 oz. and 1/2 oz.

Gardener's Healing Hand & Body Cream in 6, 2, and 1/2 oz.

Rose Cream in Jars

Wishing Everyone a very Happy New Year!!

Secret Life Revealed

The Secret Life of Nutmeg (Full View 36" x 37")

The Secret Life of Nutmeg is now complete and available for sale through Acorn Gallery in Idyllwild, California.  I love this charming gallery nestled in a quaint little town similar to my own home of McCall, Idaho.  Take a look at their website and see what's going on there!

Nutmeg is a really special piece for me.  I have spent years collecting the little shaved disks from my grinder and studying the squiggly lines and dots.  I imagined a different life going on within those little spheres - rather like in "Horton hears a Who".  I visualized a bright day with a midnight garden of wheeling galaxies and bright flowers magically happening just below the surface reality of daylight.  While I've had a thumbnail sketch of this piece for quite some time, I could not quite visualize how I was going to make it happen.  My skill level was not up to the sketch.  Through self study, conversations with art buddies, and cruising the internet, I learned a few things that made this piece finally happen.

Nutmeg Detail

Surface of Nutmeg

Each nutmeg head was hand painted with gold, bronze,and copper fabric paint. I tried some really fun pens in those colors, but could not control the line well enough to achieve the look I wanted.  I then fused a layer of white silk organza over the surface to create luminosity.  The final dimension is composed of  hand-stitched copper disks in assorted sizes topped with iridescent bronze beads.  Also visible in this detail shot are the star fields created by heat-setting iridescent metallic foil on to navy Bali batik fabric.  I created depth by fusing circles of sparkly black netting over the star fields and stitching them down with metallic thread in a satin stitch.   Too much information?  It's always hard for me to decide.  I guess you decide by either reading this post or not - or part of it!

From what I've read, one should post at least weekly to keep things fresh and updated.  Perhaps if I did that, I could keep my posts shorter while maintaining detail.  During our brief alpine summers, it is difficult for me to maintain the discipline of more computer time.  For any artist it is a difficult balance of spending the needed time to promote your work online, or actually BE in your studio creating your work! Both are necessary and whole volumes have been written on this topic.

I leave you with two photographs I took last weekend in the back country east of here.  Scott, Ethyl and I traveled roughly 160 miles over dirt roads to visit the old mining town of Stibnite and it's sister village of Yellow Pine.  Stibnite was a thriving gold and silver town at one time and is being brought back to life right now by the mining company of Midas Gold Corporation.  Visit their site for interesting photos and information.  The streams are currently running clear and sparkling near there - but still have toxic levels of "bad stuff" in them, which I found out after I'd been wading in them.  Same for soil and dust contaminants.  What changes will happen when the mines are operational again?

Stibnite Site and Dredge Pond

Mine Shaft on Sugar Creek with Stream

Stepping off to the side to take the "Mine Shaft" photo, my foot sank in a red, gooey ooze.  Moving back, my other foot sank to the ankle in loose dirt.  Made me realize there could be shafts in places I couldn't see....

Secret Beginnings

This is the beginning stage of "Secret Life of Nutmeg" as it looks laid flat on my work table.  The pieced fan shape is laid on top of the background fabric I've been preparing for a few days now.  The background base fabric is a navy blue Bali batik with star fields I created by sprinkling the surface with Bo-Nash adhesive powder following up with a heat application of a foiling product.  Voile'!!  The star field of my dreams.  I've been wondering how I was going to create the effect I could see in my head when I spotted something about this wondrous product in Jane Dunnewold's recent book, "Art Cloth" - a book I highly recommend to any fiber artist for its inspirational effects/techniques and clear instructions on how to achieve them. 

Progress is taking longer than I'd like - it's finally summer here which means it is time to repair the damage from the previous winter and get a grip on the yard and gardens which grow at a rapid rate of speed with any encouragement and long daylight hours.  Because of all the wet spring weather, I had a bumper crop of rhubarb this year.  It was so lush that I actually cut, sliced, and froze 7 zip-locks full that I know we'll appreciate during "the long dark", which is the phrase an Alaskan friend of mine uses for "winter".

Lovely Rhubarb

Warm Red Fir

To the right, is another reason for "slow art".  Around here, we say we are either living winter, or getting ready for winter.  That includes cutting firewood, which my wonderful and strong husband is shown doing here.  You can see at the top of this photo where the tree snapped off in a wind storm and thereby made itself available to us for harvest.  So far, we have hauled home around 3 cords from this one tree and there is quite a bit more.  This may be my first One Tree Winter - amazing and we are grateful.

Tyndall Creek/Vulcan Hot Springs

You say you want to hear more excuses for slow art?  Well, in addition to working around the homestead, it is important to take advantage of living in such a beautiful area.  I've made it a priority this year to hike with a group of girlfriends weekly.  I have lived here many years but there are many, many hikes I have not taken because of family commitments and employment.  With the kids grown and having been unemployed for a couple of years, I finally have the time to go hiking and I have to admit it has been a grand treat.  I feel guilty about my hikes sometimes, but then remind myself that summers here are short AND, I am taking an on-line Pharmacy Technician course to re-instate my license and hopefully find gainful employment upon completion.  It's likely I will not find a job here in McCall, but will need to look in Boise and come home on weekends.  It is not uncommon in my area for one spouse to work "away".  We'll just have to see how all that works out.

It was a beautiful 4th of July here.  My first year here was 1979 and it snowed at the BBQ I was invited to.  My Midwestern roots were properly shocked and I knew the folks back home would not believe it.  This year, we were fortunate enough to have a ring-side seat on a deck overlooking all the downtown fun.  I leave you with a couple of images from that beautiful summer night.

Fireworks!

Waiting for the Show to Begin

Coming and Going Thoughts

It has been a busy month since my last post with many entrances, exits, and another art piece completed.  In my last post, I was just about to quilt the piece pictured and entitled, "Desert Mosaic" (29" long x 35" wide).  There are so many pieces in this work and so much going on, that I chose to do the quilting with a clear monofiliment thread on most of the top using long, continuous lines of stitch to keep the eye traveling smoothly over the surface.  The whitecaps on the river called for cream colored thread, and the sky has blue thread.

In this close-up shot, you can see more detail and the color shading in this photograph is more true to the actual art work.  It is quite vibrant and I am pleased with the way these complex colors and forms come together.  The very first piece I put up on the design wall was the striated silk in the upper right hand corner with the three shaded, pointed layers of organza reaching for the top of the composition.  This was a bold fabric choice to make because of the strong lines and decisive colors and I had a few anxious moments building around and out from my original choice not yet sure that it was going to "work".  It took awhile for the vision I held to match up on the design wall.  I am very happy with the end result.  Each completed piece encourages me to move on in my artistic boldness which, in turn, encourages me to make bold moves in my life outside the studio as well.


It's been a busy month, a week of which was spent looking for jobs and resettlement in Williston, North Dakota, a modern day Boom Town based on the oil and gas industry.  My husband and I thought we had done our homework well before embarking, but found we were not quite prepared for the reality.  To begin with, we went prepared to tent camp and drove in to cyclonic weather (which is why I have no picture to post!); wind driven rain and a rising Missouri River made us decide to find a hotel room.  The closest we could get to Williston was Glendive, MT a full 100 miles away as most rooms closer in are booked out as far as two years in advance.  Our hotel in Glendive was filled with oilfield workers making that commute to Williston daily.  Undaunted, Scott had the one interview we had lined up beforehand for 4:00 p.m.  It was clear in a short amount of time that he would not be getting that particular job.  Disappointed, we headed back to our hotel room all the while making our plans for a fresh try the next day.  By the time we arrived in Glendive, we had decided to head back for home instead and make more careful plans for a future attempt, if at all.  You need to go to Williston knowing that you will not be hired unless you have a North Dakota address in the area.  You also need to know that there is no housing available.  The solution?  Take your own camper and park it in one of the myriad RV and mobile home parks springing up like mushrooms all around Williston.  If you do that, you will get a job.  Also go knowing that getting a job is not an overnight thing - we talked to several young men who had already been there two weeks with no success.    As we swung onto the ON ramp to interstate 94 outside Glendive heading West, we saw a young man standing next to the OFF ramp with a cardboard sign in his hand that read, "WILLISTON".  The whole scene reminded me of Steinbeck's, "The Grapes of Wrath", which I have read several times.  People are coming in from across the nation in an effort to find work and camping wherever they can - we saw plenty of people pitching tents in nooks and crannies around town.  Williston is a nice town made up of tidy two-story brick buildings with a lovely public library and hospital (two places I always check out).  I wish everyone the best; both in their efforts to find employment and enjoy a good life, and in Williston's efforts to maintain a nice little town in Boom time conditions.

Might Ethyl Frog Eater

Today:  dig spotted knapweed out of our field accompanied by doggie Ethyl who is recovering from her frog eating adventure.  She nearly died from ingesting not one, but many little frogs from a nearby pond.  Who knew?  When we tire of digging noxious weeds, we shall repair to the studio to start my new piece:   The Secret Life of Nutmeg.  Fun and whimsical, this art piece represents what I wish for everyone - a bit of fun and whimsy in each day!

 

Springtime in the Rockies

It was 16 degrees when I got up this morning.  It's about 30 degrees right now at 3:30 p.m.  Even for this mile high city, it is a LATE spring.  Thank goodness for friends to go walking with - we save each others sanity by assuring each other that YES - it is okay to be cranky right now.  But not to kill yourself.  I took the photo below just minutes ago at the McCall airport.  Can you even believe it?

I combated winter blues this morning by making a stockpot full of cheery salsa and canning it.  From six quarts of canned tomatoes, some onions, garlic, carrots and cilantro, I got 14 pints of canned salsa and 2 quarts of it in the fridge.  Isn't it pretty?  I so love salsa.  I'll take a jar to my daughter in Boise when I go on Monday as a thank you for staying with her.  Sometimes she shares it with her boyfriend...  and sometimes she doesn't.

Here is a picture to really cheer up a gray day:  "Desert Music" is another commission piece I completed last fall and am very happy with (so is the client, thank goodness).  I use a lot of hand-dyed fabrics from Judy Robertson - they are some of the best hand dyed fabrics I have ever seen.  To see her selections, click on this link and check it out:  www.justimagination.com  Not only is Judy's fabric amazing, she is wonderful to chat with and order from.                              

 

I do not often work in a non-square format so this piece was challenging for me in that way.  In the border, the light gray pieces are accented with a copper washer, a black leather sequin stacked on top, and a turquoise bead on top of that, used to anchor the stack down.  In the picture at right, you can just see this stack in the light gray point.  I am especially happy with the flames and the corn in this piece. 

Looking at the time, I see I just have enough time to go into the studio and work for a bit before husband and dog come home from the work site.  I'm so grateful he still has a work site to go to!

Inaugeral Post!

Several years ago, a client asked me to keep her posted on what I was doing and creating.  It took me a while to cogitate on this and come up with a solution - a BLOG!!  I thoroughly enjoy this format and hope that you will, too.  If you got this, you are a past or present client, art buddy, relative or friend.  That about covers it, doesn't it?  If you would rather not receive my post notices, just drop me an email and I'll remove you from my mailing list.

I am so far behind in letting people know what I'm up to, that I hardly know where to begin.  So in my first post, I think I'll just go back one year to when I started creating a completely different kind of fiber art based on photography.  The following are samples of what I can do now:

This piece, entitled "Fire in the Belly of Winter" (33" x 39"), is created from winter photographs of Valley County that I printed on fabric and collaged.  It is offered for sale through Acorn Gallery in Idyllwild, California www.acorngalleryidyllwild.com

I received three commissions last spring to commemorate the 10th anniversary of The Seven Devil's Playwright's Conference www.idtheater.org; one piece for each of the three directors of the conference.  This is not a great photograph (I was in a hurry - no excuse, I know, but true), but gives an idea of what I can do with many photographs in a collage format. 

Last one!  This client saw "Fire in the Belly" (33" x 39") and wanted a similar piece done featuring her home in McCall and familiar McCall summer scenes.  I took the photographs and printed them on fabric using archival quality inks. 

Printing photographs on fabric takes my art in a new direction and I expect I will be doing much more of this and expanding on the idea by...  printing photos on sheer overlays, scrim, silk, anything I want!

Okay!  Thanks for reading this - as I catch up, my blogs will be shorter (promise).  Off to run town errands and then - my reward - to the studio!  Best of the day to you!