Friday, October 7, 2011

So many ideas, so many alternative creating adventures.

I took a break from painting this summer. I could use the excuse it was due all the yard work that needed to be done even though I mostly held supervisor position rather than the worker per say. Truth be told, creativity ever continues as my brain generates many ideas for projects, paintings, mixed media work and I would drive me absolutely stark raving mad were I not creating in some manner. So here are a few items I have created these past few months.

Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose. Every artist needs to make a piece of kitch art in their life time, so here is mine.
Garden art, "Mary Mary Quite Contrary how does your garden grow".
Sea shells, marbles, buttons, etc and Mary placed under an upside-down fishbowl.
 Two blue plastic fish I bought off sweet little six and seven year old gals at their garage sale.  The fish were originally for another piece I am working on but they work rather well teasing at the skirt of Mary.
 The pearl flower was my grandmothers clip-on earring.
 Oh, look at Mary's bow!
From the top down, marbles glued with weld bond glue to an antiquish jar I have had since youth, cheap mardi-gras beads adhered to lip, small glass container, flat glass bead drops glued upon an upside down fish bowl encasing Mary watering her sea garden, all of which sits atop a sandy looking ceramic canister.
It is meant to be a garden piece though I am a bit afraid it may break outdoors in the elements. It may have to go in a sheltered shop.

Our dear ones came for an early thanksgiving and sleep-over. It was wonderful to spend time with our grandchild and our families. As our floors are all stripped to bare cement to ease morning cold foot syndrome I made a rag rug to place by the bedside in the guest room. It took two full days to complete, I have renewed admiration for the work that goes into the Hutterite rugs I see at the farmers market, I now know they are well worth the 60-80 dollars they charge.
My rug is pretty lumpy, bumpy and rustic, though feels good on the feet. I was near completed before I figured out how to slip the pieced strips together with less bulk. Its a three braid rug stitched together with strips of sheeting. I broke the needle three quarters of the way through the project but thank goodness there was enough  body left in it to complete the job.

I love going to garage sales to chat, laugh and enjoy rummaging through other peoples lives. The tiger panel was garnered at such a sale for a mere quarter, wow! Bargain! Ya, and it was brand new to boot. I used it to recover a cushion for extra flop-down sprawl across the floor seating in the front relaxing room. It took me 5 whole hours to design, cut and stitch the cover.  How time flys when I get focused, I forgot to eat lunch I was so occupied.
Another flea market find, this weird shaped piece of wood was in a freebie bin, of course I figured I could use it to create????

With two large circles cut into it it reminded me of an owl, so yesterday I spent all day designing an stylized owl. I used the photos I took at the Medicine River Wildlife Recovery Center as reference, how lucky was I that the owl had fluffed his wings and hissed, just perfect for the cut wood shape.

I'm having trouble with this silly blog "correcting" as I type which is frustrating to the extreme as it keeps changing to words not of my choosing. I need to figure out how to prevent automatized word changing crap otherwise I become too frustrated with blogging. I am slow at writing but this is making the process even slower as I continually have to keep changing words back to what I was trying to type in, grrr, damn technology is getting summer. And to detail expressly what I mean... in the previous sentence I wrote "dumber" and the system changed the word to "summer" grrrr!

3 comments:

Carol Blackburn said...

Hi Tess, you have been quite busy it seems. I've never had a problem with blogger changing my words or even spell correcting them, that's a new one. All it does to me is make me Anonymous on about half of my friend's blogs or not let me leave comments at all. I give up! Those I can comment on, I will, those I can't I send an occational email to say "hi." Looks like your blog will let me comment, so.............here it is! Hope you are looking forward to the colder weather because it sure looks like it is coming, and fast! :)

Red said...

Good to see you on the blog again and find out what creative juices have been flowing.
The odd time I get phantom words when I'm typing. The whole system has been sluggish lately.
I wish somebody like you would come by my garage sales. I didn't have any this year. Things have sold well on kijiji

tess stieben said...

Technology is sometimes not faster or easier, though computers may frustrate me at least I know I can go huddle in my studio and create, that for me is relaxing.

Carol so far we have been lucky and the weather has been cool but no too cold yet so we are still able to get a wee bit of yard work in.

Red I love garage sales, sometimes the best stuff I can use is found in the freebie bins. Last weekend we went to calgary for a friends art opening and stopped in at a few garage sales. Gerald acquired a magnifying light for me and I found a small wood box for filling with odds and ends, a small carved unfinished bird and a carved frog whose feet are broken off. the bird and frog will become part of my assemblage pieces.
Hugs!