Mermaids, Hope, and Other Tales (or Tails)

September 7th, 2008

Mermaidwip

I worked on this all day Friday and it's already different from this picture. But it's fun to see work in progress pictures I think. I had the idea for this mermaid ages ago, but it kept developing in little sketches and doodles until I was ready to go. I incorporated a bit of collage. As soon as I received it, I knew that the vintage postcard that Tammy from Sunflower Studio sent me because she just felt it belonged to me would be going in this piece. I love it when that happens. As much as the image has been played around with in sketches and doodles, it's already entirely different than I thought it might be and I still don't know where it will end up. This process is definitely a metaphor for life.

I was feeling oh so tender around the edges yesterday. It was a lovely day, yoga in the morning, cleaning and movie watching in the afternoon. It was so incredibly muggy and I was dripping sweat and generally feeling sad and teary for no particular reason. The hubster was out of town and late at night we chatted on the phone lying in beds in different countries. The talk made me feel much better and then I slept like a baby, a baby surrounded by snuggly cats.

Today I'm feeling so much brighter, my ups and downs seem to be mirroring the wild weather. When I was feeling blah yesterday, I saw this meme on Elizabeth's blog and decided to do it. What is it about memes that are calming? Simple, a bit mindless, short answer, lightly creative. 

Song you love: The song the hubster wrote for our wedding.

Word you love: Lately i've really enjoyed saying Hawai'i (not just for the meaning behind it, it's just fun to say.) I also love the sound of the word "ciao." Go figure.

Academic subject you love: art history

Hobby you love: getting lost in a book

Type of baked good you love: warm chocolate chip cookies

Type of sky you love: fiery sunsets, starry nights, stark blue against tree branch silhouette, poofy clouds, so many skies.

Beverage you love: coke

Vacation you love: Exploring a new place

Restaurant you love: Blue Ginger

Way of getting around that you love:  walking

Person you love: the hubster

Room in your home (or ideal home) you love: studio/office

Movie you love: Clue

Book you love: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

City you love: Seattle

Future plan you love: owning our first home, starting a family

Form of communication you love: art

Junk food you love: m&m's

A huge good luck to Elizabeth (not that she needs it!) in her first year of the Squam Art Workshops! I wish I could be there, but I'll be on the opposite side of the country for a wedding.

I've been feeling the need for a short blogging break and the time I'm away on my honeymoon makes perfect sense for that. I'll still be checking my email of course and I'm sure I'll pop in on occasion, but for the two weeks from Friday the 12th through Friday the 26th, I'll be enjoying checking out San Fran for a wedding and then soaking up the rays in Hawai'i with the hubster. I'm SO excited! I will still have the weekly posts where you can share what you've been up to. And I know I'll be back with loads of inspiration. And I'll still be blogging this week too.

How bout some links? Yes? Yes.

  • Mother Henna has a great post over at JustBeConnected that is fabulously filled with great links.
  • One of the links Kara (Mother Henna) shared was to MIT's OpenCourseWare, a selection of classes posted for free online. One of the classes is called, "The Creative Spark"! Yeah! I loved this quote from the description of the course: Creativity - "the mastery of information and skills in the service of dreams" (Hirschberg).
  • The sweet and talented, Jes has an article about artist's studios on the wishstudio zine blog here. There's a little bit of my studio in the post! And Jes is looking for more info about artist's studios, so check out the article and get in touch with her if you have something to share about your space.
  • Hope The upcoming election has me partly excited, partly angry, partly scared, partly hopeful. Speaking of hopeful, I love this kind of news. The Maine artist who made the pop icon of the word LOVE has created a new piece for the word HOPE with proceeds going to Obama's campain.
  • Have you ever wanted to make a bowl out of an old record? My bff recently let me pick through some old records she was bringing to a thrift shop. I'd like to use the covers in some art and she mentioned she was going to keep a couple records to make some of those funky bowls. If you'd like to try it out, here are some instructions from P@perSeed.
  • I received two copies of Patti Digh's Life is a Verb: 37 days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally this week and I'm so thrilled with how gorgeous it is! Patti's writing is absolutely fabulous and inspirational. I've got some cool art in those pages too! It was so fun to do some illustrations for Patti's essays and I'm so pleased to be a part of the community of creative folks that brought artwork to her book.Here's one of the pieces that I created for the book:

    Writesomeblues1

Still behind in emails I'm afraid. Hope to be caught up soon. I hope you've all had a lovely and creative weekend!

9 Responses

Congratulations on being in a book Leah, isn’t that fun and good for you? :-) Beautiful mermaid – in red, how cool is that?! :-)

ooh, I’m goona steal that linky about HOPE for the Creative Type blog :)
http://useyourtype.blogspot.com/

did you make your bowl yet? maybe wednesday…?

enjoy your time away celebrating life and love! hope it is full of beautiful sunsets and swooning romance :) xo

There are so many good bits in this post! I just took at peek at your links and found all the pictures of the studios, there’s so much fun, so much inspiration! I love seeing other people’s studios, sort of like looking through someone’s bookshelves to see what these people are “really” like :)

I’m so excited for the time you will have to recoup and restore with your husband! It will be so good for you!

XOXO

All kinds of goodies in this post. I’m curious to see how the mermaid painting will turn out. It’s already got an exciting foundation.

Awesome post….the best? the HOPE thing. Am saving that to post on my blog – thank you! Hope your trip/honeymoon is awesome. Come back rested and safely. Am jealous! Hawaii! take lots of pictures!

I always wanted to go to Blue Ginder ~ but it never works out. I will have to get myself there sometime.
I liked this meme too. Your posts are always so Full~ I love exploring them!

Leah, I love that HOPE sign and thanks for finding the Creative Spark class in the MIT courses — brilliant!!! And thank you for the mention! Glad you are digging my weekly surfin’ posts over at Melba’s. It’s been fun so far…it interesting for me to go back and see where the course of the past week took me. Otherwise time goes so fast that sometimes I don’t realize how much ground we cover in a day, week! Lots of miracles to you! k-

loving your red lobster girl and now have the B-52’s in my head… it will be a great day!

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