Running Rabbit: Art and Madness

Rabbit Contemplates the Art Process

 

I am suffering from the post Christmas blahs and a head cold. These two maladies have conspired to send me into a mild depression. It's one of those times where I wake up at night and start to question why I am an artist instead of a contributing member of society. Not that I haven't given 30 plus years to society and contributed my share already...but us art types don't have a steady paycheck for the most part.

The money part can be downright scary at times, like after Christmas when art types look at the state of the post-holiday coffers. The up side is like it or not, from me, most people get gifts from the studio that I take great pleasure in making for them very specifically. So far, everyone has been polite enough to express pleasure in their giftings and I haven't run into Christmas presents abandoned at Good Will -yet.

I think part of the depressed part is there is such hustle and bustle and looming deadlines before the holidays that afterwards, normal feels flat. Add to that the clean, tidy studio and the open possibilities for me: painting? Valentine's Day? Easter papier mache? Glass? Jewelry? Sometimes the choices are so wide open I feel paralzyed with joyous indecision, like the kid who has his choice of anything in the candy store and bursts into tears because he can't choose, puzzling everyone around him.

Nothing left to do now but get off my duff, stand up, put on shoes, gather up the pack (three dogs, one cat) and head for the studio. I'm sure something will demand my attention when I get there, probably the cat, but I'm hoping for inspiration.

This is where something important comes into play, something that all those who aspire to make art or make anything really, need to memorize and live by.

"Perspiration will get you through times of no inspiration." These words make bookends with,  "Process will get you times of no ideas far better than ideas will get you through times of no process". Sounds simple, but its actually pretty profound when you pull the cliche apart.

Even Thoreau got into the mix, with his famous quote,"Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still." I actually have this quote scrawled on a scrap of motheaten paper pinned to the studio wall. Its been in my work spaces for almost 30 years from the day I first saw it and wrote it down. Still true too.

I am developing more patience as time goes on with younger artists who are just jumping into this pond with me. I have been known to hand them the Thoreau quote with a lecture on drawing and painting what you know, what is around you.

I recognize my younger self in them, that girl who went looking for the perfect scene to draw and found mostly frustration. I was lucky enough to have a professor whose name was Ann Lasko. She told me to draw what I knew to make my work true and real. I didn't know buildings and landscapes back then, I knew laundry and children, vegetable gardens and baskets of toys, and my dogs and cats and my housewife world.

To this day when I'm short on inspiration I go back to  process. I draw what is in front of me. Shoes, piles of towels, the pots, pans, dishes, puppies, my yard, my world. When my world expanded I grew with it because I had developed my process. Now I love landscapes and buildings in my paintings, but I had to grow into them and learn them.

Guess what beginning artists, there is no magic. There is only doing the thing again and again until your brain and hands understand this is the shape of a wall, a doorknob, a dog's foot, a glass. And your first efforts will most likely be terrible until your hands and head are communicating and understand what you see/experience/draw/learn/shape. Don't give up, learn to know your own bone.

 

 Knowing your own bone is a true thing and I think its time for me to go dig mine up and gnaw on it for a few days...

Rabbit Makes Snow Angels

The second in my new series of Angels is finished, I like my process in these compositions. Amazing what one can do with a small editing program and a ton of persistence. When I grow up I hope I can afford to purchase Adobe Photoshop at some point, that is some expensive software!

I love angels and what they mean. Everyone defines angels a little differently and I like what each person brings to the experience of looking at these altered images which have become angels.

  Doing these pieces is an interesting exercise because I am looking for the exact open moment in time when a person is caught in the perfect pose for my images. So, friends and loved ones I will be prowling and looking for your photographs to angelicize you all before I'm done. And here is my Snow angel at the end of the school year last year, growing up fast at the age of 12.

 

 

 

Rabbit sez Christmas can be fun(ny)

For the viewing pleasure of my non Facebook friends I am posting these antidotes to Christmas blahs. I hope the Scrooges and the folks that adore Xmas enjoy equally! More as I create them from my collection of old B/W photos.

 
yes, he got her a vacumm cleaner...

 

 
The dog has big plans...

 

 
My dog Nellie's ancestor I'm sure

 

 
The effects of too much sugar in the Santa line

 

 
The girls have been into the eggnog again...

 

Next Year

My friend Emily loaned me Maira Kalman's amazing book/journal/experience the Principles of Uncertainty. Highly recommend it, what a delight. I have decided my fun project for next year is to create a blog entry at least once a week--more if I can, that will have an original drawing or illustration to go with it. I'll have to create a new category for it so friends can track "Schrodinger's Kitten"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

Heisenberg came up with the original uncertainty principle in physics and Schrodinger came up with the absurdist quantum physics (very confusing and detailed--see the link if you want more) thought experiment that a cat in a sealed box could be alive or dead depending on what happened or did not happen in the universe.  Life is kind of like that, we are either dead or alive in our world depending on what happens in our own personal universe.

 

Sometimes we are alive and feeling dead, and sometimes we are absolutely dead but feel very alive. Are you following where I'm going with this? So Schrodinger's kitten will be a lavishly illustrated and terribly philosophical chapter of my journal/blog for 2011, depending on what I feel alive or dead about next year.

 I used Microsoft paint for this silly kitten,  I like paint, its pretty primitive and suits the kid in me perfectly sometimes.

 

Ghost Chasing With Rabbit's Camera

Another slideshow design by Smilebox

I love what I can do with a camera and I love Halloween. These are all my photos, they've just been slightly altered for atmosphere. Most of my photographs don't have people in them, they are places where people used to be or have just been. I love the sense of what might have been there. The stories old barns and falling down houses have to tell if I can listen closely enough. I also adore exuberant over-the-top fountains and carvings of faces and statues on walls, animation frozen in stone but if I turn my back they might just move. These photos are the most realistic of the spooky photos. I'm working on a second installment right now of even stranger images. enjoy...

Rabbit Looks at Graffiti

Graffiti. It seems to be everywhere these days. Most of it reminds me of angry male dogs peeing on trees to mark their territory, mad dogs that are not real bright dogs either.  A lot of this stuff is not well executed or well thought out-- nor is it art. Often, it intentionally destroys or defaces something: street murals executed by an entire neighborhood usually last about 24 hours before the hounds hit it with their poorly aimed spray paint urination.

Graffiti has been around a long time, seen in things like, "Kilroy was here" and random phone numbers in bathrooms saying "call Susie for a good time", or my old fave; "time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" are all familiar to anyone who ever used a gas station bathroom or traveled on the New York subway system.

 Graffiti, the need to deface property by scratching or painting stuff onto it can be found all the way back to Pompeii. Because Pompeii was conveniently frozen in time by a volcano,( frozen or would that be fried?)  no one had a chance to tear the stuff down or write over it so we know it existed.

Graffiti hit the big time on boxcars in the USA several years back. Monster big canvases for artists who used spraycans to execute their work, usally graphics of names, or "tags". A "tag" which is the artist writing their name is known as a "handstyle." the tag is the 'artists' signature move and tags often contain messages, gang sign and affiliation and letters or initials.

A "throw up or "bombing" is painted fast with just a few colors, style is given up for speed.  A "piece" is  an artist's statement and ups the likelihood of being busted, part of the thrill? The style started with letters and has evolved to include stencils, portraiture and sophisticated stuff--especially when you consider it's usually being done in a short time, with a spray can in the dark.

There are turf wars and beefs between "artists" which can include throwing up a "block buster" or "roller". Gallons of cheap paint are rolled on in block letters to cover a wall with two contrasting colors, often just to block someone else from using the wall. And in extreme cases, one artist will hit another's piece with a "throw up" to cover it. The world of the graffiti artist is arcane and tied to the world of the street in a lot of cases. There is hidden subtext that the ordinary mortal won't ever ge, which is part of its clubby charm to the those in the genre.

So here's the thing. I have a "beef" with the twits who come along with their skinny cans of black and red paint and just spray like tomcats, because they can and all they are doing really is marking their territory with their asses.

I do however, respect the crews/artists who do the stunningly beautiful and well thought out stuff I run into occaisonally. I have found amazing graffiti in strange places: a tiny town in Montana and, a back alley in Olympia--which was executed by an astonishing artist who has gone on to fame and fortune who shall remain nameless. But let me tell you, his spray paintings of the major food groups in Olympia alleyways is the stuff of legend. Behind our apartment building we had a beautiful graffiti piece of  a stack of pancakes on a blue plate, 10 feet tall. Now that was art.

Today, I was roaming around in downtown Tacoma. An odd city that one; it has the Hilltop neighborhood full of Crips, Bloods, gangs, crime, violence, you name it--and then a couple of miles away you'll find blocks of gigantic piles of mansions and very upscale old houses, it looks like someone uprooted Pasadena's nicest neighborhood and tossed it on the hills above Commencement Bay.

Tacoma was dying on the vine until a few years ago. It had the Port, which kept it barely alive, a couple of universities and hospitals and a rapidly dying core fully of seedy bars and scary homeless people. I'm not sure what happened, but when I started taking a metal smithing class and wandering around in Tacoma I was astonished. This city is in the throes of reinventing itself and it is awesome to watch.

But I digress, what Tacoma has that is really cool and apparently keeps it in a non-stop fight with the city fathers and mothers, is the Graffiti Garages. Three big parking garages with some of the best urban taggers and artists around splattering stuff all over the walls. Beautiful, colorful, intricate and sophisticated stuff.  I did discover while trying to photograph and edit it, that all spray painted graffiti has soft edges, try sharpening that up Adobe users, ha ha! And of course the tomcats and their tiny cans have been littering the place with their idiot attempts at their names. Can they even spell? I wonder.

 The garages were empty on this Sunday and I strolled through the first two, reeking somewhat of pee towards the back. Ah the homeless winos from Saturday night, gotta love 'em Sunday morning, but even so, the work was great and I hope hope hope the city fathers and mothers back off and appreciate the fact that this brightens and adds hipitude to an other wise really drab area on antique row. 

I'm guessing graffiti has now entered terminal hipness. The third garage was full of shirtless teen boys in pants way too tight and too short, apparently for a fashion shoot based on the cameras and sycophants accompanying the hipsters.

I have put a graffiti photo album in Running Rabbit: Art and Madness for your edification. Check it out, I'm jealous of their use of color but I promise I won't come and spray paint your house while you're asleep.

Rabbit is Resistant

I am feeling so downed by the endless gray skies. It feels like its been raining forever. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for 30 years and I know the gray is coming. I just didn't except it so early. I have come to count on indian summer into October to carry me through the first two gray months. Most peculiarly this year it has rained and rained and rained. We don't usually get endless drenching rains, here in Washington we get sullen skies and the expectation of rain. Last week it was hot and wet which is really odd, but now the weather has degraded to first-of-fall chill. I actually had the heater on yesterday, both in the house and the studio.  
 

You would think it would drive happily straight into the studio but no, its making me want to curl up with a book and a blanket and bad movies on teevee. I am having to absolutely flog myself to get to work on a huge pile of projects. The scariest one is the Christmas tree for the Christmas Forest which is a huge fundraiser for Providence St Peter Hospital folks. I got tapped very late to take on a tree which is sponsored by another Christmas Forest virgin, they don't know anymore than I do. Yes, I can certainly decorate a Christmas tree but this one is going to get auctioned to the highest bidder. Some of the trees go for thousands and thousands of dollars and the terror is mine will be woefully short of the mark.

I understand there is an expectation that I will run out and pound on doors to get presents to put under the the but let me tell you, the sheer size of the project and the fact that I'm feeling my way down the path  is going to keep me from knocking on merchant's doors. I'm an artist not a fund raiser. The group sponsoring the tree has a mission this year of providing clean water so I'm trying really hard to figure out how to mix in the idea of water with my theme of a Green Green Tree. I am creating repurposed ornaments for the most part. A couple of hundred of them by the time I'm done. I am so hoping my colleagues at Matter will jump on board and donate some ornaments or things to put under the tree before its auctioned.  I need to get time to paint three or four small canvases or at least do a big metal piece, but the looming deadline has me out of my comfort zone.

I'm using a lot of tiny old glass single serving creamers I found in Montana a few years ago, I knew I bought those things for a reason--and with a $385 budget to pull off this whole thing, I can use all the help I can get from my stash. I am planning to fill them with glitter and a Christmas picture like tiny snow globes.

That's a start, and then there is the jewelry that is positively singing to me from down the room. Two new pieces are waiting for me: Rhiannon and Gwennlaise, just need to get my mojo up and hit it.

I know I'm depressed because I got a new printer that will let me do transfers and I haven't already done 50 of them!

And there is the painting for the city that requires 80 pounds of paperwork to compete. That whole mess is looming as well the want to get another three animal portrait piece done. This one is long owed and needs to be done.

So, enough to do and like my Ozark granny always said, "You can only unravel a complication by starting at the end of the string."  Time to find the end of the string.

Rabbit Cleans House

One of those days, when I want to be in the studio painting but when I looked around the house, I realized I could not avoid the fact that it will be soon rotting off the foundations if I don't stop and clean it. I was whipped after coming home from a trip and hitting class the same night so it slid out of control and I didn't care until today. It's my American Protestant Guilt at work, and although I'm no contender for Hoarder on teevee, I come from a long line of crap hoarders and hangers on to empty cardboard boxes. If you have these people in your family line you need to be very vigilant about what goes and what stays and why? I've noticed the hoarders always have some compelling reason for crap-clinging, they just can't see trash as trash. Could I become my sister? My mom? Quick let me throw out a few more things! 

As an artist involved in a ton of different media and trying to minimize my carbon footprint by repurposing Stuff, I tend to accrue Stuff. I also try really hard to get it organized and where it belongs ASAP and keep it there. My house is busy visually, but it pleases me. My eyes and heart get inspiration from the things I have here in my 'nest'. A lot of them move on out and into other lives with time.

Mexican wooden animals and Round Things, love dustfree glass cabinets!

I purposefully chose a small house, 900 square feet, because I would have to be careful about what fit and what didn't. The rule is something comes in and something goes out. That even includes books. I love, love, love books and if I had a spare room it would be lined with bookshelves and books. Given my rule, it means I have to self-edit and my books have devolved into a few keep categories. My office has a wall of art books, my living room has a wall of travel books, food books--including cooking and reading about cooking, poetry and children's books. A basket catches all the finished books destined for trading in on other books or sharing with friends.

round things, love these lit up in a 4 foot tall glass jar.

In a small house you can't just hide piles of stuff. It all shows. The upside is it takes less time to clean--even with all the stuff I have, like my collection of wind up toys, collection of rabbits, collection of carved masks, collection of Mexican animals, collections of round things, interesting saucers, and old cool metal stuff. What can I say? I was born to collect, I think I'm dealing with ADD by organizing the hell out of everything and putting my family's genetic predisposition to be scattered to work for me.

 As a working artist art is my life and my life is art. I couldn't separate the two if I wanted. I always marvel at people who say, "I'm going to paint (when...fill in the blanks)." I couldn't stop making work if I wanted to, its been a compulsion my entire life and I hope it always will be. I'm sure it makes me quirky but I like me just fine and my dear hubs puts up with my collecting of Things and Stuff.

One of my yellow dog paintings keeping company with my mask collection

Today, the jumble became annoying, and my house signaled that it needed my attention so the day has been occupied with dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing, washing, the myriad details that leak into one another like raindrops off a roof. I'm almost there. I can see the clean finish line, but then again, I've been dangerously thinking of metal smithing and how to derange the studio into a better set up for working in metal.

But for now, let me tender one important piece of advice from an artist who has to stay organized to succeed. Pick stuff up and put it away as soon as you are done with it. From coffee cups to clothes, paintbrushes to broken glass, if you put it back/away/deal with it, life is so much better especially when you go to look for it again.

Tomorrow really is a studio day, there is a big painting waiting for me to finish and I cannot hardly wait to get busy on it. Okay, where did I put that dustcloth....

Rabbit Rides: Back in the Work Saddle Again

Back in the saddle again. The sun is gone and I am home after my epic runaway weekend in Oregon. The studio and the Great Big Painting await me. I'm always about half afraid to go back and look at a mostly finished piece a few days later. What if it isn't as good as I think it is? Yes, that has happened along with a bout of what was I thinking!

I have about 300 photos to edit. I'm not sure whether to curse or bless digital imaging. It wears out my eyes but it sure does save on the developing in both time and control--let alone cost! I like having the control over editing my pix. Seldom is there a photo that cannot be improved by judicious cropping and balancing the color, and of course there is artistic license too.

 Why so many photos? If you paint or draw its wonderful to have an archive of your own work as photo reference for starters. No one will sue you for stealing their image if it belongs to you in the first place. Another piece of advice for casual photographers: invest in a hard drive that is separate from your computer and stash your pictures there. Number one pictures eat space on you hard drive and number two, if your computer crashes your photos of Aunt Stella and your cousin Fred at the forest fire will be nice and safe.

The most exciting thing I've done recently was not  a road trip it was getting back from one in time to make my first metalsmithing class. I am thrilled to the soles of my shoes. Excellent instructor and venue in Tacoma, WA. I learned so much last night and I have a lot of the tools already and use them in my current work. I've been feeling frustrated and like I'm ready for the next bump up to a new level. I've been jonesing for metal classes and Eureka! I have found them!  In October I'm going to a day of lampworking for beads, something I have been dying to do since I visited Moon Marble in Kansas a few years back.

So, saddle up rabbit we have miles to paint before we sleep.

Sad Bunny Sort Of

Today I went on a grown-up Easter egg hunt. Garage sales and estate sales are a lot like Easter, complete with hidden treats and a maddening hunt which may include fighting off others after the same "eggs."

 My friend Lynn, who is seriously professional at this, picked me up at 7:30 a.m to find me staggering around with my coffee  trying to wake up. We referred to the treasure map, aka newspaper and put together our strategy. Although it says in the paper, 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. NO EXCEPTIONS, there is a class of very special vulture out there called a Dealer who doesn't believe in anything except get there first, pillage and burn and try to get everything for nothing-- and then drive very fast to the next village and do the same thing all over again. It would be fascinating if they weren't such ugly people inside and out, Reptiles wearing hairspray and carrying coin purses.

 Luckily, I was after broken junk  and not terrifically interested in a a score off a little old lady that I could sell for 100 times what I paid, which brings me to the other side of this warped coin. When did the prices for garage sale crap go through the roof? Old, but not very, wing chair with reprehensible upholstery, $150.00. Quoi?! and a little sewing chair, $50.00. People, its a garage sale, not Macy's and your driveway is the last stop before the Salvation Army.

 Perhaps I'm being snippy because the taste and junk was so WalMartian at the first several stops but we finally landed in a divine multi-family sale that provided a lot of great pieces to repurpose. For some reason I bought a wooden flute for $2.50. That makes 5 different penny whistles and flutes in my studio now, I counted them. I can't play anything but Do Re Mi, what was I thinking?

After we paid for our piles and lugged them to the car we strolled up and down the street to all the neighbors who spontaneously began to have garage sales after seeing the foot traffic at the three family big one across the road. One gent sold Lynn a zippered up wig box with the name "Sharon Solberg" in gold across the front and an empty bowling bag, apparently these items are in hot demand, obviously I do not get out much. He gave us a toothbrush as a prize for our purchase to boot, it was new but still, it is sitting with the silver polish not the toothpaste at this point.

I found a bunny with a broken toe for 50 cents. He came home, got his toe fixed and a hole drilled through his hand. He can now swing from the rafters in my room and he has been added to the running rabbit crew.

After that, it was time to tank up on more coffee and head to two estate sales. Estate sales. These make me sad and they make me feel odd when I visit them. I realize these are what make the vultures really slaver and duke it out in line to get in and get the good stuff. Luckily, I have never tried to get there first and so have not been forced to cold cock one of these sows, but I am not a morning person and I'm just saying, it could happen.

Okay, now I've vented and I'm feeling so much better...where were we? Estate sales. There is something inherenently sad and creepy about estate sales. Think about it, someone died and their families or the court or whoever hired someone to just come in and clean the place out like African ants. Seriously, at one of these sales today I saw a bottle of soy sauce and a box of tooth picks for sale, right next to the lady's silver ware and her old pots and pans. I always wonder what the stories are behind the possessions we are all pawing over, these piles of pyrex, blankets, sheets and tea towels. A garage full of tools and Christmas ornaments or a bag of balls of wool. I have made my peace with the process by vowing to myself to treat what I acquire with care and respect.

These little pliers seem made for my hand and they are old as is this file which I will put to work again. I found a super duper metal cabinet today, a tiny flat file that is already cleaned up and holding a ton of stuff waiting to become new cool stuff. Allay confusion: a rat tail file is going to work to take off rough edges and a flat file with drawers is my new studio piece for holding stuff. I wondered at the man who left it behind along with a tie clip and enough razor blades to scrape paint off all the windows in the Vatican, but I'll treat it well.

I have to wonder though, about the things I would never buy, like really ugly clown dolls, and 50's-70's kitsch, including a great old sign somebody got someplace that said "international order of teepee creepers." It was on varnished maple decorated with a picture of a cowboy in longjohns on one side and a buxom Indian lass on the other. Not Native American either, this thing painted on a maple trivet was probably the height of cute in the 50's and that Marilyn Monroe of the Mohicans is an INDIAN, old school movie fake-indian style. Strange...

There were boxes of vinyl records in mint condition including everything Neil Diamond every recorded, a bunch of Barbara Streisand, kid records from the 60's and what I bought: Peter, Paul and Mary and the Ventures, Telstar. I had to laugh, when we got outside to pay the lady taking money looked in the jackets and charged per RECORD. So if you had a two album set with two records in one jacket you paid twice. Nope. You may keep this nice vinyl recording of Rhapsody in Blue. I will just take Peter Paul and wotz her name along with the Ventures, thanks much.

At the last sale, a gigantic rummage sale and bake sale, you could tell the goods were donated to some degree, and their owners probably just wanted them gone. I found but did not purchase these truly riveting books:

and who could live without:

 Just what every girl needs don't you think? And when I'm done working up a sweat, or is that a glow since I'm a girl? I could refer to this cookbook and listen to some hair music.

Wow! Favorite desserts of the great plains. Who knew? And there are really 500 sandwich types in the world?

Partay! Mullets and pretty boys to eat those sandwiches and desserts. I may laugh at the ridiculous nature of our recent history, but I do like finding things I can put back to work, giving them new life and beauty. And I'm sure I'll find a great use for the Spanish to French dictionary and the flute I can't play.

You know, next time I go garage saling I have got to begin the search for a cane like this one. Just think, I could stave off evil dealers and drink before noon all at the same time while ringing my bell for the right of way!