This House Haunts Me....

...and it has nothing to do with Halloween.  I know this house must have quite a story.  It's in a nearby town and whenever there is some holiday or celebration....they put up appropriate decorations whether it's "flag" decorations for Memorial Day or, in this case, Halloween.  There's an autumn wreath in the picture window and something orange hanging inside the front door which you can't see.  They have  potted Mums on the steps.  There is a Halloween banner (flag) that's not quite visible as well.  You can see lots of wear and tear...moss on the roof, a sagging side porch.  And, that's possibly a satellite dish on the front porch.  What's its story?  It looks sad...but I hope there are some happy memories there.  But I have to say....if I were trick or treating...I might just walk on by....

Having fun with the Red, White & Blue

When I first started the Red, White & Blue journal, I was only going to work on the right side of the book and just put a wash of color on the left side pages.  But ideas have come to me and now I have done work on the "opposite pages" so I will share/update you, below:

 See how they look together....

 I did the "Jaws" page earlier in the summer...and when I looked at it the other day, I realized I had this cute polka dot piece....that relates so well to the drawing of the woman...in her polka dot piece.  I found some great things to add...a movie receipt from "Easy Virtue", the Drop Dead Gorgeous...and I especially like the line going up the left side..."Everyone else brought wine"...that's why doing collage is so much fun.  The pages just work so well together.

And I added a page opposite Tom at Bethany Beach...

 And I added some more embellishments to my "Vette" page....

 It's back to work tomorrow, so I won't have this luxury of time...but I've certainly been enjoying myself.  I would venture to say that I have altered every page I've already posted...because you're never really finished with a page....it can always use that ...one more thing....

October is....

The Woods behind my house

The garden shed in the sunlight

A woodpile waiting  for a cold day

A black cat

 Lots of pumpkins.... 

And my cutie pie, c. 1989

GONE FISHIN'

  I think this is my favorite month of the year.  This week I've taken some R & R and my sister and brother-in-law were here for a visit.  Dianne & I have been to an outdoor flea market, traveled the back roads for a yummy breakfast, visited two art friends in a town north of my home and spent some quality time together.  We've had a fun time! Below is a page I did this week in my Red, White & Blue journal.  My friend, Janet, who we visited this week....has created the most beautiful, fascinating, interesting array of handmade books....so .....I came home from our visit, inspired.   

I collaged some newspaper pieces underneath the tags that I made, that are attached with buttons.  Now, being true to my American flag which I hope to have on every page, large or small....if you move the tags aside....

 ....there is a photo of the flag on the front page of our local newspaper.  This art work appears opposite the fish picture I did that is "Fish Wrapped In Yesterday's News".....which appears elsewhere on this blog.  Here is how they look together...

I think I'm done with fish now for awhile.  And I don't even like to fish!

It's All About The Light

I hate it when I have something I really want to write about....and I don't have the time.  And now it's days later and I'm not sure I can capture and share the thought as well as I could when it was fresh.  I've been reading a really interesting book by Barbara Brown Taylor called "An Altar in the World."  She is really a marvelous writer and I have so many tabs in this book that I want to go back and reread!  

But as a person who is interested in art and in "fine-tuning" my spirit, "the" light is very important....thus the photo above that I took a few months ago.
 
Here is a snippet from her book that I love...

"Once, when I was confined to bed for the better part of a week, I spent hours watching the sunlight that came through the slats of my wooden blinds move down the white wall of my bedroom.  First thing in the morning it made honey-colored rectangles with soft edges.  By 10am the wall was striped with bands of light as straight as rulers.  By noon they looked more like the rungs of a ladder, dappled with leaves from the winged elm outside my window.  By 2pm they had lost most of their character, as the sun moved over the roof of the house and left the front yard in deepening shadow."

She goes on to say....

"This may sound boring to you, but it was not.  It was beautiful.  It gave me a place outside myself to go.  I did not have to do anything to make the light change.  It had a routine it followed all by itself whether I was awake to watch it or not.  If I did not like the way the light looked at a given moment, I knew it would change.  If I loved the way the light looked at a given moment, I knew it would change.  I could not speed it up and I could not slow it down.  
Not to put too fine a point on it, the light was my life and I knew it.  Paying attention to it, I lost my will to control it.  Watching it, I became patient.  Letting it be, I became well." 

I couldn't condense what she wrote above and still capture the essence of what she was saying.  It's quite beautiful.

Leaves of Blue

It's nice to have different projects going and every now and then, it's back to the Red, White & Blue journal.  I wanted to do a page that had something to do with fall....I considered doing a tree that had zentangles (that's on the back burner now) but after I gessoe'd this page, I ended up putting a blue wash on it.  I still didn't really know what I was going to do, but keeping in mind that this is the red, white & blue book....it wasn't going to be autumn colors.  So I then took this new rubber stamp that I have of an oak leaf and I used blue ink and stamped all over the page.  Now what?   I had to get some red in....so I took a red watercolor pencil and started going around the leaves negative space.  That was working so I took my paintbrush and started moving the red around a bit.  When that was dry....I took a white ink pen and drew the tree.  Then I had some of this red and white paper leftover from an envelope that I received....added that, (actually, the design of the paper reminds me a little bit of the way the curves of the leaves are...) and, of course, our flag in the corner.  The final touch was a little bit of charcoal shadow around parts of the tree that I then rubbed in.  C'est fini.