February 2007 Archives

Embroidered with a spare pattern of vertical and horizontal running stitches. Made in art class, I think.

From my table by the cafe window, I drew the trashcan, curb, and the street light post outside. The can and post were black, and when I was done with a line drawing, I began to notice all the shapes of color across the street: posters, signs, newspaper boxes, a hydrant. So I added those shapes in color.

From my daughter's backpack today.

My landscape painting for the month of February is now posted over on the Curbly site.

In March I will be teaching a workshop at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Sat. March 17, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. and Sat. March 24, 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

$68 members/$84 nonmembers

Become part of the world of artists online by learning how to create and manage your own artblog - a blog about your own visual world. Whether you work in traditional or digital media, feature your art on your own free and easy-to-maintain weblog. Join the community conversation, exchanging comments and encouragement with other artists online, or simply create an ongoing record of your work to share with friends and family.

At the end of this hands-on workshop, you will have created your own online gallery, and you will be able to maintain it - yourself.

Basic computer operation, email, and internet browsing experience are recommended; no other specialized skills required.

Class size is limited. Please call 412.622.3288 to register for the workshop or download the registration form here. More information is available on the Museum's website.

My favorite kind of cracker, wrapped in toasted seaweed.

Sometimes it's good to close your eyes for a moment before heading upstairs.

I am glad we painted the dining room orange - especially at this time of year.

Walking home with my daughter tonight. The weather has gotten mild again, and the sky had great color over the distant spires of Oakland. Painted from memory.

A week later and some of the tulips I got for Valentine's day are fading around the edges but still with us. I love tulips for the way they get more interesting to look at over time: stems stretching, curving, petals opening wider, three outer, three inner, revealing more and more about their shapes and deeper richer subtler colors, then wilting, folding, curling, twisting, until they pinwheel off their stems altogether. Not a bad way to go, come to think of it.

Used to hang tissue paper snowflakes in the front window today. I'm still feverish from my bout of flu this weekend, and think that perhaps there are enough snowflakes outside, but my daughter is adamant. We have 20 to put up. I think the window can't possibly hold them all. She finds room. And she is right - the view is prettier when glimpsed though a window of cut tissue paper. And I am still feverish, but have been reminded again of the way simple gestures can transform a space.

Keeping things as simple as possible.

Line and wash.

The best apricots I ever tasted were dried on a rooftop in Turkey, and had come from a garden halfway down a cliff. Tonight's were the second best, tasting of summer on a cold, cold night.

The school parties were today, instead. We have small pink cards, candy, and tulips in the house.

Snow holiday, for the second day in a row. And so far, we also have a two-hour school delay tomorrow, because of bad road conditions and significant wind chills expected. That could turn into another holiday, which the children wouldn't mind.

Still wilted. But fun to paint, anyway. And with today's snow and ice (snow holiday today, snow holiday tomorrow) it will be a while before we have any of our own.

You would think that a bunch of daffodils bought at the supermarket would open. These went straight from bud to wilt.

Began drawing my hand, began seeing my fingers as a set of distant slopes on a hillside, my ring becoming an old building with a blue roof. So I washed green over the clay soil and painted in the sky.

We went to visit the Carnegie Science Center today. The building has great views of the rivers. This window lets you look up the Ohio River, toward Downtown Pittsburgh and the point where the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers join. The Allegheny appeared to be mostly frozen today - more open water on the Mon and the Ohio.

Hand from life, landscape from memory.

A cold night led to impulse baking. The recipe came from a friend, back in graduate school days.

I just got a couple of new VERY fine point fountain pens, filled one with brown ink and was trying it out tonight. Sometimes fine lines let me get intense... obsessive... as on the night last winter when I drew salt. So today I was making a conscious effort to let the lines stay rapid and loose. Obsessive stippling will come one of these evenings, though, because the pens are so much fun to use.

The tissue was flame-like across the room, and I suddenly thought of it as a stand-in for some ancient fire: a hearth we gather around, snuffling, at this time of year.

Orange painted with primary colors only, as my larger set of colors was upstairs.

The Metroblogging group has just added Pittsburgh to the collection of over 50 city blogs from around the world - from LA to DC, from Karachi to Istanbul, city residents blog about their hometowns.

I'm honored to join a few other Pittsburgh bloggers to share what I've been thinking about as I make my way around town. So bookmark Metroblogging Pittsburgh, or add it to your RSS reader, and see what's happening n'at.

Still not ripe. They are so perfect when I wait - such a challenge to my impatience in the meantime.

New materials: water-soluble Cretacolor hard pastels in burnt sanguine and sepia light and a charcoal pencil. Not knowing how the materials will respond means I take chances - I pretend to be fearless. The process becomes new again.

The youngest child fell asleep with her foot on my lap. So I began to paint. No preliminary drawing, just jumped in there with color and began to push it around on the page. As I am doing this, my husband enters the room, and with the kindest of intentions (not recognizing my subject) lifts the child out of the way of my painting and carries her up to bed. So that's where this entry stops, with everything outside the frame of the picture: surprised mother, loving father, sleeping child.

Essential furnishing for any dining room. When a question arises over dinner, you don't have to go online to check it out.