Wednesday, April 25, 2012

More Colors


The outside of my house is light yellow green, subdued purple, with bright pink doors...after weeks of riding the bus out to the West End (I worked at the hospital in Forks two days a week) I realized that the colors of the Northwest really are green and purple. The inside is all off-white walls...but if I ever get bored, I'm going to do bright red in the dining room and sunshine yellow in the bed room. A red couch, of course, and yellow sheets. Isn't it FUN to play with color! Especially now that the brown film of my cataracts has been removed.

I bought more yellow-green and purple plants for the back yard Saturday in Port Townsend, and it was warm and sunny enough on Sunday to plant them...and overuse my poor back--yoga stretched Every morning!



In Port Townsend I sat and stared at the streaks of psychadelic purple and blue in the water and filled my pockets with pretty rocks. My brother could hear them clicking against each other when we went out for dinner: A colorful pink, orange, and green sushi roll--wish I'd taken a picture! Sailboats were doing a 
complicated dance out on the water. I love SO
Much having access to salt water everywhere I go out here on the Olympic Peninsula! And the snow topped mountains as a back drop.

This time of year is so So Gorgeous in the NW US--there is green haze in different shades on all the deciduous trees, with a background of blue-green evergreen (see Emily Carr's paintings). Because of our cool damp climate, everything sping stays in blossom for at least a month, unlike the NE US where spring quickly gives way to hot and humid summer. I do still miss the fire flies, though. There are people here who have never seen them, magical fairy twinkles in the warm late June darkness...of course the mosquitos are out out there dining on unprotected human flesh then, too. Since my colorful home is out in the open, I Never am troubled by the pesky devils and can can work outside unprotected...only dodging the 3" long black slugs--not a place to put one's hand.

The climate here is all cool damp in the fall-spring and baking sunshine in the summer, with no rain for several months. I can't understand people even trying to propagate grass lawns under these circumstances. As you've seen in previous posts, my yard is dark gravel with designs of white rocks--quilting gone large. I wonder what the small planes flying overhead think? When I have some extra cash, I buy slabs of gray rock sparkling with mica and turquoise hunks, adding red glass ornaments from the summer craft shows. The yellow-green euphorbia above has been self-seeding, and contrasts with the brilliant-blue flowered plant next to it and the newly-installed clumps of yellow green and purple succulents. No gas, no noise, and hours of fascination, placing stones and small plants...I don't even mind the weeding of invasives...how do we separate what's a weed from what's desirable?

Lest you think that it's all play and no Art Work around here, I designed 6 (did another after I took this picture) Venus or Icon patterns on Sunday between trips outside. 

I'm enjoying doing my 100 Hot Flash Women portrait project, and decided to add a 100 Icon series to give me something less taxing than painting, so I can sew while I watch movies. As I learned in OT school, stitching in and out is a positive outlet for any aggressive feelings that one may have accumulated. I'll show you how the finished ones look later, when they're done. As always too many wonderful things to do, to get to them all!

Off to meet Lynne Armstrong at the Blue Whole Gallery and David at Fort Worden this afternoon...It's my Day Off!



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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Clear Vision, Living with Grace, I'm back!


Who's Grace, you may ask...as Tim did. By Grace, I mean to try to keep my head and proceed moment by moment with a minimum of railing against the inevitable changes that come with my accumulating time on the planet. To be grateful for what I have, instead of craving what I have not or have lost...and my recent cataract surgery has made me most grateful for colors and clarity.

It has been a while since I've posted, lying low, healing, trying to be Grateful for What I have. Bertha Cooper, at right, interviewed me about losing my vision, and now i have something of a reprieve. Colors and clarity are improving daily, although I need to go back and have my eyeball pressure checked again in two days, and my
pupils are still somewhat dilated from 5 hours ago--
I don't re-adjust as rapidly as I used to...in lots of ways.





Since I'm back to having a day off in the middle of the week again, today in fact, I'm hearing from my Hot Flash Women class and noticing for my own life that having too many good things to do, and feeling like a spinning top as I turn from one to the other, never staying in one place long enough to accomplish anything and just generally driving myself crazy.

Diana Somerville, science writer and environmental activist. She's fighting a proposed co-generation plant that would burn logging slash and pollute our pristine air. I'm reading AGENDA FOR A NEW ECONOMY, by David C Korten, tracing our devolution to a culture run by corporations for corporations, but as Allen, at Port Book and News says, the large populations of emerging economies like China and India are not willingly going to give up raping and pillaging the environment the way we did to get all the "goodies" of "advanced civilization."

I have been concentrating on painting my
100 Hot Flash Women
portraits, but that has been on hold while I get used to my new vision...this morning I did everything I could to avoid returning to the painting I started before surgery...what's that about? I also have a bunch of ideas for soft sculptures or mixed media sculptures, since I'm really really happy and calm when I do some stitching every day.

I started a fabric book that I was going to teach back when I thought I might do a week-long class in France. I've since decided that the economy and my shaky job situation dictate that I don't think about traveling any more...I have been to Paris and down the Nile, so what else do I really need to see, except vicariously. The fabric book is called FRANCE/ROMANCE, and I see that maybe I'm bidding good bye to both of those. (an old flame
was going to come and visit at the end of March,
but canceled a week and a half before. Part of me
was disappointed and a part relieved.) A simpler life is...a simpler life.

I don't want to think that I am limiting myself more than I need to. It has been fun to pick the fabric book back up again, and it gives me a small project to stitch on while I watch movies, AND I can enter it in the Fiber Arts Festival in Sequim in October...I try to consolidate projects to fit multiple needs. There are also two classes not too far away, one with Anne Grgich http://www.annegrgich.com/ and one with Jonathan Talbot...both on collage and layers... I don't know about you, but sometimes I go through periods of not wanting to do anything for myself that involves either time or money...maybe the way we women were raised, the stupid martyr complex just makes me angry in the end.

I was looking through my stash last night, and now there's fabric all over the floor of my sewing room, but I'm thinking of another run of Venus of Willendorf-like figures, somewhat different from the ones I did last year, but I'm liking series of 100. I also did 100 small drawings last year, with limited parameters, (size, colors, materials) and for me a series gets me past the point of too much preciousness and worry about making just the perfect one.

I am Amazed and Delighted at the clarity of my view of the world outside--must bring that clarity to my view of my own life and activities.

OK, I'm still avoiding painting, so I'll sign off.

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