Pamela's Journal

Shameless Commerce and Self Promotion

2012-02-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

HOT FLASH! Celebrating Women Who Have Dreams and Are Working to Realize Them

Are You One of Us?

HOT FLASH can mean a physiological change that occurs in women about half way through life. Not in this creative online class from internationally known doll maker and artist, Pamela Hastings. Participate and create with women gathered together to discover the potential inherent in being an older women and in bringing our power together to celebrate what we’ve done, the skills and energy we possess, and help ourselves and each other do even more and better in the future.

You will express the wisdom and emotion of this universal process through doll making and art making. Celebrate your femaleness and knowledge AND your ability to continue to have fun playing no matter what age you are.

We’ll share stories and make cloth, paper, mixed media dolls, journals, and masks on the theme of Hot Flash, giving new meaning to the term, “Power Surge”!  Wear comfortable layers and be prepared to have fun with sweat and exuberance…. and since the class will be taught online, you can attend in your jammies!  This is an opportunity to create your own paper or cloth doll designs, look into your own personal history and aspirations, and join group play on a common theme. I will provide inspirations, suggestions, and basic patterns...The group will be supportive of every effort—and magical things will happen! Barb Kobe and www.healingandtransformative dolls.com will provide the Ethernet playroom for our six-sessions.

Class includes e-book curriculum with patterns and group facilitation and coaching with Pamela Hastings. First time offer special price is $65.00 for six lessons (one every week). Purchase the course and the HOT FLASH: A Celebration book together ($30 if sold separately) for only $79.95.

Please visit my web site and blog at http://www.pamelahastings.com/ to see paintings, buy books and other classes.

Local fans are welcome to join me for my opening at Red Rooster natural grocery in Sequim on Friday, February 3rd, 5-8pm and become part of my 100 Hot Flash Woman Project.

Melissa Klein's large show of her recent work inspired
me to Think Big, and continue my portrait binge to
include 100 women who inspire me, in All kinds of ways!
Be part of it!...I don't mind increasing the number to
500...or 1000. I'm sure we all know women who are
setting positive examples--they are all around us--just look in the mirror!

The Virtues of a Snowy Weekend

2012-01-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

I see on Facebook that my cousin, Holly, is complaining about living in VT, where white can be the predominant color from November through April, and of course we all want what we don't have. Their temps are in the single numbers...and I can remember a January living in the old schoolhouse in East Ryegate, VT, where it never got above zero for the whole month and the sink trap (inside) froze. I slept by the wood stove to keep throwing in some of the 12 cords we spent the summer cutting and stacking. Sometimes I do miss at least the idea of cross country skiing on sunny crisp snow...no better way to enjoy the short days of winter!

Here in the NW, snow is an unusual occurrence. White flakes on green grass in January an occasion to photograph...and an opportunity to stay inside and work on projects. The snow started Saturday with huge lazy flakes.

Here it is Sunday night, and the snow continues, along with sunny breaks, and the most
amazing cloud formations...I should have taken more pictures. It's supposed to continue through Wednesday, but I won't be home to photo in daylight. Since we only have 4 plows in Clallam County, All Activities may grind to a halt...although I'll still have to be at work and hoping that my new automatic transmission Honda Fit makes it up the long hill to home.

Now that I have a renewed focus for my portrait painting: to prepare for a large show of portraits of the women who inspire me. Melissa Klein worked mighty hard to fill Studio Bob with all her own art, having taken an online class in self-promotion. I need to talk with her more about how to do the same for myself, but in the mean time I keep making paintings. I started Sandy Long today.

Barb Kobe has me working hard to write a HOT FLASH class/online group experience, and being snowed in gave me the push I needed to finish Session One. This project is an Intention-Setting doll.

My word for 2012 is BOUNDARIES...focus my energy onto what I Really want to do. As I write the classes and design projects, I see how much FUN we're going to have!

Express the wisdom and emotion of this very universal process through doll making! Celebrate your femaleness and maturity—or your ability to continue to have fun playing with materials at your advanced age.

Barb Kobe has also taken my Fabric Journal and Altered book online classes and transformed them into down-loadable self study guides, along with tons of pictures and projects, and in these snowy winter days--and the steamy days Down Under, I know you're going to Love going into your studios and play along with me.

See more and more, buy books and patterns at: http://www.pamelahastings.com/

To explore all the Possibilities, go to Barb's Site

My Love/Hate Relationship with Art/Life/Time

2012-01-02T20:26:00.000-08:00

Seattle for Christmas...I think this is the 6th one. Family is so precious, and Mom had so much fun out here last summer, she came to join us for Christmas, with performances by David and Hugh, and a wide variety of other festivities.

Through the magic of modern communication (SKIPE) Serene and Thayer were able to see and practice Arabic on their cousins in Isreal AND we got a real time tour of Shannon and Chris' house in South Carolina, well-decorated with Hastings' Art. I'm making a quilt for Steve's first grandchild in February.

Although Serene has declared a major in Industrial Engineering at Northwestern, her culinary skills are blooming. Her cake with the fondant ribbons looked even better than the model in Bon Appetitte

Hugh and Connie looking picture perfect on Christmas Day....and then in the painting I finished of them today.

A new year, and a three-day weekend are occasion for both joy and stress, since I want to believe that my life is more than only job/eat/sleep. Is my difficulty getting into the studio and facing the blank canvas/page/whatever because I don't enjoy the process? NO, it's because I don't feel the time freedom to founder or fail, to spend the time contemplating and exploring making Art demands.

Now that my time and energy are so short, the whole meaning of my life seems to hinge on finishing yet another painting...looking at all the potential side trips: revisiting my aptitude tests at Johnson/O'Conner with the book Doug gave each of us. I'm pointed toward three- dimensional visualization...my monumental sculpture wrapped in plastic in the garage. I see that my aptitudes do Not point toward successfully marketing my work.

My home is seriously grungy around the edges. I like cooking, don't mind laundry, and even iron my napkins. Money or Time Freedom? I need an obsessive/compulsive house cleaner...who will work for portraits! The giddy pleasure of completing a painting makes the aching knees worth while!

Final version of Doug and Amal from last Christmas morning. Living in the Northwest in
winter requires great courage, the too-brief transit of light low across the southeast quadrant.
A good walk for a new finances notebook, seeing a small tree with brave pink blossoms.

I was inspired by the size of Melissa Klein's show at Studio Bob to plan a monumental portrait show...hot flash women, meaning celebrating women who have dreams and are working to realize them.

There is never, never going to be Enough Time for the person who dreams.

See more paintings and books for sale at:
http://www.pamelahastings.com/

Blessed Solstice to All!

2011-12-21T16:39:00.000-08:00

This will probably be my shortest post... and the only one without an image. On this longest, darkest night of the year, please join me in celebrating the return of the sun and light...and all our blessings of health, love, and creativity. We all need to be loving family to one another...and our own selves in the dark days, in order to come out into the light and bounty of the sunny days again. Let's all do what we can to make this world a better place for ALL!
Love,
Pamela

Opportunity and Focus

2011-12-07T20:12:00.000-08:00

After a 12-hour work day yesterday, today presented the opportunity to be free with unaccustomed daylight and time available to me...but What to Do??? How to spend these precious gifts? I drove around, thought about beaches and/or food that I might like, and decided I was well-supplied already--with delicacies from my Book Group Party Monday night, and two pails of white rocks still in my garage, waiting to be arranged. I keep one smooth rock in the pocket of my lab coat at work.

How do we define ourselves? I've immersed myself so thoroughly in this new 5-day a week schedule at work, I sometimes forget that I define myself as an artist/writer/reader/thinker, and not as an OT. How to take advantage of unexpected gifts, this late afternoon/evening when I have enough energy left to think, "what shall I do?"

You are the beneficiaries of this extra spurt of creativity. I pledged to myself to put paint on canvas at least once a week, and so I am learning to spend more time on each painting, staging them from week to week. The one up top seems to be finished, from a photo Loel Annie Barr took--all those geometric lines and planes and colors I love, although I don't have the patience to make the lines perfectly. The implied story of the 2 men.

The second one is of Doug and Amal from a photo I took last
Christmas morning...I did a green under painting, and am fascinated to see the forms start to develop, the relationship the three-dimensionality.

My best job has always been working for myself...too bad it doesn't pay. I don't want to work on marketing...I just want to keep making Art...and seeing what comes out. That's my identity and my quest, so I try to maintain grateful awareness of my job.

Last picture: me, in Ballard with David H last January, enjoying a fried lunch of onion rings and calamari. Seize the day, Grasp the moment, Enjoy the hell out of all the good stuff and take the rest a moment at a time. Maybe David C and I will get a successful business going, teaching others like us how to survive the coming retirement years in style...even though they may be quickly slipping further and farther into the future. Start building the Perfect Moments now! Better than money in the bank...although money is certainly nice, too.

Thanksgiving on a Stick: Thankful Every Day

2011-11-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

11/27/11
I am sitting here in my bow window, being buffeted by wind and rain (but a warm Pineapple Express 50 degrees) thankful for my warm, tight home, my computer to connect me to the world as we know it, and my creative family and friends.

We have been inspired by David's partner, Brian, for the last 4 years or so to do themed Thanksgivings. This year's was Thanksgiving On A Stick. Early Thursday morning, I put the turkey into the oven...wait til you see turkey on a stick.

People who marry into, or otherwise become attached to the Hastings Family may think that we are unduly preoccupied by FOOD, but find themselves drawn into our unending celebration of one of the delightful necessities of life.

In a family of artists, is this not the ultimate art form?

David, stringing fresh green beans onto skewers, and the finished beans topped with mushroom soup, chantrelles, and onion
rings!

Brian joined the family
as mostly a non-cook, and look how fancy his cranberry sauce on a stick is! With Deb looking on admiringly. She did dried fruit dipped in her special chocolate on sticks. The frozen slices of cranberry are layered with whipped cream cheese, mayo, and walnuts--Delicious!

David's brilliant tomato coulis, to compliment his corn casserole on a stick, that I showed you last post...it bears repeating, and I still have a few in my
fridge.

The crowd swells, Hugh, with his Hastings, Nebraska sweat shirt, and Brian celebrating UNI, where our paths might have crossed.

David and Amal took knitting breaks, as we did tag team food prep. Thankfully, the kitchen/dining room/living room are all attached, with plenty of room for people to work on different food and art projects as well as converse. David is making a series of incredibly cute baby hats with his leftover yarn. Our niece, Shannon, is expecting another generation in February.

Serene, still attracted to the desserts, of course. There is more room to circulate without my Big Doll in the living room for the first year in several. She lives in the garage now, wrapped in plastic, longing for a good home and company.

Hugh's stuffing on a stick, with David's corn casserole balls in the background...must have ANOTHER!

Hugh carving, the organic turkey from Country Aire, which next year will be in the old Gottshalks building...and next year I'm going to try brining the turkey...inspired by David Carris, Montpelier, VT. I like the 450 degrees for 15 min to start, through the contents of a cheap bottle of white wine inside, and I think 13 min/pound...15 was too long.

Anita's fruit on a stick...wish the picture I took of her bringing in the bouquet of little cakes on sticks had turned out. She also did an arrangement of brussel sprouts. Next year I'll be careful to get a good picture of the woman, as well as her food creations.

Shennanigans around the Thai turkey balls--good recipe, and thanks to David, for the idea.

Thayer, in the background, working on his artful salad.

We'll make a chef out
of him yet...as well as an international journalist.

I told him that good writing runs in the family...also a taste and talent for excellent cooking.

My loaded plate...don't you wish you could have been here???

Our niece, Serene, has long been a mistress of the sweets, here, being supervised by her mom, as she makes elegant chocolate, covered by cheese cake, and dipped in chocolate, cakes on a stick, delicious, as well as beautiful. I think I overheard her telling Anita that she is now thinking about architecture or civil engineering...not medicine or cake decorating.

A NW rainbow in the late afternoon (diagonally from upper left to center). And the traditional game of May I, that we older ones used to play with Grandpa Hastings, and Brian played in his family. The hands to left and right of me belong to Thayer and David, those long Hastings fingers.

May we all enjoy to the fullest the special
moments with family and friends, spread throughout the year!

WHY MR. RIGHT CAN'T FIND YOU and other consequences of time crunching

2011-11-20T20:24:00.000-08:00

I am lucky enough to have a job that I like, in which I can meet and often help interesting people. It's just that there are only so many hours in each day, and as I get older, time seems to be constantly speeding up. Working for two has put a bite on my blogging as well as my art-making time.

When I moved to the Left Coast, I thought I was willing to give up Everything for Art Time...even if no one ever wanted to buy...but I find that I enjoy a roof over my head, and I have Pledged to myself to at the very least put brush to canvas on the weekends.

Sorry, no photos of my current works in progress for you yet, but I do have this photo that I lifted from brother, David, of his famous Corn Casserole, ON A STICK...the theme for this year's Thanksgiving feast. More Later, I promise, with 4 days
Off in a Row!!! PS...the title is from a book that Angie loaned
me, with some good advice about Relationships and finding Mr. R, not that I am sure that I want to, but...I need to get out more!

Prioritizing: Breakfast with Buddha

2011-10-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

As I contemplate one more work day each week, starting tomorrow, I realize that I'm going to have to Triage even more than usual. I'm reading BREAKFAST WITH BUDDHA for book group, and although it's lite, the message of Buddhist non-attachment is clear, and helpful for me to remember, as I spend more time at work and less in the studio. I am determined to at least put a little paint on canvas, even if it is just a little, every weekend I'm home.

Here are my 2 most recent paintings: Brother, David, and my friend, Anita, who didn't want me to take her picture...I hope you don't mind, Anita.

I don't expect to get rich or famous, but something in me will only be happy if I keep making these... both to hone my skills and just to see what comes out. So, What is the meaning of Life? This is what makes me happy...and trying to be good and kind as much as I can. Why are people good? Buddhist and book questions, interesting to ponder.

And for my online class
in Three dimensional
doll construction, here's
the finished Yellow Doll.
I don't think she needs
legs.

I guess as long as I can still make things, I can stand going to work five days a week...and be grateful I have a job. Doug says he and Amal went to a Halloween party with him as the 99% and her as the 1%...you can just imagine...

Best wishes to friends and family in the Northeast, already under snow. I see snow on our mountains...not long before it hits sea level, I'm thinking. When you can't "do it ALL," Prioritize!

More Fun, No Art...Oh, well

2011-10-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

Again this year, Brother David rented this Huge studio space at Fort Worden, with acres of tables on which to lay out the layers of his prints. I am SO jealous! It was fun to see his work to date (last Tuesday) then go to Akamai to buy art supplies and to dinner at Finn's together.

Large pale rainbow from the Fort Worden common. David enhanced the colors on his FB page...stunning!

Fall is creeping across the North West...not as stunning as VT last year at this time, but not bad at all.

I am certainly a rich woman when it comes to brothers! and Life is Too Short not to drop everything when a visitor shows up. This last weekend, brother, Hugh, came over from Seattle after a 6-week tour of the Midwest with Connie, selling Holland America tours. He posted great Roadside Attraction pictures from North Dakota down to New Orleans.

I've been keeping a list of local sights for when company comes.

In my 6 years here, I've never been up to the Sol Duc Hot Springs. Here's a hairy tree along the way.
The mossy trees in this damp climate fascinate me, probably
because they were never
part of my experience living in the NE. The hairy branches make a fascinating pattern high up into the air. The Spanish Moss festooned trees in Savannah, Georgia were the closest I've come before.

We admired the steaming hot springs (98-110 degrees) at the Spa, and vowed to come back with bathing suits and fluffy robes after the re-opening in March. Last March Hugh and I hiked to the Olympic Hot Springs, east of this mountain chain. Legend has it that 2 dragons fought over territory at the top of the mountains, and since they were so evenly matched, neither could win, and each eventually settled
into his own valley to create the steaming baths.

A beautiful triple waterfall above the hot springs. As you can see, Hugh is growing his beard to play Buffalo Bill in Village Theater's production of Annie Get Your Gun.

On our way back down we visited an ancient stand of trees, some of which were alive in 1492, when Columbus sailed to "discover" the New World.

The light in the NW forest is quite magical.

Then it was on to Murdock Beach--one of the many, mostly-deserted beaches along our coast, where some particularities of water and wind create the spherical and strangely-scooped out rocks I've never seen anywhere else.

After all the exploring, we'd worked up quite an appetite...we Foodie Hastings don't need much of a provocation to start cooking! And Hugh had been away from his kitchen for 6 weeks.

We heard about Pannecotta on NPR in the AM, looked up a recipe on the web, and that's what's sitting in the small ramekins (Cream and cream, cooked a little with sugar and vanilla, then jelled) OMG!

Hugh is whipping up a fruit sauce for pork tenderloin baked (perfectly) with garlic and herbs.

Sunday morning, after bacon and egg sandwiches and blackberry pie for dessert, we hiked to the overlook to check out progress on removal of the Lower Elwah River Dam...the water (white area to the left) has been diverted around the former dam and power plant so those parts can be dismantled.

Public access to the upper dam, on Lake Mills, is closed, but there is a web cam.

Ah, some ART after all: My Water of Life banner hanging at the ceremonies last month for removal of the tallest dam yet to be taken down in the US.

And finally, a bit of Wildlife, that my friends back East will appreciate: a slug, as long as Hugh's hand...and he's 6'2" tall with long hands!

Back to ART tomorrow, on one of my last few precious Tuesdays off: Finish the latest portrait of David, more soft dolls for my online class...and Barb Kobe says that I really must finish the HOT FLASH class, complete with dolls to make...

Take time to explore your own neighborhoods and cook with family and friends--Life is Good!

Precious Time!

2011-10-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

Time is more precious than money...but without money, it gets awfully cold living outdoors. Corner of my deck with white stone patterns on gray gravel through the newly-cleaned railings...Amazing how much mold can build up in 5 years!

My Sungold and Sweet 100 tomato plants, attached to rebar with quilting scraps have almost given up, and are certainly not cost-effective...but after the HUGE garden in Saugerties, NY, it is

kind of nice to step out back and pick something I can eat. As I talk with my patients, more and more are short of money, scared of the future, and trying to grow more of what they use. I wonder if this trend of Wall Street Occupations will lead to more true attention to the needs of the People as opposed to the desires of Corporations, who have declared themselves people? We have good conversations as I treat hand injuries, since my clients come from the whole spectrum of this small, but varied town.

Through the magic of the World Wide Web, I'm teaching an online class in Three-dimensional Cloth Doll Construction, as well as Doll Making as a Transformative Process, and now a downloadable paper doll class through Barb Kobe's site: http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com/ I've been sharing the progress on my latest doll/sculpture with class, along with all the mistakes and changes in direction I do along the way. I am sharing process with students all over the world--how cool is that!

Today is one of my last Tuesdays off for a while, as I will be the only OT at work from the end of this month until we get another. Aaron is opening his own practice in Sequim, and I said that I will try to do the work of 2 for the time being...Why are women so eager to try to fix everyone and everything??? Can I keep my work time down to 44 hours a week?

Anyway, I do appreciate my time more than ever today, as I am telling students to keep lists, take pictures, make sketches, so they can come back to their own flow of projects, knowing how challenging it is to pick up a dropped thread in my own life.

So, I celebrate Tuesdays, weekends, hours after the children are asleep, or whatever few moments we can carve out for ourselves!

I'm going to keep the portrait series going. Here's stage one of David from a picture I took last weekend. He's doing a week-long studio retreat at Fort Worden in Port Townsend--what luxury, and how frustrating! I'm going over this afternoon to have dinner with him and then Hugh's coming for Crab Festival this weekend. I have the third blackberry pie waiting in the freezer...Life is GOOD!

Seize the Day!

2011-09-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

Our days are full of busy-ness...Multi-tasking is a highly touted skill...and yet...what are we sacrificing to all this productivity?

I normally have Tuesdays off, which, in addition to a time for all my various appointments, is my Art Day. With a stack of projects in the works, I was charging through my 24 hours...taking time to email my brother, David, also busily working at his computer. I said, "I feel like playing hooky, it's SO gorgeous outside and I don't know how many more days like this we're going to get before winter!"

He said, "Go" and that was my conclusion as well. The gallery won't miss one sculpture more or less, the easel with the unfinished painting will still be in my studio on the next day off, and the next. Sometimes Experience is more important than Product. I left at 1:00pm, taking myself to North Beach in Port Townsend...you can see Mt. Baker as a faint white triangle on the horizon in the first picture, my shadow and yellow sock against a lovely profusion of rocks.

I also had time to buy a new pair of pants for work and watch a movie about singing and dancing in Naples at my favorite, Rose Theater, with the best popcorn in the world...

Friday David came over from Seattle and we ate pizza and blackberry pie, with berries picked right in front of my house. Saturday we walked down to the Farmers' Market and back (5 miles?), stopping at the Blackbird for coffee.

Fall's Bounty at the Farmers Market.

So, no great art to show you from this weekend, either. It was supposed to rain today, but instead
the sun came out and I seized the day yet again.

The Port Angeles Fine Arts Center Gala last night was Quite Delightful and inspiring with all the creativity that had gone into dressing in silver...I wish I'd taken my camera. I swear there was a woman in an aluminum foil dress, and lots of sparkle...a town with a sense of humor!

I'll go back into the studio tonight, although probably not to paint...I feel I have to be fresh to do that difficult and exciting task justice. I am making some new cloth dolls, and one will have a yellow painted face with crackle paint over the top and some added bones...maybe I'll have more Art to show next weekend. After the last endless winter, it's a heady experience to be out in the sun. Plenty of studio time in the dark days to come. Here in the Northwest, we have learned to suck the juices from any sun we see.

An August sunset...I love it here! Please visit my website: http://www.pamelahastings.com/ and buy books. Thank you!

3D Doll Design

2011-09-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I started 2 new online classes at http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com/
Returning to teaching doll making, upcoming shows wanting sculptures, cooler weather with the return (finally!) of rain are sending me back into the studio to create.

Every Christmas since High School, I've designed and made angel tree decorations. This year's is based on using some mother of pearl buckles I got in Seattle with Katie and Karen. As promised, here's a picture and pattern.

Drag the image to your desktop and size it to about 7" tall...
and Have Fun! I love piecing the bodies, use a short stitch
length. You can use one plain piece of fabric instead of the
piecing.

Fraker/Scott Gallery in Seattle sold my sculpture, CHILL, to
the lovely and peppy owner of Olympic Cellars, Kathy Charlton,
so I have been moved to make some more small sculptures
for the Christmas shows in Seattle and at Port Angeles Fine
Arts Center.

I bought the carved ebony letter opener in
Fort Bragg in 2002 on my Heroine's Journey
up the West Coast three years before I moved
here. The base is from a set of tinker toys I bought
at an antique store in town.

For my 3D students: the side pieces are two-piece, with bases, Apoxie sculpt holding the whole thing together, one-piece tubes of fabric in front and back, beads.

The earlier dark is driving me back inside...Although I hate to see the wonderful summers out here leave, the darkness and rain do give me more studio time. When I fell in love with Port Angeles and almost immediately had my house built in 2006, I was still sufficiently cautious not to want to build an un-re--saleable studio, so I work all over the house, from paintings and books stacked all around my living room to
the painting studio/bedroom,

to the sewing studio other bedroom.

I always have way more potential projects than time, as I have to work 4 days a work to support this Art Life...And, as a woman who has learned to Follow My Instincts, I still feel compelled to keep the painting and portrait series going, so here's the beginning of my next portrait of Serene...I like the feeling of the rough stage. We learn and learn by doing more and more, so get into your "studio" whenever you can and you may be surprised at what comes out.

On the Beauty of Not Working

2011-09-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

After a seemingly endless winter, summer has finally come to the Peninsula in September. Last Sunday I introduced Mercy and Anita to the wonderful beach at Port Williams, seemingly miles north and south, and usually very few other people, although that day 30 made a crowd...a very quiet and respectful and friendly one. We kept meeting people at least one of us knew, collected beautiful rocks, and shared a delicious picnic. As long as one is always kind, there is no drawback I can see in living in a sparsely-populated area.

I spent my free time last week stitching on this banner, WATER OF LIFE. It's for the celebration of the tallest dam removal ever in the US, on the Elwah river. I always volunteer art work when needed for town events...I love stitching and watching movies, and when I can do it for a worthy cause...is it Work? After polling a group of my patients (captive audience) about how they feel about this huge project, I'm not sure about Reasons and Results, but nevertheless, water is going to be a bigger and bigger issue in our world as we just keep growing in our demands, and from what I've heard, the amount of water available does not increase...important thing to ponder: In our climate of All Rain, then No Rain, I have a gravel-covered yard.

I talked with Mom yesterday. She spends so much energy avoiding tasks she doesn't really
want to do, I told her to take the weekend off.
What is this Calvinist super ego that insists
we MUST be "productive" every second
of every day? Play often leads to Creativity.

If we can enjoy the beautiful days thoroughly, the friends, the stitching and watching movies when they come, we'll have more energy for the
deadlines. As long as I have at least one painting in the works, I know I'll get back to painting. (these are the endless conversations I have with myself)

This is Kiki Smith, artist. This is the third version and good enough to stop here. Skill in Art making...and probably everything else...accrues by Practice. So by all means, keep the Practice going, but stop to enjoy the other things and people, too. If you love what you're doing, it
won't seem so much like work.

Blessings to the people touched by floods, by wars, and by the 10th anniversary of 9/11/01.

A NUMBER OF THINGS: Promise and Pressure

2011-08-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

Today is the last of five days off from the job that supports my art habit. I can see why retired people wonder how they ever managed to both work and live. Time off is a source of both Promise and Pressure. I did two paintings, one I like (at the right) and one with which I'm still struggling.

Playing Blog catch up this morning before I go to Port Townsend with Suzanne, with whom I share love of: Art, Food, Books, Beach, and Uninterrupted time to paint.

So many wonderful visitors this summer: Experiences are So Much more Important than Stuff! I need to remember that.

Dear Katie and Mike at the Elwah...as if the two years since they left for sunny AZ had never passed. I took another day in Seattle with them, and Katie and Karen (Mike's sister) and I went shopping at the special sale at Beppo...I promised I'd post a picture of the goodies I got, which will become Christmas Angels.

As often as I say I won't buy, don't need Any More raw materials, I still succumb to temptation. Life is FULL of Unlimited Possibilities!

Mike and Katie brought me my favorite presents: Food (pecans from Green Valley) and a Very Impressive rock for my yard collection:

A subtly-colored Chrysacola from AZ now sits at the center of my infinity sign (look at previous blogs for an overview of my gray gravel yard with desgins drawn in white beach stones).

David brought and placed a glass globe from one of their rejected lights in the home remodel, and I have a VT white quartz at the center of one of my spirals...hope the VT government is back to work and that your cabins and house escaped flooding, Will.

Other activities for my days off: I cleaned the house and new car, baked a blackberry pie
from the Himalayan bushes that threaten to creep up and take over my yard. I picked 3 quarts in 3 days and hacked the bushes back. The buck (3-point) that lives in the neighborhood thought I'd made a path just for him. I keep reminding him that he doesn't like my hens and chicks, but he keeps eating them and spitting them out...not very smart, And disruptive to my landscape design.

We keep having our perfect NW sunny summer weather (finally) and I can't resist running outside to arrange rocks and take walks to the library.

I'm reading books and watching movies about artists (Lee Krasner, Cezanne, Patti Smith, Robert Maplethorpe, and Van Gogh) and what strikes me again and again as I bemoan my dearth of paying Art customers is how hard these famous ones had to work to get known. Then if success does come (Pollack), it can be ruinous.

Why do I and so many others keep going back into the studio to wrestle with demons...or angels? When I do a painting I like, turn a phrase just right, the answer is obvious. Yesterday, when the painting just got more and more murky, it was time to take a walk. I'm soaking up
sun to remember during the fast-approaching dark days of fall/winter/spring.

I've always been fascinated by a photo of Kiki Smith, and took it for the subject of my painting yesterday. Then forgot that I've been liking the clean-ness of the portrait series, and worked too long, struggling, and adding way too much stuff, including the gold paint, that just breaks up the surface even more.

Learning when to STOP is an important part of art making, and as you'll see by the second image, I went way too far, and now must see if I can back up and save her--or start fresh.

I feel a little more hopeful today.

I see how Important it is to just Keep Working...the little lessons from just going at the problems/challenges again and again DO accumulate over time...Even if I'm just practicing for my own amusement...and yours.

I've developed a warm-up exercise, mentioned it in a previous blog, the series of 4" x 6" drawings inspired by a video I watched about Richard Tuttle and how famous he got for Very, Very simple drawings and paintings. (publicity helped)

I limited myself to 4" x 6" Bristol paper, taped to an old piece of cardboard, using 4 colors of pastel pencil, 2 shades of yellow acrylic in clear glaze, scraps of one or two kinds of paper. My brother, David challenged me to do 100, and I've finished the series with 101. The simplicity of the materials and size made it easy to use the project as a beginning exercise to get me involved in the studio and start the flow.

It's Amazing how many variations are possible with such limited parameters! For my next project, a slightly larger square format with a collage element and drawing...I hope it doesn't slow me down. The guys in Port Angeles who are doing a painting a day, got some impressive pieces out of their exercise.

I like my big piles of little drawings...maybe I should put them for sale in my online gallery.

How about $5 apiece plus $2 for shipping--order multiples? I have some kind of vague idea of a small project in an envelope cooking, And another project this week has been to put the missing paper doll images onto my web site, since Barb Kobe is offering my online paper doll class as a down loadable self-study at: http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com/ along with Three Dimensional Doll Design and Doll Making as a Transformative Process.

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

2011-08-21T20:40:00.000-07:00

My desk is covered with To Do lists...I am so optimistic on Sunday morning, that the list items will be completely crossed out before the reality of Monday morning and back to the money-making job looms...oh, well, my Expectations are bigger than my capacity to Accomplish them all...so I'm human. Now that I have a new credit card processing machine, I want to make my web-based gallery So Enticing that the orders will start pouring in. Still on my list is to post pictures of all the items I have described, especially the paper dolls.

I had some great side trips this weekend: Wonderful Weather, A bonus day in Seattle with Katie and Mike, a visit from the man, Casey Groff, who built my wonderful house with some fresh halibut for me. Cody is now 5 and was born just three days after I moved in, 5/5/06.

I promised I'd post a free pattern, so will at least do that:

Drag the image onto your desktop and enlarge to fit on 8.5" x 11" for printing. Send pictures of what you do.

Kelly Philage Koch of SOFT DOLLS AND ANIMALS is going to publish the article I wrote about making the Big Doll (9.5 feet tall) who is now wrapped in plastic and living in my garage...I believe the March issue, but keep watching for all the other great articles and patterns.

Please visit the Gallery section of my website at http://www.pamelahastings.com for lots more patterns and books...now that fall is coming, time to start a sewing project. Also check out my online classes, including Three-dimensional doll design on http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com/.

New Online Classes for Fall!

2011-08-14T19:04:00.000-07:00

I'll be teaching 3 classes online for fall (starting Sept. 17th),
but go to Barb Kobe's http://www.healingandtransformative dolls.com Now to sign up. Reasonable prices and lots of virtual contact with Me during the process...and NO Travel Expenses!
DOLL MAKING AS A TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS, a perennial favorite, with 6 lessons, cloth or paper projects for each lesson, and the possibility of changing your life through doll making...or just learning new simple techniques.

THREE DIMENSIONAL DOLL
CONSTRUCTION takes you
from the most simple two-part
fabric forms to designing and
construction your own mixed
media masterpieces.
Six lessons, inspirational images,
and daily online chat and sharing about the process.

ART PAPER DOLLS will be self-paced study with a book, lessons, and a kit of materials to get you started.

Take one or all three to sail you through the winter doldrums.
Sign up at: http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com

The last of summer company, Mike and Katie, who left the cool blue Northwest for Arizona's brilliance almost 2 years ago.

The best of friendships stretch for distance and time. Here they are in the National Forest by the Elwah last Tuesday. We all wish we could afford to spend more time together. My turn to go to AZ in the spring.

Lest you worry that I've been spending too little time in
my studio with all this company and sunny days, here's
my latest portrait of my friend Annie's grandson, Charlie.
He's extraordinarily cute and talented.

Sharing insights with friends and patients...my wonderful daily captive audience about time and space...both become cluttered with "stuff" and the wise person keeps honing activities and possibilities to try to stay focused on what's most important to US. I hear that retirement these days is even busier than working life...but maybe I appreciate each tiny bit of "free" time, because
there seems to be so little of it.

Commercial Message: Please buy my books...go to Gallery on my web site...I need the space in my garage...also saving up to be retired myself in only 5.5 years.

Art Of Family, Continued

2011-07-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

We're still doing the family thing out here in the West, and now I have Mom with me for the coming week, which should be interesting for both of us...the mother/daughter thing...although we've both become more graceful with age.

Last weekend, I went to Seattle for the weekend, and David took me and Mom to an Art exhibit in a park.

Steve and Linda (flanking David) were still in town, so we had the whole family together for the first time in a while.

Mom with Doug's daughter, the lovely Serene, who I'm told just started a job in a grocery store this week...probably not a career...choices have ranged from MD to cake decorator, where she already shows great talent.

Doug introduced us to a wonderful small private Art museum in Seattle, the Bagley and Virginia Wright Foundation, for a show of their own color field paintings.

We were lucky enough to have not one, but two docents, whom we impressed with our Art knowledge. We had to examine the Art close up and far away. I hadn't realized that this extreme focus on the effects of pure color was only made possible with the invention of acrylic paint, which could bond with the canvas, instead of just sitting on top.

Looking from every angle, I thought that just Maybe, I might be moved to use one of my Big canvases...and of course because of the price, my big ones are not as big as these. Anyone else intimidated about possibly spoiling a Large investment in paint and canvas...on the other hand, Life is Short and uncertain, and Why not Take the Chance??? Art Saves Lives!

Yesterday David and Brian brought Mom over for her last week in the west. She's writing letters while I work on my blog.

Yesterday I had family support in making perhaps my biggest Art purchase to date: a new Honda Fit. The back seats fold down easily for carrying Art...although it is too short for the Big Doll, who will be coming home

in another week and really, really big canvases.
I wonder how much things like car and budget size have influenced Art over the centuries? Well, century-appropriate constraints. If I had gone to Art school instead of OT school, if I had been born male instead of female???? Who knows? I'll do what I can with the many gifts that I do have, including a good job that will allow me to have the new car paid off by the time I retire.

Old and new above. I did NOT get up yesterday morning thinking, "I feel like buying a new car today," but this one is automatic (I wasn't expecting Seattle hills when I bought the last one in NY) with a Sports/shifting option that I haven't played with yet. It takes me a while to assimilate new large purchases. I have to walk around it for a while, get in and out, run the door locks and windows.

Ruth Marcus commented on my outfit coordinating with the Wilder Auto temporary plate. Although the Brothers (my 4 + Brian) got me thinking about cars, I used their fortuitous presence to make a deal I would have done sooner or later, so thanks, guys. I hate car shopping, and the sooner it's done, the better.

Now to fill the back with new ART!

The Art of Family

2011-07-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

Usually I have at least one art project to write about here, but this month is all family...we do tend to attract guests on the Peninsula, especially in Summer, and this apparently the only cool spot on the continent.

Steve and Linda (the only set of our sibling group who still live outside WA) took a car tour west after both of them retired in May.They're both younger than I am, but each worked steadily at the same job since college, so they deserve a break.

Linda's sister, Mary Jo, and her husband, Dave, live in an idyllic setting on Whidbey Island...a land of even more beautiful light quality than here. Reminds me of Cape Cod before it got over-populated, croquet game above.

Doug, Steve, and Doug's son, Thayer, to the right. One of the first kind of summery days this year, and a big craft show in Langley. We explored while the ladies shopped...I guess I'm not a Lady...maybe too many years of doing craft shows myself, although I still look for red glass items for my art yard (I am getting Art in, after all!).

Steve and Linda came up to Port Angeles and on my Tuesday off we took a trip west...not a bad NW day, a little rain, cool enough for layers.

We stopped to photograph the alpine beauty of Lake Crescent, a glacial lake, deep enough to hide the trucks and cars that have fallen in.

This is an Art shot, with my hands reflected twice in the mirror, as I photograph Steve.

Lake Crescent was so calm, it offered a perfect reflection of the clouds, making it look as if Steve was sitting on the edge of the sky.

Ruby Beach in fog, Steve imitating a land-locked sea stack. This is now one of my favorite beaches...and as we were leaving, the sun started to peak through.

On the very edge of the continent--don't I look happy? I love beaches!

There are also some pretty significant trees out here. I think this one was billed as the biggest cedar, although there was another that might have been the world's Tallest cedar, and then just another of the many Very Tall Trees at the entrance to the rain forest.

Now Steve and I both have Golden Eagle passes and can go to the National Parks as often as we like.

The Rain Forest is dark and mysterious, and it actually started raining when we were there. Unfortunately (?) I did not find any banana slugs to photograph, but I've seen them and they're at least 6" long...pretty impressive.

One small piece of ART, I'm hoping that I get back to painting in August...sometimes there just isn't enough time for all I love to do. The days are still pretty long, and I've been working on my Art yard...where the lack of rain, yes, actual lack of rain in the summer on the Peninsula, has made my succulents look very phallic in their urge toward procreation.

I must have been feeling my farming roots, because this year I decided to try tomatoes one more time...in spite of long, cold winter/spring/summer, I have eaten my second Sungold tomato from the plants on my back deck, staked to rebar that I bought for an Art project. The tomato is the size of a large pea, and tasted delicious

There will be more Art, although not my own, in the next installment of The Art of Family.

If you look very carefully, you'll see the second pea-sized Sungold that I ate today....Yum!

RIP 7/22/11: Winnie the dog, friend to David and Brian. I was there from the beginning, and even though I'm not a dog person, she was a good one, and brought out the best of David's large mothering potential.

April (?) 2010, Love at first hug.

What I've Been Working On--Does Art Imitate Life?

2011-07-06T21:38:00.001-07:00

I'm afraid my new series of Venus of Willendorfs is an attempt to deal with my self image--the ravages of time and gravity on my formerly trim frame, when my only consistently dependable pleasure is food. If I lost my sense of taste, I might get thinner, but I'd be verry, verry sad.

I hope someone will tell me the advantages of aging, because I'm having difficulty appreciating them at the moment.

I don't have to worry as much about making salable work...it's more for my own amusement. I'm going to have to keep sewing, if I ever hope to use up
the fabric and buttons and other juicy tidbits I've accumulated
over the years.

I love these lush shapes as art, but when my own personal stomach becomes a separate entity, I become alarmed!

I hear the famous nine and a half foot tall doll is coming home--anybody out there want to take in a very large, but beautiful and imposing orphan?

Pie in the Sky--electronic media brings friends

2011-06-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

Ah the miracles of modern connectivity! When I posted on FaceBook that I'd made a rhubarb custard pie, and might have to eat the whole thing myself, I got instant volunteers to come and help me out. Beatriz and Diana come over this afternoon, after work and writing group to share.

Beatriz is making plans to move south to NM. David's already down there happily working at a new library. They'll be close to Mike and Katie, who left for AZ a year and a half ago.

I've lived in Port Angeles six years next Monday! and already I've lost good friends to moves south and east...no matter how much we want things
to stay the same, they don't...on the other hand,
connections with friends stretch across miles, and new ones show up.

There was a request for my recipe, originally from Betty Crocker's Pie and Pastry Book, given to me and my ex husband by his mother, Christmas 1968. Neither of the two women who came over today know how to make pies...a tradition handed down from mothers...will it become a lost art? My rebellion against following recipes to the letter makes my baking a bit uneven. All measurements are approximate.

My pie crust is now: a cup of unbleached flour, 1/4 cup wheat germ, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon white sugar--mix well and cut in 1/3 C butter-flavored Crisco and 3 tablespoons real butter.
Use a 1/3 measuring cup and put in ice, water, and a tablespoon of cider vinegar. Mix most of this into the flour/shortening, and form into a ball, wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least an hour before rolling it out. I roll part way, cut in quarters, stack up the quarters and roll again. I think my ex mother-in-law taught me this trick.

Mix 4-5 eggs, 1 2/3-2 cups sugar (dark brown and part maple syrup), 3 tablespoons half and half, 1/4 cup flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon salt
Mix the above with 4 cups rhubarb cut in 1/2 " slices.

Save the cut off parts of the pie crust to lay on top of the filled pie--9" or 10"

Bake 50-60 minutes at 400 degrees. I put my pizza stone on the bottom shelf of the oven while baking the pie to encourage the bottom crust cooking. I love this MUCH more than strawberry-rhubarb...the custard is a nice foil for the tangy rhubarb and the texture feels good in the mouth.

There are certain foods I associate with seasons, as well as holidays. In northern climates rhubarb is often the first edible plant to ripen, and we always had a rhubarb clump in the yard--this year I had to buy the rhubarb at $3 a pound...Yikes! This is the second pie of the season. Maybe I should plant some rhubarb.

I worked more on this painting this morning (love these Tuesdays off!) I fixed it some, but the mouth still isn't right...or the cheek. I'm less afraid of over-working now...practice, practice, practice!

I've been putting more work on my web site, adding some older and newer things that I thought you might like to see. The times when I've just kept plugging away at my art are the times when I've had the best results--check it out. I have difficulty with the rigidity of computer-speak...always distracted by a tangent, so you'll see some incomplete links, which I will fix. If there's no price, that means the piece has sold.

I listened to a whole book today. The library has these clever all-inclusive devices that one plugs a head phone into and just walks around with someone reading a book into my ears...Strange feeling for me, as I have not adopted ALL the modern technology yet. I've been reading a lot of books about brain chemistry and the mind...fascinating stuff!

Perservering and the Angel

2011-06-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

Today's painting, still not quite done. From a photo of David and me at Shannon and Chris' wedding in Mexico...why is David so hard to "get"?

I was listening to Radio Lab this morning, about the different layers of brain and "self" ...how we make ourselves accomplish what we want to...or have so much trouble doing it. A quote from Elizabeth Gilbert (EAT, PRAY, LOVE) and Tom Waits about how the Angel of Creativity is more likely to visit the person who is chained to her/his desk/easel...or just continuing to work away on the idea at hand.

It is good to have a passion. I'm reading Po Bronson's WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE? I'm don't feel settled, even at 64...although these endless paintings, which I have stacked around my walls are still frustratingly fun.

This was last weekend's painting. I alternate between nudes from my old life drawings and portraits from photographs...different seeing.

I shared frustrations with Suzanne this morning. It's good to have another artist say, "yes, it's worth while to continue what you're doing." Such highs and lows...I imagine with all creative people. We have an almost goddess-like power to make something exist that never did before.

I just started another book today, COGNITIVE SURPLUS, tracing civilization and "free" time, which was first taken up with gin, then TV, and now the internet, which is so much more participatory and collaborative than passive consumption. Will the Forces for Good triumph???

For a wake up call, read DEADLY SPIN by Wendell Potter about how our attitudes are manipulated...does greed have a biological benefit?

Thanks for all the support for continuing my art exploration. I guess I do know what to do with my life: make art, improve health care delivery...two big jobs, but fascinating. I Love learning new things! I made myself another rhubarb custard pie today, and it's even better than the first one. Hi, Ashley

Getting Old is Not for Sissies!

2011-06-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait in SUN! 06/04/11

Helen Hays, in her seventies, made the statement above. It seems that the older I get, the more work it takes to sort of stay even. As I age (64 now), it's important to discover for myself any advantages of aging. I know all the obligations: daily exertion, stretching, good food, brain exercise--learning for the joy of it, giving--to others And myself--continuing to push, explore, and DANCE!

Here in the NW we have the season of Light, and the season of Darkness, when everyone stays home, and I try to immerse myself in creative projects.Today is June 4th, with light from 4am-11pm. I wrote this on Hollywood Beach. Everyone is outside: Farmer's Market, marathon, Hollywood Beach downtown, yard work, dogs and kids, soaking up the sun while it lasts. Some of the kids may learn to play, rather than just being passively entertained. Some were standing in the frigid Strait, with long branches of kelp over their shoulders, pretending to be were eagles.

My back yard, at almost 9pm, specializing in ground cover, lavender, red glass ornaments...I'm going to try some driftwood, painted in red/purple/turquoise for vertical interest.

My favorite Kokopelli real fish and chips, journalling in the sun. Alone with people all around downtown. Good Saturday!

The importance of the ever-present journal to the Creative Life: ideas, words, drawings. Danny Gregory has made a career of it. A journal that's small enough to take with you. (thank goodness cameras are small now, too, so all this and a book fit into my red bag. Ideas, words, drawings, names of books and movies: my idea stack is never depleted, and I'm constantly training my eye and hand.

Like exercise, eating right, and letting your friends and family know you love them, drawing can be a part of every day's routine. Then you'll KNOW that you are not only the effect of one bad day or stupid boss, but that you are bigger and more connected than all of that.

Last weekend I had the extreme luxury of four days off in a row, and finished my Sara painting, by doing very little to it...what a large part of ART is learning when to stop...and not letting one self compare to others' work too much.

Keep playing with the idea! I transferred the image to heavy watercolor paper and used collage and paint in the second one, utilizing images from my friend, Loel Annie Barr in the background.

Sara did body work on me before I moved West. I was agonizing about leaving comfort for the unknown, and she asked the key question: If you were on your death bed, would you regret not having done it? Thank you, Sara, and here I am.

This experiment spawned another painting/collage on watercolor paper (I'm too cheap to buy and store endless canvases, but do have a flat file in the garage for works on paper).

BECOMING MYSELF: I'm working on this life time project. Doing interesting side reading these days on brain function: how do we know who we are, and what is this creature that we construct and call by our name?

Find the things that are important to you and Do them! Don't worry about what the others are doing or thinking, and don't forget to DANCE!

Life, Death, and Choice

2011-05-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

David C sent me a great quote from Steve Jobs, Monday, when I was contemplating my life:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

I do think a lot about my Relationship with my Art, having known I was an artist since I was 5 and started making books of Princess Stories with illustrations...I still don't know whether to stop the painting of Sara where I am, because there is something about the unfinished look that is close to the idea I'm trying to capture, or to risk doing more, hoping I don't over-work it and lose the spark. My final solution is to stop where I am on this one and start another...or maybe several using collage and watercolor paper for one. I don't have much of anything else to do in my spare time, and I keep following my heart to see if I can see some pattern or design in my life as well as in my work.

I'm also playing around with the idea of white figures. This is one
that I've drawn frequently, and now finally made in 3-D, 3 feet
tall, as well as the white Venus of Willendorf below. I've been
sewing as long as I've been drawing and writing, and each has
its place, the act of stitching being very soothing.

Although I'm not sure I even care about exhibiting, and I certainly
don't want to spend a lot of money to do it, I'm thinking about taking a class with Eric Swangstu on preparing a portfolio or Enlivening one's Portfolio...finding myself having very mixed feelings about putting my self/work out in the public eye...especially if I'm not as good as I'd like to be...and all those other questions that keep coming up around Art Making...Why do it? What does it mean? How to keep pushing, Why to keep pushing? What is the Meaning of Life and What do we do with our time here?...Well, why not?

Bottom line: I like making things and there is something about having others see and notice what I've done....I've even more given up hope of making any money at this, but I went to a talk by Gloria Lamson at Sequim Cultural Connections about the resources available from Washington Artist Trust, and I thought maybe next year I'll apply for a grant to do a show of my recent work, just following along where my curiosity leads me: Portraits, Women, White Dolls (including the 9.5 foot tall one).

Maybe I'll decide that it's important for me to keep doing this stuff I'm doing--I already know that. Even though I'm not the best in the world, and sometimes I'd like to be, that's a tough pick (what does "best" mean?) and I do have a lot of different ideas. (Just reading a book called ICONOCLAST and learning to think and see differently from others...so it's all raw material for...something...whatever my life turns out to be about.

The third piece is part of my Venus of Willendorf series...because I'm tired of carrying around my winter fat, but don't want to give up my most dependable sensual pleasure (food). And because I love the meditative quality of sitting and stitching, working in series, small variations on a theme, and Women's Work: the doilies and reverse applique and beading and buttons...also inspired by the Nick Cave show at SAM...so, lots to contemplate and an interesting path with a meandering quality to it.

Rites of Spring

2011-04-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Green haze of leaves around the tree tops last weekend, this weekend forming actual baby leaves, after a Very Long and cold tapering off of winter. Is it any wonder that Pagan, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian peoples across the northern hemisphere have made the return of new vegetation a reason for celebration. Family, friends, and feasting--we made it through yet another dark season and Look, we're still here together to look forward to another year of possibilities.
Doug carves the ham.

I wrote this as I waited for the ferry to fill with friendly, happy people, carrying food. Even though it was spitting rain, we're used to it. Seagulls cawing, hoping for a dropped or thrown French fry. The Edmonds pier shifts as the boat bumps in, kids running, excited families. David and Brian are picking me up. I hope they have room for my rolling suitcase of wine and food. Strangers still talk to each other here, last weekend a woman from Lake Tahoe who hopes to find a job and a place for her mother in the town where she grew up. Another stone-loving woman on the beach last Tuesday from Canada. a couple doing the Beach Survey and hoping to fit their walk in between showers.

I was the oldest, at 64, at this dinner for 18: three brothers, their families, friends and several sets of orphan college students. Serene got home from an Ultimate Frisbee competition at 3 am and got up and made this amazing birthday cake for one of Thayer's British exchange student house mates. We had 8 college students with lots ahead.

Choices have been a big topic of discussion lately. I see 8 patients a day and many of them are coming up against their body's fragility and fallibility for the first time. No matter when it happens, 23 or 62, it always seems to come as a shock--makes me realized every day how important decisions on diet, exercise, and type of work are. With these recent years of economic uncertainty, many are starting second or third careers. I hear, "why didn't I listen to my parents and go to college?" as often as "I went to college and owe all this money and I still can't find a job."

When I was in high school in the Sixties, I tested well in a wide range of aptitudes, so there was no special direction. I love(d) art, but that was no career, as my father heard from his parents when he started school in the Depression. Females of my era basically had the choices of teacher, nurse, or secretary. My father, the doctor, offered me occupational therapy or social work. I dreamed actress or scientist.

Six years ago I tested high for civil engineer or editor, and I think I would have made a very good psychiatrist. At other times in my life there were choices about where to live, who to be with, how to spend my energy.

As it turned out, I have been well-served to be trained in a profession that will support me and my own home as a single woman into my older age. I've found a job and place to live that are comfortable, interesting, and safe--at least until the big earthquake.

I've made opportunities to work in theater, costuming, painting and sculpture, write and publish books, perform in front of students (online) and patients (in person).
Now I'm thinking that all my many possible paths--as long as I've followed my heart--would have led me to pretty much the same place I am now--How about you?

I am still in the painting frenzy, lining them up against the walls through the center of my home...I keep doing them purely to see what will come out next...Process, rather than Product...although if someone wants to buy...I'll be able to afford more canvases.

On my way home Sunday evening, the ferry sailed under a big, beautiful bright rainbow.

Food and Fun in Seattle and the Peninsula

2011-04-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

This has seemed like a longer and damper winter than usual, and others tell me it's not my imagination. I do love the temperate climate here in the Northwest, but I feel a little out of kilter to be wearing my winter coat and gloves at the end of April.

One time-proven remedy for winter's darkness is FOOD! And I've been eating well--too well, but then food is life's most dependable sensual pleasure, and my body seems to want some extra padding in these damp and gloomy days.

When brother, Doug, came all the way over to pick up the Big Doll for her show at Fraker Scott Gallery in Seattle, the least I could do was treat him to a great dinner at Sabai Thai.

When friend, Suzanne, and I shared our passions for books and art supplies in Port Townsend, we had to treat ourselves to dinner (25% off entrees before 5:30) at Fin's.

It was a wonderful day off for both of us. Next
time we'll add a stop at the beach for pure
perfection. My puritanical upbringing sometimes makes me feel a wee bit guilty when I treat myself to pleasures like these...but I'm working really hard to get over that. Seize the day--and squeeze out all the joy!

Last Saturday, In spite of gray skies and intermittent rain, David picked me up at the Edmonds Ferry and we took off for the Seattle Art Museum's sculpture park for Arrangement in gray, green, and red...I want to make some sculpture for my yard this summer.

We saw a dance performance in some of Nick Cave's amazing Sound Suits. Notice that the wall is painted with rain drops.

A trip to SAM would not be complete without a visit to Taste. Fancy desserts for Hugh and me, a burger for David, who did share his fries--no wonder there's more of me!

If you're anywhere near Seattle, the Nick Cave show is spectacular. I've been reading about his costumes in Fiberarts magazine for years, but what a treat to see so many of them up close.
He uses lots of re-purposed afghan squares, doilies and other of grandmother's treasured handiwork to build his suits.

And what inspiration for my talk about my Art and the Big Doll, Women's Work, at Fraker/Scott Saturday night...usually no one notices the millions of tiny stitches that a woman might make, in and out, over years...unless they go together to form a 9.5 foot tall sculpture. Doug, me, David, with three of my new paintings to the right of her. She looks great out in public, under an extra-high ceiling. The smaller sculptures look good around the edges of the gallery, too.

Connie, Hugh, Doug, me...great to have family around!

We are very supportive of each other's art efforts.
Hugh and Connie
are performers. Doug and I paint. David does monoprints, as well as singing in the Seattle Men's Chorus. He's going to be a dancer in the next show--Good for you, David--outside the Comfort Zone!

I lived with her for so many years, I do hope someone falls in love and takes her home. I am still totally fascinated by the process of making art, then mostly I don't need to keep it around...must make physical and emotional space for whatever comes out next. I'm working on more paintings and a Venus of Willendorf series in cloth, as well as teaching Doll Making as a Transformative Process online...and of course the job that pays for all this pleasure.

And this coming Sunday, being the celebration of Easter or Spring...or egg-laying bunnies, I'll be back to Seattle with my family for more food and festivities. Serene and Thayer will be home from college with a crew of their friends for the traditional egg hunt and feast...I Love It! Life is GOOD!

A Good Day!

2011-04-09T19:22:00.001-07:00

I'm Always happy when I make new ART! and today has been a Happy one so far! I started this painting of Steve and Megan at Shannon's wedding on Tuesday, and finished it today...I'm learning not to Over Work!

Still, it looked a little too much to ma as if it were painted from a photo, so I did a second painting, from one of my life drawings.

She was fun, paint is flowing...too bad Angie wasn't open today so I could get more canvas...but I'm going to Akamai Tuesday with Suzanne.

Not to neglect the fiber arts: I finished this last night while watching Goldfish Memory. Is it too Kitsch...or not enough? I was drawn to the doilies, and think I'll do another one all white, to keep with my recent all white theme.

With all this Creativity, I still had time to get the first fish and chips of the season from Kokopelli at the Farmers' market, a lovely soft blue from Renaissance, Panne d'Amore's incredible cheesy bread sticks, a yummy pastry for Sunday morning from the health food place on Lauridson, And some fresh spinach from the nice Korean lady...she makes wonderful and cheap sushi rolls. I also almost ran Diana Somerville down while she was crossing the street, went out to the Hook and got rocks (very low tide), and weeded in a soothing low gray sky... Lots of emails back and forth with my buddies in the Northeast. Annie refuses to move out here...just because her grandson, Charlie, is SO gorgeous. David C says yes to a bi-coastal house share...Are people from the NE really different...or it is just because they're my long-term friends? I miss that pushy, bouncy, intellectual curiosity...Any transplants in the NW who want to talk? I promised DC I'd go out dancing here, too...is the band playing at Gray's yet? Hi Ashley.

I think about trying to market Hot Flash more aggressively because I know there are people all over the world who would Love the book, but I'm too busy doing what I Love!!!

Another Step Closer to Fame and Fortune...

2011-04-06T20:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm not expecting that, although a bit would be nice. Thanks to brother, David, we have a picture of Tracy and Lynn at Fraker/Scott installing Woman's work and a couple of my new nudes for the opening of Art des Femmes, for viewing during Seattle's Art Walk, 4/7/11 and through the month of April.

I and Pam Mummy will both be giving artist talks on Saturday, April 16th between 6pm and 8pm...come and help celebrate years of stitching involved in my 9.5 foot tall sculpture and other wonderful art work by and about women in a gallery owned by women. maybe I'll wear my Hot Flash Skirt!

So much of being known as an artist is about having the ability, time, and boldness to do effective self-promotion. Most of the time I'd prefer to sit home and just Make Art...a true
Outsider Artist in part of my being....and yet, and yet, it is
awfully exciting and satisfying to see others seeing what I've done...and to get the work out of the house and into the world.

Thank you, Kim Tinsley, for loving my paintings...you know I love your work, too. I worked on another painting yesterday on my day off, and hope to finish Saturday. I know I get better the more I do, and I really do love defining my self/time/life with art! Thanks for watching!

Yet Another New Painting!

2011-03-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Wow! It's so easy to get out of good habits: Art and Exercise. The exercise part because I had (I suspected) bronchitis and was coughing til my chest was lame...so I used that as an excuse not to walk and lift weights regularly...how quickly we lose any semblance of fitness!

The Art Part--fear of failure? Fear of beginning? Shear laziness? Anyway, I'd gotten a good start on this second portrait of Lynne. Tom saw it and liked the spontaneousness of the beginning, so I spent almost a week being afraid I'd wreck it by working on it...Today I just jumped in and did it...helped to have company coming in just an hour.

I'm teaching an online class, Doll Making as a Transformative Process, and am always telling my students to just Do IT! After the book I mentioned earlier saying that we have to do Anything for at least 10,000 hours to be any good at it...WHY do I ever allow myself to hesitate, even for a minute. I did take a photo first, just in case. Thank the Goddess for digital cameras!

Making Art, and Lots of it, HAS to be one of the most aggravating...and fun things in this life!

Work in White

2011-03-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

My last patient Monday was hard work, to focus on her pain and not mine...but at the same time the experience took me out of my own concerns...always an effective technique for dealing with un-ease.

I sat at my computer late Tuesday morning, bow windows spreading the magnificent NW sky in front of me, regularly changing from brilliant sun to clouds, the hills of southern Canada a blue line low in front of me, and the gray Strait of Juan de Fuca in front of that. There is a broken layer of tall narrow Sentinel firs, the golden willow wanting to burst into leaf, the bright green stretch of high school yard below my cedar fence and white on black stone spirals.

I'm going to lie low today, push fluids, eat chicken soup and dumplings, retreat to my red couch and tales of Ethiopia and medicine in CUTTING FOR STONE, but I see I'm healing when ideas start to beget more.

Inspiration can come from any where and every where as long as our minds and hearts are open.

I always keep a sketch pad on the table where I eat and read and entertain, by my bed, in my studio...I've been making these curious drawings again and again of white muslin figures looking up...perhaps today I'll bring one of them into three dimensions...and share the results with you. ..Maye it is my own transformative image...in talking with the women of my book group last Wednesday night, ranging in age from 30 to 64 (I'm the matriarch) and from finishing AN UNKNOWN WOMAN last night (she's writing as a 37-year-old) I see how our images, our self images evolve over time, from being the images our parents create in their children as a direct extension of themselves, to forming our pictures of ourselves through the eyes of teachers, boyfriends, husbands, children, clients....and now maybe Our Selves!

Since I finished the Big Doll (9.5 feet tall) a little over a week ago, I've been working in mostly all white...it shows the form and the lines well.

I've been reading a book called BOUNCE, about excellence and achievement, mostly in sports, but in Art and Life as well. The author downplays the concept of Talent, and says instead that achievement of excellence Requires 10,000 hours of very focused practice in order to come about...so get going and Keep working!

He also said that the people who keep hitting new highs (winning races) don't rest on their laurels.
As soon as we achieve one
goal, we are ready to move on to the
next challenge...I just wanted her out
of my living space, so I could make more white dolls. Thanks, Tom!

If you're near Seattle, you can see her in person during the month of April at Fraker/Scott Gallery in Pioneer Square. Apparently I'm still healing from my cough, abandoned by ambition tonight...but I KNOW she will return. Good night for now.

Practice, Genius, and Daylight Savings Time

2011-03-13T18:50:00.000-07:00

I am reading BOUNCE, about how what is usually known as Genius, is really lots and lots and lots of practice...so maybe hope your children are born with Motivation and Focus!

In that vein, I am determined to continue with my paintings, hoping to get better and better. I believe 10,000 hours of practice was the stated amount of time investment to get good at anything, so after an annoying detour of feeling bad about my skills and practice, generated by two meaningless events, I am back on track, plugging away at one of the things I most enjoy doing. Our own Reality is So Shaped by our Perceptions of it!

I just finished a collection of Joseph Campbell lectures, talking about finding our own defining myths...mine must be as the creator...please buy my work, so it doesn't have to be as the Accumulator!

Just kidding...a little...I'm better at marketing online than in person...that's another topic for discussion. Another: as I get older, I'm trying to focus on what I Really like to do the best, having become somewhat resigned to the idea of never becoming rich...or even making a living...from my ART. The process of making it is what I love...so the work accumulates...and I return to working small, thinner, so I can store it.

More of the small drawing series below:

Today was the first full day of Daylight Savings Time...this may be news to the people who are making me go back to getting up and going to work in the dark again, at risk to crunch the heedless high school kids crossing my street all in black...BUT THERE IS STILL THE SAME AMOUNT OF DAY LIGHT as there was YESTERDAY!!! except for a few minutes at the beginning and end.

Time is such an artificial construct, and now I have to re-program my life yet again And all the electronic devices that are set to the previous dates of Daylight Savings Time.

When I finally retire, at the age of Seventy, if I'm lucky, I'm going to get up when it gets light and close the curtains when it gets dark!..Unless this is intended as life-affirming brain exercise.

A snowstorm, another painting, another birthday

2011-03-07T19:25:00.000-08:00

A week of white on the ground is very unusual for the Northwest, but we had that last week, and I took pictures of my parking area in various stages of shoveling, contemplating different attitudes toward shoveling and what they might say about the person doing the said shoveling.

I'm from Vermont originally, and I hear my friends back there just got dumped on again, so I can't say a lot about our measely 7", which has melted back to green grass. People here wait and let it melt. Back home, each instance of shoveling is a base for the next blizzard, so you'd better be neat from the beginning. I still tend to follow the VT standard, but I do get a bit lax, after 6 winters in WA.

When I was married, long, long ago, my ex used to drive over the snow, which would then be ice from November until May. The next guy was a bit of a shovel Nazi, insisting that we start work while the snow was still falling. How nice to be able to have control of my turf!

Another birthday, at the beach in Port Townsend, rather windy and cold, but not snowy. I treated myself to favorite things: beach, movie: Barney's Version (I'm going to read the book), buttery popcorn, buttery cornmeal pancakes (notice the themes?), new books, new canvas...It's at least a month-long celebration, including the weekend before, seeing Hugh in The Three Penny Opera and dinner with my handsome and brilliant Seattle brothers. I got myself a GPS and more, yet more Art Books...ready for adventures!

OK, snow in the North West, and my half-hearted shoveling, although I do like to shovel...and no, it's nothing like VT, although we can drive 17 miles south of town and one mile up and get 4 feet of snow on Hurricane Ridge in June.

Ah, yes, the painting: another in my nudes series. I really like to paint and see what comes out of my brush, and after reading Joseph Campbell about the stages of life and not trying to work outside our particular stage, I'm seeing that this birthday, "will you still need me, will you still feed me..." puts me in the consolidation phase, SO, I'll impart whatever wisdom I've gained: Do what you like and don't worry about the rest, as long as you have a roof overhead and are kind to others.

Sometimes my sculptures are more popular
than my paintings, and I'll keep doing sculptures, too, but my concession is to make the paintings
on thinner canvases, so I can store them more
easily. If you need a painting for any occasion, don't hesitate to contact me.

And back around to the snowstorm, which we received over a three day period. Since many people here are wise enough not to drive on un-plowed, icy roads, we had a light population of patients to see that week, and since I DELIGHT in sun on snow, I treated myself to lunch at my favorite fast food place in town, home of the Good $2 cheeseburger...Simple Pleasures! Happy birthday, Will, tomorrow.

Today's Painting

2011-02-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

Lovely Tuesday off! I even saw sun, here in the Olympic Rain Shadow, and I was going to walk on the beach, lift weights, and all kinds of other things, but ended up in the studio...I can't stop...except for Barbara's great work on my body and wonderful fish and carnitas tacos from the cart at Blue Sky Realty in Sequim.

Today marks the beginning of a series of nudes for the Fraker/Scott Arte des Femmes show in April. I'm working from my storehouse of life drawing, starting from when I lived in Burlington in the Eighties...valuable raw material. I have ideas for more sculptures, too.

I suppose having to go to work four days a week forces me to make the most of my time off, but as Barbara says, and as I tell my own patients, "exercise and staying healthy is
a vital part of life, too!"...And it seems to take more and
more time as I get older. Tomorrow I'll do better on the exercise part.

A Painting a Day!!!

2011-02-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

I LOVE when I get so involved in an art project, I forget to eat and time goes whizzing by. I look forward to seeing what the next thing and the next will be, and how they'll turn out.

I've been working on a series of portraits and scenes from my own photographs, drawing with charcoal on canvas that I've underpainted with one color, trying to keep the shapes flat and simple, and just suggesting the background.

I did the upper one today, spying on what seemed to be a father with two daughters in the Taste Cafe at Seattle Art Museum.

I want to take a photo of the painting in better light, and do a little more work, as he looked to me to
be very dis-engaged
and the teen slouched more, dis-engaged in her own way. Right now I like the one of Doug better...I think I did that one last Tuesday. After I get the basic shapes drawn in with charcoal, I work straight through to the end--4-5 hours. Very tiring to this aging body. Good reason to stay in shape. Doug and I buzzed through the Picasso show the day after Christmas.

Today I was saying to a friend, that I don't know how people can waste their time playing games on FaceBook, but if I didn't have Art making to keep me busy and involved, maybe I'd play, too.

A Number of Things

2011-02-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

I finished a painting today, and I like it...WoW.
Welcome, February! This is Patti and Annie at a bar in Maine from our first road trip. I'm liking the flat style of painting I've been working to get back to since Ezra Pound (I'll take a picture for you) back in 1975. So much of my art work was one-off until I moved out west and had my own space and life.

January seemed way too cold and dark, and yes, I have become totally wossey since I moved to the land of rain instead of snow. With the darkness come my demons, hereditary depression, bad chemicals, and the whole panoply of self-doubt. I did a radio interview with Mark Harvey on 1/29/11 on KONP (the audio should be available on the site by now). I found myself dwelling more than I have in years on my experience in an abusive marriage.

The bad old days are long gone for me, although at times I experience echos. If I can help someone else know that she is not alone and that she can have a life with respect and joy, it would all have been worth while.

Writing a 6th lesson for the online Doll Making as a Transformative process that I'll be starting to teach again on my 64th birthday brings back memories. Our past is still part of us, although we can transform it into positive experiences. It's all up to us. We create our own Interpretation of whatever reality may be (very Buddhist, that).

I've learned better coping skills over the years,
as well as gaining more confidence that the
black moods will eventually dissipate. Exercise
helps, writing, and going into the studio.

So here are the paintings I've finished in the
last few weeks. Life is Good--even when it's
hard!

DOLL MAKING AS A TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS

2011-01-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

I will be teaching DOLL MAKING AS A TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS online at Barb Kobe's new site

Six sessions for $65, includes printed material, pictures, patterns, handouts for fabric, paper, and mixed media projects for each session, as well as unlimited conversation, starting March 1, 2011.

Good for trying new projects to changing yourself and the World! Join women of all ages and nationalities in this inspiring process!

Barb will be teaching her Creative Journey class as well. For inspiration and to get started, go to http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com

See you there!

More Art!

2011-01-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

A wonderful thing about dark and rainy winters on the Peninsula is the opportunity the dark days afford me for making ART.

Even though I offered to go to work this morning, to remove stitches and start exercises on 4 post-operative patients, I spent the rainy and hailing afternoon bringing this painting from laboriously rubbed-out and re-drawn charcoal lines on a primed canvas to an almost-finished painting! There is nothing that makes me happier...AND some crab, mac and cheese, and berry pie from Blackbird for dinner! What could be better! Having limited time sometimes is effective to get me working...instead of procrastinating by cleaning the house or something equally un-fun.

I took this photo of a mother and son getting their pictures taken when I was in Mexico last winter. I hope to capture the boy's rather apprehensive stance. My brother, David, has been encouraging me to return to this flat style. I like it, too.

I'm on a roll for sure! Last year at this time I was motivated by the application deadline for Strait Arts...this year I don't even care whether I make the 2/14 deadline or not, although it would be nice. I'm just happy to be playing and showing here and on Facebook.

I tend to jump around all over the place, so I'm limiting myself to three major art foci: Paintings--mostly portraits, collages, like this one, using stuff I collected on my fall trip to the East Coast. This is built into the concave side of a painting panel, using Apoxie Sculpt to attach dis-parate shapes and materials, telling sub-conscious stories, and the series of drawings inspired by Richar Tuttle's simplicity...There's always something I can work on, and of course continuing my effort to draw, draw, draw and stick ephemera into my daily notebooks.

First two drawings...I'm up over 30 now...makes quite a pile. Limits create freedom!

Happily Making Art--or at least Happy when Finished

2011-01-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

Today in the meditation group, we talked about the difficult and challenging aspects of life and working on being open to what other people present to us, as well as accepting all the aspects of ourselves without being judgmental.

Wanting to make "good" portraits, portraits that satisfy me, has been a goal since this time last year...to do something with a painting that a photograph can't. (I've been reading David Hockney on photography)

I'm more interested in capturing an essence than a likeness, and I've read that the people we know best are often the most difficult to capture.

As those of you who have followed this blog know, I tend to jump all over the place with my art work, and therefore sometimes lose the benefits that constant struggle along one path can bring.

Drawing and painting, like any other skill
involving eye-hand-brain coordination, improve with practice. Because I want so much to
do well, I invent all kinds of reasons not to
work at the improvement part, the getting through
the ugly stuff to get to the good stuff.

This time I'm trying to stick with it, and keep
addressing the same "problem" again and
again until I'm satisfied...at least for a moment.

As I spend time with the original photograph, different sizes, shapes, and media, I am incorporating new knowledge and skill into my fingertips, my brain, my eyes. I don't know what compels me to do this, only that Something does, and I feel frustrated and satisfied at the same time to be doing it.

Funny to see one thing and watch the hand
create another, like me trying to sing. At least
with drawing I have a chance to fulfill my
promise to myself. I see that writing is a
constant companion to my visual art as well.

I tell my students: "follow your instincts," and I do. I'm pretty sure I don't have the entrepreneurial skills to become a rich and famous artist, but I do have the self-knowledge to keep doing the things that seem Important to Me, even if no one else ever shares my fascination with what comes out of my pen.

If you're curious, here's what my real David Hastings looks like, the photo I've been working from, which cried out, "paint me." the moment I saw him sitting that way.

The first painting I showed you, finished today, is the one that finally satisfied me--for a few minutes. I can't wait to have time to try another subject. Being called to be an artist seems to be equal parts frustration and joy--on a good day!

On another topic, another project...you know my peripatetic nature. I am in the process, in my "spare" time (ha! ha!) of writing the life change/life celebration online class, HOT FLASH, and am soliciting images on the HOT FLASH theme and stories you may want to share. Please email me at pamela@pamelahastings.com with your contributions...I'm never going to be rich, but might as well have FUN!

Transitions and Transformations

2011-01-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

Two views of the (In)Famous 9.5 foot-tall BIG Doll, who has graced the center of my living space now for several years. I have almost come to the crucial point of finishing her....
New Year, starting and ending projects are challenging for me. Especially on this gray Sunday morning, with a watercolor sky, through which I can glimpse cracks of blue...so if I don't hurry and actually
commit my thoughts to type, they will have vanished and I'll be all cheerful again, wondering what all the
gloom and agony were about.

I've been occupied for the last year with finally finishing HOT FLASH: A CELEBRATION,(available on my web site) promoting it (which never motivates me as much as doing it), then all the projects that naturally fall around the holidays, my annual Angels and Exhibits...

Every year I design a new tree angel for family and
friends:

And here we are in January, the weather is still cold and dark, the holiday treats are almost all consumed, the weight is creeping up, the Inspiration seems to have dried and blown away...and so how do we re-discover, re-invent our Better Selves, that we almost despair of ever experiencing again?

Zuni Path: (1) Show Up, (2) Pay Attention, (3) Tell the Truth, (4) Stay Open to Results

Barb Kobe called and wants to do a Transformative Doll Making web site, where we can both teach our classes, I was interviewed for a radio show with Mark Harvey, he saying that "Transformation" is the concept that resonates in talking with me, I get an email from
Kat Fasano, saying that she resonates with what I'm talking about...and without doing any more than putting the word out to the Universe, my next step becomes clear...

Of course, my argumentative mind goes: Just because you can do it doesn't mean you HAVE to do it...maybe you should just be drawing and painting and sculpting and writing (in the small amounts of time away from the paying job), and not worrying about reaching out to other folks. Who knows? But at some point one must just choose, go ahead, and see what happens, so I'm putting out an invitation to the Universe and You.

Here's my first description of the HOT FLASH online class, which may evolve as time progresses:

HOT FLASH: Express the wisdom and emotion of this Universal Process through doll making! Celebrate your femaleness and maturity—or your ability to continue to have fun playing at your advanced age.

We’ll share stories and make cloth, paper, mixed media dolls, journals, masks? cookies? on the theme of Hot Flash, giving new meaning to the term, “Power Surge”! Wear comfortable layers and be prepared to have fun with sweat; and since the class will be taught online, you can come in your jammies! This is an opportunity to create your own paper or cloth doll designs, look into your own personal history and aspirations, and to join into group play on a common theme. I will provide inspirations, suggestions, and basic patterns, if you need them...The group will be supportive of every effort—and magical things will happen! Barb Kobe will provide the ethernet play room for our six-session. More Information to follow!

An Extended Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T18:02:00.000-08:00

Because of my "regular" job, I have today off...the last day of 2010. Because I have been going around spouting off about how Time--or the measurement of Time--is just an artificial construct, today is the first day of my 3-day (maybe more) Celebration of endings and beginnings.

My personal favorite holiday and signifier of the turning of the seasons was the Solstice, on December 21st, when the days finally start getting longer, if only by seconds, and the SUN we know and love comes back into my northern sky and begins to show its face...if the sky is not too cloudy.

Winter sun is a cause for celebration in my neighborhood.
I saw people on bikes, and even
some bare arms and legs in my
travels today, although the temperature was in the thirties (above zero), and heading for the twenties tonight...cold for here. I spent most of my life where white was the landscape color more frequently than green.

So, Endings and Beginnings: here the grass is green, heather starting to bloom pink and white, and I know another month will bring flowers on the trees, as well as a surge of millenium plants among my stones. We are always beginning and ending, but I salute this time of recognizing and celebrating the beginnings and endings.

Today I celebrated the change by washing my sheets, my hair,
my kitchen floor. I like marking a new start with cleanliness, BUT
I also realize that I will never be the obsessive-compulsive
cleaner I wish I could afford to hire. Instead, clean the most obvious surfaces and save time for being Outside, and reading, and All the other things that take up my time...more
Realistic about what's possible as the years turn.

My family's decision not to give presents is a huge relief of the self-induced Holiday pressure to show our love with material goods. Of course there are those of us who cheat a bit and do get too much of a kick out of giving to
stop: Thank you, David and Doug.

I am learning not to feel guilty about taking care of myself, but still at the last minute made my traditional Christmas Angels, the Solstice party, and a pecan pie for work yesterday.

Today, instead of cleaning Everything, I went to Ediz Hook and took pictures of town from the salt water Strait, picked up a few rocks to bring home, bought myself a couple of bath time treats, and books to follow up on this week's fascination with memoirs.

I just finished reading Mary Karr's LIT and had to buy it, as
well as THE LIAR'S CLUB. Because of my own ever-lasting
urge to write Everything, save each moment in words, now
for 41 years, I fantasize about writing stories from my life, as
the women who contributed to HOT FLASH: A CELEBRATION
did. I also have a book from the library with super-short stories
from South and Central America...LOTS of ideas...and instead of setting up too-high resolutions that I may or may not achieve,
I'll keep on following my heart, investigating what seems interesting, trying to be clear about what I really want as opposed to what others may seem to want from me, going for the Experience, rather than the Stuff. Remember to give people
credit for the good things they do. Spend time with sunny days and the people we love. Keep stretching to learn more widely, hone skills in making art. Stay Curious and Interested. Don't expect it all to be Perfect, or your self to be Perfect...be Kind.

Maybe the trick is to frame our stories about ourselves and lives in ways that make us successes, rather than failures in how we deal with life's bumps...same action, different frame of mind...makes all the difference.

Be kind to yourselves, make plans but give yourself as much time as you need. Follow your heart and see where it leads you.

The drawings above are more from the series I've been working on, inspired by Richard Tuttle's simple work. They're all 4" x 6", the drawings done with three colors of pencil, painted over with one of two shades of yellow glaze, just taking a simple idea and simple tools and playing it over and over again to see what comes out.

The HOT FLASH book took seven years, an idea, and talking with a lot of other women...now I can't stop collecting
stories...don't know yet where that will lead...maybe to another book. At some time during this three-day celebration, I'll be back in the studio, working again on my portrait painting series...finishing the Big Doll...maybe stories to go with the portraits, outdoor sculpture when the weather gets warm enough to drive re-bar into the ground,

I'm thinking about retirement already, although I may have to work another 5 years before I can afford not to work. I'll have plenty to do. Still, I'm happy that I took time off in my youth to explore, travel, do craft shows, and meet all those wonderful people, dance, make love, audit philosophy classes...I think that what ever happens, we can find something positive there...although I am So Happy that I have a good place to live, a loving family, and a job that probably won't go away...a mind with which to search and stretch...PLEASE JOIN ME!

HOT FLASH

2010-12-14T10:51:00.001-08:00

Hot Flash friends, Rita Tritabaugh and Julie Branch pose in front of Rita's paintings in St. Paul, MN, with my book and a wise woman that Julie made to celebrate Rita's 50th birthday.

"Thanks again for your wonderful book and sharing the stories of so many women. Risa and I have journeyed through a lot in the past 25 + years and it will be exciting to see where the next years take us!" Julie

Here's an excerpt from a letter Kim Tinsley wrote and one of her poems following:

"HOT FLASH feels like a good visit. And an embrace. And a rare opportunity to read the thoughts of women who probably don't get asked very often, if at all, about what it feels like to walk the path from innocence to experience, what it is to negotiate the phases of a human life in a female body, what it is to live a woman's life."

places in the heart
no.3

the force unseen
that beats my
heart
breaks it too,
pieces
in
creasing
the number of places
places
where love resides

Kim Tinsley 2005

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-12-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

I have so much for which to be thankful...although I would be even more thankful if I hadn't just wiped out this almost-completed blog entry by moving tooooo fast. I live close to a big chunk of my gourmet chef family, so we can share holidays. Thanksgiving is my second favorite after Solstice, where I welcome the incremental inching back of the sun.

Don't get me wrong, in the Olympic Peninsula, rain is fine, and the early dark of winter gives me the opportunity to stay inside and blog and make Art, but Sun is Stupendous! We all get a little giddy when it shows its golden face.

Last Saturday: " A wonderful Saturday, staying in bed late, sun, a fantastic view of Mt. Baker from my front yard, warm enough to wear just a sweatshirt over my insulated underwear and fleece, visiting a craft fair with Barbara and chatting with friends, nice Asian food, book store, talking about money and time and how to get and spend them.
It's good to see green grass in December, know a wide variety of people, some of whom are doing interesting things, and to have a warm home to which to retreat with abundant projects and possibilities for the long dark night." Tonight rain, rain, and more rain, and home from the lively party at Gray's Warehouse to turn on my propane fire and chat with all of you.

I feel like quite a celebrity around here recently, with an article about the HOT FLASH book in Peninsula Woman and an interview on Karen Hannen's Art Beat...today I agreed to do one of Mark Harvey's shows on KONP...pretty good for a formerly shy person! You can listen Saturday 1/29/11 on streaming radio. I have lots to talk about, apparently, with years of practice making conversation with my patients, following the time-honored advice to: get them talking about themselves, and they'll think you're a brilliant conversationalist.

Doug and Brian start with the pumpkin-filled won ton skins that David made.

Deb Alwine has been with us for the six Thanksgivings I've been here, starting as my mortgage broker. Her family wonders why she isn't hungry when she gets to their house.

Casey Groff, who built my house, loves family gatherings around food, too, and made my kitchen/dining/living room perfect for cooking and eating together.

Serene fractured the end of her little finger playing frisbee just before Thanksgiving. As a hand therapist, I hate that the surgeon in Seattle put her into a full cast after pinning...I'm looking forward to getting her moving...at
least as much as possible...when I see her at Christmas time.

Doesn't that plate look tempting: Doug's pumpkin rolls, Brian's whipped mashed potatoes and pumpkin, Amal's green beans with roasted pumpkin seeds...do you sense
a theme?

Connie, Seattle's Queen of Pies. Don't worry, Barbara, you're still Sequim's Pie Queen.
I've been practicing for the Port Angeles title, but I won't go up against either of the Queens!

Hugh, sampling the first piece of his vegetable and stuffing Panade, made in a pumpkin-shaped mold.

Further back, you'll see Connie's pumpkin cake, made from the same mold, and glued together with cream cheese frosting, and more on the side. Doug made pumpkin cheesecake, and Serene made bread pudding.

Instead of the traditional smoked
turkey from Sunrise meats, I did a fresh
turkey--love the aroma throughout the house on Thanksgiving morning. My never-fail recipe: put an apple, an onion, some celery, and a bottle of cheap white wine in the cavity, smear the outside with butter, salt, and pepper, sear at 450 degrees for 20 minutes and finish at 325 degrees. I didn't have to start baking until 8am--very civilized.

Fun with the turkey-shaped turkey baster that Connie and Hugh brought last year.
I'm still looking for a red flour sifter for when Connie bakes at my house. They wanted to stay for the Tamale making the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll take some to Seattle for Christmas...it was much easier tying the tamales with string this time, instead of shredded corn husks. I have a lot left in the freezer, and they came out well with corn oil instead of lard this time. No point in making just a few tamales!

The southeast
view of the table.
Good thing the snow melted off the roads in time for everyone to get up my hill.

The north west view of the table. I'm thinking that I'd like to have both a smoked and a fresh turkey next year...but we'll need another table worth of
people to make it work out...Steve and Linda? any of the Bickfords???

After dinner digestion in preparation for a May I? tournament. I was doing very well until Brian and Connie did me in.

The Art Part: In the upper right corner, you'll see a chunk of the 9.5 foot tall big doll, who has joined us for every meal for the last few years now. She's actually getting close to finished now, and I think we'll all miss her when she goes to the OK Hotel Gallery in Seattle...I do have another Big project in mind for the back yard, my Stonhendge in the front yard worked out so well.

Question for the world at large: I am on my last box of HOT FLASH books...I'd love to hear from people who have successfully used printing on demand. pamela@pamelahastings.com

Plan your Solstice Festivities Now!

Friends, Art, Travel, Inspiration 3

2010-12-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

I know, back to front, but I am Determined to finish getting through my recent trip for you, so
I can move on to more current events.

Thanksgiving is waiting in the wings, and it
was a Delicious Pumpkin theme this year--good thing Steve and Linda didn't come out West
for this one, as he made it clear that he
can't stand pumpkin. I'm still enjoying left overs.

To return to my story, which starts two blogs before this one, this is the view of Lake Iraquois in Williston, VT, from my cousin's back deck.
As you may remember from an earlier post, there
was a hurricane passing through and I had only brought one pain of shoes with me, so we didn't walk down to the lake, but he rows every morning, or does until the lake is frozen and covered with snow...then the cross-country skiing begins.

Wells River, VT, which used to be "downtown" when I lived in the old schoolhouse in East Ryegate. The main street has changed very little since I was there, helping with the library expansion in the Seventies.

The hurricane had flooded the main route south of town the day I was there in October. The beige car on the right was my rental, parked in front of the white library building. We used to go into town on Friday nights to do laundry, shop, and play chess with our State Representative, who carried the fragrance of manure on his rubber boots.

One of my quintessential Vermont images: hill, foliage, field. The gray sky reminds me of my home here in Washington, and makes the colors seem even brighter by comparison.

On Route 2 west in Vermont. I never got tired of soaking up the color.

Another primal VT scene, adding the farm. OK, I'm getting it out of my system. This was in the Green Mountains in the northern part of the state, probably covered in snow by now.

And the classic New England white church, Montpelier, VT, in the end of the hurricane.
David C and I met because of architecture, working together for an architectural designer in Burlington. We took a historic preservation tour of
Montpelier in the rain.

David has a big old Victorian on Liberty St., scene of many wild times with his three children and their friends. I love the turquoise truck livening up the rainy day.

Tim at Al's Fries in Burlington, to reprise the food theme. We love our fries with the skins on and corn dogs.

Flash back to summer and my studio treat here in my bedroom/drawing studio in Port Angeles: fresh strawberries from the Farmers' Market (which can run year round in our temperate climate) good vanilla ice cream and home made brownies...I treat myself right!

And now I come home to Port Angeles, where I can drive downtown and out on to Edis Hook after a hard day at work, and look back at town with the real Olympic Mountains behind.

I am blessed with many wonderful Homes and Friends!

Now go Celebrate and make some Art!

Friends, Art, Travel, Inspiration 2

2010-12-07T17:38:00.000-08:00

This is going to come out in the wrong order, I know. My life
is rich and full, and my aspirations far exceed my grasp.

Why do I have this compulsion to record my life and thoughts--I don't know why, but I do, and it's always a total THRILL when someone tells me that they read what I write and find some resonance here.

This post will include the best of the rest of the pictures I took on my trip back to my birth/growth home...again with the theme of all of the HOMES that we collect during our life times and all the roles they play in our formation, our dreaming, our inspiration.

Above are a couple of collage boxes in my friend, Loel Annie Barr's studio...she has a one-woman show at WAM in Woodstock, NY.

She took the photos of rusty things and through a smudged window when she and Patti and I went to look for stuff together at a huge storehouse in Kingston, NY. Friends who inspire me to push my art work further are So Valuable, in person or via email, travel journals, and memories.

Moody, moody, moody. Annie took pictures with my camera, so we got to share them. I wonder if taking photos creates distance from just being IN the experience...but now I'm happy to have the photos to take me back...and maybe
inspire a piece of Art. Annie does digital collages.
I took a wonderful class at Womens' Studio Workshop in digital collage and loved it--yet another item on my To Do list/notebooks.

This is a picture I took at the same place, the repeated image of radiators: shape, form, color, and I may have learned how to use the Saturate button in Photoshop...Oh, the Excitement of discovery!
May we Always Inspire each other to do Great Work!

Looking up in a gallery in the Roundout District of Kingston, NY...I have lots of inspiring pictures. I better make time to exercise and eat well, so I live to be very old, but vigorous!

Zaborski Emporium--good thing I put the card into my travel journal. Me and Patti taking pictures, amazed by the wealth of possibilities! I'll show you the travel journal another time...also the series of small drawings I've been working on.

Remember: the more we work, the more the ideas flow.

Calico Cat French Pastries and restaurant in Rhinebeck, NY...I keep a running list of Must Eats when I go back to familiar places. Sadly, they didn't have the Blood Orange Chocolate Bombe in stock, but I did get a chocolate bombe and numerous other goodies to share. It was a shun-pike trip--no freeways unless absolutely necessary...and Oh the thin-crust pizza with red cabbage, spinach, and porcini sauce at La Florintina...I wish I'd taken a picture!

I did take a picture for my niece, Serene, of a Chicago hot dog with all the fixings in
O'Hare on my way home to Port Angeles. I may have mentioned that we are a family of Foodies.

After NY I drove back north to Vermont, following this strange X in the sky all the way back to Burlington...I guess X marks another magic mystery HOME spot.

Home with friends, with positive experiences, and with familiar/comforting land arrangements...what are all the facets that come together to make a HOME?

People in Washington state laugh at what's called a mountain in the East, but those Vermont rolling hills, underlaid with granite, make me feel at Home...there are quite a few areas here on the Peninsula that resonate with me the way Vermont does. As David C said when he came to visit, "this is like Vermont on steroids." David is a tiny speck here, center stage, in front of a giant pile of granite blocks at an old quarry in Barre, VT, where is friend is going to build a house with this view.

Montpelier and Barre are close together, kind of like Port Angeles and Sequim. The Victorian building boom in Montpelier brought lots of artistic Italian stone cutters to Barre.

David took me to a cemetery in Barre that is a showcase for their work, and a bit of a competition--artists egging each other on to do
more and more fantastical work.

A couple in bed, side by side in death as in life.

An airplane in flight. A racing car...why shouldn't death be interesting, too?

In the early Eighties, I was an original board member for Catamount Arts in the 8,000-person town of St. Johnsbury, VT. I was delighted to see how much it has grown, having moved up through the old post office into the Mason's Temple, with two theaters, galleries, and a full list of exhibits, performances, and all kinds of Arts Activities...Pay Attention, Port Angeles, we have a long way to grow and a lot of enthusiasm here, as well. I talked with Odetta, BB King, and Arlo Guthrie after performances in this small town.

And about 80 miles away on the other side of this small state, is another long-term HOME of mine, Burlington, the city on the shore of Lake Champlain, a city much like Seattle, where the mountains on the other side of the water, keep the climate a bit milder than the surrounding area, but still down into the twenties below zero, with lots of deep snow.

Church St., Burlington, home of endless festivals and active street life all seasons of the year.

The former fire station is now home to an avant guarde art gallery. True, Burlington is larger than Port Angeles and boasts several colleges and industries, but I see common threads in the cities I have chosen as HOME, and I have High Hopes for PA.

A rainbow arching above a brilliant red maple, shot from the parking lot where
I work to support my Art habit. I know, I'm in the habit of working my Stuff out in public, but here and there you may feel a resonance and a spark of inspiration.

Port Angeles, another HOME, probably for the rest of my life. There are some common elements in all of my HOMES, proximity of water, hills/mountains, good people, art opportunities. Now I work with all the others in making Port Angeles the best HOME it can be for all its citizens.

Friends, Art, Travel, Inspiration 1

2010-12-07T16:56:00.000-08:00

I actually made a new painting: Coffee, Coffee--a painting with collage, currently on display at Harbinger Winery on Route 101 west of Port Angeles.

I love painting so much, why is it so challenging to get myself to do it? The last few weeks, now that it gets dark about 4:30 in the afternoon, I've been going into the studio to play--what fun! As I've always said, just doing Any kind of art work makes more ideas come...and it is necessary, even Vital, to allow yourself to get through the ugly stuff to get to the good stuff.

I've been invited to be a guest curator (of websites and blogs on CRESCENDOh.com starting the last Monday in December for a week, so I get to span the start of the New Year.

It has been interesting to look back through my old posts and to gather other interesting and inspiring blogs to feature. I seem to work best with the pressure of a dead-line, although sometimes the self-induced pressure gets ridiculous!

Two openings on Friday: Harbingers and the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, where I added elements to a series of small collages I made last summer, as well as finishing up some small dolls...I love it ALL!

Diane Urbani de la Paz did a wonderful write up about me and the HOT FLASH book in 12/5/10 Peninsula Daily News and I will be interviewed by Karen Hanen on Art Beat, KONP, this Friday 12/10/10.

The response to this book has been AMAZING and all the 50 contributors can be very proud of your participation and the inspiration your stories have provided/will provide to women everywhere. When we reach out, others are there. We aren't alone. Maybe that's part of the magic of blogging--discovering that we share so much with so many others.

I need to keep reminding myself to take notes on all my many-branched aspirations so I don't forget any brilliant ideas. No, I can't do All of it in one day off, but if I keep plugging away, I get things done. After all, the book did take seven years and is now a 3-D Reality.

The time frame of blogging is challenging for me who gets so behind at times. My next post will be the remaining pictures from my trip back to New England and New York in October.

Note: I only have 1 box of my first printing of HOT FLASH left and would love to hear from folks who have had experience with printing on demand...or is there an Angel out there who would like to finance another printing??

Things Change

2010-11-23T19:41:00.000-08:00

Just when I was embracing Port Angeles as Home, instead of VT, we got an unexpected November Blizzard, with snow so thick, it was impossible to see more than a few feet and the edge of the sidewalk coming out of the office that I'd just cleared, was snow-covered by the time I got back to the door.

When I got home from VT, the maples along this street were turned the brightest possible RED. Very few patients got through to see us yesterday, and today the roads were mostly packed snow and ice...after all, there are only 4 city plows in a town of 19,000 people and 144 miles
of roads to clear...tonight we're supposed to break
records for cold! Down to 13 degrees a bit ago...I know, nothing compared to VT, but the insulation and road-clearing capabilities aren't equipped. Sure was Beautiful yesterday and last night.

Full Moon on New Snow
Quiet, Complete
Trees whisper...yes

Travel, Stories, Continued

2010-11-20T09:49:00.001-08:00

My good friend Loel Annie Barr, in the art-tunnel on the grounds of Bard College on the Hudson, near Rhinebeck, NY. There are friends with whom one takes up just where we left off, no matter how many years and miles intervene.

Patti and Annie,
like David and
Tim in previous
posts are that kind of friends.

Patti and Annie
in Patti's studio
in the garage behind her house in Kingston, NY. I spent time with the same Important People when I went back East last
month as I did over two years ago. Making each Moment last as long as possible, making
memories to take out and dream over later.

The Frank Gehry performance center at Bard. It was a Perfect October day, clear bright air, students playing Ultimate Frisbee, the Hudson in background, as classically lovely as Church ever painted it. The first Gehry building I saw was the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

You may remember Annie and Patti from our
road trip to see Margi and Kathryn in Nova Scotia on my last trip east in 2008, this trip was more mellow, and you're right, I didn't see All of my Important People this time. One was busy winning an election, Margi and Kathryn were busy with their lives...but I did see Tracy Stillwell--see previous post--and a lot of old doll making friends...these red threads of connection through space/time/experience.

A picture Annie took of me in the new Art Museum at Bard. Annie will having an opening of a solo show of her work tonight at WAM in Woodstock, NY. I wish I could be there in person, instead of in spirit.

Patti and Annie do one of the Best Things friends can do for each other--they inspire me to do my Best work--always striving for better.

Thank you! I hope you do make good on your promise for a road trip west this summer...but I want to be in the car, too.

Stories, Art Work, Friends, Food, Salt Water, Stones--my life's passions

Families, Friends, Connections

2010-11-08T21:55:00.000-08:00

My father's older brother died this morning, our/my Uncle Jack. I hadn't seen him since Dad's funeral 23 years ago, but Jeanne and Jack's, and then Jack's Christmas cards followed me wherever I moved.

I remember him from when I was a child, even the story his mother would tell about how he release the hand brake in one of my grandfather's cars and got it rolling down Route 5 in Bradford, VT. Jack's subsequent sporty cars, and since he was a Westinghouse engineer,
he came to visit us with the first transistor radio
I ever heard in his coat pocket.

Through FaceBook we've reconnected with our cousins and grieve with them, remembering when our Dad died, and also how very important we are to each other, carrying these genes and memories on through time.

This is a large part of my immediate family, taken 5 summers ago...we don't do the formal portraits at every holiday that we used to...Maybe this year at the now traditional Thanksgiving at my house, we will.

Here's to all genetic and chosen families!!!

On The Many Meanings of Friends and Home

2010-11-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from my every-other-year pilgrimage back "home" to VT, where I spent wonderful days and night with old friends and family, who I miss on a regular basis, even though I'm very happy here in my new "home" on the Olympic Peninsula.

There are some friends with whom one picks up
just where we left off the last time...is it shared
experiences, shared years, or just a special kind of chemistry, that happens only occasionally in great loves, both platonic and not.

Tim, David, and I in Montpelier, VT, July 1987.
Tim and David and me and David, together
again, October, 2010. We've known each other
25 years, though marriages, divorces, children,
Major Life Changes. What could be more precious? Home is the place where when you go there, they have to take you in. I am lucky to have so many homes and friends...Do we get what we deserve? If so I am very lucky.

25 Germain St, Burlington, VT. I lived in this duplex, on a block-long street surrounded by cemeteries for 5 key years, with good friends, uproarious dinners around the rosewood table that's in the dining room behind me now...the first piece of real furniture I ever bought, in 1969, scene of so many happy times.

Tim and his wife, Katie, whom I introduced in the kitchen here, now own the house, and keep it up more beautifully than I ever did. I was always distracted by making art.

Another home, the old schoolhouse in East Ryegate, VT. The 6-foot tall beautiful windows have been removed, the color changed from our original red and gray, it looks even more shabby now, and is for sale again. I wonder if the bell
is still in place in the cupola...we used to ring it on New Year's Eve over the small paper mill town.
I painted, made fiber arts of all sizes, became a bit famous here...and was often miserable, sitting on the baled hay out back in the moonlight, wondering if I would ever get free of my abusive
marriage. Those of you who've read my book, DOLL MAKING AS A TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS, know how I broke free.

There is something so special to me about the rocks and hills of Vermont...different from New Hampshire or New York, that don't stir me in anything like the same way. I drove and soaked up the scenes.

A friend of David's bought this quarry near Barre, VT, with a panoramic view and piles of sparkling gray granite--raw materials for a Fantastic Home! with many years of work ahead.

On the Olympic PeninsulaThe rock patterns in my current Home/backyard., there is often no rain all summer long, so gravel and beach rocks make a sensible, as well as artistic yard.

The Hastings stone in the cemetery in Passumpsic, VT. My father and his parents' remains are here. Is Home where one's people have lived? Ghost trails of past lives, mine and my family's, haunt the green hills of VT, and when I come home to Vermont, I am in the home of my ancestors.

My grandfather's law and town clerk office was in the bottom window of the dark tower in Bradford, VT. I remember the crud-encrusted spittoon by the side of his desk.

When I was seven, I was considered mature enough to walk "down street" with a dime to spend at Hills on a new paper doll book. David and I had lunch in a Chinese restaurant next door. The restaurant was not in operation 56 years ago.

David and his youngest, Theo, outside of Artisan's Hand in Montpelier. I used to escape to the coop's previous location to sell my wares, and be away from the Old Schoolhouse and it's dread for an afternoon.

I am a story person, it seems. I'll weave you more tales another evening.

Art-Is-You

2010-10-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

Time has been rushing by. I've been home from my Wonderful trip to old haunts...oh, good, only two weeks, with a huge make-up caseload at work and a weekend in Seattle since, so I don't feel SO bad about not sharing all that happened.

Teaching and selling at Art-Is-You was my excuse to revisit my old home turf and old friends, but more about NY and VT later, the nature of HOME, FRIENDSHIP and all of that.

Here I am with my new camera and my Hot Flash outfit, trying to smile while I take a picture in the bathroom mirror at the hotel in CT.

Sallianne and Ellen run a Fabulous Event, and asked Merrilee and her story teller friend to do an intro to my book signing for the debut of HOT FLASH: a Celebration in the hotel bar.

I wish I had asked someone to take a picture of me in the red tights, pink socks, and tie-dyed flounced skirt, the hem of which I inadvertently stepped on going up the stairs and flashed everyone. My other regret is not having sampled the HOT FLASH cocktail at the bar.

There was also a sales event...I'm Very Proud to have published 5 books now, and would love to do more, if everyone would like to chip in and buy books to fund future efforts.

The HOT FLASH book is a collection of wonderful stories and art works by 50 women about the wonders of being women...you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be inspired to tell your own stories...AND I have a HOT FLASH page on FaceBook where you can.

The theme of Art-Is was Wizard of Oz, and here Art Girl Tracy Stilwell meets the Good Witch.

Good Witch, Bad Witch struggle for supremacy....it was All Good!

My class: Dancing on the Edge: Dolls from Found Objects...Each one did Totally Different projects, using Apoxie Sculpt as an attachment medium. The Apoxie Sculpt company even donated samples for each Goodie Bag...Thank you!

Bette contemplates her raw materials.

Jean had a moving truck with the entire contents of her studio out in the parking lot, taking the class in the middle of her move to DC...Needless to say, she had Plenty of stuff to use.

David, Bette, Pat, Thea--all Great! I've known Pat since We Folk of Cloth days. Now she has a degree in art therapy and is trying to make space for all her Stuff in a NYC apartment...Good Luck!
I try to keep honing and making my stash, my range of choices, smaller. Sometimes Creativity is stimulated by having Fewer Choices, And who has time to use it all!

The other side of the class--all deeply engrossed in their individual work...all so different, yet a Team. It's so much fun for me as a teacher to act as a catalyst and figure out what word, small act of encouragement, suggestion, will bring out the excitement, and therefore the best work in these very different individuals, all with different backgrounds and skill sets.

I've known Merrilee since doll club days back in CT. She took a piece from the discards pile and turned it into this Fantastic work of Art and philosophy, that also Lit Up!

Now she's a Retired teacher. Funny how people both change and stay the same over a decade.

I wish this huge store of Creativity to Everyone...and a Lot more Self Confidence and Pride to ALL of us!

Thea, with not the piece she made in my class, but always creative and joyful. I met Thea in one of my online Doll Making as a Transformative Process classes...She was Even Better in person!

I had decided to make this my last In Person teaching, because of lots of things: being 63 and not enjoying air travel any more, having a good deal of my time and energy consumed by the job I do for money, and wanting to spend more of the little free time I have painting, making sculpture, and Enjoying my life on the Olympic Peninsula.

Very Very Tough to think about giving up face to face contact with all these wonderful and creative people! Maybe I'll figure out how to do online teaching in a way that makes us all happy. In the mean time, my hand/elbow/shoulder patients are a lot like my students, in that we have a lot of fun telling jokes and stories and making changes in our lives together. There are a huge number of Fascinating people living out here on the Olympic Peninsula.

Sometimes the Best can be made of life by finding the Best in What IS, rather than always reaching out for change and excitement.

I'll work on my NY and VT pictures to show you something of the rest of my trip: Friends who are Forever, the lumpy hills of the Northeast Kingdom, that will always tug at my heart, no matter how beautiful and temperate it is out here. The mountains finally came out from behind a week-long low cloud cover today to reveal, ta da: new snow frosting! It's so pretty up there and FAR AWAY. A patient today said that he can't stand to be away from the smell of salt water for long now, and I'm getting that way, too. I figured out how to motivate him to move his finger, even though it hurts, and tonight we both went home happy.

HOT FLASH Is Available from Pamela's Shopping Cart!

2010-10-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

The word is spreading quickly about this wonderful book, HOT FLASH: A CELEBRATION, which is now available only through my website. I can brag, because it contains the work of 50 amazing women from 20's to 80's: stories, dolls, paintings about life-changing experiences.

We have so much encouragement and inspiration to share with each other--you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to share this with your friends.

It's a seven-year labor of love on my part, encompassing my move to the West Coast and major life changes. Because I self-publish and color printing costs are up, it's truly a labor of love on behalf of woman everywhere. Only $25, plus $5 shipping, and I can fit another one of my other inspiring books in the Priority envelope with it for one shipping charge.

Feel free to use the HOT FLASH questionnaire with your groups and friends to generate more stories, art work, and support.

If you'd like to share with the wider world, please email your stories and images to me at: pamela@pamelahastings.com, and I'll add to my FaceBook Hot Flash page. Together, we can Heat Up the World!..and it won't be climate change.

I've lowered the prices on some of my previous books to make them more accessible in these tough economic times. Shameless Commerce, I know, but I need to support my Art habit...please continue to participate!

HOT FLASH

2010-09-06T20:26:00.001-07:00

Two posts in one day!!! I'm So used to being chained to the computer, after the push to get the book finished. I should get the proof this week and have copies ready for sale at Art-Is-you in Danbury, CT, on 10/8/10, and on my website after I get home.
I thought you'd like to see a few more pages, and also to know that I will continue to collect and post stories and images, because they are all Just Too Good not to share!

A new story from Holly Bickford: "Ha! Mid-life crisis are great! Truth be known I was with a guy for a while who had a Harley & I hated riding on the back...contol issue maybe?! He helped me buy my own, I got my license, he got transferred to San Diego, and I was supposed to
move there with him a month later. He got there, called me & broke up with me, the next day I got laid off from my job!!!! Yikes!!! But I'm a strong woman & had known Adam for at least a year & we hooked up soon
after that. I guess everything happens for a reason! I'm still riding & loving it, but I still have a lot to learn! Dad wanted to ground me but I told him I was 51 & he couldn't! Lol!

A Wedding in Chicago

2010-09-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

What a whirlwind of getting HOT FLASH: A CELEBRATION to the printer, then heading east to Iowa. Balancing ART and FAMILY can be tricky, even when one doesn't have children or a partner. My youngest niece, Serene, and I flew from Seattle to Waterloo, Iowa, at the end of August.

I spent junior high and high school in Iowa, and headed for a coast as soon as possible.

Here's Mom with Serene and with me in front of the Waterloo Art and Recreation Center, which was located in a crumbling school building when I was there,. Now it's huge and lovely. I took some of my first art classes there--Port Angeles needs to get started on our version of an inclusive Arts Center...we're counting on you, Max!

Steve entrusted me with his car to drive Mom and Serene to Chicago for the wedding of Steve's younger daughter, Megan. I am a Confirmed Small Town girl for sure, and it was Really Scary negotiating Chicago, especially the weird toll booths, the 2-hour Friday traffic jam, and streets that were closed. Serene was my trusty co-pilot.

I swear that living in such high density makes people way more aggressive than polite Northwesterners. Luckily, I (narrowly) escaped several potential opportunities for car crashes. Almost did a head-on with Linda's brother, Phil.

The flat, open Iowa landscape has its own spare beauty, and as we got closer to the Mississippi, the rolling hills are SO Grant Wood. Unfortunately, I was too distracted by driving to take pictures, so you'll just have to imagine it.

My current--and probably permanent--experience of living alone and also collecting essays for HOT FLASH has led me to thinking a lot about male and female roles and how we limit ourselves. There are probably a lot of Dads who have to do driving into scary cities and don't complain about it the way I do...the ability to cope is not a sex-linked trait, more a matter of practice and opportunity. Approach your fears and puzzlements and conquer them! You CAN!

Some pictures from downtown Chicago and Millenium Park where there are trees and prairie in cages like animals in a zoo, the shiny bean, the large rectangles with faces projected on them and water spitting out. It was hot in the 90's and the crowds were filling the streets day and night. The people we met were friendly one on one, but Oh So Pushy when they want to get somewhere. I actually was in sight of the Art Institute, but couldn't switch gears from my family tour guide job. Chicago, I Will Return! I keep saying I hate the process of traveling these days, but there are places I want to be.

Holy Family Catholic Church is Gorgeous, and Megan and Maurizio were, too. We love Mo from past eating adventures in Galena and Mexico. One can tell just by looking at them that they have fun together and share well.

Megan's proud parents: Linda and Steve. My little brother cleans up well. His speech at the reception and first dance with the bride invoked a few tears. We Hastings do seem to love the occasional limelight!

The Hastings/Palmer pew at the church. It's good that parents are no longer so freaked out by their children living together with their Significant Others for seven years before the marriage--just to be sure--and also accepting their children's gay partners as part of the family. I'm proud of you all! Brian was a great addition to all the festivities AND the night-time card games...also Winnie the dog. The boys and their dog included Chicago in their annual car trip.

Because the youngsters were so aggressive about going down the street to grab cabs before they got to us, Mom and I got to ride on the shiny black Party Bus with the attendants. Mom boogied down with the best of them and was quite a hit! That very cute guy may have been one of Mo's cousins from Italy. In my younger days, I would have been sure to grab a dance with him.

The youngest niece and only nephew in our clan: Thayer: just back from 2 months in South Africa, interning for a NGO--hoping for gainful employment, preferably saving the world, next year when he graduates from UW. Serene--career as yet to be decided--so many choices!!!--starting Western Washington University in a few weeks. She's brilliant, gorgeous, and a very talented baker. I know she'll be Very Popular!

For an 86-year-old women who's never really had to develop her independent side, Mom did very well keeping up with the rest of us. I can see and appreciate the parts of her in who I am today...and also see the differences. Could I actually be becoming my Own Person at the ripe old age of 63?...I see it's a gradual growing/evolving process.

I came home last Tuesday at midnight, was at work at 8:45 the next morning, and am enjoying a long weekend at home to catch up. Two days of Northwest sun and Just-Right temps for yard work and stone arranging, and thank goodness partial misty rain for my other two days, so I can get caught up with my business and art lives. I bought yet more rocks on my way home from work Friday. Steve, next door, helped me weed whack and prune the blackberry tangle beside the driveway...sore, but happy, I am.

Part of my back yard rock arrangement.
I've decided that since I can't seem to make money
with my ART, and I don't want to move to NYC and flog it (the Art), I'll just do what I want...as long as I can keep going to my day job.

I had bought some long, skinny rocks in the spring and set them on end with rebar to hold them for a tiny Stonehenge in the corner.

Like the Outsider Artists I love, I'll create for myself! I drew a sketch for a tall figure in the SE corner of my yard, using rebar, which I find I can pound into the ground with my new mallet (I'm accumulating tools and skills). I'll use up my leftover spray foam and the Paverol and make my-self an outdoor guardian...what FUN!!! even if I don't finish until Spring, which reminds me, I AM going to finish the now almost mythological BIG DOLL--who will be looking for a new home. I'll accept any reasonable offer, which must include transportation by truck for this 9.5' beauty.

Next post will be more pages from my new HOT FLASH book, to debut...Very Soon!!! October 8th!!! at Art-Is-You in Danbury, CT.

I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family in VT, NY, and CT in 3 weeks--Yikes!!!

Ta Da!!!

2010-08-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

The long-anticipated HOT FLASH book is NOW at the printer...a project that has taken me from 2/2002 to 8/1010. Wonderful stories and Images that will make you laugh, make you cry, inspire you, and let you know that you are not alone!

Big Debut at Art-Is-You in Danbury, CT, Columbus weekend, where I will be teaching 3 classes: Dancing on the Edge: making dolls with found objects and Apoxie Sculpt as a unifier, Angels and Icons: Tiny figures to wear and conjure with, and Star of my Own Show: Self Portraits in many media.

Be Sure to Join Me!

SIGN UP FOR MY CLASSES AT ART-IS-YOU

2010-07-26T20:58:00.001-07:00

Art-Is-You, a premier Northeast Art Retreat, where I will be teaching three classes--Probably my last In Person Teaching experience except for Friday Harbor in November. Yes, I've found the perfect place to live, and will be settling in to write, make Art, maybe teach more online, and of course, do the job that makes all this possible.

Please join me for my Last Blast: (1) Dancing on the Edge, using Apoxie Sculpt and our imaginations to create mixed media sculptures...Anything you've ever dreamed of is possible!
(2) Star of My Own Show: Exercises, Extravaganzas, and Explosions, using our own faces as a jumping off point...I'll supply pre-sewn fabric forms...or you might want to make an exuberant paper doll...or many! (3) Angels and Icons: We'll play with the small icon form, in all its infinite variety, to create personal spirits, mermaids, goddesses, ancestor ladies, and personal decoration, with lots of opportunities for lace, beads, charms, and other embellishments. Go to the Workshop section of my website: http://www.pamelahastings.com for complete class descriptions or Art-is-You or my Facebook page or right here for breaking updates and class samples. I am looking forward to seeing many old friends and new.

PLUS: HOT FLASH: a Celebration will be available for perusal and purchase...this long-awaited books contains inspiring stories and images from women all over the world. Only 3 weeks left for contributions.

Skeleton armatures for Angels and Icons:

Lots of Angels and Icons:

Yet another Star of My Own Show--self-portrait in collage, and then as a paper doll:

Dancing on the Edge: the possibilities of building creatures using Apoxie Sculpt, wire, and imagination are ENDLESS!

Miracles and Masterpieces from Dollar Store Materials! Too many choices??? I will hold your hand and guide you on a Marvelous journey to Making some Mighty Fine Stuff!

Art and More Art

2010-07-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know my posts have gotten further apart, but it IS finally summer (70's and sun) on the Peninsula, AND I have been making a lot of ART, as well as working with Great Concentration on the HOT FLASH book during this week off from my regular job. There is nothing quite as Wonderful for me as being totally caught up in making art. This week has put me in touch with fascinating women and inspiring stories from all over the globe for HOT FLASH. Last week it was the art exhibit at Sandy Long's Louisiana picnic that motivated my working late into the night.

So here you go: I've given myself the Luxury lately of concentrating my efforts in one (or three) directions, but not more. As I was saying in an email to Lynne Sward today, we creative types tend to be excited by Everything...and good at Everything, so we can find our energy stretched WAY too thin, not to mention our time and storage space. Limiting basic parameters gives more freedom in a way that I like and gets me doing good work.

Portraits have been my recent passion. Here are Megan (the younger sister of last November's niece's wedding) and her future husband, Maurizio, and the stages of their portrait, from the practice one on paper at the top, through the stages, to the finished one on canvas below. Working with an idea in depth is So Satisfying, and I keep thinking of new things I want to try. I'll be having a portrait show at Karon's Frames in Port Angeles in August, so those of you who are local will see more.

I don't know what you call someone who is married to one's niece, but Mo fits right into the Hastings family because he Loves food as much as we do. Looking forward to great Italian food in Chicago!

I got distracted from portraits while preparing for an art event at Sandy Long's gorgeous house on the bluffs.
I made a side trip back into collage, and made so many small (4"x6") ones that I'll just stack them up below.

A larger one here, playing with some of my paper stash and textures from Golden Paints...I could do collages for months, too!

A few more nudes for good measure, with some collage added...as I say often, the ideas keep spiraling around with new wrinkles...at least I'm keeping myself off the streets...and have paper enough to last for the rest of my life.

20" x 30" on the left and 8" x 8" on the right.

There are a few more to come this week, but I wanted to show you the little guys, and I'll just post them without comment, except that I mounted them on matt board covered with some of the exotic fabric I got at Pondicherry's sale last summer--Arlinka Blair, ever the shopper, alerted me. The small collages...and the paintings...are all for sale. The small collages are at the low, low price of $45 each...or do they need to be $35 in this bad economy? Thank heaven for the day job! My love of making Art must be its own reward, I fear.

I've been working on the HOT FLASH book this week with Wonderful submissions this week! Also did more samples for my classes at Art-Is-You...you'll be Excited! More later.

Art and Life: Graduations, Friendships

2010-06-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

I recently paid what I later thought was an exorbitant amount ($15.00) for a magazine on blogging. I learned that I am not blogging frequently or regularly enough (knew that) or involving my audience (?) sufficiently. Well, I guess I'll continue in my own particular limbo of Art and Life and trying to figure out how it all fits together (for me) out in public (for us), thinking that some of you out there may be immeshed in similar questions and appreciate another perspective.

Art and Life Adventures: Sue and Art Girl Tracy
made a less than 24-hour visit from Rhode Island. As they said, "We are just Toooo Popular!" Above they rest, exhausted on one of the cushy red sofas at The Buzz in Sequim, after I dragged their East Coast Time Zones through a tour of beaches from Fresh Water Bay (what is that new road through the wilderness all about?) to Port Williams. Sue gamely helped me select rocks for my Rock Relocation program to my magnificent Art Yard (more pictures of that later).

Tracy shot images for her texture collection. You may remember a picture of Arlinka from this same beach last summer, with my later portrait of her in the Strait Art Show this spring. The clouds over the mountains in back of town never lifted during either visit, and I found myself saying yet again, "the backdrop to PA is a range of snow covered mile-high mountains--Really!"

At some point after our NW summer officially
starts, July 5th, I'll go out onto Ediz Hook, another of my favorite beaches, and take a photo of Port Angeles with the white-topped Olympics in the background, so you can see I wasn't fibbing.

What could be better than Good Friends, with whom the conversation and laughter pick up right where they left off six or seven years ago?

***************

There's also Good Family...one of the many reasons I moved here 5 years ago. By the way, my 5-year anniversary was June 20th, when Sue and Tracy were here, celebrated with Mexican food.

Last Saturday, June 26th, I went to Seattle to help brother, David, close out his studio in the coop building in Ballard, where he's been for
many years, although not always in the same
room. As an artist, I feel such a tug of pain when any other artist gives up his/her work space, but David's studio will rise again, better than ever attached to his and Brian's new home in Shoreline....I'm SURE of it!

David's studios have been the scene of Lots of Wonderful Art Making, several years of my classes as a guest instructor from the Northeast.
I love his collections, which feature more than several of my art works from over the years. The bright green one above is from my Old Schoolhouse days, and that was a Long time ago! Anyone in Seattle should be Sure to attend his Studio Sale on 7/10/10 for some Great Deals!

I got one from his wrapped rock series, which I've always coveted. The series started from his residency at Fort Wordon, which was featured in a much earlier blog of mine.

A typical Hastings' Experiential Event, celebrated
with food--fried clams from the Lock Spot, within
walking distance of the studio, on a Suddenly Sunny
day in NW June.

The last time I remember eating from the Lock Spot
was with David and Doug, overlooking the Ballard
Locks, on my 58th birthday, a sunny day in March,
2005, when I had almost decided that I needed to
make the 3,000-mile move to the NW. Returning
to Albany to find my car buried in 18" of snow com-
pounded the decision.

************

Speaking of Doug, whose painting is in the background of his daughter, Serene, on the left, and her friend, Sarah, who graduated from Roosevelt High School this month.

Serene's graduation reception after our studio work in the am. Looking at all those bright young faces, I wondered and prayed about all their futures...Serene's brother, my nephew, Thayer, is off to South Africa for the summer, exploring ways to be in this challenging world.

Even though this next generation may not enjoy the riches of material goods that we have, I hope that they all find an equal or better joy in creativity, friendship, and service to our planet.

Follow Up to Tiny Art Quilts Class

2010-06-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

It's fun to share the work that gets finished after at class. This is Nature Quilt by Kathie Karst. Here's what she said about it: " Here's my finished quilt. I tweaked it a bit after our class and then was trying to decide how to mount it.

I had a picture frame my dad had made from weathered wood from a sheep shed on his family's old Montana homestead. It wasn't quite the right dimensions, so I decided to trim the quilt down using a decorative blade to be slightly smaller than the frame. I mounted it on top of the glass with about 1/2" around each of the sides. I used copper wire and beads, as well as metallic copper thread to add more interest.

I'm pleased with ow it turned out and feel as if taking this class finally moved me out of "neutral" when it comes to adding found objects to small quilts."

I love to see what you've done with my classes, books, patterns, and I'll post samples here. Watch for more of my classes at Quilted Strait in Port Gambol, WA.

And YES, very Soon, I'll start posting examples of contributions to my HOT FLASH book--It's not too late to participate!

Art, Life, and an Interview

2010-06-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

My latest portrait, finished this afternoon--a practice for the one I'll give Megan and Mauricio for
a wedding present. The portraits keep taking longer to do...or I keep taking longer to do them. I don't want to lose the spontaneity of the earlier quick ones, when I finished three in a day. Are the more recent ones "better" because they're more carefully done, or is there a magic in moving quickly and not over-working?

Mostly, I'm painting for my own pleasure, so neither really matters...whatever I do, I learn and gain eye-hand/paint-handling skills a bit at a time. Looking at the image online is different from studying it in person, too.

What drives us to make ART? It doesn't fill any of my food/clothing/shelter needs right now...maybe when people have more disposable income...or think they do? Anyway I can't seem to stop making it. Paintings on paper take up the least amount of storage space.

Opportunities present themselves from time to time and it's best to be ready, with a constant stream of new work. I started this 10" x 10" canvas in a life drawing group and finished it today with paint and collage. I like the square format and can fit almost any pose into it.

Sandy Long asked me to bring paintings to her Crawfish Gumbo fund raising party for PAFAC in July, and Friday Christy asked me to hang a show at Karon's Frames later in the summer, so time to start finishing works in progress. How many UFO's do You have?

This painting has been in a corner of the studio waiting for way too long. I was inspired by my brother, David's, use of collage and sewing on Japanese paper. I traced some of the images from life drawing, stitched on them, and used gel medium to attach them to the canvas, adding cut up samples on matte board from Laura DiPirro's Golden class.

I'm working for more texture and complexity, which doesn't seem to be a problem in my fabric works. I keep discovering avenues that I would certainly like to explore in more depth...I guess that's what retirement will be for...if I can ever make it there and still remember what I've been wanting to do!

Distractions: Now that there are some signs of a sort of a sunny, sort of spring-like time coming around, the outdoors is a constant pull...Sally and I went to the beach in Port Townsend on Memorial Day weekend with an exceptionally low tide. She...and a lot of other people in spite of the intermittent rain...was looking for beach glass, and I for white rocks.

The west end of my back yard yesterday. There is a yellow sedum propagating all down the hill, and
the Victoria Lilacs I planted three years ago (at the end of the fence) are covered in purple. I'm terracing across the hill with slabs of mica-sparkled stone, and I didn't take a new picture yet, but the spirals are starting to connect and spread into larger and more complex designs. For a low-budget, high-sweat job, it looks rather interesting. I worked the whole yard canvas at once and now the parts are starting to make sense as a whole.

Interview: http://bloginterviewer.com/books/pamelas-journal-pamela-hastings

What a surprise: I got interviewed online last week about my blog, and was trying to fill out the questionnaire after coming home from work over several nights, erasing it by accident two times before I got it....I'm sure my answers changed. Click on the link above to vote for me, and Stay Tuned! I'm working on some cool tiny skeletons for my Angels and Icons class at Art-Is-You in CT in October.

I'm still soliciting interesting contributions for HOT FLASH: A CELEBRATION and posting some samples on my Pamela page on Facebook.

Art and Life

2010-05-28T21:24:00.001-07:00

Two more portraits to add to my Body of Work! I'm really enjoying doing these, getting into the Zone, when Time stands still. This is my friend, Patti Gibbons from the Hudson Valley. Annie, Patti, and I traveled through Maine and Nova Scotia together two years ago and will hang out together again this summer when I go East to teach at Art-Is-You in CT in October.

I'm not as happy with the first (horizontal) portrait of Patti...making ART always makes me want to make MORE. The photo of Patti smoking that I used for this painting was taken in Annie's back yard, the night I left NY for the West...neither of them usually smokes, and I never do. Interesting to see how each painting shows a different aspect of Patti. You can see her at her blog: pagibbons.blogspot.com

This is the portrait of Loel Annie Barr from that same night in June 2005. It would be fun to take pictures of them in my current back yard, although it's still too cold here in the NW to sit outside. David C and I were talking the other night about Art-Making being my religion...I can get lost in the timeless Zone when I'm painting. With a long weekend coming up and four days off, my self-induced pressure is on, to create and achieve: Start the wedding portrait of Meg and Mo, work on HOT FLASH, finish the Big Doll, Juan de Fuca Festival, arrange rocks in my yard (if the rain stops long enough).

Last weekend was David and Winnie the dog.

Yes, and it was, indeed,
sunny in the rain forest.
We went to see Sarah and Aaron in Forks, and to the Rain Forest for the first time since I moved here...we did so much on visits pre 2005, but once I moved here to live, I've been so focused at home, I have not traveled much.

Decrease the Pressure. Enjoy the Process. Balance the Life!

I see that I am becoming redundant...oh, well.

Art and Life

2010-05-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

Here I am, happily in the HOH Rainforest yesterday. Notice jacket, sweater, scarf, silk shirt...May in the NW!

David came over from Seattle, since Brian was away at Band Camp. David brought his cute little Mini (his second), along with the new dog, Winnie, who I am beginning to think of as my youngest niece. (see my Facebook page for pictures of the adoption).

I love the drippy moss, dappled light, the 500-year-old tree. We have Such Beautiful surroundings here! One advantage of being over 62 is having a Golden Eagle pass to get into any National Park for free. Too bad it takes a visitor to get me out enjoying my surroundings--that's not totally true.

Little car, big trees. Good to hang out with my youngest brother.
Today he worked on some new cloaks for Winnie, while I cooked. We are lucky to have siblings we enjoy.

I am lucky to have more wonderful things to do than time--much preferable to the other way around!

The ART PART: Last weekend's Tiny Art Quilt class at Quilted Strait, now in Port Gambol, WA. A wonderful group of women and class room. We had fun working inside on a Beautiful Saturday, although I did stop at the beach in Port Townsend on my way home...LOVE the beaches!

Kathie Karst's piece, using tree fungus, attached with tulle.

Lindy Leon, sewing like mad on her fabric journal pages. She had a whole furniture unit with drawers of supplies...serious Workshopper!

Mo Harrah's tape-transferred Monkey face in a fabric jungle. Even though she left all her treasures at either the old MT or new PA home, she made do in style, and said she enjoyed being able to play, instead of teach.

I wore my pieced ancestor vest, with photo transfers onto cloth on the back, showing the wedding of my mother's parents in 1918. Here, Patsy Simpson and I are discussing strategy for her music-oriented piece. She says she's going to applique piano keys.

Thanks, Wendy Whittenmore, for furnishing some of the pictures of class. Here you are, contemplating your next move...

and the tribute quilt for your husband .you made below...I imagine we could have just kept sewing and sewing, talking and talking. Thank you, Ladies, for a fun Saturday!

Kris invited me back for a return engagement in the fall, maybe Ancestor dolls.

In October, I head East to teach 3 classes at Art-Is-You in CT: Angels and Icons--tiny dolls, Dancing on the Edge--dolls using found objects, and Star of My Own Show--self portraits.

There is also my current fascination with painting portraits. I am using charcoal and acrylic on heavy water color paper, to save money and storage space, but am thinking that canvas is easier, and doesn't have to be framed. I've slowed down considerably since I did the eight portraits in seven days thing...

The first Patti portrait and then the start of the second Patti portrait. I always see things I want to do differently next time, which means do Another, then Another.

I'm still chugging along with the HOT FLASH book, too--send me pictures and stories, the yard, cleaning house (at least once every 6 months), work--ah, yes, work that keeps a roof over my head while I play and make ART. What is the Answer for a healthy and happy life? Is it to be content with accomplishing a little bit of a lot of things, even while I try to keep honing and honing to the most important (to me)?

Tiny Art Quilts this weekend in Port Gambol, etc.

2010-05-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

Quilted Strait, formerly of Port Angeles, has moved to historic Port Gambol, with a fabulous new space, in a large red building near the outdoor vendors. The class for this Saturday, May 15th, 11am-5pm, is Tiny Art Quilts, and includes: Wall Hangings,

Fabric Journals,

and Artist Trading Cards.

There is still space in the class, so contact Kris Cornell

if you'd like to join in the fun.

I'll help with patterns, design ideas, photo transfers onto fabric, tape transfers, and gel transfers.

Every year I keep cutting back on teaching, both because of my job responsibilities and because I need more time to work on my own art projects, BUT I WILL be teaching at Art-Is-You in Danbury, CT, in October, 2010. Here are a couple of samples from my Self Portrait class, which I'll be teaching on the West Coast (Friday Harbor) the second weekend in November.

Exploring the INNER YOU, in fabric, paper, paint, beads, wire, and everything else we can think of, so Start Saving up!

Art Life Work Travel

2010-05-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

Patti's portrait, Phase I. I wanted to finish today (Sunday) but I may not make it. I'm in a funk, maybe overload of Interesting Things to Do. I'm running up against the Brick Wall of Too much to Do and Too Little Time! And after the message this morning in Meditation about how much we create our own versions of reality, I Should (bad word) be totally mellow, inside rotating all my interests and accomplishing a bit at a time...or Running Outside each time the sun comes out and re-arranging my stones.

And Every Once in a While, one Must get out (off the Peninsula) and honor a date made back in February, to meet up with Karen Ford and be taken on the Grand Tour of Poulsbo.

I am trying to remember to pack my camera every time I go out, and here was a photo-op of shades of gray, converging lines, the dejected posture of the man in the old VW van in front of me (toting 2 male teens), while waiting for the Hood Canal Bridge to close after the ships went through.

Poulsbo is a very cute Norwegian theme town on one of the many bodies of water around here...I need to put up a map for myself! and learn my new (5 years now) home turf. We had a lovely lunch of fish and chips and really good coleslaw, and I wish I'd taken a picture of the place and wish I remembered the name. Karen says it's Pamela Armas' favorite place to eat in Poulsbo, and Pamela knows her restaurants.

We also got to tour the best resources: beads (Imagine That!), rubber stamps (Rubber Soul), and the ever-tempting Central Market. Co-ops of the local artists' work, cute houses in the hilly neighborhoods, too.

Karen's house is ALL studio, with a potential additional studio out back. Getting used to single life again at 63 is a challenge, and she has good support from Jack's sisters and her own brother. I wish I could have met Jack. From his pictures and her stories, he was quite a guy. Karen's going to send me the address of her blog, so once I figure out how to do it, I can post it on my blog as a place to go...also Mike Yeager's. I must be using an older version of blogspot, and I can't figure out how to make the links permanent, because I didn't put the current ones up there....and I don't know if I could really face starting fresh with a new template.

Ah, the tiny violins are playing on the radio for me now. I am SO lucky to be here in the NW, surrounded by beauty, by friends and family, AND with MORE ideas than time!

Here's the beach at Port Townsend with the tiny white lighthouse way in the distance, a patch of sun at 7pm where I stopped on an otherwise cloudy, rainy, and adopted rocks for my yard.

I keep advising others to trust their instincts...so I really should take my own advice. Some times friends and adventure are sacrificed for Art, sometimes Projects and Art are put aside for friends and adventures...and maybe a little of both all the time. I am Very Grateful for my day job that supports my Art habit, but sometimes I long for uninterrupted hours to explore Every Avenue...not many have that, fewer and fewer these days.

So, on a lighter note--I am working at following my Buddhist teaching to:

(1) Appreciate the rain for the opportunity it affords me to stay inside and work on Art: books and sculpture and painting
(2) Appreciate Friends and Family and the beauty of the Olympic Peninsula for getting me out of my Self---boy, do I need that!
(3) Appreciate the endless Inspiration from friends, travels, materials, and the universe.

BUT I have a question, which may take some time to answer:

WHY did I feel Compelled to purchase two packs of ephemera, when I have a whole bureau full at home, because of this image--What is it about this image???

The necklace of colored skulls, I can understand! Also special thanks to Karen for turning me on to Century Girl--an Amazing use of collage to tell a story. I went on to amazon late at night (very dangerous) and ordered it, PLUS three other books...

Thanks for your inspiration, Karen, and stay tuned to see what I do with all your inspiration!

Two tiny birds dueling on top of the fence, they match each other posture for posture, fly up, flapping...they're not any bigger than the gourd skull at the end of the fence, and they keep coming back to the confrontation...are they dueling or courting? Life, Death, Earth shaking drama, just outside my window...Maybe I'll actually do the HOT FLASH page for Facebook next..there are too many other people involved, for me to let that languish.

Art Work

2010-04-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

Social Media is all the rage! I'm taking classes with the Fabulous Renne to learn how to navigate all the new venues. In the mean time, my blog is home base, with a picture of my latest portrait of my friend, Loel Annie Barr
I used a photo I took the night I moved away from Saugerties, NY, almost five years ago now. She doesn't usually smoke--that I know of, but that was a unique occasion. I have a picture of Patti, too, which will be my next portrait.

I have, indeed, been seduced by the ongoing loveliness of the Northwest spring and my ongoing large (100' x 100')
Yard project...I LOVE those stones! Also the un-ending and impossible task of pulling up all the Millenium plants before they start popping seeds. All my Greatest Loves,
as well as the job that pays for the bacon are competing for my time and attention.

The long-armed and legged figure from my sketchbook page is my latest sculpture. I'll post pictures as soon as it's beyond the sewn-together fabric stage. I was going to do it for the next show at PAFAC, but I think the deadline is going to arrive too soon. Part of my new push for Maturity,
Wisdom, and Grace is to accept that I will Always want to do more than what life allows me time. If I miss a deadline, it wasn't more important than all the other things I do. Sadly, I also decided at the last minute to miss David's SMC concert in Bremerton last Saturday night. Luckily we accept each other's moment-to-moment priorities, and we have a weekend together scheduled soon...there's a Mexican restaurant on Capitol Hill I MUST try...which reminds me of the on-going Reliability of the Sensual Pleasure of Food!

My new favorite coffee house...are they as ubiquitous in the NE? Blackbird, where the pie and the magazines and bread pudding and ambiance are great, and I can justify One Piece of berry pie, if I take a good walk over to 8th and Peabody. The apple pie with cheddar crust is fabulous, and I have yet to get there early enough for the cheddar biscuit with bacon and chives, but I hear it's Wonderful. They save me from baking and eating a whole pie by myself, although I did make a Delicious cornbread with blue Stilton topping and a side of mole pork.

It's been an eventful week...Mom had a brief brush with death...a heart attack conveniently taking place in the hospital, where she'd been admitted for tests after complaining of chest pains at her doctor visit. She seems to be doing very well now, and got out of ICU on Sunday.

I was good, and did my colonoscopy on schedule, with good results...at least I found two photos in my purse after that sure looked clean. Thanks, Sally, for the ride and following me home. The procedure isn't as bad as it used to be...and we ALL have an obligation to Take Care of Ourselves...also, to be Kind and keep telling others, like Mothers, that you love them...just in case...oh, yes, and Annie has her first grandson, Charlie, born this last week and Incredibly Cute.

Euphorbia!!! I Love the name. Above, a new Euphorbia from Visions Nursery, with my attendant rock arrangement, then another Euphorbia up at the back of my back yard hill by the fence...It must have ridden in with a bag of hens and chicks that one of my patients gave me several years ago...I sure am glad I didn't weed it out by mistake, although I'm fighting the grass for control of the back row. I LOVE the combination of red and chartreuse.

Today is my Tuesday off, mostly devoted to chugging along with the Hot Flash book. I know there aren't many who would approve of my method of organization: Set up the book in In Design and just plug in pages and pictures, then
move them around until I'm satisfied...or the deadline looms, whichever comes first. For an organized person, I am rather sloppy, both about procedures and finished products. I just don't have time to be a Perfectionist...there are too many things I want to try. And I have to fit my Art Work in around my work as a hand therapist and my social activities and my magnificent stone yard and Food and exercise...book group tonight...Read 'em and Eat.

And, Oh, yes, Social Media...and figuring out how it all fits together, at least for me. Renne says we can reveal different persona in different places, and I say, well, I've been trying to be honest in my one person for years now, and feel as if I'm getting a little better at it all the time. SO, When I Have Time (when have you heard that before???) I intend to work over my web site...the location where I can sell things, like books, patterns, paintings? and sculptures? (after all, a girl has to make a little dough, so she can eat and buy paints and books and such).

This Blog, is a sort of a diary, for those who want to see me chat about All the Stuff that goes through my head from week to week...or at least some of it. Facebook is a briefer, I guess, group info/chat, where I can build a Page for my business, and keep friends updated at a quick glance. Flickr class was last night, and that looks like a place where I can group pictures of my paintings, sculptures, studio, travel...but also maybe teach classes and run groups and participate in groups online. Maybe a group of other pushy, hard-on-ourselves female artists from around the world who can encourage each other to do our best work...maybe even men artist/writers/musicians, too. The next class is in Second Life, and I think my first Avatar may be a man. Brain exercise--see how it feels. I went by the Big Doll (who lives in my main room) the other day, thinking that maybe I can stand to finish her now.

I see that there's already a Hot Flash group on Flickr...So, so many new avenues to explore! The world wide web is changing life as we expected it, for sure! Here I go, doing my best to cram in as much life and creativity and kindness as I can into each moment. Join me!