Courage and Memories

 Life got in the way of blogging. Holidays got in the way of blogging. Work got in the way of blogging. Art and journaling got me through the holidays and life's curve balls. In August, our beloved fur baby Coco, aka Coconut Jenkins Wyatt, got sick. Had to be rushed to the Animal Medical Center hospital. He was treated (fluid drawn off sac around his heart) and they said to bring him back in three months for a checkup. In about a month we were back. More treatment, seemed okay. Then he had a seizure. Again rushed to AMC. Then he got sick again, this time the fluid was around his lungs. We couldn't touch his tummy, couldn't put a coat on him. Couldn't bathe him. Then he wasn't the same, got sicker every day. Wouldn't eat his favorite foods. The day after Christmas, we took him to AMC. He crossed the rainbow bridge. Somehow that week I managed to get to work and push my way through the loss. Concentrating on work was better than walking around the apartment crying. Every little thing was a trigger for crying and feeling the loss.

Journal memory written on December 30 after meeting a little girl on the 6 train

It was the Friday before New Year's Eve, a little after five, Coco had died just after midnight three days before. I was riding the 6 train home from work. A mother with a baby boy in a carriage (not a folding stroller, so they must have been from out of town) and a little girl about four got on the train and sat next to me. The girl was wiggly and jiggly and even with my headset on and iPhone music cranked up I could hear the mother asking her repeatedly (and patiently) to sit down, to turn around. After a few stops she was still wiggly, so instead of playing a new game of FreeCell, and grooving to my oldies, I went to my photo album and clicked on pictures a four-year old might like: paper dolls with wings, handmade sock monkeys, some of my more whimsical art and craft creations, and the occasional silly Barkpost dog doing silly human things. We didn't say anything to each other, just looked at photos together.

After a while the little girl--who interestingly looked a lot like me at four--pointed to a picture of Coco, so I made it larger for her to see. She bent over and kissed the screen and smiled at me. My heart melted. I felt like she was a little messenger from Heaven telling Coco that he was loved and remembered.

With all that happened in 2016--the changes at work, family health issues, the loss of Coco, the social and political climate in the country--I chose the word "courage" for my 2017 word of the year. I know I will need it and I hope I will find it when needed.

Courage journal page, with Dina Wakley face stamp and Artistcellar Om stencil.

Printmaking and Painting and My Art Staycation

Today officially starts my week-long  ART STAYCATION! Unofficially, it started Saturday morning. I pulled out most of my art supplies and scattered them around the living room in organized chaos. Saturdays seem to be the day when I just create a mess, painting backgrounds that don't look like much, pulling prints off my new gelli plate, cutting, measuring, mixing and splattering. On Sundays, I am more rested and often manage to figure out a way to pull the unrelated art bits into some kind of unified piece. Sometimes it is just a little edge of a print that becomes an ATC or a tag.

Collage with Gelli printed deli paper and stencils, assorted papers,
vintage royalty free images and printout of original drawing

Collage using vintage magazine ad, stenciled
Gelli printed deli paper and assorted papers

For my staycation, I have a few plans. One is to work on my faces using the Jane Davenport method. I have a vision of doing something bigger than an ATC, incorporating angels and wings and Medieval illuminated writing on it. I have sketchbooks and journals full of ideas that I scribbled down in moments of inspiration, so I will pull them out and see if anything turns into a solid idea.

Layers of Gelli-stencil deli paper prints, thermofax prints and assorted papers

I hope to pull my 6x6 series from the Julie Balzer workshop into one piece, maybe even hang it on the wall. Strangely, our walls are kind of empty, and my husband keeps saying: "Why don't you hang some of your work up?" Why indeed? Well, much of it is in art journals--can't hang them very easily. Some pieces are too personal, too in-your-face and I don't want to look at them every day. Some of them remind me of where I have been, emotionally, and looking at them evokes feelings I don't really want to revisit.

There's a couple unfinished projects on the horizon: my finishing the hand-quilting on my grand-niece's handmade fabric piece, repairing broken jewelry--some commercial and some handmade. Then there's the canvases...I made a "junque journal" in a Julie Balzer class, which is now so fat it will hardly close. So, I need a new one. I had some painted canvases that were intended to be covers for the first journal, but they weren't quite right. So, yesterday I gessoed over them. I had used some fiber paste through a stencil, and the gesso didn't cover it, so I used molding paste on top. Still didn't cover it. So that's a back-burner project in two parts...making the canvases look okay, and putting them together into a new journal.

Here's the 2"x3" printmaking experiments from yesterday. Two will be traded, one is a "keeper" and the rest will go in the nowhere land storage bin and either be reworked, added to another project, or used for an emergency greeting card.