Christmas Break

Well actually I'm going on a way-before-christmas-and-well-into-the-new-year-break!

It's not christmas yet, but I'm taking an early break because my house is in chaos! My bathroom is being completely redone (I've had leakage since september and they couldn't find the source, so now they are just going to redo the entire bathroom) and who knew that one small room being redone would give so much mess in the entire house? Everything is upside down! My kitchen is now my bathroom, there are grains of dust and stone everywhere, I've had to move several pieces of furniture to make room and I have no running water upstairs so painting in my studio is troublesome at best (and yes, I am using it as a stupid excuse to do nothing, sigh).

If all goes well things should be finished before christmas and then I'll be having a two week vacation (and a brand new bathroom). Yay! I want to limit my chores during those two weeks, so I am going off line on most of the mailing lists and groups (I will be checking my e-mail every now and then) and I am taking a break from this blog. I'll be back somewhere halfway january. I wish all of you a very merry christmas and an exciting and wonderful new year!

The Search

Every two years the small local museum does an art exhibit of local artists. Two years ago I participated for the first time and just recently the current exhibit opened. Last time each artist could enter two pieces and I had already decided on framing two of my works on acrylic paper. But then I got word that you could only enter one piece and that somehow would not work for what I had in mind. So I decided to put up another piece entirely.

(sorry, the photograph's not very good)

I made this mixed media painting last march when I did not have a blog yet, so you haven't seen it up here yet either. It was originally made for the local church during lent season. The reverend wanted to use works of local artists in his services and I was asked to contribute. I am not a member of the church, but I was kind of honored to be asked.

The painting is called 'The Search' and is about how we look for peace of mind and satisfaction in all the wrong places. It contains lyrics by both Alanis Morissette ("Would not come") and Jewel Kirchner ("Hands") and is full of contradictions. You can't really see it all on the photograph, but the thing has I think about ten layers, one of my favorites being the fake play money.  The painting measures 60x60 cm.

Attached to the exhibit is always a little contest where the public can vote for their favorite painting. I don't expect to win this, because the rather sad truth is that most people that visit are tourists and they expect paintings of sea scapes and beaches and other idyllic local scenery since this is an island after all.

But what I did enjoy last time were the comments made in the guest book about my work. Those really made my day, especially the ones made by children! The exhibit will run until april, so I'm looking forward to see if I get any response this time as well. And maybe...just maybe...I will sell it!

From the heart journal

I enjoy working in my new heart journal very much. This spread is based on an assignment from a dutch book on creativity and art (Creativiteit, geen kunst). The idea was to use eyes from magazines as a base for a journal spread.

Winter is here! We had the first snow on november 26, which was not much yet, but I had to take pictures of it as you can see at the bottom of the following spread. As I am writing this a lot more snow has fallen, but it all is turning into ice and getting to work is a risky business, since I live on top of a dune and always have to go down hill to get anywhere.

I love living on an island, because I always wanted to live by the sea and as any island we are surrounded by it. These pictures were taken of the Wadden Sea which is to the south of our island. The print turned out so blue not because of photoshop editing or freaky weather conditions, but because the printer ran out of magenta ink! I like the effect a print has when not all colors are available.

This is a small series of self portraits. Well, except for one, can you guess which one? ;-) But even that furry one is a part of me somehow.
Here you can also see the effect of the lack of magenta at work. The pictures turned out very yellow.

No journal is complete without at least one spread dedicated to my 'dorrebomen'. I did a post on them a few months ago. These are drawn with neocolor II crayons.

I am putting way more photographs into my journals than I used to, but then again, since I have a compact camera I am taking way more photographs than I used to. These are all pets of family members. Are they cute or what?

New perspective

I am currently reading Lix Lamoreux book 'Inner excavation' which is a pretty cool book about exploring the self through photography, poetry and mixed media. It is full of interesting exercises and even though I haven't really done any of them yet they do make me itch to try some elements from them already.

One of these was trying to use a new perspective when using my camera. The following three photo's were made on a beautiful and cold winter's morning last sunday. The idea is to put your camera on the ground and shoot. Because I was on the beach I just held my camera and rested my hand on the ground (don't want no sand in my new camera, thank you very much). I like how this changes the photographs you take.

The last one was not done from the ground, but from my normal perspective, but I kind of liked it, so I'm just adding it as a bonus-good-for-nothing-but-being-pretty photograph ;-)

Monks little book

A couple of years ago my friend M., who is nicknamed Monkie or Monk, and I visited a gallery in Rotterdam where we saw the incredible work of Jean Tinguely. Look him up on the web, he made fantastic enormous sculptures that look like intricate machines, except they have no purpose but be art. It's wonderful to see those machines actually move and we had a wonderful time admiring his work.

Next to all these huge machines were of course smaller bits and bobs of his. Photographs, sketches, films and...letters. It was the letters that caught our attention, because they were pieces of art by themselves. He sent these beautifully illustrated notes to friends and other artists often containing sketches and a very loose handwriting that we really liked too.

Being the creative gals we are we of course were both inspired by this and before we even left the building I think both of us secretly decided to send the other some mail art. That was the start of a correspondence of art that's been going on ever since. We have no rules and no deadlines or anything. We just send something when we feel like it's about time we send something and that works just fine. There's no pressure.

I often use my mail art to do little experiments or to use materials I hardly ever use just to get a feel for them. It's a lot of fun and of course it's a lot of fun to receive Monks works of art as well. I hope we will keep it up for a long time!

As I told you in my previous post recently I received a small but lovely booklet from her containing her sketches which were mostly done during a sketching class she took and since she doesn't have a blog I asked her if it was okay to show it off on mine. So here we go!

Is that cool or what? I love handmade books and if its filled with so much personal art it's even better. So thank you again Monk!

If you want to see more of her work or her photographs please check out her flickr (which she should update more often, grumble) and her fotothing. Enjoy!