my hands

...my hands lately covered in bright paint daily from little ones...

I have gotten very behind in creating and posting journal pages, and they were really helping me get somewhere with some new ideas, too! I have been teaching little kids art camp classes full time lately and have greatly missed my studio time... and the quiet it brings :)

I will start again next week with at least one a day... maybe some encouragement from those who enjoyed seeing them daily would inspire me to keep them up...

a fresh new look

check out the new update on my website: Embody Series

Spilling and Scrubbing

some recent inspirations: random things from my granddad's house
ovals, borders, frames, circles, patterns, ornamentation:

this has led me to several new ideas that are all very different but have all sort of come together into a nice idea for a fresh new series... pushing the idea of MIXED MEDIA- I want to use more machine embroidery, sewing, different shaped panels, things falling off of panels, cutting into the paintings, works on paper, a couple of instillation fabric and mixed media pieces of spills... I want to use assemblage and 3D materials, beeswax, encaustic, and quilt pieces

ideas running through my head lately:

spilling
covering
disintegrating
shadows
cycles

i am THINKING about reworking an old piece... and using it as a piece inspired by Hosea's wife, Gomer- the prostitute who leaves and comes back several times, returning to old habits and how this can parallel with so many behavior patterns...

In Francine Rivers book Redeeming Love, she writes a contemporary story of Hosea and Gomer and there is a scene when Sarah (Gomer) comes back the last time to stay where she goes off to the river to scrub herself clean of the city and the life she had their in the brothel, she scrubs and scrubs and gets carried away and Micheal Hosea comes out of the house to her and it is this beautiful moment where he gets to share with her his heart and the heart of his God and forgiveness and mercy....

I was thinking about pouring a warm white paint all over the top of this and then scrubbing and using sandpaper to see how far back to this I could get... and then I thought about doing some of that and that took me to some more ideas...


ive been really looking at leaves that are disintegrating or being eaten away at by weather or bugs or whatever it is that does this to leaves... in some of the ones ive picked up, you can still see the veins in the holes- barely holding on- so brittle and delicate..

so i want to rip away at the piece literally, cut/tear holes into it and add to it fibers and handmade paper that will look like veins in the leaves that are left behind

I am also thinking of doing a couple of fabric pieces that are very minimalistic and mostly different shades of white and transluscent fabric that looks like it has been scrubbed and washed and disintegrating becuase of the rigorous scrubbing trying to wash out stains and wash the past away... they could be displayed on a clothesline like they are hung out to dry after being washed...

and a small study:

using pieces from one of my ceramics projects with similar meaning about spilling out from within... whenever I think abstractly, I see these petal leaf-like pinched and flowing shapes mixed with thick liquidlike something pouring... today I poured candle wax onto this... tomorrow I am buying some Beeswax to experiment with

idea journaling today

last week I was Miss Deeann

Cheekwood Summer Camp

I got an idea for my 5 and 6 year old class one day when I was looking at one of the paintings in my cherished collection from all my friends at art school by artist:

Liz Roetzel

I had them do really colorful abstract under paintings with watercolors one day and let them dry overnight...

The next day I had them draw shapes over the top of the parts of their underpainting they liked with markers...
it was so funny how specific they were... I told a couple of them to draw more shapes and they both said they had already drawn shapes around all the parts they liked, the rest they wanted to cover up...
I made sure to help them pick a color to go over the top that would be opaque enough and different enough than the colors in the background. They were so cute giving each other advice about what colors they should and shouldn't pick after I had helped a couple of them choose.


This one was probably my favorite- he worked SO slow... and everyone else was done and I said "you know, I kinda like it the way it is..." and he goes "thats kinda what I was thinkin" hahaha... I think it turned out SO nice! I would frame it if he were mine....

In the afternoons I taught at 10-12 year old class:
Studio Sampler


coffee stain abstracts!

some of their stain drips and splatters really turned out nice!

we added india ink and colored pencil on top the next day to accentuate lines and shapes they found within their coffee stains... we talked about shading and focal points and most of them turned out really nice.... this is the project the parents commented about the most...


Assemblage project on cardboard... after they put gesso on with palette knives, glued a ton of crazy materials on there, and added whatever they wanted with fabric and glue... I encouraged them all the next day to do a muted tone wash over the top to pull the whole thing together and showed them how to use paper towels to wipe off parts that they didn't want to cover up.


The last day I had them all draw a grid onto illustration board and I made a "map" with numbers on each rectangle of the grid of exactly how many layers they had to do in each shape. It encouraged them to layer and try new ways to texture and accentuate their under-paintings of the first layers. This seemed to be one of their favorite projects, perhaps because they were purposeful and took a lot of time working on each part of the grid.

dedicated to my sweet friend and new mother: Mali

new mothers, fathers, and grandmothers

I went through some of my granddad's photos and found these sweet ones from when my mother was born- their first baby. I love looking through his old photographs because they are so beautiful. The one in the bottom right corner is not my grandmother- it is some friends of theirs but I thought he really captured a sweet moment during their friend's pregnancy.

sketches of the sweet comfortable rest children find in the mothers arms....

Rivers David Glass
born yesterday!
Congratulations to my friends Mitchel and Mali Glass on their sweet baby boy!