Things I've created and some thoughts about things
With this box I tried shading with different colors of beads as well as using beads made from different materials like fresh water pearls and I think there’s an amber bead in there. The sides are covered in two-toned paper. The inside is painted with acrylic paint and the inside lid and bottom are covered in an old collage remnant. Inside I keep obsidian shards from a chime (similar to this one) that fell apart after being left outside too long!
Crescents
Crescents (top)
Crescents (inside)
I recently finished this small oil painting based on the Roman Pines that I saw on our trip to Italy. I took a lot of liberty with the colors. This past fall I was noticing, as I do every year, the vivid yellows in the trees here in Atlanta. Yellow is a standout color for me especially against a blue sky. I wanted to include those colors in a piece and I wanted to do another Roman Pines painting so I combined the two. Couldn’t help but be influenced again by Georgia O’Keeffe. I call it “Transitioning”.
Oil on masonite board, 11″ x 14″
Transitioning
I hate to throw anything away that looks like it has any potential of becoming something in my art. Scraps of paper, old leather coats and plastic netting—all get saved. I think this comes from the “art” projects they had us do in school when I was a kid that involved reusing stuff. Have you ever made angels out of Readers Digests? I did! My Mother loved them. Now, I even keep art pieces that didn’t come out like I wanted, cut them up and reassemble them.
I first covered this box with copper leaf. Then I applied recycled collages inside and out. It usually holds some of the sea glass that I’ve found on the beaches in Provincetown, MA.
Forgotten Garden Box
Forgotten Garden Box (inside)
The name for this box comes from what the box contains. Inside are the wings from a butterfly that I found which was already dead. I also like this line from the Elton John Song “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,”
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear,
You’re a butterfly
And butterflies are free to fly
Fly away, high away, bye bye
The sides are gold-leafed with a small silver paint design towards top. The top has mostly seed beads with a mixture of many other kinds and a piece of sea glass. Inside there’s a small paper collage on the inside cover and on the bottom under the butterfly wings.
Butterflies Are Free to Fly
Butterflies Are Free to Fly (inside)
Butterflies Are Free to Fly (top)
This is my most recent beaded box. The Full Moon is a subject that appears all over the things I create. You can look at the Moon and know that people that you love who aren’t near might be looking at it at the same time. The love Full Moon.
I started this box a few years ago. It had been a while since completing the one before it and I was feeling the need to bead again! Have you ever watched clouds float by the Moon? That’s what I was trying to create with this box. I had beaded most of the top just before our dear friend Bruce came to stay with us. I wrote about Bruce here. When Bruce died on the Full Moon of April 2010 this box took on a much different meaning for me. I completed it during the Summer of 2010. The inside is covered in a saffron colored paper. Saffron is my color for Bruce. In the box is a piece of saffron colored silk sprayed with Karma, the cologne he would wear sometimes.
The sides have Crescent Moons on them. The top is edged with a dark blue cord and copper wire. It’s about 4″ by 2″ by 2 1/2″ deep.
Bruce's Full Moon Box
Bruce's Full Moon Box (inside)
Bruce's Full Moon Box (top)
I first got the idea to bead boxes from an extremely talented artist and good friend of Bob’s and mine, Chris Senesi. He gave us a beaded box as a wedding gift. It’s a combination of found beaded pieces and pieces that he wove himself on a “beading loom”. And the inside was lined with fur!
I was mesmerized! This was right up my alley. I went out and bought unfinished boxes and LOTS of beads. The first box was a pencil box. I glued beads to the top in a design that echoed the bottom of the ocean. Of course I had to make it more challenging and glued them one at a time using tweezers so that the holes in the beads wouldn’t show. I have no idea how long it took me. I’d work on it when I had time. I think I had a lot more time back then. I gave it to my friend Sue.
The second box, pictured here, is larger—about 10″ by 6″ and 2″ deep. I beaded the top and used silver leaf on the sides. I also used found objects like sea-glass, shells, stones, larger beads and old broken pottery on this one. When Sue saw this box she said, “You have to do the sides also! It just won’t be complete.” I hardly ever not take her advice so I finished by beading the box all the way around the sides. I lined the inside with some of my favorite papers.. It probably took me over a year to complete.
Doing this is like meditation for me. I get so pulled into projects like this. Hours go by without knowing it. I try to get away from it and I say to myself, “just one more half inch square more and I’ll stop.” I HAVE to make things so why not glue beads on boxes one at a time.
This large box is named “When Galaxies Collide” because that’s what it looks like to me. I didn’t start out with anything representational in mind. Just turned out this way. I have more boxes that I’ll post later.
When Galaxies Collide
When Galaxies Collide (open)
When Galaxies Collide (side detail)
When Galaxies Collide (detail)
When Galaxies Collide (detail)
Roman Pine
When we landed in Rome on our trip to Italy I noticed the very tall trees in the distance with slender trunks and a canopy way up top. I found out later that they are Roman pines. Since we left immediately for Tuscany I didn’t get to see them again until we came back to Rome to stay for a few days before coming home. I fell in love with these trees! My friend Paul, who was with us, called them “Jack trees” because he knows the kind of trees I love to paint—expressive ones.
I was out one night with Bob while he was doing some night photography and I asked him to take a few shots on the trees looking up from below. They were being lit by street lights and looked very different than they did during daylight. I just finished my first painting from the photos. I knew, even when I saw the trees that night, that I was being inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting, The Lawrence Tree, which I’ve always thought was oriented so that the trunk comes up from the bottom. According to several sources it should be the other way around. like this—
Georgia O'Keeffe - The Lawrence Tree
Bob & I were very fortunate to go on a trip to Italy recently. Spent several days in Tuscany, not far from Siena and then 4 nights in Rome. Bob of course took a lot of incredible photos of the entire trip. So many that he had to create two facebook albums!
In Tuscany I got a chance to do some watercolors from the castle we were staying in called Castello di Montalto. If you go to the link you’ll see what an incredible place it is. I did a few watercolors in Rome but mostly did a lot of walking and viewing of masterpieces! A friend gave me these great watercolors brushes that have a water reservoir in the handle. All you do is fill them and squeeze them to wet your paper and colors! I also bought a traveling Windsor Newton watercolor set. They were perfect.
These are all 6″ X 4″.
View From Montalto -1
View From Montalto -2
View From Montalto -3
Montalto Study -1
Montalto Study -2
Montalto Livingroom Door
Montalto Colors
View From Rome Hotel -1
View From Rome Hotel -2
I did this small painting last weekend. This was a house that was next to where we were staying in Provincetown last May. It had a very large deck that was right on the harbor. It’s a large one bedroom house on the market for $2.1 million!
The time of day was late afternoon so the sun was casting yellow highlights on the weathered wood shingles that covered the sides and roof of the house. Weathered wood shingles always remind me of Cape Cod.
“Through the Window”, oil on board, 5″ X 7″
Through the Window
A recent oil painting done from my trip to Provincetown this past May. The photo after it is what my palette looked like when the painting was complete. I thought the similarities were interesting.
Little White House, oil on board. 8″ X 10″
Little White House
