Bookcase...the end.

I've come to the end of my furniture refinishing for now - two weeks was long enough. Besides, how far can one can of red paint go? Mama's bookcase - after and before (see photo below). Everything old is new again.

Maple Table Complete...whew!

Ten days ago I started work on the maple table and today I'm finally done. This has been a labor of love that included a lot of trial and error. I thought I could use MinWax Polyshades Maple but it looked terrible so I had to strip all that off, wash the table, sand the table and begin again. I finally bought some MinWax Wood Finish Maple stain then a coat of Johnson's Paste Wax on top. There is also a leaf that isn't shown in this photo of the table in the waxing stage. I'm calling the table good for the next 50 years.

Green Again - Grandpa's Chair

Well, it took some doing but the little green chair is done. First I painted it a "better" green but it looked like an Easter object - matte and pastel and wrong. I finally realized that the best outcome for the little green chair would be for me to put it back to the way I remember it; the way it was before I started altering it. So, I painted it a better bad green. I sanded some edges for wear to honor it's age of more than 100 years and I sprayed it with satin polyurethane. Here it is, drying outside in our March sunshine.

The Green Chair

When I was growing up, we had a chair that Mama said her father carved by hand. She was proud that it was fit together without the use of nails.  It was green (Mama’s favorite color). A really bad green... so, when I was old enough to use a hack saw on the wrought iron bed (aaarggh) and was able to open a can of paint, I painted it black. Next, I painted it beige. I took it with me when I moved out at age 21 and at some point I was inspired to strip it back to the wood. Stripping was not successful though so for the last 27 years it has been stored in Jay’s garage.

I am determined to actually USE all the old family heirlooms in the new house so the chair is in my studio now awaiting its remake. I tried my favorite stripper on it but no luck. So, I’ll paint it, and in honor of Mama and as penance for my furniture sins, I’ll paint it GREEN again.

 

There are some numbers on the bottom of the chair - I won't paint over them - but what does it say? 1892? My sister didn't remember the chair at all but after I told her Grandpa carved it, she suddenly remembered standing beside him as he worked. Jay says now we have an idea of how old my sister really is.

Cool red, warm red

Fifty years ago my first table came into my life*. It is maple, drop leaf. I painted the legs red. I did art projects on it in my Broadway apartment when I was in art school in Seattle. We ate a thousand blackberry pies on it when we lived in the beach house in Magnolia. My two children sat at this table while I spooned homemade baby food into their mouths and they painted their first watercolor art here and scribbled with crayons on paper and onto the table in Leschi. It went with us to the farm we bought on Vashon Island. It has been with me all these years in Renton and is about to take up residence in the breakfast nook of our new home in Black Diamond.

The only problem is the red - it is too blue. Today I began painting the legs a warmer red that will complement our Rustico Cotta tile floor. The photo above shows the old red and the new red. After the paint,  I will flip it over and refinish the table top. I won't remove stains and nicks that show it has been well used but it really needs a good cleaning after its participation in many annual pasta making parties.

*When my former husband, Bill Iles was twenty and we were dating, he worked as a delivery person for Van's Furniture in Kent. I was able to purchase this table because the original owner bought a new dining table to replace it. Originally, there were two ladder-back chairs that eventually fell apart but recently I found two beautiful vintage maple ladder-back chairs on Craigslist.

First week of my sabbatical

It was just a week ago that I declared myself to be on a sabbatical from painting. I have unsubscribed from art blogs - even Daily Paintworks - and I check into Facebook only occasionally. Today I subscribed to a gardening blog. I have some new favorite things to share.

REALLY good book to read for fun (thank you Aunie):

REALLY good advice book for furniture projects:

BEST stripper I've ever used:

My current project:
This little bookcase sat in the living room of my parents home on "M" street. It was piled with TV Guides, the phone, phone books, a little vase of plastic flowers and whatever else anyone dropped there while passing by. Then, it was with my mother in her assisted living apartment until 2004. I brought it home and it has been in my studio ever since, once again piled with miscellaneous items. Now that I'm on sabbatical, I have time to give it some attention. This week I stripped it and after washing it with a neutralizer I'll repair scratches, prime it and paint it...maybe green, Mama's favorite color.

March 2015 Update

I'm on sabbatical...FINALLY. Read more about it here.

February 2015 Update

Wow, time flies. It has been a month since I last posted.

I've been working on another version of my 2005 pastel, Dappled Path. I want to reuse the glass and frame and rip up the old painting. To prepare, I've been using the old painting as a reference for painting small studies of the scene. They look quite different from the original because my stroke and color choices have evolved in the past 10 years. (I'd be worried if they hadn't changed!)

I completed seven little studies. You can see them here or on Daily Paintworks when I post them for purchase.

My studio is in complete chaos as I pack for the move. Most of my pastels are packed away and my easels are squished over to one side of the room. There are bags of shredding sitting around waiting for more boxes to pack up china. Anyway, in the midst of this mess, I have been painting small studies aiming for a loose, abstract quality. And, I think the mess actually helps me be less careful, less contrived, less concerned about the outcome. That's a good thing for my work but when I look around it makes me crazy.

When my studio is all clean and I attach a blank piece of paper to my easel and look over at my million pastel sticks, I want to do my best. What is my "best." Oh well, that is another subject.

Progress on our house continues and we hope to be in by mid May. When we opened the door to the house a couple days ago we were met by this cute guy on stilts. I asked if I could take his photo and he seemed happy to oblige. You can check the progress of our house here.

Back to it. Happy Spring to you!

graffiti in the family

My 13 year old grandson, Elias, had the opportunity to practice his graffiti on a building his father will be demolishing (NCompass LLC). Elias is a sweet boy and very talented in so many ways, you saw his work on this blog last July when I let him graffiti over one of my old paintings.  I'm happy his father gave Elias the opportunity to express himself on a larger scale. Thanks Drew and Elias for sharing this art.

Happy New Year 2015

Looking back and looking forward

Looking back:
When I look back at 2014 I can see that it was the worst of times and the best of times. Jay and I spent the first nine months of the year practicing patience, tolerance and perseverance. But, we weathered it together. Our communication has increased tenfold since his January retirement and our relationship has grown into the marriage I always thought was possible. Yay!

I took a leap of faith into another art medium in 2014 and also a leap back by ending the year with a two-person show of my colored pencil work with my friend Kay Dewar. The leap forward was an April workshop with Qiang Huang to explore oil paint. I worked spring and summer on small still life oil paintings resulting in a body of work for a Fall show at State of the Arts Gallery. While working in oil, I took an occasional break to paint in pastel and I am grateful for the winter show of my pastels at Scott Milo Gallery.

Looking forward:
Our new home should be completed in Spring. We are giddy with anticipation. Each step forward is made easy by our builder, Chris Welch of cMac. I continue to be surprised that this is actually happening. We are grateful each and every day.

Some of the interior rooms of the house have been re-purposed. The sun room became Jay's office, then it was going to be my sewing room, now it will be my office freeing up space in my Studio to do some teaching. I'll start off slowly in 2015 by mentoring one artist during the first three months. Mentoring appeals to me partly because of the good experience I had a couple years ago mentoring artist Marie Lyndemere. Then, no teaching over the summer while we work on landscaping but in the Fall, I hope to mentor a few more artists and begin planning a few workshops.

I continue to struggle with balance in my life. I'm most interested in the house but I have found that I feel more "myself" when I paint a little each day and I'm looking forward to exploring acrylics.

I wish each of you a happy and healthy 2015. May all your dreams come true. 

My Old Treasure Map

The backstory of my Treasure Map: I worked as a hairdresser for four years to support myself through art school. Then I worked as a fashion illustrator until my former husband, Bill, and I had two children and bought a 1902 farmhouse and 13 acres on Vashon Island. We named it Island Farm and Gardens. I worked at K2 Skis, right around the corner from our farm, for sixteen years. I married Jay in 1987 and began to dream of going back to art. In 1989 I began work on my Treasure Map and left K2 in 1990.

I am talking about this now, after a visit from Jay's 31 year old niece. I was reminded what it was like to be young and in a situation that made me feel powerless. And, more recently, old and powerless. When I was young I tried to "push the river" (per Bill). Now that I am older, I have learned to have some patience and how to change MY attitude to take my power back. I am glad to be this age, it is so much easier...I now know that "this too shall pass."

Thanks also for the wisdom and support of our Artist's Critique Group. We began meeting bimonthly in 1995 and will celebrate our 20 year anniversary next year at my new studio.

LINKS
My recent paintings
Our house progress

back to it

A Sense of Place III, pastel, 10 x 13 inches

Back to the easel and it feels right! A Sense of Place III started out easy and hopeful, got difficult, got really bad. I wiped it all off and began again. Ended with a nice loose painting. I'm happy.

"Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do”—Edgar Degas

ahaa!

I have just started reading The Practice of Process Meditation by Ira Progoff and came across text (page 78) that seems to explain my creative process - cycles devoted to a specific genre before I must move on. It is too long to quote here but a couple excerpts will help.

"The old spiritual truth seems to apply in all areas of creativity: one travels by delays."

"The image of intimation contains an intuitive perception, a generalized vision of what is possible in the future..." "When a creative process is undertaken, it proceeds well for a certain distance and then it comes to rest." "In order for the work to move on to its next phase of development, another cycle must be started. To do this, the person must re-enter the process of the work, be within it, and begin to do the work once again. In that way, as we re-approach the work from within its own process, letting the process take itself forward another step...the work builds its strength again and again."

"A key to the role of Process Meditation in creativity lies in our understanding the distinction between what an artwork is and what is merely a work.  A work is a task that we do in order to get it done." "An artwork, on the other hand, is worked and reworked, done and altered and redone, seeking always a qualitative improvement. An artwork, in whatever field of life it is carried out, in literature or painting, in business or politics or raising a child, is not done only in order to be done, but it is done as well as may be."  Ahaa!

Thinking about water...

One of the best things about these golden years is that I have time to think. When I have had a busy day of family, painting, building a house...it could be anything, I wake in the middle of the night and process the events of that day (or try to find a solution to a problem that is not mine to solve - now, that is a waste of time). Because I don't have to be up early to go to a job, I have the luxury of using  these sleepless sessions  to think of desperately dire or completely plausible outcomes to pending thoughts.

Last week I was running errands, listening to NPR on my car radio. They were interviewing author, Wallace J. Nichols about his book, Blue Mind. He spoke of the human connection with water, 'the surprising science that shows how being near, in, on or under water can make you happier, healthier, more connected and better at what you do.'  Interesting; something to think about. I put a request in at the library for the book and picked it up yesterday. After reading only three pages, I began thinking about the role water has played in my life and I'm surprised to find it is a frequent theme.

Both my children were conceived beside large bodies of water...OK, that's more than you may have wanted to know but this morning, I find it fascinating.

Besides Northwest rain, I was introduced to water by my mother and our trips to the Green River to swim. Yes, that is the same river as the Green River Killer river but that is a totally different story. The green river of my childhood is following my mother and siblings along a sandy path through thick hedges of blackberries to the bend in the river where Mama swam and we played at water's edge. This is also the place where my father fished for steelhead each winter to feed our family (and probably a quiet place for him to think). I went with him ONCE. It was so boring and cold. He just stood motionless on the cold clay bank and waited for a fish to bite his line. I had a orange with me. That's all I remember but I probably complained a lot.

We lived in the same house on "M" Street in Auburn all my childhood and we went to the same bend in the river every summer. One year, Mama saved my classmate Mike from drowning, that was a proud moment for me and one I have revisited with Mike at class reunions fifty years later. Mama learned to swim as a child in the canal in Selah, Washington. In my own childhood, I took swimming lessons at one of our local lakes. I was so cold my jaws locked and I never did learn to face-float, probably because that would mean putting my face in the water which is almost the same as drowning.

In the 1950's before I was a teenager, all the neighborhood kids played in Mr. Mathieson's cow pasture pond. Brown water thick with mud, muck and pollywogs, it was wonderful fun until I heard about polio. For a week I ate a head of lettuce each day in an effort to ward it off. I guess it worked. Much later, around the age of fifty, I was determined to learn to swim and taught myself at local indoor heated swimming pools where I could usually touch the bottom. My weekly swimming ended three years ago when I traded it for dog-walking. I look forward to swimming again.

As newlyweds and students, my first husband, artist Bill Iles and I lived four years in a beach house built on pilings in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle. In the late 1960's we spent several weeks (with our two babies) on a remote island in Canada while waiting landed immigrant approval. Thankfully, we were denied because Bill listed himself truthfully as an artist and Canada did not need another artist to contribute to their commerce. We bought a farm on Vashon Island where I was surrounded by water and traveled by ferries for eleven years.

Fast forward to my present husband Jay and our search for retirement property. We purchased five acres on Gallagher Cove, Olympia, WA and built a "barn" with living quarters above. Eight years later with no retirement in sight, we sold it and began our search for waterfront closer to the Seattle area. After a seven year search with multiple starts and stops that almost sent our dream into extinction, we finally found our perfect spot on Lake Sawyer where my father, as a teenager, helped his father build boats for the loggers' use in the millpond - maybe on the exact spot where we are building our house.  I look forward to enjoying this body of water. I plan to sit, look, and think.

Mid November check-in.

This is a mid-month check in. We finally have walls! The photo above was taken today. Even though our first walls are the garage, I am overjoyed to see them. I've been preparing for two shows - my pastels at Scott Milo Gallery and I have pulled my last twelve colored pencil pieces out of retirement to show with Kay Dewar at Dorothy Liberty Gallery. I painted my current studio and am still thinking about the colors of interior walls for the new house. And, I have been summoned to jury duty next week, something I've never done. I hear there is a lot of waiting so I think I'll take the color fan with me to entertain myself.

I love October

I made Nanimo bars for Women's Weekend 2014 - super yummy!

Suddenly we are at the end of October...what happened (I ask myself)?  Early in the month I renewed my drivers license hoping for a better photo. That didn't happen. I think I want a younger photo.

Our annual family Women's Weekend was fun as usual but different for me this year. My daughter is the new and improved version of me and her advice and insight is relevant and valued by her cousins. I'm over the hill for current advice but I'm still good for talking about the "olden days." I can see how Women's Weekend will someday go on without me and I'm happy about that though it is bittersweet.

A few days after Women's Weekend, I met my old friend Mary for our twice yearly lunch - always the month of her birthday, then mine.  October is my annual medical month, first a flu shot and on to my annual Adult Wellness Check. I keep making the same mistake on my Adult Wellness Check "test." There are line drawings of three animals. A lion, a rhino, and a camel. Every year I call the rhinoceros a hippopotamus then quickly correct myself. Well, they're both big.

Next came a simple cold but it got a little complicated in the middle and now, at 14 days I'm getting over it. I think I got it by reading the People magazine in the doctor's office. Lunch with my sister and cousin, Monday night football games to watch my Kennedy High School freshman grandson, some Saturday games to watch my 13 year old grandson "Wildcat," a routine dental appointment, a 60,000 mile maintenance on my car and selection of the fireplace and garage doors for the new house have rounded out my month. Oh, and a Sherwin Williams color fan deck to ponder (more about that later). I've become a big Pinterest collector for our new house.

I haven't been painting but did have a chance to reflect on my years of art through an invitation to post for Around the World Blog Hop.

REALLY good stuff

My show opening last night gave me the opportunity to connect with Ginny and Bill, who own quite a few of my colored pencil pieces from a dozen years ago. Now, they also own "When All is Said and Done!" Thank you Ginny and Bill.

A festive evening in Olympia for the October Artwalk. While I visited with artists and customers in the State of the Arts Gallery, Jay was outside visiting with vendors.  Chocolatier, Brother Bliss, was set up right outside the gallery. Below is a photo of a few Blissful Wunders truffles Jay purchased. We continued on to a delicious dinner of Willapa Bay oysters (Jay) and Ling Cod (me) at Anthony's Home Port. We were celebrating my show as well as our house foundation that was poured at 7am that morning.

One more thing: When we delivered the artwork for this show last week, we took Annie along for the ride and during a short dog-walk we discovered Patrick Dougherty's Stickwork. Wow, take a look!

Good Stuff

My show, Of Time and Treasurers, opens at State of the Arts Gallery in Olympia tomorrow.

Our little lake house (and my new studio) is popping up. These are the forms for the foundation that will be poured soon. Good stuff happening these days!

thoughts on time

Yesterday, a collector emailed me a photo of my painting, "November" hanging in her new home. When I saw it and remembered the process of painting it, one of the thoughts that came to mind was this old, anonymous quote:  "The greatest gift you can give to someone is your time because it is a portion of your life that you can never bring back." An interesting thought to me; that she would have a portion of my life. I had to think about that.

I feel a more exact statement is that she has the product of my time (which is a portion of my life). She has the tangible product of every painting thought for however long it took me to paint "November" but I have the intangible benefits of every thought of the same time period. If I was mindful (another word for paying attention) while painting this scene, I gained skill with the medium and an increased ability to express an idea.  I may have even saved some time by thinking about what to prepare for dinner while I was painting.

More thoughts on time, different subject: We finally received the permit to build our house. I am so glad Jay and I chose to have an optimistic attitude while waiting five months for the OK to build. We now look back on that time with mostly good memories and time well spent on other things. In the end we decided it was time to make a change so we could move forward and all was resolved within days. The excavator should be at our property today to begin. Backstory on our building project.

Happy

We are happy today after receiving the good news that we can finally begin to build. Note the time on this - several hours earlier I received the following advice from the universe: When all is said and done, farewell to summer yesterdays. It is time to let go of the past five months and move on.

back and forth

 

Yesterday, Jay and I went to The Fair, a Northwest tradition that goes back to my earliest memory at three years old when I wore my slippery red velvet dress (a strange fabric now that I think about it) and rode on the ferris wheel. That is where I lost my precious red helium balloon - a vague memory of the string getting tangled in the machinery. Maybe someone lost their grip on it when they tried to get it loose or maybe the string broke but I distinctly remember the feeling of loss as I watched it float upward knowing there was nothing anyone could do to save it. Very sad. Yesterday we started with one of the famous Fair scones and ate our way through a shared Myers hamburger, polish sausage, smoothie and finished with an over-the-top strawberry shortcake. Four hours of walking, looking, eating. A nice look back and diversion from other things.

My life has been going back and forth. We have been waiting since last spring for the permit to be issued to build our new house. We have tried to "hustle while you wait" by down-sizing. I've been selling excess studio supplies and am finally down to a pile of books that will be donated to the library. Our house plans are on-hold during what seems like a step back in an effort to finally move forward and get started before rainy weather sets in. Also this week, I handed off the last of my Women Painters of Washington volunteer jobs that have been a big part of my life for the last 16 years. Back again: in October I will show twelve colored pencil paintings in a two-person show with my good friend Kay Dewar. Also in October I will show my newest work, still life oil paintings. Meanwhile, I need to revisit my recent past with a pastel painting project. I'm becoming interested again in more writing...and so it goes, back and forth.

Yum!

My handspun yarn from my previous life.

So, the knitting machines are in my studio now, stored with my wool roving, sliver and handspun. Here are a couple examples. The brown is from my black Romney ram, Mendel. The white is a Samoyed (dog) and Romney blend. I can't remember who gave me the Samoyed but it has to be blended with wool or it is too flighty. I love my big fat bags of wool.

a new old hobby?

My bulky machine used for hand-spun yarn

In the last month I have been cleaning my studio and selling miscellaneous items on eBay. Downsizing my stuff is in preparation for the move to our new home and my new (smaller) studio. We thought we would be moved by Christmas but apparently it is not meant to be because we are nearing the end of our fifth month of waiting for the building permit. Very frustrating.

My little Peacock loom went to a new home with a really interesting artist, Charan Sachar. Please look at his website. He chatted with me for a while and I've been thinking about our conversation. He said when his love of clay became a job, he needed a hobby.  He fell in love with knitting and is now exploring other fiber arts.

hobby 1 |ˈhäbē|
noun (pl. hobbies) an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure: her hobbies are reading and gardening.

In the brief visit with Charan, I was reminded of my old hobby when I worked at K2 Skis: raising sheep and spinning and knitting, both by hand and with my knitting machines.

Today, Jay brought my two machines from our garage into the studio for me to clean and sell and I remember how fun it was to work with them. The time may be coming for me to semi-retire from my painting job and have a hobby in my leisure time for pleasure.

At the end of each year I put show information in a big brown envelope. Yesterday I had twenty-two of those fat envelopes on my bookcase. We are getting closer to building our new home and my smaller studio and I have to downsize. So, though it was tedious, I updated my exhibition/awards history paperwork. Now my twenty-two brown envelopes are in the recycle bin and my art show, award, publication history is eleven pages in a 3-ring binder. Just looking at these three years on paper reminds me of the art delivery and pickup, packing, shipping and shipping cost.The good memories are the art and artist receptions.

2012    WPW 2012-2013 Northwest Tour, Celebration, Washington state venues

            IAPS Twenty-First Juried Web Show, online, internet

            Jeffrey Moose Gallery, Landscapes: Four Artist Show, Seattle, WA

            Pastel Society of the West Coast Member Show, Auburn, CA

            Northwest Pastel Society 2012 Members’ Show, Hood River, OR

            Celebration! Women Painters of Washington Traveling Show, five venues, WA

            Pastel Society of America, Enduring Brilliance, National Arts Club, New York, NY

            Northwest Pastel Society Signature Invitational, Bothell, WA

            International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) Twentieth, Brea, CA

            Women Painters of Washington Annual Members’ Show, Anacortes, WA

            Pastels USA, Pastel Society of the West Coast, Morro Bay, CA

            Northwest Pastel Society 26^th International Open Exhibition, Tacoma, WA

            Pastel Society of America at 40, Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, NJ

            Scott Milo Gallery Group Show, Anacortes, WA

2011     Seven Wonders Show, American Art Company, Tacoma, WA

             Three Artist Show, ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery, Seattle, WA

             Northwest Pastel Society 25^th Annual Open, American Art Company, Tacoma, WA

             Annual Juried Washington State Juried Art Competition, Bremerton, WA

             Northeast National Pastel Exhibition, Old Forge, NY

             Eastside Association of Fine Arts 2011 Member Show, Seattle, WA

             Pastels USA, Pastel Society of the West Coast Member Show, Stockton, CA

             Northwest Pastel Society Member Show, Kirsten Gallery, Seattle, WA

             NWPS Signature Member Show, Scott Milo Gallery, Anacortes, WA

             International Association of Pastel Societies 18^th Juried Exhibition, Albuquerque, NM

             Six Inch Squared, Randy Higbee Gallery, Costa Mesa, CA

             EAFA 36^th Annual Open Show, EAFA Gallery, Seattle, WA

             Three Artist Abstract Show, State of the Arts Gallery, Olympia, WA

             Women Painters of Washington Member Show, WPW Gallery, Seattle, WA

             Women Painters of Washington Fall Member Show, Mercer Island WA

2010     Northwest Pastel Society Member Show, Blue Horse Gallery, Bellingham, WA

             Great Lakes Pastel Society Exhibition, Midland, MI

             Light in the Air group exhibit, WPW Gallery, Seattle, WA

             Northeast National Pastel Exhibition, Old Forge, NY

             Eastside Association of Fine Arts 2010 Member Show, Mercer Island, WA

             Northwest Pastel Society 24^th Annual Open, Schack Center, Everett, WA

             International Association of Pastel Societies 16th Annual Exhibition, Youngstown, OH

             Wonder! group exhibit, WPW Gallery, Seattle, WA

             Northwest Pastel Society Annual Signature Member Exhibit, Scott Milo, Anacortes, WA

             Jeffrey Moose Gallery, Two Person Show, Seattle, WA

             Richeson75 Exhibit, Richeson School of Art & Gallery, Kimberly, WI

             Solo Exhibition, Olympic  College Art Gallery, Bremerton, WA

             Women Painters of Washington Spring Member Show, Kaewyn Gallery, Bothell, WA

             Gallery North First Annual Small Paintings Show, Edmonds, WA

             International Association of Pastel Societies 15^th Annual Juried Exhibition, Brea, CA

             EAFA Art Slam, EAFA Gallery, Seattle Design Center, Seattle, WA

             Auburn Small Works, Big Presents, Auburn, WA

             Pastel Society of the West Coast Member Show, Auburn, CA

             Women Painters of Washington Fall Member Show, WPW Gallery, Seattle, WA

             Western Washington State Fair Fine Art Show, Puyallup, WA

             12^th Annual Pastel 100 Competition, online, The Pastel Journal

             EAFA 35^th Annual Open Exhibition, Bellevue, WA