Tales from Studio Mailbox

Frida Sorry For Me

How tragically cliche am I to lay around watching Frida with an ice pack on my face?  It's actually embarrassing.  As if a couple of teeth can even compare to lifetime chronic pain.  This must make it official.  I am Germany's hugest pain weenie. 

The hubby who's lost teeth by kissing hockey pucks on three different occasions has been very compassionate and helpful but now that we're on day 6 he's kind of wondering when I'll pull myself together.  And I'm like, "I passed out watching you get a tattoo."  And he laughs because this is actually true and the thought of how I woke up to the concern of a giant biker man is enough to cut me some more slack. 

And just for the record, pierced-up tattooed biker guys are the some of the greatest people on earth.  If you were on a deserted island or your car is broken down in the middle of the night on the edge of a desert you could pray to the heavens that one comes by.  Some of the scariest "looking" people are the smartest and gentlest creatures.  It's just one of the world's unexplainable phenomenons.

Not having anything other than a blue Rollerball pen at my disposal, this is what came out on my page.  Maybe I'm influenced by all the Ed Hardy merchandise out there or maybe the blue ink just has me thinking about tattoos or whatever.  In every instance I promise to snap out of my pain induced stupor soon.

 

Wisdomless

Monday I had the first 2 of my 4 wisdom teeth pulled.  The lower remaining one is so impacted that Doc Lothar strongly suggested we take this whole procedure in steps.  (I was naively hoping for the whole shebang.  You know -  full anesthisia and all 4 choppers magically absent from my jaw with a nice bottle of refillable narcotics as a parting gift).

Instead I got to be awake for the saga and sent home with measly 400 mg ibuprofen tablets.  (And let me tell you folks, when I was struck with the realization that Doc Lothar and I had completely different visions for my recovery is when I did break down in the dental office). 

Anyway, I'm coping although mentally and physically wiped out.  I had a big creative relaxation planned; a bunch of flat sheets prepped and ready for journaling.  Fat chance.  When I sit up with my chin tipped forward it's not a nice experience.

So for now, here's my self portrait get-well card.  It's not exactly the creative genius I had hoped for but then again I had assumed I'd be really high.

Blogging Block

It's been over a week now.  I was on such a roll too.  My stats were up, I've been connecting with more artists online and now I've just fallen flat.  Sometimes I just can't get it all done. 

Blogging takes a serious amount of time, energy and organization.   Lately whenever I've tried to sit down to post something, Typepad has been acting up too.  Is anybody else suffering from the little hourglass timer shaking and stalling and your entire system locking up?  It's only when I'm here.  Maybe the universe is telling me to take a break.

This isn't a recent journal entry, but as I was paging through my moley I said to myself, "yep. this pretty much sums it up."

I'll be back later.  Please don't leave me...

Goal Harvesting

While journaling wildly in my moleskin, my doodles upon doodles turned into the message:  Harvest Goals.  This occured to me while thinking about my recent studio reorganization and the fact that for the first time in my life, ALL my supplies are "out" and readily available for use. 

I predict that 2009 will be the year to USE this stuff. 

My journal pages aren't exactly fit for public viewing.  (In the sense that they are random trains of thought that I don't necessarily want to share as well as being compositionally frightening to look at).  They are however, important.  When you doodle in the flow of your thoughts suprising ideas can come to you.

So even if what's coming out of your pens is ugly, and your friends will ask whether or not you saw the movie A Beautiful Mind, do it anyway.  You don't have to show anybody and you just might be suprised at the (truly sane) messages that come out!

The End of Moleskin #2

Recently I've gone out and bought Moleskin #3.  This of course gave me incentive to fill up all the oddball pages of Moleskin #2.  My molies don't exactly look like mixed media wonderfulness.  I use them mostly to scribble down ideas for projects and occasional sketches. 

I like to bring them with me while on the road because they're portable enough to slip in the diaper bag.  Here are a couple doodles I've made in attempts to warm up my creaky brain...!

I think this one here to the left was an exercise where you use two pencils simultaneously (one in each hand) and try to draw a symetrical design.  Kooky but fun.

When I look at these together, I realize I seem to like repeating patterns...

 

City House, Country House

It occured to me that not everybody realizes we've moved from Würzburg out to the surrounding countryside.  It's beautiful here, although I do miss my magical castle view.  Now it's all about vineyards and the river.  More on those later.  For now, a little glimpse at the new surroundings while I continue to work inside creating the perfect nest for Studio Mailbox...

The journal page contains an image from a German spätzle package.  Yummy, yummy... although fresh of course is even better!

 

 

 

Thoughts on Rauschenberg

I'm sad about the recent death of Robert Rauschenberg and reading a little about him has made me do some thinking about the way artists source their materials.

So often here in Germany I am frustrated by either what I perceive as my lack of available art supplies, my inability to find those supplies, or my inability to find substitutes for the things I want.  

I do a lot of on-line shopping in the US and the UK just so I can "get stuff."

Rauschenberg, on the other hand, scavenged all the time for the stuff he used.  He was a pioneer of what we now refer to as the "found object." 

It doesn't appear to me he was desperately shopping on-line and arranging for things to be sent to friends in other countries in order to save on shipping charges.  I don't think he was buying bulk amounts of crap at going out-of-business sales or pillaging the aisles at his local craft store.

Rauschenberg would go for a walk, pick up trash (or as fancy-pants folks would say, "discarded items"), and then he made art out of it.

That's it.

This realization has made me be a little more at peace with the fact that I don't have a Michael's, a Hobby Lobby, a Hobbycraft, a Jo-Ann's Fabrics, or any of those other mega-craft behemoth places. 

Maybe it's time to focus more on the process, the work and the outcome.  Hmmm?  Maybe it's time to simply walk around with your feet and then go back to wherever it is you create and make something with your hands.

Apple Journal Page

Here's my journal page I made during the apple collage.  "Fenchel" is actually "fennel" in case any of you are also struggling to speak German and people need to draw you small pictures in order for you to understand what they're talking about!

"Begin with an Apple."  Okey dokey.  So I did. 

Next maybe fennel, except for the fact that I never cook with it.  Do any of you?   

Wonky Chair

First wonky inchies.  Now a wonky chair.

My giant ego decided that my sketch resembled a famous person's chair.  I thought it was Van Gogh.  I was then going to say that even the masters drew chairs that looked like cows with their legs sliding out from under them.  But after searching the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery, I realize that Vinny's chairs look relatively normal.

So I'm hoping that somebody knows whose chair it is that resembles mine.  Because if I can't compare this to somebody famous, then that might mean that my chair is crap. 

I am so in need of drawing lessons.  How do you draw the legs of a chair that you are studying head-on??

Maybe this is why Vinny painted his stools from the side. 

Plunder

"Plunder" in English means to loot or take things by force.  "Plunder" (pronounced ploon-der) in German simply means "junk."  So if you put the two together, you get me.  A foreign artist with super-abilities to magnetically find all sorts of strange German junk and ruthlessly make it my own.