a few photos from the weekend

snapped.

and snapped again ......

an all too familiar sight

and yet beauty still exists:

oops! this is the one we took after!  

saturday stuff

don't know where the time goes... i ran out of time to post after the opening in baton rouge last weekend.. so here it is a little late...


we had a great day. the art work was very poignant and personal. i talked to a writer from the lsu reveille and she made a comment that caught my attention: that she felt the art was very empathetic, that none of it had a sense of pity about it....
it surprised me in a sense, because i realized i never expect that art will be a plea for sympathy. i think if we create art out of our deepest emotions, the ultimate we can hope for is that it be a honest adn real. period. and it made me very grateful to be able to express myself through my art. with the state of the world down here post storms, i don't know how it would be to cope without such an outlet. words are sometimes so inadequate.
it was great seeing some old friends there. 2 artists from thibodaux had work in the show and were there as well my scupture teacher, who's a gem! so it was great catchign up with all of them. i really miss the cameraderie of other artists that i had while i was still in school. and it was good to hear the news.... and it was also great to walk in and see my sculpture front and center!

i had wanted to stop and take some pictures on the way home but we drove in a downpour for most of the way. i did snap a few thru the windshield.....

and then we stopped and took this a little later after we were out of the downpours....

a few collages

i played around a little bit today and these are some of the results...
they're pretty much like potato chips...you think you're done and you do another adn another..

fray 

new dawn 

fragment 

upcomign exhibit

here's the postcard for the upcoming uprooted: LA artists;s invitational exhibit which opens this sunday (jan 22) in baton rouge at the lsu union gallery. reception is 2-4 if anyone is in the area....
i have 2 pieces in this exhibit:
fury and nesting box

off to work. more later!

nesting box 

fury 

uprooted exhibit postcard 

tagged!

> Four Jobs You've Had::
travel agent, owned and operated 1 hour photo lab,
program coordinator for alochol and drug abuse agency,
machine embroiderer

> Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:
hm. i;m not a movie person, but here goes....
anna and the king (for the visuals), its a wonderful life,
.... cant think of another one.

> Four Places You've Lived:
only 2: new orleans & houma, LA

> Four TV Shows you love to Watch:
football, sunday morning, project runway, desperate hosuewives

> Four Places You've Been on Vacation:
the uk- england and scotland, (twice), rome, d.c., disneyworld

> Four Websites You Visit Every Day:
nola.com , studio78, handmaiden, musings of a textile itenerant

> Four Of Your Favorite Foods:
a really good salad, chocolate (dark), chicken sausage gumbo, good mexican

> Four Places You'd Rather Be:
back in the sculpture studio at school, home making art, on the river,
on the road to anywhere, esp new orleans

> Four Albums You Can't Live Without:
aw geez. no way i can narrow that down. depends on my mood:
various celtic, moody blues, drum corps cd's (great for gettign going when
you need energy) and currently, randy newman and arlo
(ok so that was more than 4.......)

tagged:
hmmmm......
dijanne
peg keeney
judy perez
liz berg

and now...off to the day job!

todays sketching

is pretty basic. went to new orleans and scribbeled my impressions of the swamps between here and there. you can really get a glimpse of how a hurricane happens: you;ll be riding along for miles and everythign looks normal, then hit a spot that is totally devastated.... its gettgin to seem normal to see trees with huge limbs or the main trunk snapped off, uprooted, and just generlaly leaning in one direction or another..... tryign to quickly sketch trees snapped off was a bit tricky. (esp at 70mph and no i wasnt driving! ;-)
time for some more swamp quilts i think.

nuther fast version 

trees: after storms: 1-8-06 

trees 12-30-04 before storms 

detail of front: note nickel silver crescent moon 

05sketchbookcover 

detail.....eerily hurricane-like..... 

back cover 

ringing in the new -- 2006

( a day late. )
let's get on to ringing in the new.
after the 2005 we've had down here i think an UN eventful year (certainly weather-wise) sounds like a good thing right now.

05 was certainly a year of change on a scale that no one down here coudl have anticipated. it was a year of many changes for me and my family as well. and holding true to that, it ended on change. my dh and i pretty much started our married life working together, first for someone else, then we opened our own business.... (in another world ...eons ago!!) we closed that down 19 years later, and earlier this summer found ourselves workign together again, for good friends we had met way back when in that other world. mostly, we had a great time; its been a lot of fun (tho there were days when too much togetherness was probably not a good thing!!! ;-) ...but starting tomorrow he will begin a new job. or, as it seems we've done all year, going back full circle to working for the first person he worked for when he moved down here 30 +++ years ago. great opportunity for him...
but sad for the gang at work. i'mvery grateful that i still get him every evening... ;-) and maybe it will help me get outta there at a reasonable hour every day!

and while i don't want to utter the R word my hope is that i make at least a tiny bit of art every
day in 06.

and in the spirit of looking back a bit over the last year, when i chose the title *from the sketchbook* it was with the intention of scanning in pages, doodles, drawings, etc. from my sketchbooks in progress. which of course meant my sketchbook production went way down....
(human nature is SO damned predictable isn't it???) so i've decided to go through the old ones and start scannign some clips of those from time to time as well as adding new things from my NEW ones.

usually the first thing i do when i start a new sketchbook is collage the cover. so here's 05's covers.

lifeline 

ringing out the old,

a few days late.
i spent new year' eve dogin sculpture: more aptly, creating an installation: kleenex mountain.
as it was not a process id like to be reminded of i declined to take a photo. it's been a long time since i,ve had a garden variety cold and i hope it' even longer till the next one. it does make one appreciate the oft neglected adn underrated body part- the nose. (i swear there was a perfectly nose shaped wonton floating right smack dab in the middle of my soup the other evenign......), the wonton soup was my cure of choice till fent could get to the store adn make me a pot of the real thing---a huge steamy wonderful pot of chicken noodle soup that i swear is like an instant cure. i don;t know if it's the drinking it or the holding it under you nose adn allowing the steam and aroma (so i was told i couldnt smell a thing) that does it.
so in the spirit of doing a drawing a day i did the only thing i could do: