Tuesday, March 30, 2010

we are SET!

i finally got my laptop! all $100 worth of it! here's a pic of my new dynamic duo: beauty (aqua-colored canon powershot elph) and the beast (used and lovingly abused first by Biola and then another owner for a few years, before finally making it to my lap - so far it appears to be worth all hundred bucks :)





i'm just so excited to be able to take a picture, and post it from my very own laptop that WORKS! i'm at panera drinking a cup of hot chocolate right now for my first blog post of my new era... and now i can just post a picture of that! amazing. it's a whole new world (every turn a surprise; every moment gets better... ahhh, aladdin, the last great disney cartoon)
and here's a completely unrelated picture of joey in the awesome green snuggly sleeper my mom made for him (just because i can... i have a feeling you're gonna be seeing a lot more pix of joey on here because i have way more pictures of him than anything else... he's just so dang cute! ;)

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

come and gone

joey's fourth month birthday was friday. i didn't come anywhere close to my goal of creating and /or blogging every day... but it was better than it's ever been! i blogged 8 times in that month, and i'd only EVER blogged 9 times before that (the whole year of 2009+). so it's an improvement! and i made stuff maybe an average of every other day...? i discovered how hard it is to really buckle down and do it when there's this all-time-consuming little person with me 24/7! maybe the older he gets, the more he'll entertain himself and i can play when he plays? he came down with his first cold yesterday, AND got his 4 month shots! pobrecito.
but in happier news... i got a new camera and it's aqua-colored! and i'm getting a new (to me) laptop, too! so my blogging career may be just beginning to take off (i dream of no more frustrations with uploading photos, converting them from RAW, etc. ;) watch out, world, here i come! ;D

Thursday, March 11, 2010

the opening

last night, i went to my first art exhibit opening that had my art in it! so fun! not quite as exciting as i had first thought - when the e-mail came out saying we'd been accepted to the show, there were only 8 names on the poster... so i didn't know if that was all that had submitted, or if mine was one of "the chosen", but i was 1/8 of the show! then on the facebook event page, there were like 13 names listed... and all in all, there ended up being 26 artists with work up! over 50 pieces! which is exciting - there was a lot of great work represented there (my favorites were megan gonzalez, danielle camorlinga, and julis barbee) - but less "special" for me... still fun though! when we got to my pieces, they didn't have a label on the wall next to them with my name, e-mail, explanation of the piece like everyone else's did... i was a little disappointed (there goes my "exposure"! no one even knows who did it!) - and that's when we took this picture... little bit of fake smiling going on ;)


jason and i were debating whether to go ask Shannon, the curator, about it, but thought it'd be a little awkward/weird... while we were standing there talking about it, a girl came up to the director of the event, and asked if she knew whose pieces those were "cause i love them...!" i talked to her for a minute (turns out she is the wife of a friend of mine from high school! AND she had her own awesome piece in the show!), and then the curator runs over to us and says "jamie! (hi, i'm shannon) we don't have your label up there! hello?! this is the SHOW! i'm so sorry! i'm gonna go get it from my car right now!" we talked for a while, and when i told her it was the first time i'd been in a show, she asked how it felt... my response was "exciting... VULNERABLE" and she was saying how even more vulnerable it would be because i have my own image up there and my own journaling. so true. i'm "out there" for all to see! ...so take me or leave me but this is who i am! :)

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

i love watching kids on playgrounds!

that sounds creepy... ha. but oh, isn't it so delightful watching little ones enjoy themselves? my morning run used to take me past a school that always seemed to be at recess when i'd be running by (since we moved, the school i run past always seems to NOT be at recess - guess i'm too early... but i keep hoping!). such a joy to see elementary students playing like they don't have a care in the world! ...or like they do - watching 5th grade girls and their bff/cattiness with each other just reminds me of the good old days! watching 10 year old boys play soccer like they're trying out for the pros. they just have so much heart! such an ability to PLAY that adults somehow lose. like we're not allowed to play. we have to be "responsible" and work hard and make a living and blah blah blah. i think it is SO important to the human soul, young or old, to take time out to just PLAY. making art has been that playtime for me. i have to ALLOW myself time to have fun and do things that maybe don't seem productive or to have any lasting value... but oh, how they rejuvenate my soul!

YOU need to give yourself permission to do creative things, too. not as a means to an end, being "productive", but as PLAY. i mean, it can be refreshing for me even if i'm simultaneously doing something productive, like making a card for a friend... but sometimes i just have to play with color and texture and transparency just because. and a lot of times, i end up putting my heart onto whatever i'm making, and i end up being able to see it as almost a journaling time - time to process life and emotions... but sometimes, it's just the delight of putting aqua, lime green, and bright red together to see what happens!

i wish i could post pictures of the little projects i've been working on this week: baby shower cards, scrapbook art, making a "gel skin" image transfer... but alas, our camera and our computer are still not speaking to each other. i know a blog is much more fun to read when there are photos, so i'm gonna keep trying!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

i love technology...

when it works... and i HATE technology when it doesn't work. the only reason i haven't been blogging is that we haven't been able to upload any pictures from our computer for the last week and a half. i finished that one piece and posted about it a WEEK ago. and we've been trying every day to "fix" our Mac so it'll post a picture of it! granted, we don't have much time to work on stuff like that, but we keep trying with the few minutes we can snag! i'm hopeful that today's the day, so i'm writing a blog post for the pictures to be added to WHEN we figure it out today ;)

I did it! i made two art pieces and submitted them friday to biola for the show commemorating "women's history month"! they were supposed to be about the theme "process" - i think more referring to the process of art-making itself than the subject matter, but i took it both ways :) these pieces are about the emotions that came with finding out we were pregnant all the way through the process of pregnancy to actually having a baby. they are entitled "fear" and "wonder" which i guess can still pretty much sum up how i feel about the whole "motherhood" thing. from the time 1 year ago when we found out i was pregnant, till now with a 3 month old, i'd say the progression has gone from FEAR & wonder to fear & WONDER. amazingness. so the first piece has me pregnant, and the altered photo actually shows the different stages of the growing belly and joey inside (hard to see in the final product 'cause of the layers of beeswax). the second one is about MY wonder, but i love that i found a picture of him as a newborn with such a look of wonder on HIS face! the rest of the pieces are collage elements such as my journal pages about what i was feeling about being pregnant, dress pattern tissue (i use some of that in pretty much every piece i make), beeswax, ink, and oil paint stick. a bunch of transparent layers that reveal the "process" of art-making.

they were supposed to e-mail us yesterday to let us know if our pieces were accepted to the show or not... i'm waiting!

got the pictures posted finally! here they are!

"fear" 5"x7" encaustic collage on claybord

"wonder" 5"x7" encaustic collage on claybord