Show on Cancer

I am working in between jobs, taxes, and life, to enter two pieces in a show hosted by our local hospital's Oncology Group which took the most amazing care of my daughter.

I have not entered a show in a long time, but this show is inspiring to me as it is loaded with much personal meaning.

I have the piece done about my father who died when I was 19 of cancer. Diagnosed in late May, died in August. It was a very intense affair; we were not allowed to tell him he had cancer, and I was never able to make peace with a man I hated. Through art I have been able to come to terms with some of this.

The second piece, tonight's work IN PROGRESS, deals with my 24 year old daughter's cancer. She is in remission from LMS and we keep focused on healing and a long life. She is pregnant, (docs are amazed after her chemo and radiation that she was able to conceive) though alone as her husband is in Afghanistan. Needless to say, I travel to Tennessee from NY as much as I can...we don't go much longer than a few months without seeing one another. I am getting child support again. My ex owes me 35,000 and he finally has a job ---- and even though my kids are 24 and 22, it is back money. I am using it to visit Megan, and probably to help my son get his car on the road. I know the universe will give back to me tenfold.

So here is the piece in progress. In the rough, but I am honored to share it with you.

Namaste, Patti

Struggling with Studio Time

I have not been posting much. My artistic life has come to a near halt.

School. Taxes. Floods. Family.

It has been three weeks or maybe even more since I have set foot in my most sacred of spaces.

I grabbed a few hours today however, and started setting myself up for work. I am putting two pieces in a show about cancer. I have a piece that I was finally able to complete some 30 years after my father died, and I am working on one about my daughter.

It was through Megan's cancer that I was able to face my father's death. It is through Megan's cancer that I have been able to seek and appreciate the best of life.

So today I started setting up my encaustic works so that I can get a piece done soon. I already have the idea, the materials, and the muse comes to visit whenever I welcome her.

It is good.

Patti

Projekt 1

Mosey on over to my EAT MAN DRINK WATER blog, where I posted some of the photos from a series I am putting together, titled Projekt 1, born out of the need to make art on the plane.

Years ago, I did a lot of fun travel collages on the plane using the Airline magazines, but then after 9/11, I stopped taking my pointy little scissors with me.

Taken with a Canon Powershot A 75, a dinosaur compared to what most people use... Most are altered or touched up in Photoshop.

I intend to do a series of oil paintings based upon these images, which will eventually give me a 20 piece body of work.......

My time away from my studio and my busy life is often an incredible time of introspection and inspiration, and born over the past week is this project, which has been incubating for 2 years.

patti

In Spite of the Fog

I have been remiss in posting to this blog as I have had my hands full with doing NYS sales tax, and working on my income taxes. Oh, and then there was the studio flood.

A few weekends lost to things other than art.

I went up to one of my favorite places in the world today, Mohonk Mountain house for a spa/lunch day with friends. We had hoped that we could hike part of the day, but the cold pelting rain kept us inside for all but the dip in the outdoor mineral pool.

The only photos available were out the dining room windows...the fog was quite thick and not much was to be seen, except pieces of the huge hotel sticking up through holes in the fog.

But I had fun with the few that I took,(funny how so little can satisfy me) , and now I can finish up my packing as I will be away for the next 5 days.

Off to finish packing...

Patti

FOCUSING

After this weekend's flood, I have decided that I need to lighten my load and downsize my art supplies. I am not running a craft store, and I don't need all the things I have amassed over the years.

If I go in the 10,000 directions I am apt to go, I will NEVER learn how to mix color, or be a master at anything.

So out goes the leather, the stamps, the stamp pads, the beads (OK I will keep the pearls, crystal and semi-precious stones), ephemera I won't use (but oh, you never do know when you will do a mixed media piece that deals with 100 year old machines!) and any other thing that might distract me from what I truly love to do.

Stop by Etsy every few days to see what I put on. It might be something that you have a passion for! I have some lovely suede and leather for mask making or other leather arts, and tonight I am listing a few bags of nice scraps to start.

I have gotten way behind on my blogging, my artwork etc. with cleaning up after the flood, but now that my floors are white again, and everything in order, I can see clearly now.....the clutter is gone.

Patti O Cleaner!

Fabulous use of Operculum

Tonight I wrote a story on my EAT MAN DRINK WATER about this tie clip for sale on eBay.

It used the same shell that I have been writing about here.

Lovely isn't it? Great use of design/material.

I wanted it.

Read the blog.

patti

PAYPAL WARNING

After a long and frustrating go-around with Paypal, I figured out the problem.

If you are an AOL user, and you have problems accessing/downloading any of your logs (most of us who have online businesses are working on income AND sales taxes) from PAYPAL, and get messages that no logs are available, and you have cleaned your cookies and caches, and it still doesn't work, well fret no more.

Open up another browser...download Mozilla, or Internet Explorer, and do all the work in that. It seems that there are program conflicts w/ AOL and PAYPAL. Hours of work, and a few tears and one rage, but I figured it out and printed up the logs I needed. Of course one hour's work turned into 3 or 4, putting me behind schedule, but at least I got it done.

PAYPAL help was NO help. All they could do is tell me they would send me a CD w/all of the info on it and I would get it in 1-2 weeks. That is cutting it too close for my deadline, and is totally unacceptable.

But a deep breath, add some problem solving skills, and I beat the odds and figured it out.

Off to bed, I have a headache. But at least my logs are printed.

I HATE TAXES.

patti

She Uses Protection

I went to R and F today to make some more encaustic pieces. I laid in bed last night thinking about those cat-eye shells I bought, and decided that I was going to do a series of work which feature them in some way.

I am working on a body of encaustics anyway, and thought that I should make a piece or two using them.

Our 1800's woman is protected from evil as she sports her operculum shell on her neck.

I have to design some jewelry pieces too which feature these shells. I am having so much fun with them....it is magic when a material inspires you to create and think-outside-the-box.