gifts given and received

Ah, fare thee well, Christmas. May you rest well until next season where I can glitter the hell out of you again.

I thought I would share the gift I made for my sister's family. As you probably know, I am an identical twin, and my sister has three children--aged 9, 6 and 4 (two months older than Beezus). Every year we try to give something handmade to one another. She made my kids the cutest stuffed animals ever.  The ballet pig is for Beezus since she was born in the year of the Golden Pig and the elephant is Thor's. She named him Sir Nigel Flopworthy. Thor calls him Da.

That monocle has velcro and goes on his arm if he is feeling less dramatic.

I initially had painted her a mizuko jizo, since she has been saying she wanted one for her house. But it didn't exactly turn out the way I envisioned. So, I sat with it. I had no idea. Then I walked around the pre-stretched canvas section of the art store, seeing if I could envision something for her. And then, I saw three canvases bundled together. Each canvas was four inches by twelve inches, so together they were like a square...it came to me, and I could envision exactly what I was going to do.

Three paintings, one of each kid, representing their beautiful personalities. Ones that worked together or individually.

I hope they like it. The first one is Audrey, who loves doggies, so I have her holding a dog with a spot over its eye and a paint brush, and her one eye painted. The middle one of Maxwell is of him with a bone and magnifying glass since he always seems to be exploring and trying to discover something. I just see him as a paleontologist. And the blue one is Cooper casually hanging out and yo-yoing, which is his personality. I like stripes, so painting each of them with stripes and gray outfits was fun. All in all, I loved the way they turned out.

Merry Boxing Day. Hope you are kicking the crap out of someone. (Just kidding. I know that Boxing day isn't about boxing.)

some recent projects

 I've been needlefelting a shitload of stuff. Ornaments, mostly. There is more, but they are gifts for my niece and nephews and my sister reads this space. I like the aggression release of felting. It helps. I have also been trying to construct a felt bag, though I am terrible at sewing. Maybe it will just be my needlefelting bag.

The red piece is going to be the flap and the other pieces are going to be the long handle.

And then, I am at the end of this painting. Not sure if I really like it. It was supposed to represent the duality of spirituality and grief. Mizuko jizo is a joyful bodhisattva, yet grieving. The tower of stones is supposed to represent all the babies. Perhaps I should have continued them up, up and up. Maybe I still will. This piece is 36" x 48", so larger than both my kids standing next to each other. It is acrylic on canvas. And I think I will be showing it at the show five in January. I am in two minds about it.

I'm also wondering if anyone can give me pointers for making prints or postcards of my work. Do I photograph it? And if so, is there a trick to photographing artwork that I should know. Has anyone used anyone in particular that they like? Thank you for any information.

open house and jizos

Yesterday, I had an Open House for other families who have lost children, really it was to display the travel journal. I cooked and cleaned last week, like a fullhouse deep cleaning, which was nice. I do that every Fall and Spring, Summer and Winter. It is like a seasonal change thing, but I spend a week just scrubbing the tiles I don't usually scrub and spit shining the faucets. Okay, not really. But this one was for my homies, so I took time. I also hung lots of my babylost art around my house, pieces I never display in open. These three I painted for a show next January. I shared them here already, but I hadn't seen them together.

From left to right they are: I Wish You Understood (But I'm Grateful You Don't), She's Not an Angel. She Was My Baby. the last one is untitled as of yet, but it is me holding a picture of Lucia. I think it might said, I want my baby, instead of a picture I can't show anyone. I'm taking suggestions.

This morning, I needed to meditate, so I painted some jizo cards. I just needed to sit and clear my head after all the week of busy.

And I started a jizo wall in my studio, since I have so many dang jizos around. I have some in my lounge, so I need to get them on the wall...fun, fun, fun.

some recent work

This one is for a certain red headed babylost mama. Shhh, don't tell her. She asked me for it, and then I never followed up, so I am just mailing it to her. I don't think she reads here.

Trying to paint some jizos like pop art, but not digging how they are turning out. This one is 16"x20" and it was for a SHARE art auction. Back to the drawing board, me thinks. Or I don't know. What do you think?

This was the first one, and it is very dark and not appealing, so I am going to gesso over it, and paint something not babylost related, like a little girl who can fly for Beezus, or a unicorn. She loves unicorns.

Coming Along

08.08.10

Remember a few days ago when I showed that huge painting in the dining room? Well, today was family day. No computers. No blackberries. No phone calls. Just unadulterated family time. It is an experiment. We went for a hike. Collected things for our family altar. Read books. Played games. Which to be honest, we found it slightly challenging at times. What to do? We usually have activities, then spend some alone time, or individual times with the kids, then family time again. it is bloody hot here, so outside activities were slightly limited. After our hike, we realized that the mosquitos were awful on top of the God-awful humidity. So we wanted inside projects. I suggested we do a family painting and we just paint over the whole painting and create something together, but Sam loved the colors of the original and the "You are my Sunshine." Sam was so timid when we started. He didn't want to do anything, so he took red and began painting on top of the red. First he started with a circle, then some designs in it. I kept yelling at them, "YOu can't mess this up. Just go for it. It is a family project. Paint, splash. Do anything. Cut out pictures and paste them to the canvas." I finally got them to really play with the paint. Sam made this cool design that looks Native American, he used some black, which he hated, so I gave him a brayer and told him to roll the design, and it came out looking like spray paint. I pasted small prayer flags to the piece, to show that I wanted our family to have wishes whispered on the wind, and I used an old linoleum block design of the Buddha and stamped Gold Buddhas all over it them rolled them out. Beatrice used white and red and yellow and just painted on top of everything. You can see her pinkish contribution on the top middle of the canvas. Sam also painted little stick figures of our family in the corner, with Lucy by his leg, which broke my heart a little. All in all, it was a great day.  

I have been really re-inspired with my jizos from Janis' gift this past week. The top jizo is a commission. The canvas didn't work for the mama either (The one from last week), so I thought I would go a different route. It still needs the beautiful poem she wants written on it. I am slightly nervous about the writing, which can always make or break these jizo paintings. I also somehow managed to squeeze two more watercolor jizos into my afternoon while no one was looking.

Mizuko jizo and twins. 22" x30" Watercolor.



























Close up of jizo. Watercolor.

Jizo with lotus. 7"x10". Watercolor

Meditating jizo. 4"x6". Watercolor.

07.01.10

Anatomical Heart. Watercolor. 

I had this idea for a painting/mixed media thing. I had painted something using the e.e.cummings poem i carry your heart. But I wanted to use an anatomical heart, antique it after watercoloring it, then hiding it behind kite paper and pinning it to a canvas, so it looks like it was dissected out of a body and covered, inside one of the veins, I was going to hide a little drawn cartoon-y heart. I wanted to cut the lines of the poem out and use them in the paint of the underneath canvas. I found some medical books of my husbands and began sketching and painting. This is the first anatomical heart I did. You will see the second later. This just was not good enough for what I wanted and too detailed to be interesting in a graphic way. TOO LITERAL. I did this earlier in the week.

Trying again, I made quicker sketch and used marker to color it in so it would be very graphic. Then I gessoed some foam core board that I had laying around and painted it with a combo of black, grey and blues, with red in there. It looked awful. Ditched that idea without putting the poem into the paint.

This morning, I let my daughter paint on my grey background and she did some cool bright colors on there. And I pinned my heart onto it.

Anatomical Heart. 17"x20". Acrylic and marker.


Not exactly what I was going for in the beginning, but I love doing art with my daughter and it was fun for her to pin it in there and do a piece together. Plus, it is pretty big for a three year old.

From art journal. Audrey and Bea Swim. Watercolor.

I carry your heart. ATC. Mixed media.





I love the last stanza of this poem. And so I cut it out and mixed my mod podge with gold paint and stuck in atop an anatomical drawing of a heart made by da Vinci. (Hell might as well steal from da Vinci, if you are stealing art.) This was in response to Kara's call for small. I had already done part of this painting larger, and thought of how it might look small. I love this one the best, perhaps because I drew nothing in it and I am full of self-critical words right now.

6.26.10

Life is going by so very quickly. My little Thor is three months and Beatrice is three years and three months. Insanity. This week was my first week of having a babysitter help me get some writing/editing done. It was nice t have three hours straight to work during the day. I am most productive in the morning, so it worked well. As you can imagine, I didn't get much done. But some good things happened this week, one of my Etsy paintings made it to a treasury. I Carry Your Heart. And the bonus is that it sold. YAY! And for those who don't know, and who would, really, because I didn't tell many people, I was asked to write an essay for a book by women who have had a stillborn child. I am joining many amazing writers and bloggers and artists (Kara, aka, Mother Henna amongst them.) This week, the publisher finally posted the book on the website, and it is listed on Amazon. They Were Still Born.

I did manage to do some paintings this week. I was really interested in trying some painting and mixed media techniques and play with some images. So I did some mini-paintings on canvas board. They are layers upon layers of stuff I tried. It was fun. I did them thinking of my daughter Lucy. One is called You are my sunshine and the other is called Please Don't Take my Sunshine Away. The You are my sunshine one was originally a jizo painting and the jizo is under the collaged paper, which is actually kite making paper I found online. I just wanted to see what that looked like layered.

06.05.10

i look normal, but my soul is broken. 6"x9" acrylic, watercolor, ink and paper.

i need a hug. (but not from you.) ATC 2.5" x 3.5" acrylic and ink.

Monday. 01.25.10

Sumo Love. Digital Media. 01.25.10

I don't just love sumo wrestlers because they are fat and loved in Japan like me. I find the whole aesthetic of sumo wrestling beautiful and wonderful. I was boxing up my heART today, and found some old sumo stickers to close my homemade envelopes (thanks, Ines). I wrote out this little saying, and decided I wanted them to be a kind of valentine to the world. So, away I went messing with the picture, and playing. It is so fucking stupid. I know this. But it was a lot of fun to do.

Suck it up. Acrylic.01.25.10

Sorry for the crappy picture. I turned off the flash, but the overhead light made the right side overexposed. I haven't painted with acrylic in a long time, so I wanted to sort of get a feel of the paint. I just mixed up some color and painted a canvas. Not exactly art or anything, nothing real creative out of it. But it reminded me of this beautiful painting I saw a few years ago. It was very basic, cream-colored or something, and very small in the corner, it read, "don't cry." And I loved it. Of course, since my daughter died, that means so much more as an inconsolable crier. This is one of those things I used to say all the time. My mother used to joke that she was going to put it on my headstone when I died, "Suck up and deal." But now that I can't suck it up since my daughter died, I kind of thought it might be a bit, I don't, subversive. My daughter said, "Your name looks pretty, Mommy." Pointing to the 'suck it up'.

YAY, subversive guerilla art.

Tuesday.01.12.10

Rose. Needle felted flower. 01.11.10

Peg jizo, acrylic painted wooden peg. 01.12.10

Shit, that jizo is awful. But I wanted to see how it would work on peg. I am terrible at painting these round pegs. I should have photographed them in my hand. They are quite small, and I am a bumbling mess. I am going to spend the rest of the day cleaning my home and cooking and laundry. My creative energy is kind of waning right now. I need felting ideas. Anatomical hearts might be in the mix tonight for Mama Henna's art swap...we'll see.

Friday.01.08.10

My Peg Family. Acrylic-painted wood. 01.08.10