Between her busy art gallery (Artful Journey in Peoria, Illinois) and my Shingles, it has been a long time since I’ve sat down for a ZOOM art session with Ruthie Inman in Illinois.
So when we finally got together this week, we yakked and cut and collaged until I was totally worn out! Ruthie had chosen a very fitting collage project.
She had us building a small accordion book to glue into an existing art journal. I am still writing most days in the Journal I was keeping on our France trip, and always welcome the chance to add something interesting.
We measured some light-to-medium card stock about 3 by 5 inches, and joined 5 pieces together by their one inch flaps.
Since it was going in my France Journal, I chose bits and pieces that reminded me of the gardens, museums, restaurants and Emergency Rooms we had visited.
I used quite a few pages from Jennifer’s donated art calendar, adding them to ‘failed’ Gelli prints and roll-off papers, bits of an old Time/Life book on medicine, and pages from falling apart French language Agatha Christie mysteries. When I’m totally happy with it, I’ll stick it in my Journal.
I just love sticking bits of nonsense together to tell a story!
The other day, Bridgett and I set out on a simple quest. I wanted a new Journal to use when the one I am using fills up, which will be in a week or so.
Being a diligent art supply shopper, Bridgett had done the research and knew the closest shop to try. We walked across the Rhône just past the Lyon Opera House, to Géant. There we found an 8.5 by 11 inch, spiral bound, multi-media quality journal that will hold my next batch of memories, clippings, and art doodlings.
By then, it was after 10 a.m., and we needed snacks. Loutsa Coffee was just a few blocks away by the Saône, and they had carrot cake and espresso for me and blackberry cheesecake and café crème for Bridgett.
We decided NOT to have a big adventure that day, just a small walk across the Saône to St. Paul’s, the only church in the Old Town that we hadn’t been into yet. We wound through the medieval streets and found it, set low, where ‘ground level’ was in the year 549, when it was built. Yes, that three digit number is a year.
It is showing its age, but is mostly in good repair. It wasn’t open when we were there, but Mass schedules were posted, so it is still in use. The history here goes very deep.
We were disappointed at not getting to see the inside, but knew there would be other things to see. We figured we would walk to the next bridge, cross back over, and head for home.
That didn’t happen.
Because we looked up. Straight above us, built into the bedrock of the butte that forms The Hill that Prays, were Roman arches, bridges and walls.
“We’ve got to go up there!” I’m sure the caffeine and sugar from our yummy snack affected our judgement, but all that history was RIGHT THERE!
Of course there were stairs, and I stopped every now and then to breathe and to greet the running fanatics who were doing laps up and down. The shade and modern handrails set into the Roman wall were a godsend.
We kept seeing ancient walls and arches, either used as foundations, or quietly left in the undergrowth. For a modern-day kid from Southern California, this was special.
When we got to the top, we were pretty close to the place we had NOT been heading to, the Loyasse Cemetery. This wonderful old necropolis, kept secret by its inconvenient location and its ban on photography (I took this picture from outside the wall) was as lovely as the Père La Chaisse in Paris, and lot less messy and crowded. We spent an hour wandering in the perfect silence of the hilltop.
As usually happens at this point in an adventure, having reached the top, we realized how hungry we were and needed to head toward sustenance.
We followed staircases heading straight down and tiny roads that wound between steep walls.
We stopped at a tiny grocery for cheese, fruit, and an emergency back-up Snickers bar, and ate on a bench by the road, feeling pretty good about our adventure. Further down, we nearly tripped over another chunk of Rome, five burial monuments erected around 27 A.D.
Romans, all over the place! Leaving giant carved bits of their lives and culture. Amazing.
When we got home, Bridgett’s AppleWatch said we had walked 7.59 miles and gone up 27 flights of stairs. So far, that’s a record. Tomorrow, we rest a bit.
Well, a new year in the garden means a new garden journal.
This year, I am using a calendar book that Auntie Bridgett had laying around. After making my journal from scratch two years running, it was time for something new.
I painted the front with acrylics and have decorated the inside with acrylic color scraping (with an old credit card) and writing, using yellow, blue, sea foam green, and some metallic silver. And watercolor.
And a little collage for fun.
I wrote the first page on March 15, knowing it was too early, too cold and too wet to plant. Besides, we were heading out for our big vacation.
Two weeks later, when we returned from cold, dry, windy Denmark, we found cold, wet and windy Portland waiting for us. The dark blue page is hard to read, but really showed my mood. The cartoon is from a Dutch magazine, and asks if it is STILL raining, or raining AGAIN.
On April 20, my Spring Fever could wait no longer. I pulled out the wagon, bundled up, and slogged through some real rain to Portland Nursery.
I’ve decided to keep the receipts from things I buy for the garden, so I can see how much my “free” veggies are costing me.
And fittingly enough, Saturday was Earth Day! So after we chatted, I put the red oak leaf lettuces and dahlias in the ground.
Here’s the reality and my watercolor interpretation of the lettuce bed.
It has been a weird spring of snow, sun, wind, hail, and rain. I have tried to reflect this in my garden journal.
This is my favorite two-page spread, with April 10 showing the garden as it was that day, and the dramatic change wrought by the overnight snowfall. As my accuracy improves, I am capturing the details better.
Illustrating transparent containers is hard, but they have been an important part of this spring’s garden, sheltering my sprouts from two inches of historic April snow. The bits of sunshine during the day allowed the soil to capture some heat.
And now that the freezing temperatures seem to be gone, we have rain and more rain. I am hoping for resilient sprouts and just a few peeks of sun for the next week.
We go through a few wine corks here, and it has always been a bit of an issue for me. I hate throwing things out, but aside from Auntie Bridgett making some really cool miniature tikis a few years back, we haven’t made use of them.
This problem found (one) solution the other day, as I was flipping through the Garden Journal I made for the second half of the summer. Auntie Bridgett looked over my shoulder and said, “You need to put some bees into all those hexagons!” I knew I could draw bees, or paint them. But wouldn’t it be cooler….
So I grabbed some of the corks and the Exacto-o blade and had at it. I started with a few bees (only one turned out) and played with them on the hexagon page. I learned a few things right away. First, ink is better than acrylics (which I should have known), and second, the ink I have isn’t totally waterproof. Also, a tiny bit of yellow paint really makes a difference.
So I kept playing, creating a love note to our favorite pollinators.
Then I cut two more stamps, a rectangle and a “O”, and played with them. For a moment, I forgot I was in my garden journal, and had to do some quick finagling to make the stamps “garden-Ish”.
Then I trimmed up the rectangle so it was thinner and pointy, and I liked it better. I had another page that needed a picture on it, layered some acrylics and then used the stamps to make a flower from the shapes.
I still have no idea where this is all going, but just being on the road is pretty neat!
I stopped by the garden plot yesterday, to pull tiny weeds and remove the camellia blossoms. I noticed that some of the radishes were looking weird… the soil around the leaves was lumpy and tilted.
Harvest!!
And then I saw why!! Some of them have actual radishes below the leaves. Taking a clue from my friend Shawn Quione in Salinas, I chose the biggest ones to thin out, so the others would have more room. Each one was about the size of the end of my thumb.
Once I got them home, I washed them gently and put them away like fine jewelry, to have with supper. And while I was waiting for Auntie Bridgett to get home, I celebrated with a portrait of the harvest. It is my favorite page in my garden journal so far.
The latest page in my garden journal
I know it is only May, and summer goes until September, but I don’t know if I will be as excited about anything I pull from my dirt as I am about these four radishes. The newness of this sort of creation is just wonderful.
I have been making Art Journals with Ruth Inman for a while, using cracker boxes and other leftovers for covers. But the other day when I found this really old, falling-apart literature book, I thought …. Why not use ITS cover as a cover?
First, I helped the book finish falling apart, trimming the cover and selected pages with an Exacto knife. I saved the very old 2nd place ribbon I found inside. The handwritten inventory numbers and check-out pocket touched my librarian’s heart, so I made sure they were safe. I found one of my favorite poems, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Rhodora”, among the anthologized works, and saved it, as well as old illustrations.
Lovely, historic insides
I grabbed a yellow printed fabric from my box, thinking the texture looked like old alligator skin. Once I had it glued onto the cover, however, it became clear that I had mis-judged. It was too light. I resisted the urge to tear it off and decided to highlight the texture and darken the effect with some acrylic paint. It was better.
Improving the spine fabric Sewing the signatures in
I stiffened the spine with some card stock, then laid in the inside fabric. I made four ‘signatures’ (sets of pages) and pierced the spine carefully to sew the signatures in.
A new book from an old book!
Since the book was printed in 1932, I plan to use it as a journal for my research and ponderings on history. I have been researching English and French history, and am now looking into the many places where they intersect. I am also curious about how they interacted with the Holy Roman Empire and, further away, the many dynasties of the Chinese Empire.
This historic, hand-made journal will give me a place, and an inspiration, to collect these thoughts, as well and other brain bits that pop up.
The Inspiration….
“Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Last summer, a few months after the Covid shutdown, I started painting with an online group organized by Ruth Inman. It made sense that we should start painting with flowers…. who doesn’t like flowers?
Step by step watercolor Cornflowers
My skills weren’t very good, and I was scared of making mistakes, but being with an old friend put me at ease. The tremor in my hand got in the way a bit, but I’d just power through, realizing that the wiggly lines could be just part of the picture. Flowers don’t have straight lines, anyway.
Wacky candy wrapper collage
As the year passed, Ruth would give us challenges to use different materials, like candy wrappers or other recycled papers. These let me realize that ART didn’t have to mean making a perfect painting every time. The making, the process, was the main thing. If other people liked it when you were done, that was a bonus. But it was not the main goal.
Fun with Acrylics
Realizing that, I got more confident. I also came to understand that different media work in different ways. Watercolors always show through, so planning is crucial. Acrylics are more forgiving and will cover up mistakes. Collage needs a careful hand but is amazingly freeing. And all of these can be used in the same piece, if you like!
This is my new favorite, a remembering of a drive along the Willamette. As I sat on a bench looking at Mt. Hood far away across the river, I planned out how I would construct it. Watercolors for the sky and ground, THEN the distant mountain (out of a bit of Kleenex box), THEN the flowers/ trees in front of it, then the river and dogs. I found the note in the sky folded up in our picnic table, and wanted to include it.
Close up!
I built up from the background to the foreground, and was pleased with how it turned out. The snow on the mountain is a tiny bit of Posca marker.
I’ve learned a lot this year. Mostly, I learned that I am still learning, which is a good thing.
I haven’t done much work in the garden, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it! My garden journal gives me a place to put my dreams and imaginings down in a art-y, fun, not-having-to-think-too-much-about- it sort of way.
So when the rain comes down and the garden plot is all mud, I dream and draw, get out the collage glue and the watercolors, and have fun making up what I WANT to be doing.
Hopefully, by the time I run out of ideas to paint, spring will have sprung enough to where I can put seeds in the ground.
I am anxious for spring to come and to be able to watch my seeds grow.
It has been a fun, happy, busy weekend! I made a stencil I really like to use in my Art Journal. So far I haven’t finished with it yet, but it is showing promise.
Fun with stencils
I also started whacking away at the two dozen or so blogs I have written about our wonderful, historic Lone Fir Cemetery. I started simply copying them, then realized that with just a little tweaking, there is a story there about Portland’s history that could be worth telling. I am currently paddling in some very deep water, and enjoying it very much.
Little Ada Smith
There was also a delightful surprise purchase from Jehnee Rains, who runs Suzette, our nearby Creperie. Since she has has greatly reduced business for the ten months of quarantine, she is selling a lot of her catering supplies to raise a bit of cash and simplify her life. Auntie Bridgett saw some ‘bee’ themed bottles she wanted, and I saw cookie cutters, so we threw on clothes some and walked over.
I now have these great beauties to play with, and the cookie dough mixed for delivery to Auntie Katie and the cousins.
Score!
I also found a map of Portland I was sewing on last winter and ran out of inspiration for, which is looking more promising now.
Downtown, the Willamette, and our Sunnyside neighborhood
I feel like I’m gunning my engine at the starting line, and can’t decide which race track to run first. I need to take a breath and focus…. or not. I’m sure it will all work out.
Dear Liza 