Welcome Home!

My father-in-law is celebrating his 86th birthday today. His best birthday present was that, after over a month in various hospitals, he went home earlier this week. He had a valve replacement and a double bypass. He's doing fine now but a long recovery is in front of him.

I'm guessing that he wouldn't particularly care for this color combination, but this piece has a home and a heart in it so it fits the topic! Welcome home, John.

Lorrie

Sunset Junque

For the first time in years all five of us had Memorial Day free: no soccer tournaments! On Saturday we walked in the Curesearch Walk (which is a fundraiser for childhood cancer) in memory of our little buddy Austin Melgar. Austin lost his battle with Neuroblastoma just last year. Then, with the wonderful weather urging us on, we headed over to South Haven and Lake Michigan for the weekend.

South Haven is a tourist town that sleeps during the winter and comes to life in the summer. The beach is beautiful, they have some good, fun restaurants, and boat watching on the pier is a happy way to spend some time. Once we're done with all that we always head to Sunset Junque to see what the owner has come upon for the season.


This place is a site to behold. There are a few buildings, in which he puts things that can't get wet, but most of the stuff he has is outdoors exposed to all the elements, all the time. This is not one of those giant yard sales that pops up on a major highway twice a year. Needless to say, it all has a weathered look.
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I've bought a few cool things there over the years but nothing huge. I wish I could figure out a place to put one of the big, incredible doors or gates at my house. Maybe one day...

He also owns an antique store in Sarasota, Florida that is probably worth checking out if you're ever that area.

Lorrie

Mosaic picture frames

I've been finishing up some mosaics lately. I'm very good at starting projects, but not always great at finishing them, so it feels super to have these done and looking good. Like most artists, I suppose, my stack of unfinished stuff never seems to get any smaller because as soon as I finish something, there is always new unfinished stuff to take its place! I guess it's just like laundry but more fun.

Anyway, the photos here show some picture frames that are now in a nice jewelry store in Three Rivers, MI called UniQ. These are all 8" x 10" frames (for a 4" x 6" photo) that are either on a hanger or an easel and are $30 each. They have such a high gloss varnish on them that they look almost like glass!

Actually, this blue one has already sold to artsy friend Christine. What would we do without friends?!?


I have more to show you but don't have scans yet. Stay tuned...


Lorrie

For subscribers: It seems that many of you did not get a Feedblitz email about my last post. If not, please visit http://lorrieabdo.blogspot.com/2009/05/taylor-grainger.html to read about my neice, Taylor Grainger. Thanks.

Taylor Grainger

Taylor Grainger, a vibrant, lovely 14-year-old young woman, died two years ago today. We loved her well, my kids looked up to her, and she was well liked by all who saw her huge smile. Taylor happens to be my niece; my brother's daughter.

Since her death, many good things have happened in her honor:


* My brother and a cycling group called Team Taylor have raised over $100,000 for Make-a-Wish. This not only gives other sick kids great memories but it gives my brother and sister-in-law and their kids something important, something lasting and something tangible to hold onto even though their world fell apart. They ride again this July on a 300 mile route from Traverse City to Chelsea, MI. In my sidebar is an icon you can click on to find out more.


* Friends, family and art supporters donated thousands of dollars to the Children's Hearts Fund as a result of an Art Show that I am involved with each year. Through various other efforts, over $50,000 was raised for CHF in Taylor's name. This group, in Buffalo, NY, is the only organization working toward a cure for Protein-Losing Enteropathy. PLE is a result of a specific heart surgery that Taylor had when she was two.


* Hundreds of people around town wore, and continue to wear, pink bracelets that remind us all to "Walk Tall" and be proud of who we are. Her favorite color was pink, so most things done now in her honor prominently feature pink.


* After taking more than a year off from my art (just didn't have it in me any more), I began experimenting with a series of mosaics to sell for the Children's Hearts Fund fundraiser. At the time all the mosaics had a heart theme. I continue this venture into paper mosaics, with various themes, now and get more excited about the possibilities each time I complete a mosaic project. She is with me on these!


* My kids continue to remember her in special ways and grow as caring people in their remembering. For instance, this poem was written by my daughter, Claire, earlier this Spring, about Taylor.


Inside this girl…

Inside this girl
Her name is Taylor Grainger
Inside her, lives the strongest army a girl could ever have.
They are a hot pink, and are called “pinks”
The pinks fought to keep Taylor safe for years
And the all to soon only one pink was left,
This pink fought and fought,
But then when this last pink was defeated, Taylor was too.


Yes, this is all good stuff, but we'd much rather have her with us.



Lorrie

Special Mother's Day Gift - Papermaking

Kids love to get their hands into the pulp and mom's love to get handmade gifts from their kids. So, in a well meaning marriage of the two ideas, each of the students in my daughter's 4th grade class made a handmade paper book for Mother's Day.




Each year I go into my kids' classrooms and make paper with the students. Therefore, some have been lucky enough to have the experience several times but for others it was a first. It doesn't seem to matter: first time or xth time, they always have fun. These pictures were taken before and after the whole group (22, I think) came in to work so they certainly don't show the excitement and BIG energy that was in the room but it gives you an idea of how I set up each of the four stations. You also get to see my daughter and her buddies, Sarah and Julia, at work.

Each station is a large black vat with a smaller dishpan size vat inside. The smaller vat holds the pulp while the larger vat catches spills and holds the mould and deckle (when not in use) and a sponge. This set up significantly cuts down on mess. I had four stations for this group.

The girls are pulling a sheet of blue paper with confetti paper/glitter inclusions. You can't seem to have an elementary school art project without glitter!

As you can see, we used boards as our drying method. While the boards are a bit awkward to carry to/from school, I most definitely prefer this route. The kids can also press objects into the wet pulp and add interesting textures to the sheet.

After the paper was dry, I went back into the classroom to help the kids bind their books. The title page of each book is "I love you because..." Some books had only a couple of pages and some have as many as eight. From what I saw, all the books were great and the moms will be pleased.

I'm finding that the main challenge for me, now that I don't have a dedicated papermaking space, is the preparation. My papermaking equipment is disorganized and buried in the basement. Having to look for what I need, borrow what I'm missing and lug it upstairs for transport is becoming a bigger job than I like. Since my youngest will be in her last year of elementary school next year, my hope is to get a small grant (rather than this freebie, cool-papermaking-mom thing!) and really go out with a bang completing a bigger papermaking installation project. That should be a great culmination of almost 10 years of paper projects at the school.


And to all Moms out there: Happy Mother's Day. I hope you enjoyed a great day with your family!



Lorrie

Fire and Ice - Up close and personal

Fire and Ice: Just as with the first two spreads that were done in this Altered Sister's Round Robin, I thought I'd show you the before and after of the photo that was used to achieve the final look for Fire and Ice. So, here is before...

Up close: Here is the photo, cropped tight, in its altered form. The bottom of the photo is torn off. Bleach was used to remove some of the darker ink on the bottom of the picture. This turns the area first to red, then yellow, then white. It looks quite fiery. And, I'd love to say that this was the intended look but, in fact, it was a happy accident. The icicles were scratched with a needle tool then painted blue. After the photo looked like I had done what I could with it, it was glued onto the "fire" background. In order to incorporate the photo into the collage rather than have it looked like it was just "plopped" on the background, I used oil pastels to blend it all together. I need to get better at this but I'm working on it.

Personal: We had a long, long winter and these icicles were hanging on my house sometime in December. I'm very glad that the front of my house now features some tulips rather than sculptural ice forms!

Lorrie

Altered Sister's Round Robin - book three

It's hard to believe, but another month has gone by and it is time to pass on the next book in the Altered Sister's Round Robin. For May, I have Joanne Huffman's book entitled Fire and Ice. It is a small board book: compact but impactful.


In keeping with my vow to alter a photograph for each of the ten books in the swap, I used a photo of icicles and painted in the "fire" myself. The photograph and the matches on the bottom right page worked out pretty well but then I was faced with how to balance all that on the left hand page. This was tough and I'm not sure I successfully solved the design problem but the yellow graphic hand, while a bit large, seemed to fit. And, hey, it's well past midnight, it's due at 10 this morning, and that's all I've got in me at this point!

Have a great week!

Lorrie

Spring Greeting Cards

It's a rainy day here in Kalamazoo and I'm feeling the need for some color! So, I'd like to show you what I have available in cards that feature the wonders of Spring. Perfect for the gardener or someone that just needs a lift, they are blank inside giving you room for your own message. Each card is $3.50 (or buy 4 or more and they are $3.00 each) and I pay the postage to get the card(s) to you. Now there's a deal you won't get from Hallmark! Send someone you care about a card that was made by a working artist. Both the recipient and I will love you for it! :)

Paper mosaic - yellow daisy

Paper mosaic - blue daisy

Garden fairies come at dawn, bless the flowers, then they're gone.

Where flowers bloom so does hope

Dirt Diva

Tulips

We Have Potential

A bird in the hand

Thanks for looking. Let know if you're interested in any of the above.

Lorrie

Honor our Earth - Papermaking project

For years I've been making paper with younger kids at the elementary school level on an Earth Day project. For a month or so prior to the actual papermaking day the kids collect all the blue and green paper they get in their regular mail or school handouts. You'd be surprised how much blue and green paper is in use, especially in elementary school!

When the day arrives, we put the paper into the blender and I show the kids how the paper breaks down. (I beat most of the paper ahead of time in a bigger beater or we'd be at the blender all day!). Oh they love to push the "blend" button and see the pieces of paper go whishing around. Now they have pulp to play with.

Using the tin can/pouring method to make round sheets of paper, the kids use the blue pulp to make the oceans and the green paper to make the continents. Some kids try to be so precise with their pours. Others just dump it in and are done. All of them have a ball. I board dry so they can do some embossing on the sheets as well. As you can see in the picture, this little artist chose to also use some oil pastels and outline a heart.

After the sheets are dry, I go back into the classroom to help them each bind an Earth Day booklet in which they write their wishes for the world. Here are a couple of things that the kids have written: I wish pepeal wouldn't litter, I wish there was a law when you cut down a tree you had to plant one. I can recycle by wrighting on both sides of the paper.

This is a great example of taking a curriculum topic and turning it into a fun classroom activity. In fact, papermaking can be turned into almost any school topic: chemistry, colonial careers, the Oregon Trail, botany, etc. If you're interested in additional details on this Earth Day project, I wrote an article on the process for PapermakingZine a few years ago and would be glad to share it with you.

Lorrie

Spring Break

One week ago today we returned from a spring break trip to Williamsburg, VA and Washington DC. But, from looking at this first picture,I'll bet you might have guessed that!



We enjoyed a visit with family, took in more history than was wanted (at least from the kids' perspective), enjoyed roller coaster after roller coaster at Busch Gardens, ate well in Georgetown and walked, walked, walked, walked in DC.

I won't bore you with the traditional shots of the Washington Monument and other noteable sites. You've seen them all before and certainly with a better camera than mine. But, here are some pictures of those "traditional" places from a different perspective...

The beautiful Virgina vista surrounding Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

The cistern (I think) roof at Monticello.

Williamsburg brickwork.

A display of arms at the Governor's Palace, Williamsburg.

The ceiling of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC.

The rotunda dome of the Musuem of Natural History, Washington DC

And now for some real fun:

Hope you're enjoying spring, where ever you may be.

Lorrie

New Style of Mosaic Sheets

This is one of those ideas that hit me just as I was in that in between state of awareness and sleep. Miraculously, I actually remembered the idea the following morning! I worked on these just before we left for our vacation last week.

As I showed you last month, I've been making mosaic tile sheets. (My dear arty friend, Joanne, appropriately calls them "component parts".) These mosaic sheets were obviously on my mind as I was trying to get to sleep and my brain was working through a design problem. The problem is that the precise grid-like sheets don't always work for a more free form end product. Well, duh? How about making mosaic tile sheets that aren't so grid-like. Here are my first attempts. I like the results so I think you'll be seeing more of this style in my finished work.

The two red/pink/orange sheets are identical except one has black "grout" and one has white "grout". It's amazing how different they look. Which do you like better?

Lorrie

Music - Up close and personal

Music: I thought I'd show you the before and after on the photo that I used in the Music spread for the Altered Sister's Round Robin. So, here is before...

Up Close: Here is the "after" artwork, cropped in tight. The cement on the bottom of the photo remained, and became the staff for the notes, but I cut away the top of the photo just above the sculptural round forms. When I alter the photos, I am doing it all by hand, not digitally.

Personal: This photo was taken one year ago exactly. We went to Seattle/Olympic Peninsula last year on Spring Break. How can a year have gone by already?!? What a great family trip that was. And, as a bonus, I was able to go to Artfest in Port Townsend, Washington. That retreat, even though it was a year ago, is worthy of a series of posts. I'll have to get on that!

Lorrie

Altered Sister's Round Robin - book two

It's time for another Altered Sister's meeting and that means I've had someone else's book to work in for the last month. I actually had to plan ahead for a change because we've left town on a spring break trip to Williamsburg, VA and Washington DC. I got the book done ahead of leaving and it has been delivered to the group for the next round in the robin. (Well, you know what I mean!)

This book belongs to Laura and the theme is Music. I must confess, that while I enjoy music (Chris Isaak, Matchbox 20, blues/jazz), I seldom listen to it and it would not be on my short list of things that inspire me. Ok, now you can all think to yourselves "what a weirdo, no music in her life."

Well, one thing is for sure, I still can appreciate music and the effort it takes to make good music. My youngest is starting her second year of piano and really enjoys it. She is working hard to get ready for her first piano recital so this effort, rather than the music itself, is what I have in my mind right now.

Given this brief history/scenario, here is my spread in the book, Music.



I promised myself that for this round robin, I would alter a photograph for each book. Based on the photos I have and the theme for this month, it was a toughy to figure out how I was going to pull this off. Finally I remembered a photograph I took last year in Seattle near the Space Needle. The huge sculpural balls reminded me of musical notes, so off I went to the studio. I did some scratching/carving in this book as well.

The end result is kind of a blood, sweat and tears thing. No guts, no glory. Work hard, Alicia, you can do it. Get it? I struggled with this spread and I think it shows. Whenever there is a lack of color in my work I get uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I hope Laura likes it as it is hers now to keep.


Lorrie

April Fools' Day

On April Fools' Day, and everyday, remember that:




Here's to hoping that you get fooled at least once today!

Lorrie

Book Club

Tonight is the last meeting of a book club that I have been in for the last year and a half. So, in honor of this, I remind you to

Some of my favorites are: Time Traveler's Wife, Water for Elephants, Cold Mountain, Bluebeard, The Pleasure of My Company, Shadow of the Wind, Never Let Me Go, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Middlesex, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, The Kite Runner, The Constant Gardener and A Thread of Grace. Some that I haven't cared for but get all kinds of great press and word of mouth: The Solace of Leaving Early, Atonement, and The Poisonwood Bible.

I'm always looking for a great book. I haven't read a really, really good one in a while and am dire need of a great read. Please send me the titles of your favorites. Or, join me on Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/as a friend.

Lorrie

Foreclosure on a Sunny day - Up close and personal

Foreclosure on a Sunny Day: I thought you might be interested in seeing what the house photo looked like in the artwork I did for my Altered Sister's Round Robin book, Foreclosure on a Sunny Day, before I altered it. It's not a great picture, that's for sure. What a dark, dreary December day it was! When I took it I was looking at the form of the houses rather than the surrounding stuff. I like the way the houses go up the hill.

Up close: And, here's the altered version that I used in the artwork...

Personal: The photo was taken in my husband's hometown, Olean, NY. As far as I know none of these houses are in foreclosure but a couple of them looked like they could be.

Lorrie