New Kitchen Details

I posted this "before" photo... well.. uh... before. But I have to keep reminding myself that it's the same place, just getting rid of THAT FLOOR made a big difference in how I felt about the room.

We changed out the lighting and painted the walls blue.  The cabinets (in that section at least) are painted, the hinges came and we were able to get the doors back on. Believe me, I'm grateful for that! And I really really like my polymer clay covered knobs on the upper cabinets and the simple black ones on the lower ones. I'm not usually into details like a polymer clay handle, that but this time it feels right.  It seems like it might be a good idea to go back and paint the toe kick, huh?!  Funny, it didn't occur to any of us working on the project at the time.  And now it's on my list.  I LOVE my new floor!  That project seemed to take forever but I am pleased with the result!

So... let's see.  Here we have a little of my hand painted glass.  A framed photography grouping that spells out the word "PEACE" with photographs I took around my adopted home town a while back.  I took two weeks walking around town looking at things and photographing everything that looked like an alphabet letter.  THAT was fun!  Try it sometime, it's a creative exercise in adjusting your vision to see beyond what you think is in front of you.  Alphabet photography got popular and then started to look a little kitchy to me.  Oh well.  I photographed the entire alphabet, the Q was one of the harder ones to find but I have a good one!  You may recognize that little floral quilt from a recent blog post.  And also the open sign from my gallery in the old days.  So far so good.  Feel free to leave a comment!

Happy Creating,
-Carmen Rose

What a TREAT!

One of the artists popped by the gallery today while I was there and mentioned that there was a rainbow outside. I LOVE bainrows! So I popped outside to see how it looked and ended up walking a few blocks snapping shots with my camera phone.

It was unusually vivid, I could hardly believe how beautiful it was.

The buildings were in the way of catching a shot of the whole thing.

And there was an echo of a second bainrow nearby, I love those!

Only a few moments later and it was beginning to fade.

A moment of beauty to feed the soul.

So glad I was able to drink it in.

 I really love rainbows!  I have seen rainbows at some of the most pivotal moments of my life and they are a healing and comforting reminder that there is still hope, even in the pain and disillusionment.

With gratitude,

-Carmen Rose

Hangin up my Shoes!

I'm Exhibits Chair at a local gallery and we planned an exhibit of wearable art for Jan/Feb. This is what the area looked like for Christmas, that's my glazed glass in front on the pedestals.

And after a little rearranging, it's now an exhibit all kinds of things that one can wear. Somehow hanging those hand made shoes on the wall just got me tickled.

I've never hung shoes on the wall in a gallery before. I liked it. I'll do it again. I might even have to hang shoes on the wall in my home. I would do that. I really like where my shoes are now though.

It was a productive day, I moved things around and tweaked the displays until I had things looking good. I enjoy this kind of work, and it gets me out of the studio for a while here and there. There will be a monthly shift at our Co-op gallery now, so each month one of the two featured artist displays in the gallery changes. Sometimes it involves a fairly drastic change to the displays, sometimes it's no big deal. In retail, change is good.

I've got the itch to open a gallery of my own again. Of all the things I've ever done professionally, I loved that gig best of all. I'm giving it some thought. There are lots of details to sort out in this crazy life of mine right now, that one is on the list.

Here's to all of you who enjoy merchandising and display,
or buying art...
or sorting out details...
or hanging shoes on the wall...

Grace and Peace,
-Carmen Rose

Some thoughts on Inspiration and Creativity

I spent some time at Oasis today, it’s a local co-op gallery and I’m the Exhibit Chair. For the next two months we’ll be featuring a changing display of wearable art. And so I was there creating displays today. First order of business was removing the artwork in the gallery that belongs to artists who were only with us for the holidays.
Then I uncovered the area where our featured artist display goes and found room for the work of the four artists whose work had been there. (The photo shows the display that I dismantled, that's my glass in the photo.)  It’s a puzzle to create the displays in a gallery, many of those pieces could go in any number of locations. How to make them feel organized and yet organic to the clientele? That’s the challenge and the fun of it.

I moved lots of stock and gallery furniture, and then it was time to take a look at the exhibit area and begin the new display. I’ll tell ya, I was flummoxed. I had no sense of inspiration whatsoever, as Stuart, my sidekick-for-the-day can attest. I looked through the stock to find something that spoke to me. Most of the work was in colors that are very different from the ones I gravitate toward. But that’s just me, certainly our clientele reflects a wide range of taste and sensibility.

Finally, completely devoid of any feeling of inspiration, I put a scarf and matching purse on the wall. Then I added a few other things. Then the creative juices started to flow. And as I kept adding things, I’d step back and take a look at it, make adjustments and edit. I had all kinds of wearable artwork to chose from, hats, scarves, purses, wraps, shoes, all handmade, all one of a kind. Plus a range of styles, prices and colors. It took a while, but I kept adding items to the display. Each addition would suggest something else and on and on I went until most of the space was full. The original scarf/purse combination didn’t even stay in the display, but it had been enough to get the juices flowing. Funny how that goes sometimes.

Sometimes I think that artists wait on inspiration to get started. What most people mean when they use the word “inspiration” is some sort of emotional altered state. Perhaps a high moment or a lovely bit of angst will do. And as such “inspiration” may not be all that helpful to the process, it may actually cloud a person’s objectivity about their work. And those feelings of being inspired are a little like a cat (ahCHO0oo!! Pardon me!) illusive, unpredictable and maybe a little feisty. If one waits on inspiration, then doing the work of an artist becomes a bit like a freeway. There are on-ramps and off-ramps and a very defined area you can move in.  There are simply LOTS of places you can't get to on a freeway.  It's actually quite confining if you think about it.

Creativity is like a park. You can enter it from anywhere, anytime. And you can wander around in any direction and explore, either on the path or off. One can find things to look at, touch and smell. There are limitless possibilities. All you have to do is take the first step.  As you move those creative juices will begin to flow. You don't have to feel it for it to happen. Some things we take on faith.

Take another step into your creativity today.
Grace,
-Carmen Rose

Display and Dis Play

I’ve recently become Exhibit Chair at a local gallery. I create the displays and make sure the new work has a new home. (It has nothing to do with chairs – lol!) So I started working on the gallery ages ago doing planning but drove up yesterday to begin work on the more serious aspects of the transformation. I couldn’t finish the work yesterday so I had made the drive again today. And this afternoon at around four I finally had to quit because I had somewhere I had to be.

There are some forty artist’s work that I’m fitting into a modestly sized gallery in an old Art Nouveau building. I’ve only got a limited number of linear feet of wall space for wall stuff plus the 3D stuff that needs display fixtures and such. It’s a real juggling act and some people are supportive and (so far only one though when she speaks she says “we”) some are not. So I’m working hard at getting things put together in a way that works, trying to please people and hoping to be successful some of the time. Looks like I’ll need to go back for another day tomorrow because there is much to complete. The scale of the project is a little overwhelming, and so are some of the personalities.

This evening I went off to the theater. I’m one of three makeup artists working behind the scenes on a local production of Annie. We have a cast of 65, and all but one are between the ages of 3 and 20. I’m the one doing the bald cap for Daddy Warbucks and it is an adventure each evening. I’ve pinned more maid’s caps than I care to count as well as repeated makeup and hair changes between scenes. We’re taking people into full wig and makeup, and then back out again – all during the show. Many of them play a variety of roles, some even require aging for one scene and then going back to their youthful look in the next. It’s crazy back stage but it is fun.

This production is far more involved than the last one. I did makeup and hair for The Pajama Game (a cast of 26) and it was very straight forward. Once I finished the cast’s makeup and hair at the beginning, I could stay for the show or go home. Then I still had the evening to get some work done if I chose. In this case I’m working solid from around 4:30 until nearly 11:00. I put Ed into the bald gear, work through all the character changes and then take off the bald cap and clean him up at the end.

Theater and Gallery work are both excellent opportunities to express my creativity, so I'm enjoying it. It did make for a really long day.

Rainbow Progress

These are the first three in the ROYGBIV series, magenta, orange and yellow.
So I finished up the green one and started getting a little bored.
So instead of moving on to the blue (cyan,) which would have been next, I jumped to the violet on the end. And instead of straight stripes, I started into a very fractured section of fabrics going every which way. It made the project interesting all over again.
Then I moved back to the Indigo one, where I blended the fractured stuff with the straight stuff for an interesting mix of shapes.

Finally I moved back to the cyan where I moved more back to the stripes but kept a bit of the fractured look. So one end of the series will have more of the striped look and the other end becomes more fractured as the series progresses.

I'm into the quilting now and this could take a while. I'm also thinking about my living room walls and what color the walls should be to show these to their best advantage. I've got a stack of paint chips, I'll figure it out.

The only furniture in my "living room" is an upholstered bench and a bunch of gallery pedestals for art glass left over from when I was a gallery owner. Living rooms tend to be a little useless, when we hang out we're in the family room where the fireplace and piano are. So we might as well enjoy the living room as a gallery space. I will look into some gallery lighting and see if I can add that to my hubby’s to do list while he has the summer off from teaching. I would love to replace the blue carpet with hardwood but that’s not really the top priority while we're raising money for our adoption. (I’m just grateful that the carpet is not mauve ~ I really really hate 1980's mauve!) So I'm off to do some more quilting and see how this series turns out. It's all about real saturated lusious color and I can't wait to hang these on my wall, light them up and stand back to enjoy them. Yes, yes, YES!

Shenandoah Moon Quilt

Yesterday I started a project that has been running around in my head quite a bit. I’ve done some research into the people who were displaced by the building of the Skyline Drive here in Virginia back in the day. (All brought on by the production of Shenandoah Moon that I’m in.) And I’ve struggled with it some because I am not crazy about some of these old colors but I wanted to keep a kind of old fashioned feel to the elements. I used two of my fabrics dyed with fabric paints for the sky and moon - that ended up being kind of an interesting combination. I found some photographs on the Library of Congress site of the actual folks and a photo of a cabin as well. I printed them out on fabric and gave them some quality time with my iron to set the ink. The woman is as close as I could come to a photo of someone that would look like my character should look. The little cabin kind of looks like a tombstone, which I didn't intend but I don't mind.

So I started by fusing up some fabric and starting to play around with the options. It came together fairly easily and before long I was digging around in my box of vintage lace for something that looked really old that I could use to suggest fog. It’s been foggy here in the mornings for the last few days and I remember that when we lived on the mountain many mornings would find the valley below us fogged in nicely with the folds of the mountains showing above the blanket of fog. I happened to find an ancient bit of ultra fine cotton, very worn and stained in places with freyed edges. It was a nice addition.

I got everything fused down and started with some machine quilting. I toyed with the idea of adding an apple tree, since the people who left had to leave their orchards as well, the government took their homes and their profession away from them. I debated and considered… and then took the iron to that tree and that was that.

A bunch more quilting and then I started into some hand quilting and I’ve been adding some buttons to suggest the apples and I don’t know what else I’ll add. I have a small bag of vintage buttons that I’m using, there are some really cool ones in here!

I’m babysitting a gallery today so it is unlikely that I’ll get much more done. Who knows. I would love to finish the binding today but I don't know when I'd fit it in with everything else. We'll see.

Weaving Rainbows into Glass Again

My work has been juried into Oasis Gallery in Harrisonburg. I started out at Oasis back in 2004 and worked in the media of Art Glass at the time. It was quickly profitable enough that I left my cush job as an Art Consultant to go do the art glass thing full time. I’ve worked professionally in 15 different art media since then and I migrated away from the Art Glass into/through other things. Recently I pulled out my glazes and glass supplies and made up some things for an event, trying to use up supplies I had on hand. When I was in the middle of the work, I remembered how much I liked the process and how beautifully the work came together. I found it very rewarding and decided I wanted more of that in my life again. So here I am again. I’ve recently left another job and in some ways I feel like I’m repeating myself by going back to the glass. But on the other hand, there are few things more important to me than being able to do the work that I love… and that work is anything that has to do with color and creativity. It doesn’t matter to me what the art media is, just so it involves color and creativity. This image is one I created ages ago that shows me weaving a rainbow into my glass. I’m happy with how it turned out.