Lisa Myers Bulmash 9/4/15 Lisa Myers Bulmash 9/4/15

Getting schooled

How can you feel like you have too much homework when you're not even in school anymore?

Lots of firsts at our house:

The Boy started his first year of middle school
TwoBoo started first grade
I'm no longer driving anyone to a day care center -- for the first time in ten years

Every trip is taking maybe ten minutes more because I keep missing turns. Both schools sent home stacks of paperwork for ME to fill out. And my job, that art thing?

I'm up to my ears in meetings about art. Applications about art exhibitions. Other computer-related stuff about art. Art stuff, but not making art. Which is sometimes part of the job.

Art business consultant Alyson Stanfield has some useful suggestions on how to deal with overwhelm, which I really need to work on this month. So I'm going to spend a long weekend in planning mode... and somehow, making something.

Lisa Myers Bulmash 7/17/15 Lisa Myers Bulmash 7/17/15

Work-in-progress: diving in

It's been a bit of a shock here to feel heat (that is, "summer") every day. What does one do when it's hot outside?

*Semiahmoo Bay. Photo: Lisa Myers Bulmash*

Ah yes, large bodies of water. I understand one sometimes dives into them.

The original vintage image of the diver was part of a stereoscopic pair. I set her, and part of the background, against waves on a Japanese art paper. Then I added a handmade paper sky, at the back of an altered book niche.

You might remember back in the day -- like, waaaay back in the day -- this kind of swimsuit was considered scandalous.

Filmed in Lulworth Cove and Brighton, this footage was shot in 1898. Some girls are showing quite a lot of flesh for the time much to the disapproval of Brighton Council.

More power to you, for doing what makes you happy. I think Calamity Jane said it best:

I'm leaning toward the title "Legendary." Still need to mount the book and do a couple of other tweaks, but it's getting there. Next week, I'll be showing her to an interested collector who's been following this work-in-progress on Facebook.

Lisa Myers Bulmash 6/26/15 Lisa Myers Bulmash 6/26/15

New series: "Your Crown Has Been Bought & Paid For"

At one of my last exhibits, someone asked me what I was going to make next.

*"Bought & Paid For" altered book series/ Lisa Myers Bulmash. Photo credit: Clear Image.*

I responded I was considering creating work inspired by the following quote.

I've been thinking about the people who've suffered and even died so I could be where I am. I've had a fairly privileged life: loving family of origin, college graduate, married with children. And I'm profoundly grateful, but what sacrifices have been made for me. I could be paralyzed with guilt... or I could get on with making something of what I've been given.

I focused on coronas (which can mean "royal headgear" or "the light around the sun") and paired them with fragments of fake money. Then I layered transparencies of my brother as a child over painted-over images of shelter, fitting each pair into hand-torn book niches.

This first piece is "Reconstruction." Yes, that's a slave auction house in the background. But notice the person leaning against the building is a black man with a rifle -- probably not an enslaved person. I assume the original (Library of Congress) photo was shot sometime after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction Era.

The second piece, "2100 Miles Away", was inspired by a long-ago comment my grandmother made. She was happy to have her daughters both living on the East Coast, "a perfect distance to travel" in her opinion. But then we had to go and move to the West Coast... a distance which made my mother happier than my grandmother.

The final piece points both to the past and the present. Compared to most of my relatives, I live in "land's end": the furthest northwest you can get and still live in a metro area of the contiguous United States. I don't know how much time I have left to see my older cousins again. It brings to mind superstitions about birds on the roof.

I designed these pieces to work as a triptych, so I'm hoping all three will be accepted to an upcoming exhibit. I better get on that submission process...