Blog candy on its way

Here's one of the pieces of blog candy Tally and Cheryl will receive:Thinking, a series of two ATCS

The wooden faces had been hanging around for a while in my stash... I got them from a woman who brought them to a class I took in 2004. I stamped the test onto the woman's face, then pasted a matte medium transfer of the baby's face on top.

The denim background is kind of new: it's adhesive-backed denim from the Creation Station, which is an art/recycling place I like to visit from time to time. It's a lot like Scrap in Portland. I distressed the denim with a retractable knife/box-cutter thingy.

Then I painted the denim, hoping for an interesting color combination, but I learned this: Denim is quite absorbent. It likes acrylic paint. I know, I know... all y'all who work with fabric in your art coulda told me this many times over. But I'm learning. Eventually.

Hi, Daddy.

Today is the second anniversary of my father's death. He would've been 70 in June of that year. (My mom died seven years prior.)

There's not much to say when both your parents are gone, except "It sucks."

I could write until I keeled over and still not convey their respective essences. I am just not that good of a writer.

It's odd: I feel almost like my father was not someone I knew personally, but a storybook character I grew up with. Which is really bizarre, considering that we were very close, yet I was completely aware of his human flaws. It's just that... I will never be able to hear his opinion about anything important to me again. I can tell him; he can't respond except as a whisper of what I would expect he'd say.

I'm starting to feel the same way about my mother. I suppose it might have something to do with the genealogy research I'm doing, because I'm hearing perspectives from my father's brother and my mother's sister. They're becoming narratives.

I guess I'll light a mental yahrtzeit candle and let it go at that. I'm not Jewish, but I like the idea.

Little arters everywhere

I read the lovely Deryn's post yesterday about blogging passionately, just after I took this picture of the cardboard-and-birdseed feeders at my son's daycare.
Didn't have my camera with me, but The Husband showed me how to transfer my cell phone photo properly. (And of course, your blog host probably offers mobile blogging.) The pic illustrates the comment I made in Deryn's post on successful blogging: carry your camera or camera phone with you to remind you to look for the art around you.

I like reading blogs that show art in everyday life. It could be small-people art on the naked trees... could be your own work or work-in-progress. Nina Bagley is a master of the latter -- in fact, I'd say her blog pictures lean about 8 to 1 in favor of arty bits to photos of finished pieces.

I know sometimes the only photo you feel like posting is one of your own toes, but I believe I've seen more toes in the past year than I have in my entire life. And that's including summer swim team leagues. Scars are interesting, though. Chicks dig scars.