Inspired by Klee and Cezanne

"Don't be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation.” Paul Cezanne 
Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see. Paul Klee

      Last week my art buddies met at one of our houses...we first did our showing of what we had been doing since the last meeting. Our challenge this month was two paintings for inspiration.  The added challenge was to "marry" the pictures...by color or design or both.

     

"Fire at Full Moon" by Paul Klee

                               

                                    "Le Golfe de Marseille by Paul Cezanne

My first take on our challenge  was to print one of the pictures on fabric; then superimposing the other on by reprinting on the same fabric...a good way to marry them...NOT...Just came out a muddy mess.  So I then printed each separately and placed one on top of the other then sliced them up into equal parts, placed them on my design wall in alternating sections...Klee, Cezanne, Klee, and so on. And placed compatible colored strips between each section.

Stage I

Stage 2

Stage 3

Then I did some more slashing and adding of horizontal and vertical strips; created a stamp the shape of the bright orange figure on the Klee; sewed it all together; did some stamping and hand stitching then faced it and.....done.  I enjoy doing hand stitching in the evenings...if I'm not doing something like that, I doze off!!

My finished challenge

     The neat thing about our challenges is to see how everyone creates something different.  We are beginning to develop our own styles!  Here are a few of the others...I didn't get pictures of all of them, but my last picture here is a shot of all of them spread out.

All of them laid out together...all sizes, all designs!

    We also did some dyeing...trying using different resists...that will be for another blog! Oh, and I don't know if I ever told you, you can click on the pictures to see them enlarged.  Sometimes that helps you to see details better.

It's Been Awhile!

“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.” 
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

     In order to do all I want to do, I am going to have to live to be at least 132!  But my time the past few weeks has been taken up by a creation done in love.  My church, Westside UU, has a new minister, the Reverend Shari Woodbury and last Sunday, we had her Installation Ceremony.  It was a wonderful service; I think the whole congregation was there as well as many ministers from other UU churches in the area and friends/ministers of Shari's from other cities.
      We, the congregation, spent many hours getting the grounds and building more presentable.  You know how it is when you are having company or something special going on?  It is an opportunity to spruce up all those little things that you meant to do earlier but just hadn't gotten around2it! My small part in the whole affair was to design and make a wall hanging for the occasion. So here is my process:
     As I have probably said before, I design in my head first, then to my design wall.  I rarely sketch out my plan; I just pull fabric and jump  in.  For this project, I wanted to incorporate music, because I knew Shari is very fond of music as well are most of the congregation...to the point that a "Special Choir" had been formed with at least thirty people...much larger than our really great regular choir...with a special director and all!
      First thing I did was create paper pieced letters of one of my very favorite songs "Come Sing A Song with Me". (Paper piecing is a quilting technique that I am not going to take time to explain now but if you are really interested, you can go to this youtube link to hear all about it!) Then I decided to print off on fabric lyrics of many of our favorite songs. (Again another quilting technique with a youtube explanation) I then began placing these items on my design wall.  I knew the banner had to be pretty narrow because the wall it hangs on is curved and won't allow for anything too wide.

First design

Second Design

     With the second design, I also added some paper pieced flowers and had bordered the lyrics with fabric. (Much of the fabric I used had been give to me by Diane Nixon, a long time member of Westside.  She had all these lovely pastels for a Springtime look which was a good thing because most of my fabrics run along bold colors and batiks!)

Third Design

Fourth Design

     By this time I had added borders to the letters and started arranging it all to come up with a total look, adding other blocks, etc. I was realizing that all my blocks and letters were getting to be way too wide for what I needed so....

Fifth Design

     I moved out many of the blocks...

Sixth and final design

     I was able to get almost all the lyrics that I wanted on as well as the lettering for the song title. I also decided that  the whole thing was a little too busy as in design #5, so I put a white border between each panel and the sides, then bordered the whole banner with the same bluebonnet fabric that is around the letter.  I forgot to take a picture of it but the whole back is made up of leftover blocks I didn't have room for on the front! Which is a good thing it is on the back because one of the blocks had the date of the occasion on it and I had put the wrong month!  (When it is taken down, I will fix that error!)

    I didn't mention, that after I finished the design on #5, I actually had sewn it together but just didn't like it!!  So a lot of seam ripping going on!!  I am much happier with the final design but you can see why it took me a while to get back to blogging!!

For the Pulpit

    I also decided to make a pulpit hanging which I didn't think I would have time to do but I had so much fabric left over I started making that hanging on Friday before the ceremony the following Sunday. I had the flowers and leaves left over from another quilt I had made.  This is 22" x 33"; the banner is 20" x 60".

     And here they are together...a little different configuration...the wall the banner is on is not curved but it will hang on a curved wall later.

In the church before the Ceremony

Reviews..books, film, plays

“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.” 
― Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I have to agree with Mozart...I don't like to read reviews of books or movies until after I have read or seen them...I so frequently disagree with reviewers.  So take my reviews with a grain of salt...what  I may or may not like has nothing to do with what anyone else may like!

Since the last time I wrote a review blog, I have read or listened to several books.

A five star book to me

I had read "The Husband's Secret" by Moriarity and thoroughly enjoyed it..so when "Truly Madly Guilty" came up on Amazon on sale I had to get it on my Kindle....really good...one of those that became hard to put down once into it a ways.

Only two stars!

This was an audio book I downloaded...the premises was intriguing...what appears to be a normal size pond is called an "ocean" by one of the characters who turns out to be a wee bit supernatural! Now, I like Sci-Fi and supernatural stories, but this one just never got of first base...it need a lot more character  and plot build up for my tastes.

Another five star!!!!!

I love Jodi Picoult!  I have read several of her novels and have yet to be disappointed.  A contemporary situation...racial tension, hospital and courtroom settings, an awareness created for me of being a privileged white woman....not that I haven't always been very liberal but this made me look at my status in a whole new way.  We read this for our Villas bookclub, but I missed the March meeting to discuss it because I was out to town....it would have been a lively one to hear about!

Four stars

Another audio book...this author is known as " Denmark's premier crime writer".  I really enjoyed listening to this book on a couple of levels....it is a fascinating plot and the reader was really good with the Danish accents!  "The Keeper of Lost Causes" is Adler-Olsen's first in an ongoing series about Department Q,  a newly developed investigative team...cold cases...in the police force of Copenhagen.  I am really taken with several Scandinavian authors...Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo),  Jo Nesbo (the Harry Hole detective series),  Henning Mankell (of Wallander fame), and Camilla Lackberg (who also writes in a series of murders in a small Swedish town).

And a couple of plays I have seen in the past few weeks presented by Stage West, Fort Worth, are:

"Stupid F*&#*ing Bird" was on a couple of months ago...it is a modern day adaptation of Chekov's "The Seagull"....If I had ever read Chekov's play, I didn't recall it, so I downloaded it to my Kindle and have now read it.  This adaptation was very close to the original play....without the "blue" language! 

.....and just this afternoon....

Another really dark play with strong language!!

"Deer" had me laughing heartily!!  It is dark...it had a lot of "strong language" but it was full of unexpected twists and turns! It is one of these plays one will either love or hate!  This was the "World Premiere" the play...the writer was going to be available after the play for a discussion but we decided to head on home.

And my last review...a movie!  I haven't been to the movie theater in probably two years, but when my daughter and I were visiting Kathleen in Warrensburg, MO, where she is in college, we decided to go see "Lalaland".  I had seen Stone and Gosling interviewed on Charlie Rose not too long ago and with a couple of clips from the movie, I thought I was in store for a good ol' fashioned musical in the style of "Cabaret", "Westside Story", etc.  But it was not to be...I think my expectations were too high, because I found it to be disappointing....not nearly as much music as I expected..the story line was disjointed and unfulfilling...if I were rating it with "stars" as I do books, I would have to give it no more than two stars! 

Now, keep in mind my first  statement...this is just MY opinion!

Border Cantos

“No separation of distance; no separation of time; no separation of any kind need lessen compassion.” 
― Zechariah Barrett

Border Cantos by Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo
All of the signs were in English and Spanish

Project

Border Cantos presents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the two-thousand-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus starting in 2009—resulting in a distinct melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter. The latest installation in Misrach’s ongoing Desert Cantos series, this project includes eight suites of photographs—some made with a large-format camera and others that have been captured with an iPhone. Misrach and Galindo have worked together to create pieces that both report on and transform the artifacts of migration: water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol “drag tires,” spent shotgun shells, ladders, and sections of the Border Wall itself, which Galindo then fashions into instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices; video clips of those performances can be seen on this site. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which use Misrach’s photographs as points of departure.

This is the explanation for the art work on display at Crystal Bridges now. It will be there until April 24 so if you are in the Bentonville, Arkansas area, it is very worth your time to visit.  We were there last week when visiting my grandson at U of Arkansas.  It is a thoughtful display of art surrounded by eerie music. To see more of the collection and to hear the music, click on the video clips link above which explains in detail what you are seeing and hearing.

Here are just a few of the pictures we saw there. Partial walls all along the two thousand mile border. The photographs were behind glass so sometimes there is a bit of a glare or reflection.

And there were pictures of articles and effigies found along the border.

Spanish version of Dr. Zhivago along the wall (zoom in for a better look)

Guillermo Galindo, a composer, made musical instruments from some of the found objects which you can see and hear from the above link. Here is the Exterminating Angel which he made into a gong.

Sign explaining the Exterminating Angel

The Exterminating Angel

And Then We Came Home

“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.” ― Paulo Coelho, Aleph

After our classes as Asilomar were over, Andrea and I had planned to stay around for a few more days.  She had lived in San Francisco for a few years and we had visited her a few times so we had "done the big stuff".  We did a little tramping around Monterey....Cannery Row, hung out at the Aquarium for a bit, and visited the Salvador Dali Museum.

Cannery Row Statue

Watching a mother otter and her baby playing in Monterey Bay right outside of the  Aquarium

The Salvador Dali Art Gallery in Monterey

We had wanted to go south to Big Sur for a day or two but because of the floods, Hiway 1 was closed down due to damage to one of the  big bridges in the area.

Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Highway 1 CA

The damage on the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge

We were able to go a little south to Point Lobos State Preserve which is a beautiful park right on the ocean.  A friend of Andrea's had told us about it. One of its unique features is that a special cypress tree grows there and it is the only place in the world for this specific  variety except for Pebble Beach, CA also in the same area.

Point Lobos State Reserve

The Cypress Trees-very interesting shapes.

Ancient sentinels

The Cypress Trees

Then we traveled North to San Rafael, Marin County. And had to go across the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and through San Francisco to get there.

The Golden Gate Bridge

Marin Lodge in San Rafael

We spent the night in the cutest little cottage inn.  It was surprisingly one of the least expensive places we stayed!  California is not the cheapest of places to travel...or live!  Then we headed back to San Jose to catch our plane home.  On the way, we ate breakfast at a interesting restaurant on Mirmar Beach which had been a brothel at one time. 

Previous  Brothel turned Restaurant

Mirmar Beach....right outside the restaurant!

We spent the night at a motel in San Jose and got our flight home the next morning.  When we landed ten days ago, I was deaf for about three days!  I had mentioned this in my class and one of the ladies came up to me later and told me about "Earplanes".  They are earplugs which are to be worn before departure, then removed once in the air, and replaced in the ears about an hour before arrival.  I got some and boy!!  Did they ever work!!!  I'll never fly without them!

Goodbye to San Jose!

We had such a great time, I think we are going to plan to go back next year....with different classes.