New Zealand Earthquake: Aftershocks Rock Christchurch on 'Darkest Day

In the face of this natural tragedy, read (below) what one New Zealand artist is doing to bring an outpouring of love to her neighbors...

"Hearts for Christchurch"

I never know what I'll find when I check my email in the morning. Today, there was a post that immediately caught my eye. Evie Harris, a quilter and artist who is a member of one of my Internet art groups, lives in Napier, New Zealand, just a short distance from the quake. She has put out a call to her friends on the Internet to make "Hearts for Christchurch", to share some visible love to the people in Christchurch (New Zealand) who have been affected by the devastating earthquake that struck that city on February 22nd. She asked for her message and request to be passed along. Please read, and participate if you can. This project is perfect for church groups, schools and youth groups, guilds and any communities where you may have connections. If you can't make any hearts, please send this message to others.
Thank you!
Cindy Peck

PS: If you DO choose to participate, will you please let me know? I would like to track this on my blog!

Evie writes:

“I am gathering hearts for Christchurch. Not heart blocks in the quilting sense but `hanging' hearts.

Please make two heart shapes sewn together, stuffed or not, embellished, embroidered, CQ'd, quilted, plain or fancy, felt or fabric or anything goes. Add a loop at the top.

However many inches high that you care to make. For ease of postage, envelope size is a good measurement. These could even be ATC size!

Also for ease of postage you can send them flat, leave an opening and add a note "Please stuff me". I have a couple of non sewers on stuffing.

You can choose to sign them on the back and add a message. It would be nice to have at least the area they come from.

This is just a small measure of something nice to give in this terrible time. A heart is a symbol of caring and I know we all feel an overpowering desire to do something.

Where will they all go? It is intended the hearts will be displayed all together in Christchurch so people can see and feel the outpouring of caring. A venue for that will need to be finalized, given the destruction in the city, the timing of taking them to Christchurch and the number of hearts. After that each one will be given away to those affected by the quake.

If you aren't in a position to donate a heart or two send a little bit of fabric. I have heart makers at the ready. Or simply pass this on message with my address (please do that anyway).

Address for hearts:

Hearts for Christchurch
C/- Evie Harris
523 Main North Road
Bay View
Napier 4104
New Zealand

Spread the word to any and all who you think will send a little of their heart.
Thank you.

Regards
Evie”

TV pictures of the aftermath of the February 22nd earthquake disaster in New Zealand showed scores of collapsed buildings in the South Island city of nearly 400,000 people. Shocked survivors could be seen wandering the rubble-strewn streets, which cracked open as the ground beneath was liquefied by the tremor.

New Zealand experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which only around 20 have a magnitude in excess of 5.0. The last fatal earthquake was in 1968, when a 7.1-magnitude tremor killed three people on the South Island's western coast. The February 22nd quake was the country's worst natural disaster since a 1931 quake in the North Island city of Napier killed 256 people.

New Zealand lies on the notorious Ring of Fire, the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim. The country straddles the boundary between two tectonic plates: the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates.

Blogging Without Obligation

An idea whose time has come...


* Because you shouldn’t have to look at your blog like it is a treadmill.

* Because its okay to just say what you have to say. If that makes for a long post, fine. Short post, fine. Frequent post, fine. Infrequent post, fine.

* Because its okay to not always be enthralled with the sound of your own typing.

* Because sometimes less is more.

* Because only blogging when you feel truly inspired keeps up the integrity of your blog.

* Because they are probably not going to inscribe your stat, link and comment numbers on your tombstone.

* Because for most of us blogging is just a hobby. A way to express yourself and connect with others. You should not have to apologize for lapses in posts. Just take a step back and enjoy life, not everything you do has to be “bloggable”.

* Because if you blog without obligation you will naturally keep your blog around longer, because it won’t be a chore. Plus, just think you will be doing your part to eradicate post pollution. One post at a time. . .

14 Secrets for a Happy Artist's Life

Be Last night I stumbled on a Yahoo group called “14 Secrets for a Happy Artist’s Life”--- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/14_Secrets/. The group is all about art making, art exchange, and making ourselves happy with art.

"14 Secrets?" I mused. I love secrets so I joined the group. Here are just a few:

--- Find three good things every day, whether they are experiences, or objects, or both. Find a way to use them in art.
--- Make everything special. Embellish your life.
--- Play more often.
--- Find something to love about where you are everyday.
--- Create beauty with what you have on hand.

They made sense to me.

Group owner Lani Gerity is an artist/art therapist/writer/puppetmaker who was raised in Taiwan, schooled in New York, and currently lives in a fishing village in Nova Scotia. A magical muse, she offers an on-line course starting September 7th called The Artist’s Happiness Challenge—An eWorkshop. The class seemed a bargain at $40 ($19.95 if you’re smart enough to click on the “Top Secret Discount for Blogspot Readers” which I wasn’t) and I signed up immediately.

Who could resist “three months of art challenges, current research, and happiness inspiring stories... weekly art challenges based on current research from positive psychologists... and exploring the connections between positive emotions, art making, and health benefits?"

Check it out for yourself at http://lanipuppetmaker.blogspot.com/. Lani also offers free downloads of an e-zine that is definitely worth the read at http://homepage.mac.com/lanipuppetmaker/everydayart/FileSharing77.html/.

I love retirement and time to dabble. My march has slowed, and there is so much to see and sample!

I Know a Little Bit About a Lot of Things...

I love the Information Age. What I know about IT---information technology---would hardly impress a kindergartener, but as a dedicated, lifetime IM---information monger---virtual access to the seemingly infinite world of ideas, opinions, and people leaves me breathless with anticipation as I boot up and head for Google Search each day.

No wonder collage art has surfaced on my radar and is consuming so many of my waking hours since June. It feels as if I am collaging my life, organizing what floats about in my head and grabs my attention, and then giving it a visual form. My computer is the intercept between what I want to express and how I give form to that vision. I spend endless hours revisiting the thousands of scanned photos from old family albums and those available in the public domain, considering why they call to me, imagining how they might be transformed. When something clicks, I open Photoshop and start playing on my computer screen. SAVE and DELETE are such powerful little keys. I keep what I like and discard the rest.

Sometimes I stumble upon some little program such as the one that created the word COLLAGE above. You can try it out yourself at www.mycoolsigns.com/. What fun! This morning I plugged in my name, pressed enter, and voile! Photos of letters on signs from around the world spelled out "C" from a highway sign in France, an "I" on a graffiti-filled building in a city, and so on. I just love this kind of thing. It won't put bread on the table, but it brought pleasure to this grandmother in North Carolina on a hot Saturday.

What is your experience? Why not share it?
C

Generosity and Art

I look forward to checking the mailbox these days. Bills, flyers and magazines are always there. But if I'm lucky, I'll also find a neatly addressed envelope that contains a special gift---a tiny piece of art from a new, virtual friend!

The image above is a page from my ATC collection. The acid-free pockets, originally made to fit standard sports trading cards kept in a three-ring binder, are perfect for these tiny pieces of art. Imagine the generous spirit of the individuals from around the world who share their creative talent with strangers for the cost of a postage stamp and a card in return. Amazing, isn't it?

Some of the cards are cut paper collages, some doodled in inks or colored pencils. A few, like most of my own, are digital collages created from photos and images in the public domain, manipulated to create backgrounds for a dramatic effect. What they all have in common is the creative passion of the individual artists who create them and their generosity in sharing them with others.

Do you think you'd like to try your hand? Search "ATCs" on google or yahoo and see what comes up for you. You may be surprised at what you find!

"Two puries for your aggie"...Internet Swapping

When I woke up and checked my email this morning, there was a message to check out a blog kept by a new Internet friend in Arizona. Along with thousands of other artists around the world, she creates tiny Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and sends them out to people who want a piece of her original art in exchange for something they have created.

From parcels of land to marbles, swapping is as old as time. The Internet simply has expanded number of players by pushing the boundries into cyberspace.

I swapped the cards above with Margaret Storer-Roche last week, 4 of hers for 4 of mine. She had so many little jewels of color and ink on her flickr photostream site that I wanted them all, but fair is fair. I had to leave some for other eager traders, after all. When I opened her blog, I found that she had posted the trades she received this past week from all over the world: http://waterblossoms.blogspot.com/2009/07/thankful-thursday6.html . Do take some time to visit it, won't you?

Yes, Trading Cards are B-A-A-ACK, not the mass produced wax packets along with a piece of bubblegum however. This time, each 2 1/" X 3 1/2" card is a tiny bit of original art. and who knows? Maybe one that I've traded for will some day be as prized as a genuine 1951 Mickey Mantle Rookie card!

SoulCollage or ATCs?

Two weeks ago, I made a new discovery---ACTs. ARTIST TRADING CARDS are miniature works of art created on 2 ½ X 3 ½ inch or 64 X 89 mm card stock or similar sturdy papers. Produced by a single artist, ATCs are made in limited numbers, often no more than one of a kind. Unique ATCs are called originals; sets of identical ATCs are called editions and are numbered; sets of ATCs that are based on one theme but that are different are called series. They reflect a wide variety of techniques including paintings, drawings, collages, photographs, rubberstamp works, mixed media, found images, assemblages, and more.

Although art miniatures were popular as early as the 1600s— Zurich artist and organizer M. Vänçi Stirnemann initiated the concept of ATCs, the application of trading cards to the art world, in 1997.

Traditionally, an ATC mustn't be sold, only exchanged, as the whole essence of these tiny works of art is about artists meeting other artists and exchanging their works in person, by correspondence, or even online. Several yahoo groups exist to promote trading internationally. Artists upload pictures of their cards on photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and invite group members to view them and propose a trade. http://www.flickr.com/groups/artisttradingcards/ is one such group with over 2000 members.

That basic rule about trading and not selling cards was tweaked when some artists saw the Internet as an opportunity to make some money and began to create cards to sell, and ACEOs---or "Art Cards, Editions, and Originals" came into being. Many former ACT artists now sell their art miniatures on EBay, making art easily affordable to virtually anyone today.

So, where do I sit on all of this “new discovery? For now, I love creating these little bits of color and form on my computer. Through trial and error and a real desire to understand the program, I have finally learned some of the most basic techniques in Photoshop that have eluded me for years. SoulCollage cards and ATCs are a very different process for me. The first is driven by intention that is felt but not always clear until the last image is glued down. The latter evolves from an image and decisions made to enhance and show it off to the best advantage. My flickr photostream has been inserted to the right on this page. What do you think?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. For the most part, so it is for me with collage. Not so this time, it appears.

First, the backstory. My sister and her husband just left to fly home this morning after spending five days exploring Greensboro. We drove around, walked the university campus, looked at neighborhoods and houses, ate in some wonderful small restaurants and celebrated my birthday at the ballpark watching the hometeam lose their lead and get beaten into the ground in the ninth inning. We really enjoyed each other's company and laughed a lot.

After dropping them at the airport at 6:30 a.m., I grabbed a biscuit and egg at Mickey D's and grabbed another hour's sleep at home. When I rose for the second time, I pulled out my magazines and started cutting out images. One by one, they just seemed to fall into place. Arches and pathways. People facing forward and away. Questions. Laughter. People sharing. Old and young. Even the cats and sponge Bob's eyebrows made it into the picture.

For me, collage tends to be the creation of pleasing arrangements of color and form without any clear underlying intention. When the collage felt complete, I took it to my workspace to scan it. I really like the way the image glows on my monitor, almost as if it were a whole new piece.

The image popped up on my screen. For the first time, I really saw it---a family in transition, and staying present to the process. A surprise summary of a great visit.

Now You See It, Now You Don't!

Retired for several years now, I've explored a variety of activities in that time, some useful to the greater good, some just gloriously self-indulgent. I love the Internet. It satisfies my insatiable need to "dabble" in ideas new to me like nothing else short of a real library. That's what I was doing a few months ago when I stumbled on an article by Seena Frost about a process she called SoulCollage, and "discovered" the infinite possibilities inherent in collage. It was just like walking into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and not being diabetic. I was hooked.

Since then, my so-called dabbling is more focused. I've found and follow some wonderful mixed-media bloggers who share their art and observations with visitors. Corey Eiseman is one of then. The image above is really two images by Eiseman that I printed out and scanned for comparison. The top part, No. 302, is the most recent evolution created on May 15, 2009; the bottom, No. 1, was the first collage, started on September 15, 2004. There have been a lot of changes to the original in 5 years.

A good poker player knows when to hold and when to fold. But Eiseman's perpetual computer blog "canvas" seems to have no end, and she's betting that we will keep returning to see how it evolves. The unique thing about this process is that the current entry is used as a starting point for the next. Then it is worked on, added to, changed a little bit more and archived along the way.

Eiseman says the hardest part about making art is knowing when to stop, but with digital media and blogging available why should we have to? You can see the progress of the perpetual canvas for yourself at http://www.toegristle.com/ .

Trying Something New...

Last weekend, I came upon a blog called "A Collage a Day," an ongoing project that involves creating and posting a new 4" x 4" collage to this site every day. Each 4" collage is offered for sale for just $25.00, which includes 8" x 8" archival gallery matting, documentation, and free shipping. Randel Plowman is an artist living and working in Northern Kentucky. He is part of the graphics department at the University of North Kentucky.

As I scrolled through his site, I came across a notice about a workshop he was offering this weekend, during which he would be examining various transfer methods, the use of glues and various mediums and how to mat and frame art. As a newbie to collage, I was immediately drawn to the offering and contacted the artist to see if there was still a place available. There was.

I am so excited! After hours of scouring the Internet, I finally was able to get a great deal on an air and car rental package, and then Priceline set me up in a 3 star hotel for just $40 a night. As the lyrics of an old favorite say, "My bags are packed and I'm ready to go." Meanwhile, I've played around with computer collage using some free vintage images that characterize Plowman's work.

You might enjoy checking out Plowman's blog site at http://www.acollageaday.blogspot.com/. There are similar sites where quality art is offered to the public at reasonable prices. Check out a-painting-a-day and others.

...A Daisy a Day

These daisies have pushed through the rubble of an old brick home being torn down to make way for a new interstate highway near me. According to the Language of Flowers, each flower has a message and a story. Daisies bring a message of innocence and purity, saying, "You have as many virtues as this plant has petals," or, "I will consider your request." I wonder how this applies to the current situation!

Do you remember plucking a daisy's petals one by one as a child and reciting, "He loves me, he loves me not," for each petal pulled? The last petal so plucked predicted the future of such love. Young girls might also pick a handful of daisies with eyes closed. The number of blossoms in hand told of the number of years remaining until marriage. Its simplicity has made the daisy a favorite of many poets. Its healing and predictive powers made it popular not only with farmers, but also with an infamous English king. Spring, medieval farmers would say, would not arrive until one could set a foot on twelve daisies. To dream of daisies in springtime or summer was a lucky omen, but dreams of them in fall or winter meant certain doom.


Transplanting wild daisies to a cultivated garden was considered to be very unlucky. King Henry VIII ate dishes of daisies to relieve himself from his stomach-ulcer pain. For then, it was also believed that drinking crushed daisies steeped in wine, in small doses over a period of fifteen could cure insanity.
I'll give you a daisy a day, dear...