Wordless Wednesday (Saguaro Hike)

(note the changing light: from afternoon to late afternoon)

Escapism...where ideas come from...

It's cold here and a blizzard is moving through later today...or at least the prediction is for "blizzard conditions." So it warmed my heart to have some of my photos from my recent Arizona project and residency requested for a web page in progress about this project.

It's warm to look at these images and then I was struck by a lovely synchronicity between this image, created when I took several photos of a beautiful desert vista and "stitched" them together...

...and the corresponding warm tones and colors in a collection of my pieces--spanning several different series--accidentally grouped together in my Etsy studio. Only ironic because I'm not a desert person...only a visitor.

But apparently the colors and sense of this landscape inform some of my work. Mind you, this is probably subconscious as I tend to work and make pieces with the simple philosophy "You never know where a good idea will come from" and then I trust that making things will be the "best arbitrary choices taken from random coincidences." Of course, the human mind is always tuned into patterns and looking for relationships...but beyond that? I guess it's my stubborn persistence to just make and make, and try and try, and eventually "things" pile up and hopefully, some of them are pretty good.

So it's good for me, now and then, to try to step back and consider the larger picture. Somehow, the fact that this set of images, subsequently reorganized, all popped up on my monitor here, within moments of each other, was one such opportunity so thought I'd share!

I've been wonderfully, amazingly busy with orders from my Etsy shop--very satisfying as I progress through my 3rd holiday season here. There's still time to place an order through WillOaks Studio with regular shipping charges to arrive before Christmas....but only for a few more days!!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

Wordless Wednesday (Big Cats)

More fauna from the Tucson Desert Museum...sorry I've been away!! Trying to catch up since I've been back and there simply are not enough hours in a day! But I'm very grateful as it is the time of year when orders are plentiful...when I'm lucky!


See something new today!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I met this lucky turkey at the Desert Museum in Tucson a few days ago--so he's not in trouble for turkey day!! And neither are a few friends that lived there, too...other relatives? Maybe they aren't so lucky!! Enjoy your feast with friends and family, and I hope you are able to count your blessings to give thanks for the past year!

I am grateful for all my lovely blogger friends, for the completion of my 2nd year on Etsy where business continues to improve, and for the health and happiness of myself, my family members and friends all over the nation!!

Have a happy holiday one and all!

(P.S. I'm safely back from my artists' residency, as you may have guessed. I have a ton of new photos and some really interesting information and observations from my residency, and look forward to sharing this over the next few weeks!)

A Lot of Different Things....

....but mostly art related. I've been behind in posting here and you'll understand why in a moment or two. So I'm sorry if I'm jamming too much into one post, but my goodness it's been busy. Ironic that this will fall on a wordless Wednesday, but once again, I take responsibility for a bit of stupid timing...but not stupid news!

First, especially of interest to my Chicagoland friends--I've now got a nice collection of my work in a local gallery! I joined an artists' coop in Barrington and this past Monday, installed a good number of pieces here at the IceHouse Gallery of the BCAC (Barrington Cultural Arts Center) http://barringtonculturalartscenter.org/ I'll be part of a larger group of artists for this endeavor and am very excited by lots of new possibilities! To be continued....

So that took a lot of time and effort over the past weekend, but at the same time, I was also listing new work online, including these new pieces which finally all came together with some lovely silk ribbon, dyed by artisans and used to make the hanging length fully adjustable. This soft, 1/2" silk ribbon has been dyed like water color painting, and I found it in shades of gray and shades of a warm brown. A limited edition, but I'm always looking for new things to try, so we're used to my moving on and changing often.

I showed some of these earlier, but wasn't happy with the hanging ribbons and so have changed and improved them. Now, as you can see here, they can adjust from about 16" to as long as 28 or 29", which is exactly what I was trying to do! I'm just thrilled with how they finally came together.

Plus the "Made With Silk" series continues to grow, and I recently added a lovely stylized cross to my pendant mix, so now can offer a choice of the Om (or do you say Aum?) pendant or the cross pendant added to a variety of colors and material mixtures on long silk crocheted chains...fun, eh?!
Next up, a lovely new treasury that the curator named after one of my bracelets (above) called "Seashore Echos." She says that my piece inspired her treasury collection!


Lisa, the curator, also makes bracelets...with wild abandon...using many of my favorite things...especially Czech pressed glass flowers. You may visit her Etsy shop justCharming to see more. So flattering to learn my piece inspired her choices and her title for the treasury, which is Echoes. Thanks Lisa! Please visit her shop and treasury.



And finally, last but not least, I'm in the final countdown for a major project which will begin this weekend. Quite awhile ago, I was honored by an invitation to join a select group of artists and scientists to be part of the project introduced below:

Art Lab: Border Biosphere Exploration
November 14 - 21, 2010.

Art Lab: Border Biosphere Exploration (AL) will bring together ten
artist educators with scientists and researchers to explore the Sonoran
Desert Bioregion and be inspired by the unique environment that
surrounds them at the Biosphere 2 and Tumamoc Hill Research Station in
Tucson, Arizona, and Cuenca los Ojos' El Coronado Ranch in Pearce,
Arizona. Artist participants will learn about how climate change is
impacting the environment along the international border region of
Southern Arizona, and they will create artwork in response. Their work
will then be presented on the Rillito River Project website and in
related exhibits and presentations.

Readers who may be puzzling about how the work I've been presenting here has anything to do with my participation in a project such as this should not dismay. You didn't miss a thing. I just haven't shared quite yet, on this blog, the work I've done the majority of my art career as an installation artist with a primary focus on aspects of ecology and the environment. I'm getting to that!

And over the next month or 6, I'll begin adding some aspects of my past work with some new things coming into focus in response to this Art Lab experience. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

For now, you can preview more information and past projects from the Rillito River project, of which this is a new chapter, here. And you can watch this blog over the next couple of weeks for breaking news as this adventure begins to unfold....did I mention that I just got a smart phone and will try to add current bits here as I am able? I didn't? Well, I hate to commit just in case the technology eludes me and my best laid plans.....but I hope I can use a bit of different technology to add to this blog as the new adventure takes shape!

IF you have read this far, I'll bet you're saying "Darn you Karen, can't you sort of post all this stuff bit by bit instead of jamming it all into one thing?" To which I must answer, "Yes, that would be most ideal wouldn't it? To bad I'm not really that organized!"

OK, I've got a zillion things to finish yet this evening...thanks for dropping by and more later!