Wednesday, March 18, 2015

beginnings

Sometimes I start things with all the best intentions but my timing is wrong.  This blog was just such a thing.

I started it with the best intentions.  I was going to share my life with my family and my friends and whomever else may have stumbled upon this little space on the internet.  It was a failed attempt but like everything else when a better time arrives perhaps we do better.  I hope so.

I have been on a journey through art throughout my life. 

As a child I remember wanting to write in cursive like my mother did.  Her handwriting was beautiful and I now realize it was her art form.  It was so much a reflection of her life, her desire to be better, be better.  She grew up hopelessly poor on a reservation in Arizona and one in Oklahoma. She was an orphan passed from home to home, used and abused, until she struck out on her own at the very young age of 15.  She was self taught in all her art forms.  She cooked, she sewed, she improvised and most of all she taught Patti and I to do much of that. She was beautiful and I loved her
Mom and Dad and Patti and I
 
I feel like I have been playing with art in some form most of my life.  I thought for many years that I did not do art until I was much older but that isn't true.  I sewed, designed my own clothes, embroidered my own art work on my clothes, doodled through classes, drew floorplans for homes I wanted to own, and a myriad of other things but never seriously until I began crafting when I was in my middle 20's.  Now I am in a new period of life and I am finding my own style, my own voice as an artist.  For the first time in my life I am not focused on how to make extra Christmas money or how to create gifts or just to make clothes for our little ones.  Now I am making art for me.
 
 
This is a shirt I began embroidering about 35 years ago.  It is still hanging in my closet although it no longer fits, waiting to find completion...I will hang it back up now.
 
So this year I started working within the Documented Life Project on Facebook.  It is a group of artjournalists and the wonderful girls at Art to the 5th give us weekly challenges and monthly themes to work within.  I am enjoying it but I am behind...life gets in the way of art.
I want to share my journey for the year and since this is the most consistant art challenge I have accepted I will share it here. 
I found the Documented Life Project a year ago and started a journal but it was the wrong time for me so I got very little done.
The one or two pieces I did get done are very special to me.  This is one of them.  It was about doors and the most important door to me at that time was the front door to our home.
 
This year the gals at DLP suggested a large art journal for the project.  I completed three challenges in this journal before I changed to a smaller journal/planner.  It is much more appropriate for me and my time limitations.  The top two images are from the large journal.  The two below are from the smaller journal.  I love both pieces and I am happy to have done this challenge twice!
 
I think that is enough for now.  I don't want to chase you away so soon. 
 
If you have a moment leave a comment, ask a question, or just let me know you were here.
always,
michele