Grandmothers are Great, but I want to talk about ART today

I was just reading in another blog (Alisa Golden's at http://makinghandmadebooks.blogspot.com/) about Art being cut first when schools need to save money. A pretty bad idea, I sez--when I was in school, Art was a good refuge from the bullying I was subjected to, and I reckon it was for others, too. Making art has so many "uses"--like explaining your abuse when you are too young to write about it: you draw it. Or helping to explain a story in a book you are reading; then it is called "illustrations," but of course it is really Art. I'm sure you can think of lots of other things Art does for folks, even little kids, whose toys start out as someone's conceptual drawing--Art.

One of the textures I made from Lost and Taken and Valleys in the Vinyl  downloads

Art is Everywhere, and Art Never Sleeps.

Now, I don't recommend tossing out science, math and language arts just to make room to keep Art in the budget, but a little thought and effort can integrate Art into everything and anything. Scientific American is a magazine full of science, of course, but it is also a goldmine of breathtaking illustrations and photographs; somebody, somewhere in that magazine's organization has had a hefty dose of Art. Edwin Tufte has written several books on making information visually accessible to everyone; again, lots of Art involved. Geography? Some of the old maps are amazingly artful. And of course, National Geographic makes maps into art on a consistent basis. History? Well, before there were photographs, there were--wait for it--Paintings! And drawings, and mosaics, and who-knows-what-all that were used to depict battles, coronations, disasters and other memorable events. Language Arts (including all its children, like spelling, reading, and writing) can be connected to Art in lots of ways: illustrated alphabets, calligraphy, rebuses, and on and on and on. You name it, and there is Art connected to it somehow. Don't throw it out! But if you can't find a separate place for it in your budgets, Schools Everywhere, integrate it! Make Art a part of it all--won't be hard! Art has a great head start: think of the wonderful Cave Art that has come down to us after millions and millions of years. Once you have food and a roof, you make art.

Yes, this is almost the same, but I did add something

And I am a firm believer in Making Art. I try to do that all the time, but sadly, eating and sleeping have been known to interfere. I see lots of blogs by folks who are out there trying to make Art every day, and I see the wonderful, often untutored, always colorful art they make as a stimulus to my own Art.

Here are some special blogs I look at all the time:
http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com
http://bibigreycat.blogspot.com/
http://velmabolyard.blogspot.com/
http://timholtz.typepad.com
http://lostandtaken.com/
http://valleysinthevinyl.com/

They are all quite different, very individual. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer has a wonderful sense of color and freedom that I greatly admire. Bibigreycat's blog is all illustrations from all sorts of antique sources; she calls it Agence Eureka. Velma Bolyard is a fiber and paper artist who works with natural dyes and materials, and who takes the most stunning photographs of her surroundings. And Tim Holtz is--well, how can you describe Tim? He is full of enthusiasm, ideas, creativity, and energy, and I learn something new every time I open his blog. The last two are very cool sites where I can find and download textures to use in my digital art. They have also inspired me to make my own textures (Thanks, Caleb Kimbrough and Dustin Schmieding), and now I mostly do that instead of using someone else's. But they are a continually inspiring resource.

This one has eleventy-million layers, and

this one uses all my own photographs and scans

So I leave you with my very favorite Art aphorism, one which I made up (and someone else may have thought of it, too, before and after I did):

FEAR NO ART

Cheers, Nan

Yes, I had TWO Grandmothers

I've blogged a bit about my grandmother Helen Lyon Hawkins, but I haven't yet talked about my other grandmother, my mother's mother. She was amazing, also.

Her name was Susan Larkin Thomson--and the first amazing thing about her was that she was named after my great-grandfather's first wife, but she was the daughter of his second wife. My great-grandmother must have been amazing too, to let him get away with that!

Susan was the oldest of seven (or was it eight?) children, all but one girls. She was what her generation called a Great Beauty. Here is a picture of her as a young girl of about 14. The picture is from 1894.

She was very self-assured, not to say bold. When she was around the age of the picture above, her younger sister Virginia, who had been given a camera for Christmas, was asked by a spinster living across the street to take a picture of her deceased sibling, who had never been photographed while alive. Virginia was afraid to do it, but Susan took the camera and the photograph. The spinster rewarded the girls by leaving them each a three-carat diamond earring in her will. My great-grandmother confiscated the earrings, saying the girls were too young to have them, but eventually the daughters of Susan and Virginia got rings made from the stones, a generous present of another of their sisters, Holmes. I would have the ring today, but it was stolen from my mother--ripped off her finger by her cousin when she had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital.

But I digress. Susan grew up, and was presented to Society as the first modern Queen of the Veiled Prophet's Ball in St. Louis. Here is a picture of her as Queen in 1900. I always loved this picture, and my grandmother holding the crown of her office slightly behind her back. I still have the crown--it is purple velvet, with pearls forming sections all around it. It is rather tired now--but then, it is 111 years old! Her pin, a wonderful gold dragon and crown set with rubies, diamonds, and pearls is a treasured heirloom.

I always got the impression that my great-grandfather was something of a rascal where women were concerned, despite being A Pillar of Society (he was a founder of a bank and a hospital and the zoo in St. Louis); however, nothing was ever mentioned by my grandmother's generation in my hearing. Anyhow, Great-grandfather had strict rules where his children were concerned. One of these rules was that any suitor for the hand of one of the daughters had to have $1000 in the bank--a lot of money in those days. Only one of the daughters ended up unmarried--and it was said that my grandmother tried to help her elope with the postman, but the escape went awry, and Aunt May, poor soul, had to live to almost 95 without the love of her life. Aunt Holmes, whom I mentioned before, married a doctor, who turned out to be an abuser. He beat her so badly she lost the baby she was carrying, and came back to live under her father's roof as a divorced woman (something of a disgrace in those days).  Susan backed Holmes up when she wanted to get a job to support herself and her father objected; women in his family did not work (horrors!). And divorced women should stay indoors away from the gaze of society. Anyhow, Holmes got a job at the men's handkerchief counter at Stix, Baer and Fuller, the famous St. Louis department store. She was spotted there by a young man who was undeterred by the divorce and the disgrace of the working woman, and who was apparently in need of many, many handkerchiefs. By that time, Susan had married a young Cavalry officer, my grandfather Alex. Susan made sure that Holmes got to marry her young man (he turned out to be a millionaire, owner of Funsten's Pecans, and they were happily married for forty years, until his death), in spite of my great-grandfather's reservations. Susan bought Holmes' trousseau, as her father refused to so it, and Aunt Holmes was always grateful to her.

This is my grandfather Alex, taken in 1919 at the end of World War I. As you can see by the eagle on his cap, he was by then a colonel. He was in France when the word came through about the Armistice: he received the telegram announcing it, as he was Chief of Staff to the General in command. He was quite an amazing fellow--but his story has to wait for another time. Right now I want to finish up Susan's story--or at least as much as I know of it!

As the wife of a Cavalry officer, she needed to know her way around horses, and I have a picture or two of her on camping trips. She could ride a horse, and was also a crack pistol shot. She won a pistol contest or two.  My mother told me.a story about a time she and Susan were travelling the back roads of Kansas at twilight in their Model T Ford; Mother was driving. They came upon what looked like a road block up ahead. There were sinister-looking men around the block, and so my grandmother hauled out her trusty Colt .22, and rolled down the window. The road was quire rutted, my mother said, and Susan, with the gun pointed out the window of the bouncing car, asked, "Anne, do you think it would be fair to use both hands?" The road block turned out not to be bandits, but a fallen tree and workmen trying to remove it--but in the dim light, it had looked dangerous. Luckily, Susan didn't fire a shot.

Here is a picture of Susan taken in the late 1920's. She has on jodhpurs and boots; I am assuming my grandfather took the picture--he was an avid photographer.

Here she is camping, but I am not sure of the date...I call this her bag lady picture.

I think I'll stop here for now--there are more stories to tell, though, and I'll be back soon to tell them. --Nan

The Weekend of Week in the Life

Thursday was such a full day--but Friday was the highlight of the week. The Greek class was having a cooking party! We were all to go to Prof. Heracles' house instead of to class, and we would share food, and he would show us an easy way to make spanakopita, a delicious Greek phyllo pastry filled with spinach and cheese. One of us was unable to have any milk products, so we substituted tofu for the cheese. I love the traditional spanakopita, and was dubious about the tofu, but it was very tasty--a little different, but tasty.

But first, in the morning, I got a hair cut. Actually, I got them all cut. Debbie, my hairdresser, was drying her own hair when I got there, but soon she had me shampooed and ready to to be trimmed.

Here I am, taking Debbie's picture while she finishes drying her own hair.

And here I am, taking a picture of Debbie cutting my hair.

All done! Debbie is holing a mirror so I can see the back. I like it this short--no fussing!

At the party, Prof Herakles showed us how to roll out the phyllo, and some of us took turns doing the other layers. We made four layers--not a lot, compared to some recipes which call for many more layers of phyllo. The phyllo you get ready-made is also very much thinner.

The dough was mixed in a big mixer, and then divided into four pieces. These were rolled out, one at a time, to make the phyllo layers. Olive oil was painted on the rolled out dough between the layers.

Using lots of flour to keep the dough from sticking, and a long 1" dowel as a rolling pin, Prof. Heracles rolled the dough into a very large, thin circle; this was then placed into a large, round cake pan. While the dough was being rolled for the first two layers, the filling was being heated on the stove. This was chopped onions and spinach, with tofu chunks stirred in.

The filling went into the pan after the second layer, and then a third and fourth layer of phyllo went on top. A couple inches of phyllo hung over the edge of the pan, and this was rolled up and tucked into the pan like a piecrust edge.

Then the pie was cut into sections and cooked in the oven for 45 minutes.

While we waited for the spinakopita to cook, we munched on veggies and fruit, and drank lemonade, and sat in the garden or spent time chatting with Tony, Prof. Herakles' African Grey parrot.

Tony was quite the hit of the afternoon. He is bilingual, and spoke to us from time to time in either Greek or English, depending on who was watching him.



















Eventually, the spinakopita came out of the oven, and we made short work of eating it and the other dishes we had brought to share. All in all, it was a wonderful party, and we all stuffed ourselves.

Saturday I spent time at the computer, wasting many hours trying to install a new program. It drove me crazy, because it would install perfectly and then immediately turn around and uninstall itself. Very frustrating! But I did manage a bit of shopping, and I bought a small cube of drawers for under my computer table.

Here I am reflected in the window of the halal grocery where we went to get a couple of cans of gigantes--the name for fava beans in Greek. They are a very large bean, shaped like lima or butter beans, and very tasty when prepared with tomato sauce and spices.

We visited out son, Matt, who lives near us. He asked us if we would take him to a party he was invited to on Sunday, as he doesn't drive. We agreed, and arranged to collect him and deliver him to the party. After that, we went to Vetco Electronics to get a cable to connect our new modem/wireless lashup (see Wednesday) to my big computer. It was a feast of textures, and I took lots of pictures for my graphics files.

Sunday I made some Artist Trading cards. I made digital collages using some of my textures and some elements from Digital Scrap and characters from ads and rubber stamps.

And I built my cube of drawers for under the computer desk, and found places for a couple of rolling chests of drawers under the tables. The rolling part didn't happen, though, because the wheels would make them too tall to fit. The computer room revision is an ongoing project, and I found lots of things I could part with to make room for things I can't part with.

We went to Half Price Books on the way to pick up Matt, and I took my picture in a mirror on a book.

We took Matt to his party, and went over to the Ave in the University District to have dinner at the Continental Pastry Shop. I used to hang out there a lot when I was a student at the U, and my son Jeremy did likewise when he was a student, so the owner, Demetre Lagos, and our family are very well acquainted.

Some of the Continental Pastry Shop's wares

Demetre Lagos and me

After that, we picked up Matt from his party, took him home, and went home ourselves to spend a quiet evening with the TV.

So--that was a week in my life. And lest you think it was exceptional, let me assure you that ALL my weeks are that hectic. I don't always take a thousand pictures, though I just may from now on! Being a retired person has a few benefits besides Social Security; one does not have to deal with small persons demanding a lot of attention, nor does one have to satisfy a particular schedule not of one's choosing. One can spend one's time making art, or writing blogs about whatever comes to mind. Especially if one's husband is able to cook some of the time (it's his recipe for gigantes) and is willing to do the heavy chopping for stir fry!

Until next time, when I plan to get back to the grandmother thread, Nan

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Well, That is The Week that Was--It's This Week, Now

OK, where did I leave off? I think it was Thursday we are up to. Thursdays are my play days with my lovely friend Ami. We do cool thinks like check out the latest digital goodies, make ATCs (like we did today) and then go out to dine in splendor at the food court at Crossroads Mall. Last Thursday, though, we didn't do that. We had our usual kaffe mit schlag, yum, and took crazy photos of ourselves and each other, and played a bit on the computer.

Yummy Coffee and Whipped Cream

We had fun in her kitchen mirror.

Trying to get both our faces into the picture.We had homemade raspberry rhubarb crisp and store-bought key lime pie for lunch...can't do that every day, but it sure tasted good!

In the afternoon I went to the University of Washington and sat in on a Modern Greek class. It is intensive Greek, and while I am not a student in the class, I am expected to participate when I visit. My Greek is very rusty, as I haven't exercised it much since 1983 (my last trip to Greece) but I tried to do my best. The class was about an elephant named Mitsos who, having flown to Greece from Africa with his mistress, was too big to fit into a taxi to go to the hotel.

The Greek class finishing the story about Mitsos

The class decided that the story needed finishing, so we finished it by having a monkey direct Mitsos, with the monkey's owner and his mistress on his back, to the hotel. But instead, the monkey took them to the zoo--a hotel for animals.

After class I had time to kill before my board meeting for the Seattle Book Arts Guild, so I wandered around campus taking pictures.

First, I went into Allen Library and took pictures of the installation, "Raven Brings Light to the House of Stories." This tells the story of Raven doing this, and there is a book, and there are various nooks around the library that have Ravens installed in them. This is part of the main installation in the library lobby:

And this is the Book:

There was a descriptive sign on the Mezzanine:

Then I went on to grab a snack for dinner in Suzzalo Library.

Model of the clock on the top of the oldest building on campus, Denny Hall

I had dinner in the coffee shop in the library, where the model clock is kept. Then I went out to the Quad, and took pictures of some of the unusual gargoyles on the buildings.

This baseball player is one of the sports gargoyles

This commemorates the Navy

This is Arithmetic.

The gargoyles have always amused and fascinated me. I used to look at them every time I passed the building.

Nest, I wandered over toward the library where the board meeting was to be held, and saw a sign advertising the anthropological museum on campus.

The whole sign

Here are a few of the letters, close up:

These signs are made of enameled metal,

and there were pictures on both sides. I particularly enjoyed the winged Mammoth.

So I photographed him again without the wings.

It got a bit dark to take more pictures, so I went into the library to wait. When the other board members arrived, we held our meeting. It lasted about two hours, but we got a lot done, so it was time well spent.

The Seattle Book Arts Guild Board Meeting

That's it for now--Friday, Saturday, and Sunday still to come!  ---Nan

Taking a Break from the Grandmothers

I need to find a couple of photos in the storage box that I want to share with you. So my grandmother saga is on hold for a brief time.

Instead, I'll tell you a bit about my week. I signed up to take a class from Ali Edwards of Designer Digital called "A Week in the Life." One is supposed to record the ordinary goings on in one's life for this week, and so far it has been quite a blast.

On Monday I went with two friends to a rehearsal of the local Chamber Music group that has an annual festival. There was a talk beforehand, and then we were treated to the most wonderful music! It was Opus 1 from a Hungarian composer I had never heard--or heard of-- before, and I must say I have been missing something! It was a Piano Quintet, which doesn't mean five pianos, but one piano, two violins, a viola, and a cello.

This is the piece and the cast of musicians, from the program  for June 25

This music is amazing, and the musicians certainly did it justice. I was really glad to get to hear them! 

I saw a T-shirt in the gift area that I later decided would be perfect for my viola-playing grandson. Of course I didn't think about actually buying it (I did take its picture) until we had left. But one phone call to my friend who had suggested we go to the rehearsal, and who had a ticket for the concert, and it was arranged! She e-mailed me that the deed was done; I'll pick it up at our regular meeting next Monday!

The T-shirt for my grandson

Tuesday was a full, but fun, day. I had planned to go to ArtWorks, where I teach, to "play" with my friend Meredith, and to exchange tips and tricks on antiquing with metal salts and solutions on various surfaces with my friend Tonnie. We had a wonderful time. Tonnie brought her Vagabond (an electric die-cutting machine designed for Sizzix by Tim Holtz) and lots of metal to run through it with texture plates. I brought the antiquing paints and solutions. We spent a happy three hours making samples and pieces to use in our art. Meanwhile, Meredith was tarting up a nine-foot umbrella she had agreed to contribute to a local Junk-o-rama. We did manage to squeeze in lunch.

Meredith is hard at work on the umbrella; Tonnie is in the background

Some of the samples Tonnie made were awesome--I mainly spread some gels out to make skins and worked on experiments with the antiquing stuff and heavy interfacing.

A piece of copper Tonnie embossed and antiqued

My antiqued interfacing

I also stenciled some antiquing stuff on gessoed canvas; it will eventually become a book cover, I think.

Stenciled canvas; rusted iron and patinated copper

After that, Meredith and I went to Seattle to our regular Belltown Book Arts group meeting. We had dinner first at the BellThai, which is a routine with us now. Then we went on to Uptown Espresso for our meeting. Unfortunately, the city of Seattle has seen fit to jack up the parking prices and keep the meters in force until 8 PM instead of 6, which covers most of the time we meet. This means we may have to find a new meeting place--after six years. Most of us are barely able to pay the current fee.

Belltown Bookies Meredith, Liz and Michael

Today was interesting. I didn't go anywhere (imagine! I stayed home!), but the Xfinity man was coming to re-do our internet and phone lash-up  So I had a few re-arrangements to take care of in the computer room, so he could get to the wall and an electric outlet. He was right on time, and I got his permission to photograph him for my Week In The Life project. I also photographed his truck.

Here is the Xfinity Guy, drilling a hole in the wall

This is the hole; that's daylight in the hole

And this is a sign on his truck.

It took him awhile, but he eventually got everything installed and working. And of course, as soon as he left, it stopped working. Luckily, I still have my connections, but my poor husband is still frantically trying to solve his problems. Isn't technology wonderful?

Here is my frustrated husband, trying to get things working

But it works for me!

I hope he gets the problem solved before too long--he is very grumpy when having technical difficulties!

Bye for now!  Nan