Wherever you go, there you are.
I had a wonderful weekend in Las Vegas, talking Photography of Place and exploring a new city.
And what did I mainly photograph? Trees. Palm trees against the Las Vegas architecture. Shadows of palm trees. Palm trees against that amazing sky.
What else could there possibly be to photograph in Las Vegas, but trees?
I have to smile. Wherever I go of late, I find myself amongst the trees.
Today is the day! My pink suitcase and I head out on another adventure, this time to Las Vegas to teach A Sense of Place at Selah. And also do some other fun things… like travel with my girlfriend Rainie, photograph the Vegas lights at night, and get to know some new creative peeps! I can’t wait. There is still room in the workshop and the extra activities, if you’d like to come join us. I would love to meet you!
This travel is the closing chapter of a month and a half of trips… Singapore, Spring Break, Vegas. I’ve noticed I do this: pack a whole bunch of trips and activities together in one short, and crazy, period of time. I did it last fall too, with travel for my brother’s wedding, England and then Vancouver all in a month and a half.
Do I do this on purpose? I’m starting to wonder. I can’t say it’s bad necessarily, looking back I see my mobile art renaissance coming out of that period of time last fall. Who knows what will happen this time? One thing I have learned: It all comes together, in some way, in my art.
The other thing that came out of last fall’s trip to England was a desire to have an easier way to connect without a computer. I had such a struggle with sharing and connecting during my England trip! Through the iPhone and iPad I now have a system, and today I’m sooooo thankful. Last night my son called me down the hall in a concerned voice, “Mom! Your computer has an error! It says the fan has failed and you need to service your PC!” Needless to say, the PC was shut down immediately. So now I’m without my desktop PC until I can fix the fan, which won’t be possible until after my trip. I’m relieved I have other options to connect now, so I can keep in touch with my classes and drop a note to you all today on the blog.
So, looking back I can see: Good things come out of the experiences of crazy times. And in then next couple of months, when my pink suitcase is put away for a while, I’ll figure out what new growth and inspiration has come from this recent time. Right now all I can do is live it and enjoy each moment as it comes.
They are off! The first mailing of the Liberate Your Art 2013 Postcard Swap has been dropped into the post box. With the help of five lovely volunteers, we finished in record time. I’m so grateful for their help!
The final number of artist participating this year is 215. 216 if you include me! That’s 1290 pieces of art that will be liberated into the world over the next few weeks. I love this part!
If you weren’t following along on social media yesterday, here’s the photo story of swap day…
Step 1: Lay out the envelopes (already checked in) with the right mix of US/international so everyone gets one from a country other than their own. Maybe two!
When Step 1 is done, there is a line of envelopes snaking all around my house. In order to keep things organized, our poor dog was relegated to the garage for the day. The postcards would not survive her enthusiasm.
Step 2: Remove postcards from envelopes and distribute them to the five neighbors to the right. Labels and stamps stay with their original envelope.
Doing this step right is crucial, or things can get royally messed up. My friend Rainie came earlier than the other volunteers to help me. There would not have been enough room for more than the two of us in some of these tight spaces! The space was a bit tighter than usual, because our family room is blocked off for construction (we are having skylights installed) and all of the family room furniture is squeezed into the bedrooms. That meant all remaining floorspace in our house was lined with envelopes!
Step 3: The rest of my lovely volunteers arrived ~10am to help with the longest part – sticking on the stamps and labels. After a short training session, they were off and running. The volunteers (from left to right): Rainie, Jeannette, Iris, KC (front) and Katy.
A huge thank you to you all!! In no time at all the finished stacks were growing.
Having done most of this myself the last two years (asking my husband to help when he was available), I was amazed at how quickly this went. Right around noon we finished up, which means that about what would have been 12 hours of work on my own was accomplished in 2 hours with the 6 of us working together. The saying “Many hands make light work” is very true!
The reward for the volunteers at the end: Looking through the postcards. I know, you probably think that we look at the postcards as we work, but if we stopped to look at the postcards as you stamp and label, we would never get done!
So there you have it. Swap Day accomplished in record time, along with a record number of artists participating.
The art in the first mailing is liberated. Fly, art, fly!
It’s true confession time! I am addicted to postal art. Not just the postcards I’m seeing as I get things ready for the Liberate Your Art postcard swap or the lovely envelopes that a few participants have decorated. I also love the stamps that come off the envelopes. Each year, I watch for interesting stamps on the swap envelopes and cut them off of the envelopes. It doesn’t matter, international or domestic, I love them all. After the swap, I carefully soak off the backing and dry them flat. And then I pack them away. For what? I have no idea. I just can’t let these beautiful little pieces of postal art go to waste. I’ve been doing this for three years now! At some point, I’m sure I will be inspired to use them.
As of Wednesday, 185 swap envelopes from artists all over the world have been received. I’ll do a mail pick up after work today, and then check one more time on Saturday for the last few envelopes. This week has been a flurry of activity for the swap! Checking in envelopes and getting things ready with my volunteers for Swap Day. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to open the envelopes and find an extra card or a little note to me in there. What a bonus! I don’t ask for it, but when it comes I’m always filled with joy and gratitude for that little connection.
Since I was away so much in March, I haven’t had time to do as many posts of the beautiful art that’s coming through on the envelopes. I’ll catch you up on a few today!
This handmade envelope is from Terry, one of the few guys in the swap. I love the gorgeous blue and the matching blue butterfly stamp. Even matching blue in on the cancellation! That can’t have been by accident.
Here’s a hand-watercolored envelope from watercolor artist Mimi. I love the way the various stamps are spread out over the envelope, creating an interesting and unusual composition.
This envelope has texture! Katie added paint and hand carved stamps, turning a boring manilla envelope into a work of art with color and texture.
And finally, the highlight of the year is always receiving Amanda’s envelope. (Sorry, Amanda didn’t provide a link!) She’s a calligrapher, and the work she does is amazing. I love the sentiment too – we ARE saving the post office, one postcard at a time. I’m sure we are helping as I spent >$400 on international postage this week. 🙂
Two days until Swap Day!! The postcards will be liberated back out into the world next week.
Landscapes have always eluded me. I could appreciate the awesome landscapes of other photographers but could never create them myself. So I focused in on the smaller scenes and details, and left the landscapes alone. Occasionally trying, and failing, to capture what I felt in the scene.
So it came as a surprise a few months ago when I found myself capturing more landscapes. What was going on?
With the “Blown Away” image I shared last week, I finally figured it out. The difference now is that I’m not trying to capture the “landscape.” There is no goal to fit in the entire scene or capture the grandeur.
What I’m doing now is photographing trees, in context. I’m thinking: How do I best capture this tree and it’s surroundings? How do I best convey it’s loneliness or it’s beauty or it’s light? It all stems from that effort. That I end up with a photograph that can be categorized as a landscape is incidental.
Could it really be so simple? I think maybe it is. Landscapes may not be so elusive after all.
Thanks to Brenda’s Photo-Heart Connection post for reminding me of this “aha” moment. I love how the PHC community inspires and grows together! You can still join us this month, the Photo-Heart Connection link up is open until April 7th.
One of my goals this year is to print new work weekly. This is partly to stay in practice with printing, because without some reason to print I could let the printer sit for months without use and that’s not good for either the printer or my printing skills. It is also partly to have an ongoing, growing body of work that is “print ready” should the need arise. I’ve learned that while sometimes you can get all of the settings right on the first print, other times it takes repeating the process (print – adjust – print) before it looks the way I want it to. Doing this type of work on a deadline for an exhibition can be stressful, but when I’m doing it as a learning opportunity to have new work on my wall it’s quite fun and interesting.
I’ve been posting these regular endeavors on Instagram, using hashtag #livingwithmywork or #lwmw, if you’d like to see how they progress over time. Here’s an example of my evolving wall display from mid-February:
All of this print practice paid off on Sunday evening, without me consciously realizing it. Here’s the story…
Checking my email last week while on our Spring Break camping trip to Northern California, I read about the upcoming Corvallis Art Guild meeting on April 1. There was an interesting program and there was the opportunity to be juried in as an Exhibiting Member. To be an Exhibiting Member of the guild means that you can participate in the opportunities to display and sell your work at various venues and programs they organize throughout the year. To become an Exhibiting Member, you have to go through a jury process: bring 3 pieces of finished artwork, framed and ready to hang, for review by a panel of jurors. This opportunity only happens twice a year, in April or October.
ACK! I thought, as I read the email. I’d been thinking to submit some of my mobile work, the “digital paintings,” to be juried into the guild. But would I be able to make it? We would be arriving home the evening of March 31, the meeting was the evening of April 1, and I only had one piece framed and ready to go. I would need to get two pieces ready – printed, matted and framed – on Sunday night after we got home. Could I do it? It was worth a try, or I’d have to wait until October. I jotted down a couple of notes about which pieces I might prepare and went on to enjoy the week. (Pics will be coming soon of the awesome week in the Redwoods!)
Sunday night, while unpacking from the trip, doing multiple loads of laundry, and shaking the sand and dirt out of everything, I sat down to print. I looked at my available mats/frames and my “print ready” pieces and selected two more to print, mat and frame. I got them all put together and packed up to load into the car Monday morning – I would need to go to the meeting straight from work – and then went about the business of getting other things ready for the week.
Monday was a loooong day between work and the guild meeting, but all went well. I was accepted as an Exhibiting Member of the guild and the jurors had very nice things to say about my work. (Side Note: It was quite nerve-wracking to go through an in-person jury process like this. Normally for juried exhibitions you send off a digital image into the nether and hear back a “yes” or a “no.” It’s not as physical, personal, as this process.)
It wasn’t until Monday night, laying in bed basking in the glow of this little success, that I realized just how far I had come in my ability to create finished artwork. Without even thinking twice about it, I was able to create two nicely finished and ready-to-hang pieces that I would be proud to submit to any gallery or exhibition. I realized that all of my print practice had paid off. A year ago, I had never printed a single fine art print on my own. In addition, all of the work to learn about matting and framing for exhibitions, paid off too. I now have a stock of mats and frames that work for the sizes I created my artwork. This is not trivial, since most of the work I create doesn’t fit “standard” photo sizes (8×10, 11×14, etc.).
A year and a half ago, I was struggling to figure out what to do for my first exhibition. I hadn’t seriously worked to get a fine art print on the wall before. Now I can prep for an exhibition – or something like this jurying process – without a second thought! These are skills and knowledge that I’ve integrated. Sure, I am always facing new challenges (like square artwork) but each new challenge just expands my growing knowledge base and is easier than the one before. I don’t have to work so hard to create a finished piece of art. That is huge – it means I can spend my energy creating new art and get it out into the world. It means my art can have a different impact – as something real and physical, not just on the computer.
If you are a photographer in the process of figuring out how to bring your art into the real world, keep going. I encourage you set a goal to do one thing new to bring your art into the real world. It’s worth it. It starts with getting just one image off of your computer, printed and hanging on the wall of your home. It starts with something as simple as a postcard. That’s how I started ~3 years ago – with ordering printing postcards to share – and look at what I’m doing now. (This is one reason I love the Liberate Your Art postcard swap! Who knows where this one tiny step will lead you?)
As always, I want to help you. You can cut straight to what I’ve learned by visiting my Online Services & Shops page, listed under Resources on the sidebar of my blog. I’ve just updated it with the latest info on my mat and frame sources, and I update this page periodically as I learn new things. Check it out.
And then go… PRINT!
