Art Project 52-4. The Sketchbook Project

 January 31 is the postmark date for The Sketchbook Project. I'm ahead of the game; my sketchbook is ready to go in the mail today.

I started late and was controlled by the instruction to stay dry:  "Your book should be finished at least 48 hours before mailing" to allow all of the paints and glues to dry.  I needed a quick-dry medium to begin with that would allow me to do a backgrounds without having to wait for each page to dry. Thus the decision to use colored felt-tip pens.

The pens weren't enough in themselves, which is why I added bits of photographs.  Somewhere in that process, I realized I needed to add text in order to make sense for other people of what was obvious to me.  That's the reason for the black lettering, which, in the best tradition of any kind of art, reached a conclusion that surprised  even me.

 WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO SCRIBBLE LIKE THIS?

 WAS IT THE SUN, HURLING ITS GOLD UPON YOU?

 WAS IT THE ENDLESS NUMBER OF SHADES OF GREEN?

 WAS IT THE EAGLE,

 OR WAS IT THE EARTHWORM?

 WAS IT YOUR HEART, POUNDING, ROLLING LIKE A WHEEL ACROSS CONTINENTS AND TIME?

 WAS IT THE SHADOWS -------   OR THE RULES?

 PERHAPS PERMISSION CAME FROM THE STEADFAST AFFECTION OF OTHERS OR

 FROM YOUR OWN LOVE OF LANGUAGE AND OF

 COLOR.

 THE GREATER GOOD

 DEPENDS UPON -------- FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.

 MY BRITISH GRANDMOTHER SIGNED LETTERS XXXOOO.

 X. O.: STRUCTURES THAT BRIDGE THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US.

 DID YOU ASK PERMISSION TO BUILD, TO SCRIBBLE, TO BE FREE,

 OR DID YOU CLAIM PERMISSION AS YOUR BIRTHRIGHT?

My sketchbook is one of 4,264 created by artists around the world.

Battle of Lake Erie

From my mother's postcard collection.  "Burial scene, Sept. 12, 1813, of the officers slain at the battle of Lake Erie, Sept. 10, 1813, Put-in-Bay, O."

The Life Waiting For Me: Flying Through The Sky

My friend Carolyn went sky-diving and wrote this fabulous post, which includes a video. Best parachuting sequence I've ever seen. Now I want to do it.


The Life Waiting For Me: Flying Through The Sky: I'm not really sure who decided jumping out of an airplane at 13,500 feet was a good idea. And I'm not sure what exactly possessed me to ag...

Art Project 52 -3 - In Which I Write an Essay

Last week's artist project: writing an essay with a maximum of 600 words to submit for possible publication in one of four books to be published this year by the Tending Your Inner Garden program founders, Deb Engle and Diane Glass.

I'm sharing the first paragraph of the essay, which will appear in the Winter volume.

Deadline for the second book is February 15. If you want to take part but the thought paralyzes you, the best trick I know for breaking through resistance is to decide to write for ten minutes a day.  That's all you need:  ten minutes a day.

The Onset of Winter by Mary Cartledgehayes

Nearly three years ago, Maureen called from South Carolina to tell me that her sister Terry, my friend of 35 years, had a malevolent sarcoma on her left arm. Chemotherapy might be called for. “And” (note: in medical conversations, and often precedes a full-on kick to the head) “she may have her arm amputated.”

Middle Bass Grade School, circa 1972

Middle Bass Grade School painted the color God intended.

Charlie Cartledge is in the foreground.  Circa 1972.

Middle Bass Aerial View, 2005

Aerial view and key.  (Translation of key follows.)

In Belle Cartledge's hand-writing:
Middle Bass Island, Ohio   2005
1.  Lauber-Schnoor dock
2.  Bill Gross's Walleye
3.  Lonz Airfield - closed
4.  Lonz Marina - closed
5.  Jim Roesch's marina and family home
6.  Lonz Estate - overgrown brush, formerly vineyards

Art Project 52-2. "What's for Breakfast?" collage

Collage, "What's for Breakfast?" by Mary Cartledgehayes. 40" x 24. 2012. Deconstructed cereal boxes on canvas.

Detail photo, "What's for Breakfast?" by Mary Cartledgehayes, 2012.

The story behind the completed photo:  This collage has been in the works for several years. I was cutting up cereal boxes to use as the base for mail art, and eventually I began cutting out the solid blocks of color on the boxes as well. The canvas is one Mary Flowers gave me. She'd bought it at Goodwill for $2 as an unfortunate abstract in burgundy and browns. Mary, who often works in textiles, covered the piece with tan suede and added circles and nature-oriented trims. When I admired it a few years later, she told me I could take it home.

The fiber piece remained on my wall for months before it began to lose its zing. I decided to utilize Mary's "take what is and learn what it can become" method.  I worked consistently for a month and then returned to the piece every few weeks.  Last year I gave up.  I simply didn't know what to do next.


This week I was determined that this collage would be Art Project 52-2.  I began by painting the outside edges navy blue. Then yesterday my friends Susan and Kenny came to visit.  She said, "Show me your new art," and I presented the piece for observation and commentary.

"I stopped because I didn't know how to finish it."

We batted around potential additions (a silver spoon, a school-size milk carton) to emphasize the cereal-box origins of the collage, but in the end Susan and Kenny agreed that I didn't know how to finish the piece because it was already complete.

Trusting their judgment, I added just a few more bits later in the evening, primarily the few long thin pieces scattered at odd angles. Those pieces turned out to be the surprise that satisfies.

Quilt-speak

 As promised, another view of Mary Flowers' quilt.

Somebody asked if I'd mind sharing what I wrote around the edge of the quilt. Here is what it says:
 

Where ever we may be, the sun is shining on me and thee. The same sun, yours and mine, no matter how near or distant our houses may be. That sun warms, comforts, nurtures – much the same way that you (my dearest friend Mary Flowers) and I (your dearest friend Mary Jo Cartledgehayes have warmed, comforted, and nurtured each other for what is now more than forty years.

Forty. How can that be? And why do I feel as though if we'd blinked we'd have missed it. “Ars longa, vita brevia” - the Latin, constant believe that life is short and arts long. Today, January 8, 2012, the day I am completing this quilt, I understand the statement anew. Life – our lives – are long in the day-to-day; in experiences and creativity and curiosity and people loved steadfastly. Long in cute shoes, pretty dresses, leather jackets, blue jeans (remember the time we went somewhere and they wouldn't let us in because we were wearing jean? Jeans that cost $50 in 1979-ish? I think that was the night you put your purse on top of the car and we got in and started off and papers flew out like giant snowflakes in the dark). Long in places: Paris, even though we weren't there at the same time and London and Middle Bass and the Carolinas; bars and 24-hour breakfast places; baptisms, burials, weddings, Cookie Days, and the thousands of ordinary days (14,600 to be precise) that we have laughed our heads off, cried our eyes out, raged, ranted, run (remember running on East Main?) and sung.

Our lives are long in the counting of days and goodness, but they are also the blink of an eye. But art: here's the thing: art, even the oldest – Phoenician, Babylonian, cave paintings – or the famous: Mona Lisa, the crown jewels, the Daniel Morgan statue: art is long but art is frozen, forever frozen in the moment of its completion.

We have been a lot of things over the course of our amazing lives, but what we have not-not-not-not-not-not been is frozen. Those flames you saw dancing on my head when I was in the pulpit? Girl, those flames were dancing over your head, too, this whole time, since back when your dad christened you May-Ree and me May-Ree Jo. We are the brains in our heads. We are the wrinkles and scars on our bodies. We are the flame. And we are the dance. xxxooo Mary Jo

On Finishing

Project 52.1

This year I'm completing projects. First up: a quilt for an old friend. I'd already made her one, but she pointed out that it needs washed once in a while. a quilt -- primary colors with a red binding --a few years ago, but she wanted a second one.

 

She was hoping for colors like rust, brown, aubergine, orange, gold:  the vibrancy of falling leaves. Those colors remind me of every boring antique quilt I've ever seen, and I can't stand the thought of working with them. I found a substitute:  turquoise and tangerine.  That combination developed from the first fabric I chose for her, the birdhouses you see above.

This is the only fabric that appears twice in the quilt. That's because Mary has a number of vintage birdhouses ornamenting her lawn / garden in South Carolina.  Here's a photo from the summer of 2011:

Every decision about the quilt emerged from the birdhouse fabric.  It allowed for turquoise, which allowed the peace sign fabric, which freed me to use any other color I wanted. The Jetson-looking tangerine blobs convinced me to make the entire quilt from 18" squares. I like those blobs very well and didn't want them lost.

I hand-quilted the piece with orange thread, and this afternoon I finished hand-sewing vintage binding onto it.  I was then going to write my name, the date, the location (information all quilters are encouraged to include), but once I started writing I couldn't stop until I'd gone around 2.5 times.

Then I traced around my left hand, because I love the shape of hands and also because Mary Flowers once told me she would recognize my hand if we were separated by fifty years and all she saw was one finger.  (Do you know what I call that?  I call that enduring friendship. And thus we have The Enduring Friendship Big Block Quilt.)

What did I notice in forcing Project 1 through to completion (and, trust me, it was a forced completion; yesterday I came up with a new idea; I had to remind myself I was determined to complete one project a week in 2012 and I was rapidly running out of week)?

I noticed 

--that I like the look of handwriting around the inside borders of a quilt backed with white muslin.

--that I might enjoy making a quilt in which my words, in various colors, become the pattern.  That idea is a bit nerve-wracking; what would happen if after investing ten or twenty hours in writing I added something I didn't want to keep in the finished quilt?

--that sometimes I worry needlessly about silly things that are resolved once I get on with the project.

Hellloooo, 2012

2011 was capped off by my annual meeting with Dick Clark to welcome the new year.  He was on the television in my bedroom, where I was snug as a bug, keeping my right arm still and allowing the muscles and ligaments to recover.

While I was in South Carolina, I met my friend Brian for coffee, and we talked about the New Year's Eve we spent in Times Square with our friend Susan Malavet.  Cold?  Oh, Lordie, it was brutally cold.  We'd have frozen, no doubt, if not for Susan, who lived north of the city and was the veteran of numerous New Year's Eves in New York City.


The most amazing aspect of being there is the other-worldly / one-world feeling you get when you visit the Mona Lisa or when you see Charles Dickens' name inscribed in a visitors' log at Shakespeare's birthplace, both of which I've done.  It's equal parts awe -- I'm part of something so much larger than myself -- and also of connection -- not to the artist but to the millions who've joined in admiring the work. 

The next most amazing aspect was that within twenty minutes Susan, Brian, and I were the only people left on the street. I don't know where all of those people went, or how they got away so quickly.  If they'd all flowed to Grand Central Station, they'd all flowed out of it again by the time we arrived there to catch a train.  The night is a masterpiece of civic planning and foot-traffic flow.


And here we are with a whole new year,all bright and shiny, just waiting for us to pitch in and make something of it. 

I'm beginning a new series of large art pieces this year involving bridal gowns (and perhaps additional garments) and narrative. 


I'm also planning a number of smaller pieces.  Rather than making 365 pieces of art, though, as I did last year, I'm going to complete 52 pieces of art (painting, collage, quilt, fiber art, assemblage) in 2012.  Yep, that's one a week.  Twenty or so pieces are already off to a good start; at least a dozen more are right at being finished and just need me to push through that final "what the hell do I do now?" stage.

My other major art project for 2012 is to learn how to operate all of the bells and whistles on my Nikon camera.


And then there's that book project.  It's a very fine project, indeed, but I won't be working on it until the repetitive stress injury to my elbow heals.


Finally, I'm still researching preservation techniques and still working on Step One, which is to halt the damage to paper records, photographs, and ephemera from my parents' house.

For the record, the Year of the Rabbit continues until February 4, when the Year of the Dragon begins.  Other dragon years are 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, and 2000.  If any of those are your birth year, you can expect an especially propitious time of it.  The rest of us can expect the usual sun and rain falling on the just and unjust alike.