Mayhem Mojo

These are my guard frogs. Other people have guard dogs. Or noble lions. Perhaps even a bear. Not me!---I'm all about buggy eyes and funny feet. I'm crazy about frogs and about this time of year they start to appear, singing their strange songs of love into the night. The irrigation pond at my parent's house typically rings with a cacophony of little froggy voices and if you're lucky, you can see them chillin' on the rocks along the rim. They have the right idea---hanging with buddies by the pool!

Speaking of chillin' with buddies, albiet not around a pool, but around a pool-sized kiln...Mayhem 2008 was a blast! This annual mudfest is a shameless drench in all things ceramic, splashed with lots laughter and food. Lots and lots of food. We revert to our own inner Emile, dang straight! It's food for the soul, too. Truly, when Joanie, Lesli and Lynn are together, I hear happy cosmic harmonics that rattle my neurons in pleasant ways. Yet like every year, it all came and went in a blink of a buggy eye, and the house is left so quiet and still. There's a tangible feeling my house seems to have after each Mayhem that speaks, "What the heck was that?!"

Same with my brain! Wow...my mind is still spinning from everything I've learned. There's no substitute for hands-on doings and picking the brains of experts to really jump-start the learning curve and the inspiration to tackle it. Also casting from an unprecedented nineteen piece plaster mold (Stormwatch) does a lot to whittle away any sense of timidity! I think I've finally conquered my trepidation with underglaze, too, since the two pieces I worked on came out so much nicer than I expected, and pretty much what I'd aimed to create, which is new. I suspect because I underglazed them boldly, with total abandon, with no sense of worry or anxiety that typified my earlier attempts. I had nothing to lose. It's alarming how a sense of caution can impede a creative attempt, and there's rarely a less forgiving media than ceramics, which only heightens a deep sense of artistic existential agony! Yet if you're gonna learn to swim in the glaze, you just gotta jump in! There's something to be said about uninhibited chaos in the studio. So my big breakthrough this Mayhem was experiencing the difference between freedom and fretting when working with ceramics, which was the key I needed to unlock my resistance. As anyone who knows me will tell you---I'm impulsive. I'm not a "plan ahead" kinda gal. I thrive in an "eraser situation." Yet ceramics demand a very regimented way of thinking because you have to see each step in perfect clarity, all the way to the shiny end. This is very hard for me to do, which had brilliantly impaired my ability, and desire, to even venture forth. Things are very different now. The ability not to care has unshackled my ceramic mind! So, thank you Mayhem for...well...the new creative mayhem in my mind!

Which brings me to new mayhem with cold-painting. Besides going bonkers with ceramic techniques, I'm also playing with a new cold-painting method for my dapple greys, using charcoal pencils, in white and black. I've been searching for that method that duplicates the graininess of a dapple grey accurately, while also providing absolute control so those dapples look right...and I think I finally found it....after 20+ years! I'm applying this technique in earnest on a wonderful Fraley Bram'll Blue Boy and I'm pleased as punch with how he's turning out! Here's the "before":

Then using a tortillion, I smudge strategic parts and areas to soften it:

Then I spray with Testors Dullcote, and start again, building up layers and effects. Shown here is only the first layer, so you can see I have a ways to go. I also plan to use an airbrush and hand painting to accentuate certain things. The great thing about this approach, what actually sold me on it from the get-go, is that the graininess remains in scale. I'm a big stickler for painting effects to be fastidiously in scale, which becomes increasingly important the smaller the sculpture. Honestly, there are few things more effective to erasing the "believeability" of a paintjob than having its key aspects out of scale to the pattern or the sculpture. So me thinks an article on this method for The Boat is in order!

I'm a believer in sharing information. I like a jumbled sticky sweet mess of fresh ideas heaped in a big communal bowl, tantalizing our artistic senses. Some may think this is confusing, perhaps intimidating, or even foolish, but I think it's enlightening! Exciting! To my mind, the whole point of discovering new artistic methods and concepts isn't to horde them and let them stagnate, but to douse the world with them and watch them grow. The more brains that puzzle on a technique, the more possibilities are revealed! This is why those minds that show a predilection for creative exploration and those spirits that show a fondness for sharing the lessons learned tend to garner my deepest admiration. It creates such good juju. Dessert for the mind and soul. So thank you, Joan, Lesli and Lynn for another year's serving of enriching soul food!

"Anyone who isn't confused here doesn't really understand what's going on." -- Anonymous.

Rites of Spring: Harleys and Surf Guitar

My goodness. It’s been an abysmally long time since my last post! It’s uncanny how quickly time cooks away when your fire is roasting too many irons, snapping and sizzling with sounds of the future and enticing possibilities. The Year of the Rat has lived up to its promise of new beginnings and change for us, and it’s not even half over! Good beginnings and good change, though. Sometimes the things that appear most wrenching and catastrophic really are the most cathartic and rejuvenating. So it’s fitting this blog entry comes during spring, a time of rebirth and renewal blooming from the desolation of winter.

In Idaho, spring isn’t heralded just by the Canadian geese and the gluttonous rush of the Snake River, but by the rumble of Harleys! Idaho has a large and very active HOG community, one that longingly waits in hibernation during the Idaho winter. Yet the nanosecond the weather warms in spring, these impressive machines are coaxed into gleaming glory by loving polishing hands and ignited awake from their winter slumber, to thunder out in eager hordes as if to chase away the winter solstice. Each day blessed with glorious spring weather will cause the roads to be generously seeded with these two-wheeled harbingers of summer, as social bonds are re-affirmed and new adventures are mapped out and planned.

Another messenger of Spring for me is surf music. I have long been enamored of this eclectic and idiosyncratic form of music, one that’s unencumbered by vocals and so allows room for the instruments, especially the guitar, to “talk” and the mind to wander into curious places. There’s something about the energy, the airiness and the peculiarity of this style of music that speaks to me of shedding the grimy cloaks of winter’s chill to bask in the new glow of whimsy and unconventional wisdom. My husband and I were lucky to catch Dick Dale’s last tour back in 2006, as it kicked off here in little ol’ Boise. What a great concert, by such a grand old school musician! My signed poster (above left) beams like a beacon in my office during winter's grey gloom, promising Spring just around the next sunrise.

I love Spring. From the deep hole of Winter, this season allows us to open up our house to let its freshness in, filling the house with sounds, smells and sensations almost forgotten during the oppression of snow. What was that?---a bird! Ahhhh---a warm breeze blowing through the living room! I smell a BBQ somewhere---in the office! Beautiful weather allows us to bring the outside inside, reacquainting us with Nature and arousing our senses once again to the tingly life of The World Outside.

Spring also is a joyous time for the Green Thumb, a thing I enviously am not. All of my houseplants are very good plants. Very strong, determined plants. They survive on sheer will power. I think I have very little to do with their continued survival, and I suspect they’d like to keep it that way. Yet those friends and family sanctified with that blessed shade of digit are now speaking of planting, potting and matters to do with dirt and seeds and clippings. I shall rejoice in their new shoots and buds, and daydream of luxurious gardens full of secret places, inner moments and the buzz of tended Nature flourishing unabashedly.

So I sit here, typing this blog entry listening to The Ventures with all the windows open, and gazing at my tulips popping up in my flowerbed as my husband polishes the chrome on his Fatboy. I hope your thaw is as restoring and invigorating this year, too! Welcome, Spring!

"I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face. " --Langston Hughes

My Last Nerve is a Fighter

Hello again--but this time from the critical unit of Systemic Software Necrosis! In other words, I'd like to kill my Microsoft Word program. At least bit-slap it silly. So I apologize for not posting earlier, but nearly all my attention has been focused on a current writing project with an ominous deadline--next month! GAH! Every time I look at the calendar, my eyeballs pop out on stalks and my hair looks like something inspired by an experiment on MythBusters. So if I seem a bit hard to get a hold of these next few weeks, it's because this little Shetland is scrambling in the salt mines to get this project published on time.

Published? What published? Well, starting January 1, I became the new editor for the RESS newsletter, The Boat, which is now a biannual ezine published as a full color PDF for members. I'm rather passionate about this organization that has helped so many of my fellow equine artists grow, and I've poured that level of enthusiasm into this new version of the publication. For months I worked on it. 200+ pages. Totally formatted. In Word. I was so puffed up, thinking how efficient and competent I had been by starting so early!

But like most little conceits, it all blew up in my face like Acme Dynamite.

About three months ago, Word decided it simply didn't want to open it anymore. Harumphf! It even had the audacity to decide to crash every time I tried to coax-beg-cajole-shriek at it to please open the file! What gall! Now usually I have "Techno Joy" (in the words of Eddie Izzard) when it comes to writing, word processing and publication lay-out, but this euphoria turned to "Techno Fear" in one heart beat.

After a barrage of trouble-shooting, I was at wit's end. Ultimately, I figured I'd just have to pay a professional to rip it open and salvage what I could. But on a whim, I tried one last ditch effort on my part--my little iPages word processing program that came with my new iMac.

Open-Winter08-*click*-"Here ya go!"

Wham!--there it was! That funny little program ripped it right open, images and all, though all the formatting was lost. Small price, though, since I was ecstatic to have salvaged everything, even in raw form. Now since I thought I didn't have time to learn a new program and play eight months worth of catch-up, I re-started The Boat in Word again, thinking the document had developed a corruption that I would just avoid (somehow) in the future.

I desperately need to develop the skill of slapping myself at strategic moments in life.

Word crashed again!--After six weeks of work of feverishly reconstructing the publication. And with no indication as to the bee in its bonnet! I had it with Word. A program I had depended on for 10+ years was now simply unreliable for this publication, so I promptly bought AppleWorks. I would just have to bite the bullet and learn a brand new program on the fly as I re-did The Boat for a third time, while also wrapping things up to meet the publication deadline. But you know, it's ironic how things pan out to work for the best--here I thought my forced leave from the studio was a disaster, but if it wasn't for that, The Boat would be months late, or perhaps not published at all as a Winter issue! So hooray!--I guess?

And so far, so good, but keep your fingers and footsies crossed that AppleWorks doesn't develop a neurosis, too. But I gotta say--this little program is a lot better for my goals with this ezine, so in that sense things worked out for the best, too. Crazy. You just never know which disasters will actually turn out to be blessings!

Now one might wonder--"Why the heck would a self-employed artist spend all this time writing for and working on this publication?", and that's a good question. But the truth is that it comes back to me, in very positive ways that improve my work and advance my artistic goals. Really, it's not a selfless endeavor! I don't know about you, but I've never believed that "those who can't do--teach". BAH! What nonsense! Obviously someone with a goodly bit of insecurity and bitterness coined that phrase. In contrast, I believe "those who do well, teach" because teaching is one of the best ways to learn! I also believe teaching helps to elevate the art form by helping more artists achieve goals they never thought possible, creating a more cohesive and energized community for all of us. Accomplishment is a good and potent drug. So that's why my last nerve is doggedly fighting to get this puppy published, and on time! And as a teaser, I've included a small peek at a couple of illustrations in the Winter 08 issue.

So, until next time: "Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." --John Cotton Dana

HELLO NEW YEAR!

As you can well imagine, I'm frothy and agog that 2008 is the Year of the Rat. I'm pretty well freaking out. I have all my rat gear and I'm so ready to welcome in 2008 with open arms! And, personally, I just can't imagine a better symbol for any year, but in my case (and I suspect for many of you out there, too) a more serendipitously apropos symbol for our life paths these coming months.

Like many of you, hubby and I watched the 100th Year Anniversary Ball come down in New York, and it was beautiful and meaningful. But I can't wait for February, for Chinese New Year, to roll around, then I can really get crazy with celebration! I mean...c'mon...I'm existentially bitter about being a Year of the Monkey person, and fully intend to wallow in Ratiness this year, as I hope you all do, too! May all the blessings of Ratiness pile in through your door in 2008!

And I'm happy to report that my recovery is going well. My mobility is almost back to normal (though I still have to take it easy and I still not allowed to sit upright) and the numbness and impaired coordination of my legs is almost completely gone! And, just as important, I was able to cook my customary breakfast this morning for the first time in ten days, and Beasley was especially grateful to get back to his morning routine. He's a little scrambled egg junkie. That's him peeking out at you from his Kleenex box hideout. Like cats, rats love to play in boxes, particularly those that have little peep holes and inner hidden compartments and paths inside. He and Bix entertained themselves for about two hours exploring every nook and cranny and playing through the peepholes last night. Beasley was on my shoulder when the New Year's Ball came down, too. He likes to join in on the party!

And it's a beautiful New Year's Day here--white snow on the ground, blue skies, bright yellow sun and crisp winter air! It doesn't get any better for an Idaho winter! I hope the day, and the coming year, is equally beautiful in your neck of the woods, too! I feel ready for 2008. Really. Ready. Eager. Bring in ON!

And so with that: "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come." ~Joseph Campbell

Jingling All The Way~

Hello, hello! Greetings from the post-surgery stupor! There's nothing quite like the buzz of painkillers and candy cane hot chocolate!

Now I would have posted sooner, but when I'm unable to assume postures that would allow me to type easily, all of a sudden this everyday task has taken on Mt. Everest proportions. "Just...hit...the CAPS button....must hit CAPS....button! No!...NOT TAB! Ahhhhhhh....."

But I'm doing well and back on the road to recovery. But golly--sitting here, unable to do much of anything is a bit of a, well...torture chamber. How I want sculpt and play in the studio! ARGH! And...of course...I've had a billion inspirations in the past five days, yet I'm completely unable to materialize them. Why is it that when we're unable to create, life decides to make our brain work 100 times faster, giving us the motivation, but denying us the means? I call no fair! And poor Hubby--it hasn't even been a week and I'm already a bat in my belfry. However, his diabolical plan of placating this monster with a steady stream of chocolate and movies seems to be working so far.

But I shouldn't complain. And perhaps there's a lesson to be learned here. Truly, I have much to celebrate, and so much to look forward to, as well. And as I heal, I'll work on other things and perhaps I'll crack open that ol' sketchbook again and rediscover that long-ignored diversion I utilized so adeptly in school.

So I'm sending you heartfelt thanks and best wishes during this splendid holiday! Celebrate and make merry! And until next time, I leave you with this:

"I have had just about all I can take of myself." ~S. N. Behrman

Glad Tidings to You!

Out of nowhere, the holidaze has descended upon us like a frenzied whirligig. Gadzooks!...Duck, man...DUCK! It's truly amazing how much we can cram into one week, isn't it? So congratulations to each of you who has so efficiency (or not so efficiency) wrapped up your holiday preparations and are now coasting, like a gleeful tot in a new sled, down the mad hill of December and smack-dab into the Season's festivities.

I, on the other hand, have pretty much accomplished nothing.

Yes, a couple of outstanding tasks and projects got done (and came out a lot better than I'd hoped!), but everything "holiday" will be about a month late from MinkieMundo. This back surgery, which is tomorrow morning--finally, has shook my sensibilities like a dimestore snowglobe, being the cause of The Great Disruption that has festered on my nerves like a bad case of D'OH. I'll be so glad when it's all over and I wake up. I truly dread anesthesia. Truly.

But it's been a very good day today. A brilliant day. Hubby and I spent the day together, which is always awesome! And he bought me two CDs by The Clash (I'm upgrading my old tape collection to CD) and we went out to our favorite sushi place for dinner and totally porked out. And best of all...he bought me a new Charmkin!

Say hello! He is such a little character and so very sweet! We were actually getting supplies and new fish for Hubby's fish tank on a spontaneous errand, but I wandered over to the rodent kiosk and there he was...all alone. I peered at him, and he peered at me, and he just had to come home with us--and so he did. I'm so lucky to have a husband who understands and indulges me on these matters. And ZeeBee and Beasley have welcomed him like a lost little brother! It's so fascinating to watch them parent him, and how so very patiently and gently keep his playfulness and boisterousness within acceptable boundaries. They're all asleep now, cozied up into one big blobby lovepile. Oh, to be that size to snuggle up into that warm, fuzzy goo! And speaking of goo -- a place where large, friendly rats roam around is my idea of Heaven on Earth.

But though he hasn't told me his name yet, it was meant to be. Some things just are. I mean--get this: Some blankety-blank jerks had bought this little guy as a White Elephant Gift for some holiday party. What kind of person buys an animal as a White Elephant Gift?! No one who would survive two seconds with me. And get this, the recipient apparently debated for a week what to do with him, while he was stuck in his cardboard petstore box the whole time. And thankfully rather than killing him (which apparently was a viable option-???), they returned him to the pet store. And that's when I found him. He was very timid at first, but has tamed almost instantly and is so excited to be here, he can barely sit still. He's enthusiastic about everything. The mere fact this little guy can bear any goodwill towards a person after what he's been through testifies to his graciousness and willingness to try again. Truly, the perfect lesson as we end the year--To always be willing to hope! So we now have much more to celebrate this Christmas--a new sparkly light on our family tree!

And though I can't eat or drink anything now since my surgery is at 11am, earlier I scarfed down...er...ate...some chocolate, drank some hot chocolate and watched Totoro (Thank you, Elaine! I LOVED it!). Hubby is going to show me how to transfer some materials from my iMac to my iBook, so I have some projects to work on while trapped in his Lazy Boy, like some confused Iron Maiden. "You shall sit in the COMFY CHAIR!" Ugh. But thank God.

So while our Christmas and New Years will be sedate, it will most definitely be filled with gratitude and cheer!

And so may your Holidays been shiny and bright, too! Celebrate! Sing with gusto! Don't skimp on the tinsel! I wish you and yours all the joy, laughter and love this season brings, and most of all, to carry that through 2008, too! And, in true ratty nature, of course, I wish you piles of sinfully delicious food and treats! May you be warm and content, and may your bellies be full this Holiday Season!

Joy and Best Wishes to you! ~Sarah

"Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow" ~ Helen Keller

Lean, Mean, Mold-Making Machine

No, it's not a fancy bar of Neutrogena soap! No, it's not a wiggly block of orange Jell-O! And, no, it's not a giant fancy piece of tangerine Jolly Rancher!

It's mold rubber--a big wiggly-jiggly-squiggly rubber version of my new Jumper plaque that Joan of Pour Horse Pottery cast for me, making it the new master from which production plaster molds can be poured, ad infinitum. Now you may be wondering what those black lines are, around his chest and neck areas, and those are the mold lines she drew in to guide me since this will be my first multi-part plaster mold I make on my own (in this case, a three part mold, with a floating inner bit). Hey--it's high time to give that learning curve a good jolt. If you don't use it, you lose it! And I have chisel at hand just in case I entomb it in the white stuff--it's like a rite of passage with plaster molding.

And this piece is big, measuring about 9.5 inches long and 6.75 inches at the widest parts, which offers a lot of space to play with glaze and technique. Joan has already glazed one, beautifully, as usual--Wow Joan! I'm positively enthralled with sculpting relief work of various kinds because I can infuse the challenges of graphic design and new ways of interpreting the equine subject that I just can't exploit with a conventional sculpture. And with my new tile press, I'm excited to dive into that aspect of sculpture. Who said playing in the mud was for kids?

And in case you're interested, feast heartily on Joan's new rosegrey Dafydd. Ay chihuahua! What a looker! I am so very fortunate to have so many talented and fabulous people in my life. It's hard to tell where the inspiration from the work, and the inspiration from those involved, begins and ends!

This shores me up as I contemplate my impending spinal surgery this month. To say I'm anxious about it would be a Godzilla-sized understatement (with jumping around and glowing spines and all--and is that Mechagodzilla and Rodan in there, too?). But necessity dictates this course of action. The only way around it, is through it. The recuperation will take six long weeks, where I can only sit upright for 20 minutes at a time, so finding new and bizarre ways to work will be an interesting exercise in new kinds of creativity. And this right when I'm to receive my new tile press!

But my wonderful hubby bought me the widescreen DVD of Ratatouille the day it came out, so I'll have ample, rotund rodents to cheer me up, well, besides the two blobular pygmy landsharks here who keep me busy enough! I think I shall fall under the ether with the image of Emile, stuffed full of grapes in all his lumpy, bumpy, blobby glory.

So Christmas here will be somber and sedate, but I'll truly have much to be thankful for and feel it more deeply this time I suspect. So many good things and exciting possibilities still to come! And gingerbread cookies--lots of them. This time of year usually leaves me with mixed emotions and an eagerness to get back to the routine, but I believe this year I shall wallow in a new, and perhaps better, sense of it. Life is like art, in a way, with each new experience, like each new creation, is a learning opportunity, and with a bit of reflection and auspicious grace, we become better for it.

So with that, I leave you with this: "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." ~Cicero