No Valentine today, and in fact my valentines are curiously un-valentinish. But I figure that artsy people like to give people they care about cool cards, even if they don't all have hearts on them. This is from a walk in the woods with my dog yesterday, with a slight nod to Andy Goldsworthy.

These valentines were completed over the Summer. Islamic tile patterns, yoga poses, and the Sanskrit symbol for Om or Aum, the universal divine sound if you buy into that sort of thing. Which I do. I'll have to change this from a weekly blog to an intermittent blog I fear. Sanskrit is so beautiful, even if you goof it up, print the stencil backwards, then reverse it. A lot of these papers are from gelatin printing and paper marbling with shaving cream. I'm itching to try more paper marbling, but it's a big set up and clean up with little kids around. Maybe I'll ask for some supplies for Christmas. I dream of going for my MFA, of having a studio in a building with other artists that's not half filled with engineering books, audio supplies, and the other equipment that comes with an audiophilic mechanical engineer who is a lovely man and partner. But cluttered.

In a way they are all small acts of devotion. Imperfect, incomplete, but the best I could do for now. Children grow.

These valentines were made using a combination of papers from a gelatin printing workshop with Linda Branch Dunn, and some marbled paper from a marbling with shaving cream workshop (idea from Carol Hough) I did at home with the kids. I keep using the om or "aum" symbol, an ancient Sanskrit symbol signifying the universal divine, but on the darker valentine (printed with large bubble wrap no less), I accidentally inverted the symbol, but I still like it inverted and upside down. It's intriguing to me that it's no longer a particular symbol with a specific meaning, more an abstract shape with reference to ancient script.

My oldest (7) wanted to do a summer art camp this Summer, but instead I'm doing my own summer art camp at home with my children and my niece. So far we've done the paper marbling, a 3 part still life project with ink, watercolor and pastel, we've bought journals to decorate and fill and an indigo dying kit I can't wait to break into. There are more projects than time I'm afraid but we're all having fun and learning some art along the way. I'd like to expose them to more artists too, but I might have gone overboard with the Edouard Vuillard book. Any and all ideas are welcome!

The papers here are from a gelatin printing workshop with Linda Branch Dunn at the Groton Public Library. The fern thing may be cliche, but I love it anyway. The aum paper was printed with large bubble bubble wrap. Anna and I had a blast.

Temenos Trip

These are from a weekend in Shutesbury, MA at a beautiful, very high spiritual place called Temenos. These drawings are directly drawn from a carving in the rock done by a woman named Ellen Sidor. I love this image of the Jizo Bodhisattva for its simple, elegant lines and a potent inner grace. Imagine the colors of grey rock woven through with the varying greenish grays of lichen and moss. The images on the left are cards and the images on the right are larger drawings. The upper right drawing was done first, and even though the proportions are off substantially, in many ways it's one of the stronger drawings. As so often happens as soon as you bring out the nice materials like the 100% cotton Fabrian paper on the lower right, the drawing becomes stiffer. I may add color to the card on the upper left, but I'm not sure yet.

First, imagine this quite a bit greener, but that's beside the point. Handwritten lyrics inside from Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah:

Your faith was strong

but you needed proof

you saw her bathing on the roof

her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you

she tied you to a kitchen chair

she broke your throne and she cut your hair

and from your lips she drew a hallelujah

I'd work on it more, but I'm already 2 days past my internal Monday deadline of posting it, and it's time to start a new one. It's kind of a shitty little valentine, but then that is the point, to make one per week, good or bad. Of course, I imagine they'll improve, I haven't hit my stride yet. I took my oldest daughter into Harvard Square on saturday, her birthday and the first day of spring. She wanted to buy some grown up art supplies, so we went to Utrecht and I bought myself a cutting mat. Psyched! I wish I had brought a camera, she was luminous dancing to every street busker who played or sang a song, dancing with wild abandon and making me see a piece of myself I'd forgotten.

As a mother of 3 with several part-time jobs, I often despair of ever catching up with housework. In fact, one of the biggest challenges of motherhood is learning not to sink into despair at the endless nature of laundry, cooking and dishes. Luckily for me, I enjoy cooking, I think I'd go crazy if I didn't. I've been reading and thinking about Karen Maezen Miller's book, Momma Zen, and following her blog, Cheerio Road. She suggests that the housework is practice, is in and of itself a spiritual path. Can you be present while doing the laundry, while washing every dish? It's a journey, and meanwhile my 5 year old says "Mom, you haven't even gotten the bikes out. Come on!

There's a traditional children's song with haunting lyrics: Little bird, little bird, fly through my window as sung by Elizabeth Mitchell. That song is the inspiration for this valentine. The lyrics will go on the inside. I was originally going to cut out a window so that you saw the bird through the window, but I think that would work better with a collage bird and curtains, I'm not really a watercolorist by any measure. Still, this painted bird was inspired by another painted bird in a book called Birds by Kevin Henkes and illustrated by Laura Dronzek. A dose of gratitude to all the artists living and dead whose work inspires and leads to (we hope) some further insight.

These curtains are pretty flat, I haven't studied the effects of light on draped fabric enough.

Ganesh Valentine

I left the front pretty much as is (see previous post). This is the inside of the Ganesh valentine, along with a detail. My self imposed Sunday deadline means I have to finish and post the valentine on Monday, and that's a good thing because although there's more I could do here, I think it's more important right now to move through ideas quickly. I've already got an idea for this weeks valentine, it uses song lyrics from a children's song called "Little Bird." Stay tuned!

Progress Photo- Ganesha

A tripod is a handy gadget indeed, that and a husband who knows his way around a camera and lighting. I'm not sure where I'm going with this concept, but I've been thinking about the elephant god lately and wanted to learn more about him. He's supposed to be the remover of obstacles.

Meanwhile, I've been reading about paper marbling, ebru, suminagashi, and other like techniques. I can't find any workshops in the area so I'll have to figure it out from a book. I did find some interesting youtube clips. Check this out:

Ebru- Tree @ Kendi Kiosk.

Second valentine, the left is the front, the right is the inside. Sorry for the less than crisp images, I have to turn the flash off or I get glare and there's not enough light today. Guess I need a tripod for this! I didn't use all of the weaving for this either, so it may show up in future valentines. I've been using the cut out heart thing in a number of valentines- I've been insane enough to make 30-50 handmade valentines for the kids so the idea feels a little tired to me now. What about a more realistic heart with aorta and such? And there doesn't have to be a heart at all, it's just a starting point really, but it's a fun and quick way to get a valentine going.

Done weaving- now to cutting, pasting, painting, stamping and embellishing. I glued this lightly to a paper backing so that I could cut it more easily, but I had to sacrifice the other side, which was interesting too. Then I brushed on some matte medium, so that I could glaze and paint on it a bit. I think this will become 2 cards.

The next technique I want to learn is paper marbling- I hear that you can do it with acrylic paints but it looks like I'll need a day and a large space to make a mess in. That might take a while. I've requested some books from the library so that I can read up on it, and I was looking at some exciting work by Julie Martini after Merill Comeau told me about her work.

There's an iphone in the weaving, and images of artisanal honey. I'm enjoying this palette and would like to push it further.

In Progress

Learned a weaving technique from Stacy Piwinski at the Lowell Open Studios in February, and I'm using it here to begin a valentine. Magazine strips from Yoga Journal and Martha Stewart's Living, and colored paper.

This valentine started with an idea from Virginia Fitzgerald, who has drawn these beautifully patterned hands. It reminded me how so often I've traced my children's hands in journals, cut them out, colored them in, traced them on aprons for grandmothers and aunts, traced them on plates. It's such a tangible record of a moment in time when their hands are small. But then Virginia's decorated hands seem like an ode to the art of mehndi, or henna tattoos as practiced by Indian and Pakistani women on their wedding days.

A Valentine a Week

The goal is to create a Valentine every week. In Groton, MA we have a fundraiser in which artists make and donate valentines. A sale is held annually at the end of January, and the money raised goes to a grant that is juried and divided among the juror's picks. As an artist and mother of 3 young children, I need a realistic goal to get me back in the studio and working small until my youngest goes to kindergarden. I plan to post the Valentines here.
For more on the Artists' Valentine grant, go to:

www.artval.org or find our Facebook Page (keywords Artists Valentine)