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.