My New Feathered Friend

This sweet woman found me in Joann's on Saturday morning. Her name is Felicity, and as she tells it, she was among several feathered friends in a peaceful English garden, when suddenly the human decided to do away with statuary in favor of those stoooooopid round balls seemingly turning up everywhere these days. And so Felicity packed her valise and followed the currents across the ocean and into my admiring hands. She's so elegant, isn't she? Such a graceful neckline. Watching her new world. I can see that I will have to 'splain to Miss Felicity the rules: No one, but NO ONE, reads my new magazines before I do. And yes, more for the foot wars! Neener Neener, Miss V -- I'm in FLIP FLOPS!!!

Tag Book & New Backgrounds in Process

I've had this accordion tag book in my drawer for a year. Suddenly last night, it leaped out and got me in a stranglehold, a full nelson, I had to say UNCLE! UNCLE! twelve times and promise I'd get directly to work on it. True story, I swear! The violet medallion is embossing powder on Mica ... boy do I like how that looks! I also have a plan for taming that wild ribbon, just didn't get that far last night. The sad-faced girl is stamped with permanent ink on a piece of palm bark, then embossed. And that little urn will have flowers growing out of it, too, or possibly a topiary.

Also began two backgrounds on pieces of cardboard I had laying around. This is how I'm learning to circumvent the dreaded 'drying time' -- just have 25 things to work on at once, and rotate them in front of the fan. Love the subdued feeling of this. I used some glass texture paste around the edges (click on the pic to enlarge and then you can see it), trying to create the sense of looking through a window. I have an idea, now, what this might become. I don't even know where this is headed -- and that's the part I love!

And here is today's message from the Universe: "Thinking, Antonia, is life's only variable. Everything else was settled a long, long time ago. Sittin' pretty - The Universe"

Twice in One Day! Thanks Gill!

So this must be what it feels like to unexpectedly win an Oscar or a Grammy ... speechlessness and delight! This award is from Gill, my U2 besotted SBS 11 sister. Oh, but so many many wonderful blogs! The hard part is only picking FIVE to award!

This time, they are:
1. Cathy Cullis - a new blog for me but what amazing originality in terms of types of projects (i.e. today's long poem necklace).
2. Jeri - whose art is like a taser to my lethargy and bait to my muse; I'm trying to get her to make room for me in her broom closet so I can come out and watch her make art!
3. Mercedes - for such delicate, feminine dreams captured in her art, her journal pages, her thoughts.
4. Georgina - for amazing range, for paintings that are the source of all my poetry lately, and for sweet sweet emails!
5. Carolina - for unstoppable ideas, willingness to explain 'how to', fun fun comments, and a name I just adore!

An Award from Vicki - THANKS!

This came to me from one of my SBS 11 Sisters, Miss Vicki - what a surprise and I'm SO elated! I am supposed to send this on to five people who make MY day, so here they are:

1. Beth, for inspiration and giggles.
2. Czina, for new perspectives, honest words, and pictures I love.
3. Gennine, for one of the most amazing journals I've ever seen.
4. Veronica, for sisterhood but also because she always somehow helps me push my borders, expand my margins, and believe I'm capable!
5. Jo, for a homey, tender & true blog and because I somehow have this sense that she and I have always known each other.

Final Prepped Pages - Highballs High Heels Journal

Voila the final prepped spreads in my Highballs High Heels altered book/journal. I started this journal on October 5, last year. Wow. Adding the visual elements slows down my written expression, but opens up so many other dimensions to 'say what I want to say'. Since all the pages are ready for me to write, this book will no-doubt be finished by Monday. I want to go seashell collecting with this maiden - doesn't she look HAPPY?! This cute pooch was already an illustration within the book, but I hated the text around her! The stamps on the 'post' brads are from Columbia. I loved this wallpaper and paid $5 for a sample. THIS is what they sent. This 5x6 piece. For $5. Did I mention it cost $5? NEVER AGAIN!!! I might as well buy the roll for $24.99 and facilitate some more swaps, huh? But what a lovely journal page it does make. One of the B&W photos from my pal, Greg. I am constantly using that pile of pics he gave me. The gold is from a napkin sent by Patty. I LOVE it. This just HAS to be Zoe as she would be if she were 'human.' I love this plain woman in her housedress. I bet she's a hellion! I'm not throwing away even the tiniest of scraps left of the wallpapers Patty sent me! That mug shot, top right, just slays me with giggles!

Spring Blooms With Dreams

My on-line art group, An Affair with Art, recently posted this inspiration photo [a pillow from Pottery Barn] for our March Inspiration mingle. The idea is to use the piece in any inspired way -- color, shape, pattern, all of the above. Here is my response, entitled Spring Blooms With Dreams.

Note: I am spending 30 minutes per day practicing drawing hands. Bear with me & soon enough my lovely creations will have hands to match!!

RAKs from AAWA Friends for Kevin

Let me begin by saying THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to you wonderful AAWA women. Kevin was astonished & thrilled! From Miss Susan T., presently in Chicago and minus card-making implements! (& still she sent a RAK! What a woman!) From Ms. Cher B. in Spokane Valley, WA - this is the front. The inside of Cher's piece -- which is now the background on Kevin's MySpace! On the bottom are two of the six pieces inserted into the little pockets -- on the backs of all the inserts are quotes or comics. From Ms. Jean B. in Orlando!

Serena By Moonlight

This piece is for Kris H. with An Affair With Art -- my take on a 'tag mingle' -- a tag that could not be a tag shape. So mine is a starfish, reflecting a moonbathing beauty -- the title is a play on 'Serenade by Moonlight', which is the sheet music used on the background.

"Imagine"

My first "Anonyrrie-inspired" piece - completed.

Reflection & Illustration Friday: LEAP

[all images Googled] Oddly, happily, and synchronistically, as I've been writing this word over & over in my journal for the last week, it turned out to be the new Illustration Friday theme word. LEAP. When I was a gymnast, my favorite event was the balance beam, and I was the definition of the word fearless. I was fearless because I was haplessly, hopelessly, completely in love with that apparatus and my own self, on it, over it, elevated by it, in tune with it. I loved the feel of the wood, the smell of the wood, the line of the wood, the rounded edges of the beam, the sensation of elegant, lifted flight whenever I even looked at the beam. Oh, we had our differences. I often sported big ugly bruises, twisted ankles, dislocated shoulders, callouses ripped open on my feet and hands ... but it was love-work on a relationship that was deeply personal to me, my sense of myself, my sense of what I COULD do, COULD conceive of being. And it was lyrical -- movement, trust, grace, work, practice, detail, athleticism, exhaustion, commitment, magic, and, yes: LEAPS. Lots and lots and lots of LEAPS. I was 5'-8" tall in 7th grade ... unusually and unpopularly tall for a gymnast. But when I leapt, it could not be missed -- certainly not by anyone watching, and absolutely not internally.

I haven't leapt, in that same oneness-of-mind-body-spirit, in a long, long time. My connections to and with visual art have been very grounded, like twirling and bouncing but on the floor exercise mat ... music accompanies me but there is caution, still, inside me. However, the adventures my art has introduced me to have slowly infiltrated my life, & strengthened my leaper-spirit, in larger ways, and now that I have reached a place that requires me to make a professional leap, I realize I'm ready, if out of practice. I'm scared. I'll frankly admit it. Sometimes a comfort zone is really just a place of habit, a place of 'settling for' and 'putting up with' because there's some kind of pay-off. For me, my job the last 3 years has been both of those to the maximum. "Settling for" a neurotic and profoundly unnurturing environment, and "putting up" with it because for the first time in two decades, I was working only an 8 hour day, and absolutely no weekends, and for the most money I have ever earned in my career. In the construction industry [my field], this kind of schedule for an administration position is literally unheard of. Ten hour days and taking work home, working at least one day every weekend, and more often than not BOTH days - that was my life for 20 years. Read? Plan a family trip on a weekend? Make art? Let alone write at any length in my journal that wasn't just gripe gripe gripe about work? Please! Fantasy! Fiction! Didn't happen.

But "settling for" and "putting up" with never fail to become toxic, and I've been swallowing the toxins to the point that my reserves are wimpish and weakened: my reserves of self faith, self esteem, professional confidence, eagerness for challenge, innovative thinking, autonomous professional behavior -- all of which coincide with & would reflect my interior, my art, and my writing. None of that sort of thing is invited or welcome where I've been. I work in an environment of individuals whose idea of progress is that nothing change, not one minute detail of any single or combined element(s). Truly: a living death. And, inevitably, even a strong-minded, change-seeking, risk-taking individual such as myself forgets what a leap even is, let alone that she knows how to do one pretty darned well.

The Universe sent me my ULTIMATE SIGNAL this morning -- the details don't matter and wouldn't tell the story anyway, but you know: it was the proverbial 'choke chain & leash that dashed the winged leaper's heart to the ground one too many times'. Only this time the leaper who is me realized -- "Hey! Wait one second, here! I CAN fly and why in the world HAVEN'T I been flying and let me go dust those wings off and root them right back into my spine where they belong. It's time for take-off."

I'm a leaper. Never again will I miss the signals: if I am anywhere, or with anyone, where I doubt on a daily, minute-by-minute, or ever-increasing basis that my wings are welcome, it is time to LEAP ON OUTTA THERE!!! Those wings have intuitive little spines & feathers & tickly air-sniffers and circumstance-testers on them, so whether I'm 10 minutes into a job interview or a conversation, I can trust the information they're giving me, trust it enough to act on it. And I can attest to the fact that when you strip them off to accommodate anybody else's comfort level, they set to raising serious hell in the closet where you hang 'em. Mine have been flapping, fluttering, twitching and swatting -- trying to restore my normal sense of flight & lightheartedness into me, for 2 years now.

They're going with me to work on Monday, where certain words and time frames have to be declared. Wherever I am, from now on, it's going to be that balance beam and me again -- movement, trust, grace, work, practice, detail, athleticism, exhaustion, commitment, magic, and, yes: LEAPS. Leaps into the future, the unknown, the place where discoveries can be made!