New Journal Page: New Dreams

for The Three Muses. Wednesday Stamper and Creative Therapy. "Sometimes on the way to our dreams, we get lost and find an even better one." I can't recall where I first read these words, but I've remembered them often.

When I went to college, all set to major in commercial art, I was a teeny tiny fish in a vast ocean of "art majors." My first professor, a Mr. Jan Weber, was not impressed with my daily submissions for Design I. He always had some withering, witty comment about my efforts. I was nowhere near avante-garde enough for him. I didn't wear all black; I didn't wander dazedly into class, reeking of patchouli oil; my hair was clean; I wore L'Air De Temps, for heaven's sake. I was...what's that awful word? perky! Something about my placement of triangles and cylinders infuriated Mr. Weber, but, in my dorm's dimly lit lobby, I'd work all night, trying desperately for something original to present for his approval. I could only imagine so many ways to configure geometric shapes on a 12x16 page, but I gave it everything I had. I made a C-in his class. I only endured one more semester in the art department, through Freehand Drawing I. In May I fled to the counseling department for a barrage of aptitude tests. According to the results, I had aptitude, it seemed, for the ministry, special education, and social work. Since I was enjoying all evils of college life, being a minister was out of the question, and I pretty much flipped a coin between the other two choices. Special education won, and it was during that time that I experienced the single enjoyable artistic endeavor of my entire college career: making a sandpaper alphabet for my Teaching of Reading class. On the back of each index card, I did an illustration for that particular letter of the alphabet. I got the highest grade in my whole class. Finally, somebody appreciated my art! More importantly, though, I found a vocation. I've been a special education teacher for twenty eight years, and I love what I do more every year, I had never considered becoming a teacher before I gave up on my dream of being a commercial artist, but a teacher is who I became, and the reality of that has been a dream come true.

"There are as many different worlds as there are perceivers or Beings or
individuals. You are not here to create one world where everyone is the
same, wanting and getting the same. You are here to be that which you want
to be, while you allow all others to be that which they want to be." Abraham-Hicks

Gothic Arches and MMM

This is the first gothic arch I've created in some time, but I couldn't help but be inspired and play with the Rose theme at Gothic Arches this week. The flower-headed lady was created on our trip out of two images I got from a Flickr group called Collage Images (Not For Posting Art). The actual arch was made using techniques I learned from an Extreme Journaling workbook by Juliana Coles. This is by no means "extreme journaling," but I decided to play with what I learned from her workshop booklet "Empty Raw Creations, and I found that her techniques can be used for almost any mixed media project. Here's what I did: I prepared a piece of heavy watercolor paper with molding pasted, stamping it before it dried with a paisley-shaped rubber stamp from Walmart. When the paste dried I painted the entire arch with cheap aqua acrylic paint, and when that was dry, I drybrushed magenta paint on the textured areas. I let the paint set for a minute or two and then began wiping and reapplying the magenta until I was pleased with the result, and then I did the same with yellow paint. I added a little mediuum pink paint for highlights and then glued Madame Rose and flower cutouts from Artful Blogging onto the arch. I brushed around the edges of the cutouts with magenta, aqua, and yellow to make them seem more a part of the arch, and I used my new favorite art tool, Baby Wipes, to remove paint as needed. I continued adding and removing various shades until I liked what I saw. It's important to use a new Baby wipe when one gets covered with paint or you will muddy your surface. When all the paint was dry, I rubbed a black ink pad over the textured areas and used a flourish stamp in some of the bare areas. Again, I used a Baby Wipe to make the stamps less distinct. Next, I added two butterflies from my vintage butterfly book that Ava gave me last year, overpainting them with magenta and yellow arcylic, and I went back around the outside of the arch while I still had paint on my brush. The last thing I did was use my black stamp pad on the edges of the arch and voila!

SWO: Circle It

In the summertime, when I have little to do and no excuse to be tired, I seem to go into full couch potato mode and want to sit around and watch back to back SVU episodes. But when I'm away from my studio and can't create, I'm often flooded with ideas and anxious to get home and bring them to life. Of course, once home, I often lose my momentum, plop down on the sofa with a bowl of chocolate mint ice cream and start watching Snapped on the Sleuth Network. So while we were driving through the very beautiful state of West Virginia last week, I made a little note to self, on this journal page, of all the projects I want to finish before I go back to school in August. Today I've managed to steer clear of the devil t.v., and I've spent most of this afternoon in my studio finishing some travel journal pages and beginning Juliana Cole's Empty Raw Creations workshop booklet. More about that later, I promise

Big ETSY Sale:

I am forcing myself to do a cleanup in my studio and closing my ETSY shop, so I am putting all items on sale for half of their listed prices. If you are interested in anything, you can contact me on ETSY or leave me comment here. In addition, there a number of journal pages available that I have not put in my ETSY shop, and, if you'd like to purchase one of those, just let me know which one, and I'll check the availability. They are also priced at 15.00 plus shipping. You can find a ready-made black frame/white mat combination at Walmart, and it will fits most of these pages. My friend Susan has about eight of my journal pages framed in a mass display on her office wall, and they give the room a very colorful, happy atmosphere. Happy shopping!





Django Acrylic on canvas 12" X 12"

There's No Place Like Home

This page is for One Powerful Hour's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" challenge, My Time To Craft's "Music" challenge, and My Artistic Life's "Pink & Blue" challenge. It was completed in record time: 45 minutes, while driving through Virginia on our way to New York City. My supplies were limited to what I had in my portable journaling backpack, so I started with a page of text from Vogue magazine for the background, and I glued on a bit of a Juicy Couture ad and an image from Collage Images Not For Posting. Color was added using ink pads, and lettering was done by hand with a black brush marker. Stamps were added this morning after I got home.

We actually arrived about 11:00 last night; Mr. Al drove the 18 hours from upstate New York to Atlanta, so we could wake up in our own beds this morning, and it was divine to be able to have my coffee and blogs. I visited many of my favorite blogs and to see what lovlies you all had posted while I was on vacation. Imagine my delight when, I discovered on Shelly's blog the Blue Ridge Lady and on Nancy's blog, CrowAbout, that Amusing Muses had been given this award. These two ladies have been with me since my earliest blogging days: cheering me on, inspiring me, teaching me, so from them, this means a lot.
Along with the award came the instructions to tell 7 random things about myself, so here goes:

I have a learning disability in math. I barely passed Algebra II and Chemistry, but made an A in Geometry. Go figure. Guess the right side of my brain kicked in.

Although I am a very non-violent person and pacifist, I am strangely fascinated with serial killers; I love movies and television shows about them. The one about Ted Bundy, "The Stranger Beside Me" is my favorite. It might have something to do with Mark Harmon.

I've always been really good at taking tests, I think because I read so much.

I'm a sucker for any man who can dance but especially a big man who can dance. Think John Goodman, Chris Farley, Vince Vaughn, Brian Dennehey, Frankenstein...

I asked my husband out on our first date, and, at dinner that night, we decided to get married. And we've been married 26 years.

I make the best spaghetti sauce in the world, if I do say so myself. Mr. Al plants about 35 tomato plants every year, and, when the tomatoes come in, I spend days making sauce and freezing it, so we can have it once a week until the next summer. I'm pretty sure that the secret to my successful marriage is simply that I won't give Mr. Al my recipe.

I'm horribly neurotic about losing things. I rarely lose anything, however, but that may just be because my loved ones would rather drop everything and search, instead of watching me wring my hands or listening to me rant obsessively until the lost object is found.

I'd like to pass this award on to some other very special artists:
Lumilyon
Queen Of Arts
Allison's Heart Sings
Danford Designs
Groggy Froggy
Taluula's Art Blog
Reflections of a Ramblin' Girl
Joyful Ploys


Please treat yourself and visit their blogs. You eyes and hearts will certainly thank you. I'll be posting more pages I created on the road, as the week continues. Until then, I'm going to spend some more time catching up on what you've done in the last week.

Headcase

This journal page was created for Illustration Friday's and TGIF's weekly challenges and it's also tthe first in a series of blank journal pages that I'm making to take on our trip to New York. Mr. Al and I will hit the road early Sunday morning and pl drive to New York City. We're such rubes; neither of us has ever been, although both of our sons have been there. We plan to try to get at least as far as Richmond, VA the first night of our trip and drive to the city the next day to spend four days there. We are so thrilled to finally be going to the New York that we are practically beside ourselves. If you have any suggestions about where to eat, what to do, where to go,(especially flea markets, vintage shops, museums, or best NY attractions), please leave your ideas in a comment here for me. When we leave the city, we'll drive to upstate NY, where my dear sister-and-brother-in-law, Mary Ann and Don, have a cabin on Lake Eerie. We'll stay there three days before we return to Georgia. I hope to have 5 or 6 journal pages in various states of completion to work on while we're traveling, so tonight I'm painting backgrounds and assembling supplies in ziplock bags. Mary Ann is very artistic, and last Christmas, she gave me a beautiful handmade book, which I'm using strictly as a travel journal to record my memories of this trip and hopefully many others. I don't know about Internet access along the way; well, I know our hotel has it, but I don't know about the cabin, so I may be out of pocket for 7 or 8 days. I do plan to post all my pages and photographs when I get back, though. It will be really weird to go so long without blogging, but I'm too excited to think about that right now. Please don't forget to share your travel suggestions with me before I go because Mr. Al and I like to explore fly by the seat of our pants when we travel and would love some of your ideas. I'll miss you all tons, but I'll talk to you when I get back.

XOXO
Love,
Alberta

PS
Some of you have let me know that you had trouble posting the badge I made for you, so, if you want to, e-mail me at katherinemccullen@yahoo.com, and I'll send you the flickr code. If I post it here, the image posts instread of the code. I'm sorry I'm not more technically savvy. Feel free to save the image to you photo editing program and adjust the size as you need to.

Good luck!

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

This week Creative Therapy asked what we like most about being a woman, and my resounding answer is, "My girlfriends!" No doubt about it; I'm not one of those women that says, " I really just don't like other women." In fact, I'm ashamed that any woman says that. I, on the other hand, adore other women; I love their sensitivity, their courage, their emotionality, and their style, but, most of all, I love that other women are just great company. Maybe I've just been lucky, but, since the day my parents brought Ava home from the hospital, I've had a best friend. From Laurie Herzog, in third grade, who took me to Temple on Friday nights and helped me choreograph a dance routine for the school talent show to "Hello Dolly," to Nancy Slade, in junior high school, who chased boys with me and helped me get a fake id, to Rhonda and Melanie, in high school, who got me through my parent's divorce and may have shared the dubious distinction of being the only other two girls in the world who didn't smoke pot in the 70's. The things that all my friends had in common were loyalty and strenth, kindness and creativity, a sense of responsibility and code of honor. And, best of all, a really wicked sense of humor. This is the card I made for Wednesday Stamper's Rock and Roll Challenge and MY Crazy Amigo Susan's 50th birthday. We met 15 years ago at the baseball field and discovered through hours of bleacher chat that, besides both of us being big sisters and mothers of sons, we also shared an obsessive love of interior design, gardening,and anything at all English, as well as epic romantic movies, margaritas, and the beach. She became the person I called in the middle of the night when Mr. Al had cancer. I was there when she finally made the agonizing decision to end her 26 year marriage. She rejoiced with me when my husband tested "cancer free" and I with her when she fell in love again. We've weathered our wayward teenage sons, an evil boss, hysterectomies, a dying horse, and aging parents. We've shared color schemes, secrets, and 8 hours a day together in a classroom for a whole year. Susan is one in a long line of much-loved confidants, allies, and partners in crime. I'm looking forward to many more adventures with her as we watch our body parts go south. I'll be in New York on July 1, so I won't be with her when she turns 50, but, when I return, I promise to make it up to her and all the requisite, cliched abuse that entails!

And to all of you BBFF's (best blog friends forever) who visit here, feel free to post this on your blog, as a badge of sisterhood and a token of my gratitude for your steadfast encouragement, inspiration, and humor.









Love,
Alberta

Maps Of Heaven

For the last five days, Ava and I have given up our morning walks, sunbathing by the pool, and afternoon naps to attend The Writing Institute. For 10 hours each day, we've listened to "motivational" speakers, attended such scintillating classes, as " The Latest and Greatest Books To Springbooard Writing," "Conducting Effective Class Discussions," and "Teaching Grammar With Picture Books." (I must confess, lest you are thinking of nominating one or both of us for sainthood, that the very first day we sneaked off campus to "run errands" and actually ended up at Nikko's Corner, the local wine store, drinking a chocolate wine, left over from Saturday night's tasting, and we were commmonly known as "the bad gals from Mississippi.") Below you can read Ava's final project, a story about moi, and you can see my journal pages, which are based on this story. You are going to love this story.

Maps of Heaven

She was one of the "babies," children five in August but six in September, put in Miss Rayden's room to prepare them for second grade. If they were ready the next year, they moved up. Most stayed with Miss Rayden, not being quite ready to leave the idyll that was their first grade. These children were given lots of scope, plenty of room to maneuver. For example, the babies could take their shoes off and go barefoot all day if they wanted; they could draw pictures instead of writing--preferred subject matter, maps of heaven, drawn with great swirling lines of blue and gold and orange. Since they were babies, they couldn't be bothered to remember grown-ups' last names, they just called Miss Rayden Miss Mary. Sometimes Miss Mary's babies all walked over to her little pink house a half block from the school and visited there instead of in the classroom. Sometimes the babies just all joined hands and floated straight up to heaven--barefoot, using their maps, with Miss Mary leading the ascension.

Most of the babies stayed behind to bond with Miss Mary one more year. Kathy, however, was a very bright little girl; she had, after a brief fisticuff with the 30's and the 50's, learned to count to 100, earning a gold star, and sealing her fate. She was moved to to Mrs. Yates' room. There, Kathy was handed a thick, smelly, stapled packet of mimeographed worksheets. Having never before put pencil to paper except to write her name on her map of heaven, she didn't quite realize they were given to her for completion. After a while, she was tired of them. So she abandoned the packet and knelt down by the desk to organize her brand-new school supplies. She was so proud of them. She took out all the composition books, the plastic pencil holder, the ruler, and the queen of all, the three-ring binder. She sorted them by shape and color, made sure the desk was nice and neat and clear of scraps of paper, and began to put them back when a cacophony of fury exploded just over her left ear. To a noise-sensitive child, it was like the barrage of artillery marking the obliteration of Bastogne. She dropped flat on the floor until the screaming exhausted itself, with a vague idea that it would simply move on like a storm front. When it did stop, she raised her head, only to see Mrs. Yates three inches from her face, glaring right at her. The yelling had stopped, but its aftermath remained, like violent drops of a summer storm. They evaporated, but left a hissing miasma behind.

So Kathy got back in her desk. She was finished organizing her materials anyway and ready to color something, but the packet was still on her desk, obstinate and unappealing. She started doing some of the fill-ins, mildly engaged at first. She spent a pleasant quarter of an hour drawing arrows. She matched some shoes with feet, some hats with heads, gloves with hands. Kathy noticed her desk had holes in the side of the seat, so she stuck her pencil in one of them. It looked like the throttle of an airplane, so she began to maneuver the pencil back and forth, shifting up to a higher altitude, leaning way back in her seat from the g-force, and finally bursting through the clouds to an expanse of glorious sunlight. She thought she caught a glimpse of Miss Mary.

Boom! Her pencil flew out of the hole and Kathy plummeted down, spiraling in a collision path. What she thought was a sonic blast turned out to be Mrs. Yates yelling again, and Kathy had to shake her head a little to focus her vision, then wished she hadn't, because what she saw was a snarling, snapping mouth and two bushy black eyebrows, this time only two inches away.

I wish that for a little while adult Kathy could go back and inhabit baby Kathy's body. Trapped as she was in her second-grade frustration, hurt, and bewilderment, I'd love to see what became her very distinct assertiveness emerge. "What??" she'd say.
"I'm here. I've got my plaid dress on; my crayons are sharpened. What do you want from me? Ask me to color something, bitch." Sadly, in baby Kathy, that quality was either non-existent or inchoate. But I think it started there, with Mrs. Yates' screaming.

And while she didn't make the connection between Mrs. Yates' termagant behavior and the unfinished packets until she was about forty or so--really--Kathy grounded her plane and settled down to drudgery, following a dim perception that the worksheets that might be something she was actually expected to do. They weren't great flowing swirls of color that led to heaven, but they did finally lead to third grade, and a kinder, gentler Mrs. Lacey.

Look at her. Right this minute. There she is, in the back of the South Gwinnett High School Theatre. She's got her writing journal open and she's working. She's listening to the lecture, but she's writing, too, writing in undulating lines of turquoise on a saffron-painted page embellished with pink swirls and green scallops. Scraps of paper flutter down periodically from her lap, and land on the carpet like confetti. Somewhere, from up in heaven, Miss Mary blows a party horn, waiting for Kathy to ascend to celestial heights and join her and the other babies there.

for Creative Therapy


"Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions.” for Saturday Surprise


for One Powerful Hour


for My Artistic Life

How Can You Mend This Broken Heart?

If you want to know how, visit Luisa's wonderful blog here to see the best cure ever!



for Creative Therapy, Mixed Media Monday, and Created By Hand.

IF: Unfold

un·fold: to open the folds of : spread or straighten out : expand; to remove from the folds : unwrap; to open to the view : reveal ; to make clear by gradual disclosure; to open from a folded state : open out : expand b: blossom; develop, evolve; to open out gradually to the view or understanding : become known

You can see that I am still fascinated by the work of Juliana Coles. In fact, I ordered one of her visual journal workshop booklets, and I can't wait to get started. In the meantime, I've been studying her work online and trying to use her method of journaling. Here's what she says about Extreme Visual Journaling: "In an Extreme Visual Journal, we are after the rich interior. We are concerned with our own and unique inner, ancient wisdom. We want to find our voice, our style, and our flair for life by documenting our past, present and future in a book. We are NOT concerned with making art. We are NOT concerned with a product or pretty picture. We want to know how to unfold and in that moment, there is remarkable beauty on the page we did not know we possessed." This will be quite a stretch for me.

New Journaling Approach

for Theme Thursday's Flourish Challenge

I don't know if you have noticed a change in my journal pages, but recently my approach has been much less controlled and I'm working a lot faster. I've become fascinated with the work of Juliana Coles, whose Exreme Visual Journals I first heard of in Sparkleface's inspiring Flickr galleries (here) and ran across again in Lynne Perrella's book, Artists' Journals and Sketchbooks while I was reading and journaling at the pool. I still love to create intricate borders with many layers of elements, but I also like to concentrate on color and energy, as I did on this page, Obedient Wreckage, Dare to Dream, and Letting Go. I'm writing less self-consciously and actually using my pages as an outlet for my feelings and responses to my life. Today's page started with the central image; the face is from the miost recent cover of Rolling Stone, and the flowers came from an English rose catalog. I used a rubber stamp that I got at Michael's so long ago that I'm not sure of the brand. The background and hair were done by layering a little molding paste, inks and acrylic paint, using my fingers, brushes, a crumpled grocery bag, and an old rag. After I glued all the pieces on my background, I went over everything, except the face, with a very watery wash of magenta paint, and then I journaled using my trusty black Pilot pen. All in all, I spent about 2 hours on this page. That might not sound very fast to you, but a journal page often takes me a whole day and then some!

Obedient Wreckage

A little something different (and darker) for one of my favorite art challenge sites Creative Therapy and a wonderful brand new challenge site hosted by three amazing artists The Three Muses.

Alberta's Big Adventure

for Saturday Surprise

Dare To Dream

I believe I could have an entire journal called "People in Hats," and this page was made for Theme Thursday's challenge of the same name and TGIF's Dreams challenge. It was inspired by one of my all-time favorite collage artists and the administrator for CollagePlay With Crowabout, Nancy Baumiller. You can see all of her wildly creative journal pages a here in her Flickr album or scroll down my list of inspirational art blogs to "Something To Crow About."

Letting Go

More poolside journaling for Crazy Amigo's Bright Color and Created By Hand Circle challenges

The Obsession Continues

for Mixed Media Monday and Creative Therapy

This is really one of my favorite journal pages because of its evolution. (The scan, however, isn't very good because of the glare on it. I'm not sure what caused that to happen, unless it's because of the many layers of media on this page. For some reason, it shows up better on my Flickr page, if you have time to look here). I started this page while lying in the sun at the pool. Well, actually, I used a prepainted page, but I started layering at the pool. I added various papers, some handmade, and pages from an antique book. Then I doodled using a black Pilot pen, which smeared terribly because of the heat, I think, and I journaled about how I began painting again after a trip with Mr. Al, to the Bennett Street Art Gallery last year. I won't bore you with the details because I've told you about it here before, but you can read more about it on Creative Therapy's challenge this week in "Comments," if you'd like to. That night last year was the rebirth of my thwarted art career. So, back to the process. The face I used is courtesy of CollagePlay With Crowabout. (You may recognize my cousin Zoe in her art fairy costume here). Once I got home, I added a few more details, some layers of distressing ink, and even some candle wax to age the papers more. I think the wax may be what caused the glare, but I like what it did to my borders, and I'm a firebug at heart anyway. Finally, I added buttons from my collection and a butterfly, for good measure.

Even though, journaling at the pool is a challenge in itself, I'm pretty sure I'll keep doing it because it's just one more place I can continue my obsession with my art journal. And challenges almost always lead to interesting results, or, at the very least you learn something new, even if it's what NOT to do, right?

IF: Zoe Wanted Wings

Inspire Me Thursday (Altered Ancestor,Stage II, Metamorphosis)


Adaptation:

a. Something, such as a device or mechanism, that is changed or changes so as to become suitable to a new or special application or situation.

b. A composition that has been recast into a new form.

c. Biology An alteration or adjustment in structure or habits, often hereditary, by which a species or individual improves its condition in relationship to its environment.

Altered Ancestor

This is a portrait of my third cousin Zoe, that I created for Inspire Me Thursday's Altered Ancestor Challenge. By the time I was knew Zoe, she was sixty-four years old , deaf as a post, had ill-fitting dentures and a bushy shock of white hair that looked oddly like a mohawk. But this is what I imagine Zoe looked like back in the day. My mother was an only child born of a mother who had one brother. She was, however, raised with her first cousin Zoe, as though they were sisters. I remember the two of them as old ladies, chattering wildly and giggling like girls in my grandmother's kitchen. My mother says Ava and I are just like them.

Totem

This is a collage I made for The Created By Hand Insect Challenge. Please check out all the lovely bugs and crawly things the artists created this week. This collage is also for my favorite Flickr challenge group called CollagePlay With Crowabout. Every Saturday morning the group administrator, Nancy Baumiller, posts a printable page of images, and members of the group create collages. Very aptly named, this is a group of some of the most fun irreverent, supportive artists I know. If they don't get your muse in gear, nothing will. You'll recognize the names of many of the members in my blogroll, and if you'd like to play, just click here and join the fun.

Back to Bali

for Mixed Media Monday and Creative Therapy

Transcendence

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” Patanjali


Only one more day of school and then I'll move my easel out on the screen porch and have whole long, slow days of uninterrupted painting, where I can watch the birds and feel the sun and smell the jasmine blooming. I can take long walks with Ava in the morning and nap outside on the daybed in the afternoon. I can pick blueberries from Mr. Al's garden and make gallons of spaghetti sauce from his tomatoes. I can eat figs right off the tree and read so many lovely books. Summer is just perfect.

This last week has been so hectic, though: giving and grading exams, finishing iep's, packing to move to a new classroom. I've had no time for art for almost a week, and that has not been fun. When I saw this challenge, though, at One Powerful Hour, I was immediately inspired because my new issue of Elle magazine had a great spread featuring this striking Asian model. Black and white fashion photography is something I've used a lot on my journal pages, and I thought, "This is a challenge I think I really could finish in less than an hour." And did I ever need to make a journal page! Something about journal pages loosens me up and helps my creative spirit flow. So, this morning before I left for school, I used some of my most familiar techniques on my favorite color and completed this page in about a half hour. I immediately felt energized and happy. Art and color have that effect on me. Making art helps me find my power, makes me feel closer to the real me, at least the me I want to be. What gets you going? Where do you find your power? Please leave me a comment and tell me where you get your sense of self or purpose and what you're going to do this summer. Remember that "a goal without a plan is just a wish." (Saturday Surprise) Find your power!

Love,
Alberta

MMM: Altered People

I know that I've mentioned how much I longed to go to Bali in April for Anahata Katkin's week long mixed media workshop, Since I couldn't go to the retreat in person, I studied the photographs she posted on Flickr, and today I had my own private Balinese art retreat in my studio. Because one of my favorite subjects is altered people, the wallpaper panels she demonstrated were of great interest to me. You can see samples from her students here. Although mine is very miniature, I tried to apply the techniques Anahata taught, and here's my version of a wallpaper icon.

IF

"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Under The Sea

for Wednesday Stampers

I'm sitting out on my patio with a good glass of red wine, listening to Mozart and the frogs down by the pond, waiting for Wesley and his girlfriend Brooke to come by for supper. Sigh, life is good...

How Does My Garden Grow

Mr. Al designed our Woodland Garden, and together we planted it with shade loving plants. Come down the path with me, and stop to smell the jasmine and sweet bay magnolia.


















Mr. Tumnus stands sentry in the hellebores and sweet woodruff..


















Rhododendrons bloom under the oak trees.




















A long view of the back garden stretching toward the pond.



















A tiny cottage garden lines the walk leading to my kitchen. This is where I grow my herbs and the flowers I use for cutting.


















A winter storm felled the arbor last November, but my Mozart Rose blooms undaunted.


























Foxgloves, my favorite flower, mingle with David Austin roses Othello and Mary Rose.


















Zephrine Drouhin and Constance Spry roses clamber over the walls of the house in the front cottage garden (for Inspire Me Thursday and Saturday Surprise).

The Spy Who Loved Me

On this Mother's Day, I'm going to reprint something I wrote last year for my mother, the queen of all Amusing Muses:




During the Cold War, spies were all the rage. There was James Bond, The Man From Uncle, and Maxwell Smart. There was Emma Peel, Agent 99, and Jethro, the Double-Naught Spy, but, most notorious of all, was XLo05. Ava and I had a slightly dysfunctional, somewhat unpredictable, magically creative childhood. The magically creative parts were due to one lovely, irreverent crazy woman we fondly call "Mother." Other mothers in the '60's, were known as "Mama" or "Mom," but our grandfather insisted that we address her by the very formal "Mother." There was little else formal about her, except, perhaps, her manners. Almost all of her other appellations, suited her better. There was "Pot," (a nickname given her by her sorority sisters in college, mysterious because it was a decade too early to have today's connotation). Then, there was the affectionate "Nan-nan," a name I invented as a toddler, attempting to pronounce her real name, Katherine Ann. This was also the name her grandchildren would be allowed to call her, since my grandfather wasn't around to encourage the use of the very proper title "Grandmother." To her high school students, she was "Flash Gordon," the hip, five-time Star Teacher of Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, romantic poetry and American transcendentalism, yearbook sponsor, Scholastic Bowl coach, and stage director of high school theater and beauty pageants.

But to Ava and me, behind closed doors, she was.....XLo05! On muggy summer afternoons, when it got too hot to read or decoupage purses in the carport or even run through the sprinkler, she would beckon us into her bedroom, turn on her window unit, shut the door, and dole out a strange blue candy we'd never before seen. The candy looked like Jolly Ranchers, but Jolly Ranchers didn't come in that color. No matter how we begged, she refused to tell us where she bought them. She remained enigmatic on that subject, and, with a barely straight face, she informed us we didn't have proper clearance. She would divulge the name of the candy, however: XLo05. In the murky underwater dimness of her bedroom, we whispered and giggled and gossiped. She told us stories of secret missions and dangerous feats in which we were the heroes; alter egos for the all of us were born; we were intrepid spies of international fame and fortune. On those afternoons, she was quite a different person, nothing at all like the other mothers we knew, who played Bridge and attended Junior Auxiliary meetings. She was a co-conspirator of silliness, a collaborator of folly, a spinner of tales of mischief and adventure. Behind her closed door, in the the damp frigid air of her bedroom, she created a secret triumvirate of superheroes. She instructed us in the martial arts of spreading magic and mirth throughout the universe. She gave us the armor of laughter and imagination. She made us believe we could do anything. We were undefeatable.

Happy Mother's Day, XLO05! I love you.
Alberta

Another Self Portrait

Earlier this week my friend Roc made a postcard that I fell in love with. Coincidentally, the card was called "Albert." So I made this journal page as another self portrait demo fo rmy class and as an entry for Theme Thursday's Dance challenge, Illustration Friday's Parade challenge, and TGIF's Childhood challenge. Check "Albert" out here along with all of Roc's brilliantly quirky art.

I realize this isn't the best scan, but I was journaling at school on a watercolor pad that was too large to fit directly onto my scanner. I had to photograph the page, scan it, and then do the editing, so it ended up slightly crooked and some of my swirlies were cut off. But it was a lot of fun to make and that's what counts, isn't it?

Zetti Mom

My all-time favorite journal artist is Teesha Moore. Last summer, shortly after I began blogging, I discovered her website, which includes a wonderful description of how she creates her funky journal pages. To see her art and read about how she makes her pages, click here. This page is a demo I made in Teesha's Zetti style, on the spur of the moment, for my fifth period writing class and for Created by Hand's Mother's Day challenge. For my end-of-semester project, I assigned a written autobiography and a creative visual representation to go with it. In an attempt to get my students to make something besides a poster, I showed them some of my art journal pages and explained that they didn't have to go out and purchase a bunch of exensive art supplies. Most of them have their poetry journals from first semester, and I told them just to grab some magazines and start cutting. The elements in this collage came from my top desk drawer and are just leftovers from other projects. "Mom" came from an old issue of Glamour, I think. I also had to resort to using construction paper (for her hat) and a crusty old bottle of Elmer's glue (hence the bubbles and uneven spots on the page). Today I'm going in armed with glue sticks, bottles of cheap acrylic paint, and more magazines from my endless stash. I can't wait to see their self-portraits.

Infinite Mind

"Perfect peace to the soul as we rest in the realization of our unity with all there is, was or ever will be." Ernest Holmes (for Saturday Workout and Lots To Do)

Theme Thursday: Hats

At Theme Thursday this week the challenge is "Hats." Please take a look at the terrific entries there, and, if you have read the post below and visited Katherine's blog, please do. There's something I want to show you.

Love,
Alberta

Art and Meaning

Blackfish by Katherine Treffinger
Recently my friend Katherine Treffinger started a new project on her blog. Each day she introduces a different artist and asks each to respond to these questions: "What meaning does doing art have for you? Why do you show up in your studio, or wherever, and pick up your tools day after day?" Katherine hopes to compile their answers into a book someday, which I think would be fascinating. I was the artist on her April 18 post and you can read what I had to say here. Every day I look forward to discovering a new artist and learning what motivates and inspires each one. Please treat yourself to a visit to her blog Treffinger Daily to see her magical, intuitive abstract art and read what her artists have to say about what art means to them.

To Do List

1. Clean linen closet: check.
2. Antique picture frames and drop off at framer: check.
3. Plant window boxes: check.
4. Dust, mop and vaccuum pollen off screen porch: check
5. Finish mermaid painting: check.



mixed media on 8" X 10" canvas, $60 plus shipping
If you're interested in this painting, please contact me at katherinemccullen@yahoo.com


I started this piece last week for Mixed Media Monday's Mermaid challenge, but I was unable to finish it in time. The background is many, many layers of paint and ink: sponged, stampled, and splattered. You name it and I think I did it to this little picture. Fortunately, TGIF is having a Fish challenge this week, and MMM is doing Beaches, so I'm going to submit this painting for both. BTW my friend Serena's blog title, which has always made me smile, was the inspiration for this painting. Be sure to check out her amazing altered art here.

Susie Pryor

I absolutely love this artist. On Friday night I went to the opening of her newest show at the Bennett Street Gallery and realized how much her paintings remind me of memories of my own children. Susie says that Mary Cassatt and Andrew Wyeth are two of her major influences, and you can certainly see that in her work. If you are anywhere near the Atlanta area you should check her out, and if you can't make it to the gallery, you can see her work here. Magic Flowers and Creek are two of my favorites, but I'm really dreaming of hanging Touching the Tide over my fireplace.

We Can Dance If We Want To

Well, I wasn't sure I was ever going to make it back to Blog Land. I just haven't been able to focus lately, but FINALLY: I finished a journal page. (Crazy Amigo, Creative Therapy Saturday Surprise ) I found inspiration from the assignment I gave my first period writing class on Friday ("The ABC's of Me")and included my own version in the text on the lower right side of the page.

Today I'm going to try to complete all the projects I've got going: plant window boxes, clean out linen closet, finish mermaid painting, and antique the two picture frames I painted gold. I know I won't get to the curtains I'm making, but maybe next weekend.

Glamour Girl

My fingers have been itching to create something new, but I've been so involved with cleaning out my mother's house, helping Ava move, and spring cleaning my own house that I haven't had the energy to do more that walking into my studio and sit down at the computer. My brain feels clutterd with all the "stuff" I've put my hands on this week. This is a photograph I took of a wig stand that I painted last year. Her name is Ava (as in Gardener, not my sister) I altered the color of the photograph to use as an element in a collage I'm working on, and I was intrigued with its painterly effect, after I changed the color saturation. You can see Ava in her natural state in the studio pictures below. So I'm posting it for the Art on the Darkside Mannequin challenge, Theme Thursday Glamour Girl challenge, and One Powerful Hour's circle challenge. Maybe next weekend I'll have time to work on the actual collage or finish one of the three other paintings I have in prgress.

Custom Work: A Dream Come True

Most of my life I've dreamed of painting portraits of children or illustrating children's books, and recently this fantasy of mine has come true. I've accepted several commissions in the folk art style of Are You a Good Witch , an 15" X 30" mixed media painting on wood, and I've decided to start a new project: mixed media folk art portraits by commission.

If you are interested, take a look at my portfolio on Flickr or at my shop on Etsy to get an idea of my style and range. You can contact me via e-mail, Flickr mail or Etsy with any questions or to discuss specifics, such as size, palette, price, and you can also send me photos of your subject. Please allow 6-8 weeks for completion, since I do have a full-time day job teaching school. When summer break comes, I may be able to work a little faster. Payments will be made in two parts: half up front and the other half, plus shipping, upon completion.

I'm very, very excited about this because I've been drawing my little ones since about fourth grade. Those of you who remember which birthday I celebrated this year, know exactly how long ago that was! I am so looking forward to talking to you about your ideas

Love,
Alberta

Postcards on Etsy

Sunday Postcard Art

I don't know about other artists, but I have a need to work in different styles and media. Other artists seem to specialize in one genre, but I find myself some days with an urge to make something funky and fun, and other days a desire to learn something and work intuitively. Other days I just need to paint something magical and pretty to escape into. Maybe it's because it's spring and cherry blossom petals are blowing across my garden, or maybe it's because Ava and I are going to visit our mother for a few days, but today my inner child needed to escape for a romp with a beautiful fairy tale bird. The little painting is called: Printemps Prend la Fuite, Spring Takes Flight, and, if you like it, the postcards are available on Etsy.

Saturday Surprise

Prints available on Etsy in 6.5" X 6.75" or 9.5" X 10"

IF: April Fools' Rabbit By Ava

16" X 18" mixed media on canvas (available on Etsy) for Saturday Surprise "Mother Nature Challenge" , Created By Hand Craft Challenge "Easter" and Illustration Friday "Talisman Challenge."

The rabbit is the symbol for faith in many religions and is also a talisman of love and fertility.

Isn't this painting awesome!!! I'm such a proud big sister. I've already commissioned her to do one for me.

Painting for My Son

I've been in my art attic painting with Ava all weekend:








And here's what I've been working on:




My son Wesley, who is 20 and my youngest, discovered my blog recently somehow and called me last week to tell me how much he loved my art! What a moment of absolute zen. He made me log on to my computer and go back through all my old posts, telling me which pieces he liked best and why. Who knew he even had an interest in art? He’s always been quite creative but his medium is music. Before our conversation was over he’d offered to BUY 3 paintings (please!), linked me to two of his artsy friends on Facebook and asked me to paint a mural on the wall of his living room. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. This weekend I started a painting for my Wes. It’s not finished yet, but here it is. To share my passion for art with one of my children is pure Nirvana. Wesley and I were always very close; my husband said we were joined at the hip, but in the last 5 years, he’s been busy becoming a man, and, to be a man, he had to break away from me. It makes me unreasonably happy to know we’re still kindred spirits.
Creative Therapy "Unconditional Love"

Warning!

If the music on my autoplay is too rowdy for you today, I apologize. I don't have a stereo in my studio, and this is what I'm painting to. So please mute your speaker, if it's too distracting.

XOXO,
Me

MY FIRST ETSY SALE

Today I don't have anything new to post because I'm working on a large painting, but I did add five original journal pages to my Etsy and have marked almost everyting down. All journal pages are now $25 (regardless of what they're marked in the shop, and I've reduced most of the 12" X 12" original paintings. This Etsy thing is still new to me, so I may have origianlly overpriced my items. I hope to make the ICON design available on t-shirts, as several of you have asked about them, but I'll have to wait and see what the price will be after set up and printing. I'm also quite interested in doing commision work in the folk art style of my "Emerge" fairy for little girls rooms etc. If you'd like, you can contact me at katherinemccullen@yahoo.com with specifications. Thank you so much for your interest and all your encouraging coments.

Love,
Alberta

Icon Part Deux

"Cultivate an attitude of happiness. Cultivate a spirit of optimism. Walk with faith, rejoicing in the beauties of nature, in the goodness of those you love, in the testimony which you carry in your heart concerning things divine." Gordon B. Hinkley

I'm thinking of doing a whole Cirque De Zetti series (inspired by Theme Thursday and Illustration Friday)My last two journal pages have been portraits of my sons, hard to tell, I know, but true, nonetheless. This is Andrew. The first Icon was Wesley.

Icon

(an icon that became a t-shirt transfer for WS: and Daily Art Stop)


"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."

–Cecil Beaton

Allegra

Mixed media on canvas 24" X 30" $400. If you are interested in purchasing this painting please email me at katherinemccullen@yahoo.com

It always surprises me how inspiration comes when you least expect it. If this composition seems familiar to you that's because it was originally a journal page called The Mummer's Dance (click on title to see). I've known since I finished that collage that someday it would be a painting. (My Artistic Life) Something about her joyous dance captured my imagination. (Inspire Me Thursday) The original collage was also the first art piece I ever sold. I began painting this in January, but I got stuck on her hair. I couldn't figure out how to get the effect I wanted. So, I left it alone, hoping that something would come to me. I've spent the last several weeks learning something new, concentrating on abstracts, and I was so excited about what I was doing that I forgot about Miss Thing leaning up against the wall in the corner. Friday morning over coffee,though, I happened to catch a glimpse of her. I'd originally textured a larger area for her flowing locks, but late the night before I decided her hair was out of control and decided to give her a little makeover. So, I took a paint scraper to her and began to chisel chunks of molding paste off, leaving areas of black canvas exposed under the paste. I liked the way the rough black and white looked on her. So I took my palette knife and more black paint finished giving her a new hairdo. Suddenly, the whole painting came together, and I knew exactly what to do, From that point on it was amazingly easy; the painting almost finished itself. And here she is, my celebration of spring, Allegra, dancing in a midnight garden.

At One Powerful Hour, where the challenge this week is Spring, the disclaimer on the sidebar said they didn't really care if the creation took an hour or not, that they really just wanted to see what we'd created. Well, my painting took a lot of powerful hours; just piecing together her crazy quilt skirt took quite awhile, but cleanup might have taken an hour.

Imagine Your Life

I worked on this new journal page off and on for over a week while waiting for Shaman and Django to dry. It fits several challenges Arty Girlz Stamping Challenge, Crazy Amigo's Paint Challenge, and My Time To Craft Nature Challenge.

If you'll take a look at my sidebar, you'll see that I've added some more journal pages to my Etsy shoppe and I will continue to update. I discoverd that Walmart carries a ready-made frame and mat set that fits most of my pages, and I did the stairway down to Mr. Al's office and a wall in my studio with my framed pages. They look very cheerful. When my BFF Susan saw these framed and hung, she went out and got frames for the pages and cards I've given her and covered an entire wall in her office with them. Believe it or not, I still have plenty more where those came from, so I hope some might find a happy home with you. 11" X 16" prints are also available for all of my collages and journal pages.

Love,
Alberta

Django

12" X 12" X 1.5" mixed media on canvas

Painted while dreaming of spring on a long, cold rainy weekend. (Mixed Media Monday)

IF: Shaman

11" X 15" mixed media on cardboard for Illustration Friday's Legendary challenge

Well, as you can see, I've discovered something else I like. Ava says I like everything. What could be wrong with that, I ask you? Except that I do get a little attention deficit when I have a lot of things going on, like I do now. I've got three big unfinished paintings in my studio, and while they sat there, I painted this abstract because I'm excited about this new form. Truthfully, I didn't like one of the big unfinshed canvases, but now I think I can go back and apply some of the same techniques I used here and be happy with it. Learning something new is always a good thing!

Earlier this week I received this honor from two Phenomenal Women: Cathy and Terri, two friends whose support and friendship inspire me daily to have the courage to continue pursue my dream and to share the chronicles of my journey with you. Here's what these two artists said about blogs that receive this award: "This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this clever-written text into the body of their award." I am humbled and honored to be considered as such. I would like, in turn, to recognize 8 other artists whose blogs exemplify the qualities of generosity, inspiration, and selflessness:
Artiphy the Heart
What's Up Roc
Bluebirds Living In The Meadow
Bulles Dores
Green Weeds
Lumilyon
It Must Be Mice
Tumblefish Studio

Please visit their blogs and leave them a comment. You will be glad you did.

Because of all of you, I have finally been able to do what I dreamt of for so many years. Thank you with all my heart.



Love,
Alberta

12" X 12" mixed media collage on canvas

Because green is my favorite color and I use a little green in almost everything I do, it was easy to find an entry for this week's Wednesday Stamper challenge. Green has always been is a very spiritual color, in my mind, and represents growth, rebirth, joy. This lady ( My Time To Create) has a firm spiritual foundation, an open heart, and sees the beauty of the world around her.

Let Go The Illusion of Control

While I was waiting for ""Verdure" to dry I journaled around the studies for that piece with the paint leftover on my palette. (for Mixed Media Monday's Written Word Challenge)