ONE MORE TIME

Because of the mass murders in New Zealand, I am not posting my usual blog. I hope we all take a moment today to think of ourselves as human beings, related to each other.

WOMEN WHO STAND OUT IN THEIR FIELDS

To celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, I painted a bunch of postcards with yellow flowers to send to Love Notes and Global Art Swap postcard members. While I painted and since it is also Women's History Month, I thought of women artists and what little recognition they have received. Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, or Mary Cassatt are artists we are all familiar with. If you studied art history, you might remember Louise Bourgeois, Kathe Kollwitz, Louise Nevelson or Helen Frankenthaler. If you love photography, you will know Diane Arbus, Imogene Cunningham, Annie Leibovitz, Cindy Sherman and Dorothea Lange. I couldn't go much furrther in making a list.

I stopped painting and continued to search for women artists. I came up with a good list that I have included at the bottom of this page. I recognized only a few of the names, but I found their work to be both interesting and diverse. I scoured the National Museum of Women in the Arts to find more. I linked Bernarda Bryson Shahn and Elaine de Kooning to their more famous husbands.  Many others stand on their own merits, but without the recognition that many male artists received.

Looking at my postcards with yellow flowers, I remembered Vera Neumann from my childhood. My mother encouraged me to follow Vera, a well-known clothing and house linen designer, because she had made a success of an art career. In college, I loved the work of Sister Mary Corita Kent, a silk screen artist who used bright colors to convey her social justice messages in the 1960s. I hadn't thought of these two artists in a long time, but I realized as I worked this week what an influence they both had been on my own artwork.

          You can look at a gallery of Vera Neumann's work here: http://veraneumann.com/about/

You can see more of Corita Kent's artwork here:   http://corita.org/collection

Here is my list, so far, of women artists from the last hundred years:
Fine Artists:
Sonia Delauney, Natalia Goncharova, Bernarda Bryson Shahn,  Milena Pavlovic-Barili
Adrienne Piper, Carmen Herrara, Agnes Martin, Amelia Palaez, Judy Chicago,
Pat Steir, Elaine de Kooning and Jay DeFeo
Lygia Clark, Eve Hesse, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell (not the singer),
Grace Hartigan, Perle Fine, Alice Neel, Mary Abbott, Judith Godwin, Sonia Gechtoff
Designers:
Ray Eames (who worked with her husband Ray Eames as a design team)
Lucienne Day (who worked with her husband Robin  Day as a design team)
Vera Neumann, Sister Mary Corita Kent, Margo Chase, and Louise Fili

What mentor did you follow who helped you to be the person you are today?

Check out these websites for more information on women artists and designers:

National Museum of Women in the Arts
https://nmwa.org/about
Envato:
https://envato.com/blog/6-women-designers-you-need-to-know-about/?_ga=2.120770632.1371324038.1551832962-398375444.1551832962
Phototraces:
https://www.phototraces.com/creative-photography/famous-female-photographers/
Huffington Post:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/11-historic-women-photographers-you-should-know_us_55f6cb87e4b077ca094f82ac

Join the Love Notes Postcard Project and the Global Art Swap:

https://www.jenniferbelthoff.com/love-notes-postcard-project

https://louisegale.com/global-art-swap/

KINSHIP

 Every month for the last five years, a group of friends gather at my home for Craft Day. We sit working on unfinished projects that would otherwise languish in closets. Some knit, some make quick fleece blankets for gifts, some make jewelry, others put together photo albums or do paper crafts or quilt squares. We all have projects we haven't finished that have accumulated in a drawer or on a top shelf. We spend a few hours together to work on them. Most of all we chat about children, grandchildren, recipes, restaurants, vacations, and universal issues that affect us all.

Since the beginning, I've been working on two unfinished Christmas projects. One is a cross stitch stocking that I started in 1990 as a gift for our son, which originally I saved to labor on during summer vacations and never completed. The other is an embroidered ribbon-weaving runner for our dining room table. I've worked on both off and on since we started meeting. I've finally finished the cross stitching on the stocking and completed the herringbone stitch that connects the ribbons on the runner. The tops are complete, but I still haven't added the backing material to finish either project.

Each strand of ribbon is connected with a herringbone stitch done in gold threads.
No wonder it took me so long to finish!

We take a break at noon for our Stone Salad and a cup of soup. I provide the greens for the salad and a soup. Everyone else either brings one thing to add to the salad, such as nuts, tomatoes, roasted vegetables, salsa, cheeses or dried fruit. Or they make welcome additions such as deviled eggs, delicious rolls or homemade desserts.

Here's a recipe for one Craft Day soup:

Chunky Vegetable-Lentil Soup
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup dry lentils
1 lb. small mushrooms, chopped
4 medium carrots, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
1 small yam, chopped
1 half chicken breast, roasted and shredded
6 1/2 cups of chicken stock
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon peel
salt and pepper
parsley
paprika
oregano

In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook till tender. Stir occasionally.Add lentils and cook and stir for one minute.
Add mushrooms, carrots, celery, stock, parsley, paprika, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for about 25 minutes or until lentils are tender.
Divide among soup bowls.

At the end of the day, we've all made a little progress on our projects and we've all had a chance to enjoy each other's friendship. Our group members have changed over time as some have moved away or have made other commitments. Some of the members who have moved away come back to Craft Day when they are in town. What started as a way to clean out all of our unfinished projects has become a lively day with endearing friends.

As Nadeem Aslam said, "Pull a thread here and you will find it's attached to the rest of the world."

Many Craft Day members

I found Nadeem Aslam's quote at Holstee, a company whose purpose is to help people live more fully and mindfully.
Visit their website:https://www.holstee.com/pages/about  You will be glad you did.

**************

A friend, Chandra Lynn, posts regularly on her blog, Pics & Posts. Check out today's post on the last day of Black History Month at
https://iamchandralynn.com/2019/02/28/thursdaytreelove-youve-got-a-place-here-too/
You will be glad you did.

A LONG WALK AFTER THE RAIN

Can you find the ant on the mushroom?

After our heavy rains, I went looking for mushrooms. They sprout up at different times of the year in Northern California, even in our dry, hot summers. But I expected to see more of them in February.

As I walked along a path, I thought I would be surprised by new crops blooming everywhere. Instead I found random tennis balls from the nearby courts forgotten under the trees. I discovered tennis balls are as hard to photograph as mushrooms are. The light confuses my iPhone in much the same as round mushrooms do.

I also found the last of the prickly Liquid Amder seed pods blown into bunches on the edges of the path. We used to collect them and spray them gold or silver for holiday ornaments. The birds love the seeds inside the pods, but all the seeds were gone by now.

Liquid Amber tree seed pods

I didn't find many mushrooms on my walk until I came back to our backyard. We have a dead alder stump in the middle of the yard. The top part of one of our redwoods broke off, thundered down to the ground and whacked the alder so hard that it too eventually died. A tree sculptor carved bear heads in the trunk once the rest of the tree was cut down. Last summer clusters of mushrooms covered the roots of the tree. Now fungi have started crawling up the sides like fairy staircases and into the carved spaces on the bear's head and paws.

Fairy staircases or Yellowstone-like pools?

The fungi are beautiful and remind me of the monarchs that usually swarm the trees along the Monterey coastline. I thought about those beautiful butterflies whose population in the last year declined by 86% -- a precipitous drop. Scientists offer climate change, habitat destruction, and pesticides (Round-up is particulary harmful) as reasons for the loss.

These mushrooms are also known as Turkey Tail Mushrooms

Our alder tree is going through a natural process of decay. We can't do much except watch it crumble, little by little. We humans, though, have accelerated the loss of the monarchs on the West Coast. They live here all year round and the smoke from last year's fires was harmful. Big environmental issues like this seem to be so enormous that it's easy to feel helpless.  I've learned that the last couple of years of political upheaval provides a blueprint for action. Getting together with others to do even small things can result in amazing achievements. If you can find space in your garden for some local, nectar-rich plants, join me and plant them. You might save a butterfly!



The Xerces Society has produced a series of plant guides to help all of us to find plants that will do well in our locations. Check them out!
https://xerces.org/monarch-nectar-plant-guides/

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/western-u-s-monarch-butterfly-population-declined-sharply-in-2018

HELP JUST WHEN YOU NEED IT

                    

I couldn't resist replacing my planned post for today with this photo from a good friend. A kitty and hearts. What more can you want to make you smile?

I'm a day late to write about Valentine's Day, but I'm taking inspiration from my son, who once said we should celebrate days like Valentine's, Mother's Day, and birthdays every day of the year. So if you missed creating something special for Valentine's, here's your chance to create a sweet surprise (minus the cat).

The hearts in the photo are simple to make. Take a sheet of 90 or 140 lb watercolor paper, dampen it, brush watercolors across the sheet. Let it dry, cut out heart shapes (use a shape-cutting machine or your own hand-drawn design) and add your message of love with a marking pen.

My friend's other card is more complex, but still doable. You need to collect a sheet of red paper for the background, a gold doily, some images such as the butterfly (either from a magazine or from a craft store), ribbon, hearts (make your own or head to the craft store), and some circles to put your message on.

Once you've assembled your cards, hide them in places your person is most likely to find them: sock drawer, under a pillow, at the breakfast table for a morning surprise.

You could also download the images below to fill someone's week with surprises and cheer. Print these images on cardstock for stability.

Have fun with love.

by mARTha Slavin

by mARTha Slavin

by mARTha Slavin

And one for your cat.

by mARTha Slavin

FICKLE SPRING

by Bill Slavin

To the rest of the country, winter is making its worst mark. In Northern California, white blossoms cover the flowering pear trees, the daffodils bloom with joyous yellow, the primroses and shy hellebores spread their colors along walkways and under the trees, while leftover poinsettias seem out of place. Rain comes and even snow to the local mountain tops, but sun breaks through, rainbows appear.

by Bill Slavin

Our Spring comes as early as mid-January. We luxuriate in the warm sun, but we need the rain, and more rain to keep back the hot firestorms of Summer. In the meantime, we glory in the pink and white tinged street trees, we marvel at the tulip leaves pushing their way into the sunshine, and we check the tips of the deciduous trees to see the beginnings of new green growth.

by Bill Slavin

I hope you enjoy a little bit of Spring photographed by my husband, Bill.

SEEING COLORS

Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with the life I have?

Most of us ask ourselves those questions over and over again in our lifetimes. We look for the meaning of life in various ways, through religious practice, journal writing, astrology, Ouija boards, sweat lodges, psychedelic substances, meditation, personality quizzes and more sophisticated evaluations such as the Myers-Briggs Indicator and the Enneagram test.

I grew up during the explosion of New Age philosophies and cults such as EST and Hare Krishna, so I tend to be skeptical of systems that purport to give me all the answers to questions of life. But I also understand that sometimes these systems provide comfort and insight for people who are looking for the answer to the question we all ask ourselves: Why?

I still like doing self-exploration quizzes and tests that I come across. At a writers' workshop this past weekend, I sat with a dozen other people as we looked at colors to identify important areas of self-knowledge and inspiration. What colors would we choose and what do they mean? we were all curious.

The leader spread out a large grouping of Pantone colors and asked us to pick the one color we would take with us if we knew we wouldn't return for a long time. I normally would have picked Yellow, my favorite color, but her question stopped me. Would I really want to be surrounded by the brightness of yellow day and night? I picked a shade of blue instead, thinking that if I had to live with one color, I would select something that would give me serenity. Because of my Scandinavian heritage, I chuckled when I saw the name of the blue I selected: Swedish Blue 18-4330 TPX

In the Aura Soma color system we were exploring, blue represents my soul color, and signifies communication and finding my voice. I thought of writing my blog and my artwork in relation to my choice. I next selected a burnt sienna shade of orange, Tiger Lily 17-1456, for my Challenge color. Orange stands for creativity on the plus side and doubt on the negative. As a creative person, those two qualities go hand in hand as I work. My last color choice, Magenta 214,  my Resource, is supposed to give me strength and a love of the small things in life. Again, I noticed a corollary to my own life: I tend to find the small things around me that other people may not notice, and I write about those small things and their significance to me.

I didn't pick pale or extremely dark colors. I was surprised when I put them together as a palette to see that the three colors rest in the same value range, not too light, not too dark.

My best try in watercolor to represent the Pantone colors that I selected.

Working with these colors was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Like many opportunities to explore self-knowledge, I took pieces of the system to gain more insight into the depth and breadth of all my experiences. One more piece of the puzzle of a full life.

What color would you choose if you couldn't return

 to your starting point for a long while?

Take a look at all the color choices that Pantone offers:
https://www.pantone.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj72IkuaY4AIVA7vsCh0G4wxIEAAYASAAEgKaPfD_BwE
More about Aura Soma:https://www.aura-soma.com/content/index