Journaling with the Kids

Ledger drawing by Jennifer Judd-McGee

Flickr may be the source of my latest case of Inspiration Overload, but there are so many reasons to keep "drawing" from that particular well. One of them is mixed-media artist Jennifer Judd-McGee, aka swallowfield. She's an incredible artist whose drawings seem to flow from her pen like doodles. She's filled the pages of a vintage ledger with imaginary landscapes, such as the one shown above. I love the little hidden houses in the exuberant forest of oversized leaves and flowers. The ledger itself makes the drawings seem effortless and spontaneous, but the overlapping and meticulous designs seem like they have to be precisely planned.

You can see more of Judd-McGee's ledger drawings in her flickr photostream and purchase her prints through her Etsy shop. The ledger series of drawings will be exhibited (along with work of matte stephens!) at nahcotta (in Portsmouth, NH) in October. (I think I need to head out to Portsmouth--Elsa Mora's paper cutouts will be exhibited there at the Three Graces Gallery in September. It must be an artists' haven.)

After seeing Judd-McGee's drawings on Flickr, I remembered the collaborative journal I kept with my best friend Sara in junior high. We filled spiral-bound notebooks with doodles, song lyrics, pasted-in photos of our teen idols and fashion icons, and, of course, endless paragraphs filled with teen angst. I admit, not anywhere in the same ballpark as what Judd-McGee does, but that's just where her work led me.

And that happy memory of being young and exuberant and expressive inspired me to share that experience with my kids. We've started collaborative journals for a number of reasons. Foremost among them was the chance to connect with both kids in the midst of all of our work and other activities.

My daughter, who is a thoughtful middle schooler, often gets drowned out by her louder younger brothers, and we rarely get a chance to share our thoughts. The journal that we have started is a real dialogue. So far we've touched on how our writing has developed over the last few years and what inspires us.

My middle son has a tough time expressing his feelings. And the physical act of writing is really difficult for him. So I'm hoping that regular practice writing up a journal entry will help him improve in both areas.I have a tendency to go overboard with projects, so I'm hoping that I won't overwhelm him with my drawings and writing.

My youngest joined in the journaling action on a recent sunny afternoon. We sat under the oak tree and doodled for a while, before the boys decided to race around their reclining sister in their wagon.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone has tried a similar journaling experiment with their kids. If you have any tips to share to make the journals more successful, I'd love to hear them!

100 Things a Girl Can Make, Online!

A Japanese fish kite

One of the things that I love about Arts and Crafts-style design is how it draws on the simple lines and craftsmanship of Asian, and especially Japanese, handwork. I came to my appreciation of Arts and Crafts design from living in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, near Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. I was also quite fortunate to have spent three months in Japan with my husband and daughter soaking up the culture's incredible melding of art and nature.



Several projects in 100 Things a Girl Can Make (Bonnie E. Snow and Hugo B. Froehlich, Lippincott, 1922) show a clear Asian inspiration. The fish kite shown above (and my mini-version below) are modeled after Japanese koinobori, which are hung to celebrate Children's Day (5/5). We spent Children's Day at a festival in a remote part of Japan, and the long streamers of koinobori hung suspended from a bridge over a wild gorge.


I just made a mini-version of the carp kite to try it out, but I'd love to make a whole group of these to hang outside next spring.

A Chinese coin purse

I love working with found metal containers (my daughter and I started an Altoids tin project), and the Chinese coin purse above is an inspiring project to make. The authors suggest using a gas mantle box (there are probably not a lot of extra ones of these around because the gas mantles used to be made from radioactive thorium!) or "a suitable box may be obtained at any drug store where they are in constant use as containers of various powders, tablets and salts. They are about three inches high and two inches in diameter." I know what I'll be looking for on my next thrifting/antiquing trips!

If you're interested in seeing the instructions for these projects or more images from 100 Things A Girl Can Make, you can download an electronic version at the Internet Archive. Isn't the Web amazing?

Also, check out lotusgreen's two blogs here and here for a fascinating melding of Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau and Asian influences.

Garden Party Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Kathleen Dougherty, a self-taught but highly accomplished seamstress, over at Grosgrain, is some kind of wonderful. She makes lovely handmade children's clothes and takes equally amazing photos of her children modeling them. You have to admire her new (to me) take on the familiar giveway. You can enter a giveaway for a particular item by posting the link to it on your blog, i.e. Garden Party Frock GIVEAWAY!!!! See, I just entered to win her Garden Party Frock, which is made of green broadcloth with a unique pattern made of white crochet trim. What a great way to publicize her blog!

How to Combat Inspiration Overload

No, no, it's not fall yet! A picture my husband took, from Fall 2004.

Thank you, friends, for all of the great advice yesterday about how to deal with Infomania, or Inspiration Overload. Making such good friends through this blog has definitely been worth the occasional bout of Infomania!


I've condensed your tips into a short list. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'll be sure to implement them stat.



1. Step away from the computer. Turn off the computer to allow ideas time to simmer and develop!

2. Offload all the ideas buzzing in your head somewhere.

3. Make something!

[Added note] This is my beautiful niece in the pinafore I made for her.

4. Involve the whole family (more about combining steps 2 through 4 in a later post!)!

5. When you turn your computer back on, go to finder sites like Rachel's oneprettything and allow yourself one click! (And for gosh sake, stay away from Flickr!)

6. [Added per Linda's comment. Wise words, Linda!] Do not use the excuse of not being tied to the computer to make a trip to Michael's or the fabric store or Salvation Army or that garage sale down the street or any other place that would remotely provide you with yet more inspiration/supply overload!

Please feel free to offer more hints in the Comments.

Inspiration Overload

In my last post, I told you about some of the blogs that I've been reading lately. I think going back to my Flickr favorites to put together that post gave me a little kick of inspiration over the weekend. The central design for the papercut above just came to me out of the blue, and I had to sketch it up right away. I spent some idle time hanging out in the yard with the kids (with papercut sketch in hand), and our crabapple tree caught my eye, so that had to be incorporated as well.

This kind of quick flash of papercutting inspiration and equally quick turnaround time for completing the project rarely happens for me, so it was a milestone of sorts.

However, now I'm feeling inspiration overload, which seems to be the craft/design/art blog reader's variation of workplace "information overload." Electronic information overload--from emailing, texting, surfing, etc.--has become so prevalent that there is even a formal organization devoted to combating its drag on workplace productivity. Nathan Zeldes, the founder of the Information Overload Research Group, defines the problem this way:

I define Information Overload, or Infomania as it is informally called at times, as the problem that today’s Information Intensity - the ubiquitous, rapid flow and exchange of information, communications, and the implicit tasks they impose - puts our knowledge workers and managers in a chronic state of anxiety that is exacting a heavy toll on their productivity as employees as well as on their personal well-being. This problem is caused primarily by the combination of two distinct phenomena: one is Queued incoming message overload, and the other is Distractions/interruptions.

The term "Infomania" pretty much sums up the downside to blogging and surfing. Because information/inspiration is everywhere, and so easily and quickly accessible, it sometimes gives me that not-good manic feeling that leads to a creative dead end. Sometimes there seems to be TOO much eye candy, inspiration, and free patterns available. It's all wonderful to see, but it gets to the point where the list of projects I want to try becomes too much of a burden.

I think some of you out there may have experienced this: you read a blog, click on an interesting link, and then find yourself, several blogs and hours later, completely unsure about how you got there and what you wanted to find out in the first place. (Smoothpebble, I know you have a funny term for this, but web surfing seems to have affected my long-term memory as well.)

So, my question is, how do you strike a balance between having a "real" life and drawing on inspiration from the Web?

Brillante Weblog Premio, Part II

I can tell when I’m not quite “on my game” on this blog. There’s lots of cutting and pasting and casting about for words. The previous post is a good example. So here’s my attempt to fill in some of the holes in the previous post.

If you have read my blog for a while, you know that Maya from maya*made and I are blog buddies and (I count myself lucky) actual in-person friends. We met in January of this year in the sweater aisle at the Salvation Army store while both of us were looking for wool sweaters to felt. I immediately recognized her unique spirit and was impressed with the many talents that she was just beginning to explore more deeply and put out into the world.

Maya and I started on this whole blog journey together, and there were countless evenings when we were just getting started when we exchanged multiple emails very late into the night about particular sites that inspired us. (Also, many late-night phone calls that devolved into bleariness.) We were both giddy with this amazing resource we were tapping into—so much beauty and inspiration to be found, all at the click of a mouse.

So, in the spirit of those very late-night emails, let me annotate some of the blogs I awarded with the “Brillante Weblog Premio,” as I would have done for Maya:

1) Snippety Gibbet. Have you seen the playful papercuts that Snippety Gibbet does? They make me laugh out loud, and each “snip” reveals a scene that would be almost impossible to express as eloquently in words (and yet Jan does that, too!). I’ve studied them closely but still don’t get how she snips them! She's an art teacher, and her photos of the work she does with her students are pretty inspiring, too!
2) Fog and Thistle. OK, if the blog name alone doesn’t draw you in, the papercuts will. The three-dimensional ones are my favorites. There is something very earthy and mythological about all of Rachel Weber’s expert cutouts.
3) dolls stories. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon the work of Israeli textile artist Neta Amir, but I’m so happy I did (I think it was one of those late-night Flickr crawls). You have to check out how she deconstructed a finished doll, stripping away its extra layers and getting to its essential beauty. Now that’s what I call great editing. Also look at the installation she did of her work in a Maastricht art gallery. And the slippers she makes, and . . . . You can get lost in all the beauty, I’m telling you.
4) Have you noticed all of the amazing Portuguese artists out there? Saidos da Concha, the wonderful blog of Portuguese textile artist Constanca Cabral, led me to many other Portuguese artists. Reimao is an illustrator who I’ve just learned about, and unfortunately her blog is in Portuguese only. But look at her illustrations, and you’ll see that they translate perfectly.
5) I’m sure that you’ve heard of Portuguese artist Graca Paz and her and her husband’s Atelier XT, the amazing source of all things bright and beautiful. I’ve never been to Portugal, but after seeing Graca’s work, I must go. The whole country must be filled with color and patterns and life. I’ve never seen anyone mix pinks and turquoise and red (this combo just inspired a birdhouse I painted with the boys) so beautifully. You have to check out her newest series of paintings—O Canto do Rouxinol (Nightingale’s Song). I’m in love with the imagery, and the language! And her crocheted afghan in these same colors, and the kids’ furniture her husband makes! Cotton candy heaven!
6) I just stumbled upon the most amazing blog and Flickr photostream! You have to go look through Argentinean illustrator Gustavo Aimar’s work. He’s an amazing book illustrator and collage artist, and he shows his process! I learned so much by looking at photos of him at work. His personal profile is very poetic: “Amante del clavo de olor, la nuez mozcada, la canela, y los papeles antiguos. (“Lover of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vintage papers.”)
7) After my trip to Portugal, I think I’ll need to head down South (southern U.S., that is). What is it about Southerners and design? They get it, they do. I think I noticed knack studio’s work on elsiemarley’s Trash Pickins Flickr group. I keep going back to her blog and studio site just to admire all the details in her studio and to see the colors she uses. And those gorgeous vintage glass knobs! So much to learn here!
8) I recently got a Flickr email from Mint Design, and I immediately fell in love with the look of this blog. I swoon over (they do that in the South, don’t they?) all the eye candy and inspiration in every post, and I’m getting quite the design education. There must be something in the air or water down there, don’t you think?

So, thanks, Maya, for giving me this award and giving me the opportunity to share some blogs I love.

Handing Out Some Awards

maya*made just sent this lovely award my way, and I thought I would continue the "chain" and use it to highlight some of the shiny, happy blogs that have enriched my life lately.

Here are the rules for receiving this award:

1) Put the logo on your blog.

2) Add a link to the person who awarded you.

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.

4) Add links to those blogs on yours.

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

So here are some blogs that give me inspiration and joy. I know you'll enjoy them too:

Paper cutters:

Snippety Gibbet

Fog and Thistle

International:

dolls stories

Reimao

Cherry on the Cake/Atelier XT

Gustavo Aimar La mesa de trabajo

Southern (U.S.) design:

knack studios

mint

Claire Brewster's "Magical Landscapes"

At first glance, the cutouts by British artist Claire Brewster seem delicate and lacy. Her precisely done cutouts of birds, insects, and flowers hover suspended in their white box frames, casting finely limned shadows.

"Arctic Peonies" (2008), cut from Oxford Advanced Atlas.

On closer inspection however, it becomes clear that Brewster's perspective and wit are as razor-sharp as the blade she must use to make the precise cuts of what she calls "magical landscapes." Her landscapes seem to subvert our sense of what we know about nature and gently mock our attempts to control it through scientific accuracy.

"I'm hungry," (2008), cut from Chambers of Commerce atlas.

Discarded maps and atlases serve as Brewster's canvases and paints, and the geographic features become the colors and details of her birds, insects, and flowers. Place names, routes, colors, latitude and longitude lines, all trace the details of insects and other creatures we often ignore. Emerging from its source, each creature becomes a map of a particular aspect of the natural world. Yet rather than pinning down the natural world, the animals themselves seem poised to rip away our knowledge. With sinuous curves and lacy cutouts, Brewster transforms the scientific rigor of the map, challenging the order that we try to bring to nature. Brewster has literally poked holes in our knowledge, thus untethering nature from human control. Sometimes, as in “North America Physical Features” (2007), the insects even seem to completely overpower us, devouring an entire continent.

Her birds, often depicted in flight or about to take off, hang suspended in their frame, ready to launch themselves. They suggest a journey, but one with a jagged, torn map, a freedom from the constraints of human knowledge. They remind me of the trash bag twirling in a wind storm captured by the amateur videographer in the movie, American Beauty. In the eyes of the young man, the plastic bag is a discarded human relic, but unbound by its human context and swept up by natural forces, it becomes a thing of beauty, a part of the natural world

"Little humming bird" (2008), cut from Chambers of Commerce Atlas.

Brewster often assembles her birds and insects in groups, like archipelagos in an invisible sea or stars bound together by gravitational forces. The group of birds in "Night Fighting" suggests a savagery to the natural world that we can't control, and also a metaphor for warring nations perpetually fighting over patches of territory.

"Night Fighting," (2008), cut from Atlas of the Heavens.

I admire Brewster's work from a purely aesthetic perspective. Her cutouts are beautiful, well crafted, and funny, and they playfully reuse items that we normally would view as trash. What's the use of an outdated map, anyhow? That's precisely what gives Brewster's work its power, and which kicks it up a notch above the merely pleasurable.

Luckily for those of us on the East Coast, we can soon view Brewster's work in New York City. Brewster was one of a select group of artists chosen for the 2008 Chelsea International Fine Art Competition. Her work will be shown as part of a group exhibit at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea. The exhibit runs from August 15 to September 4, 2008.

For additional images of Brewster's work, check out her website and her recent joint exhibit, "The Nature of Knowledge," at Jaggedart.

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

Inspired by Brewster's work, I tried my hand at a paper cutout using an old atlas of Wisconsin. I'm calling it "Iowa Flood Dragon."

Black-eyed Susans and a Few Clouds

My weekends usually follow the same pattern. Saturdays we clean house, do laundry, and grocery-shop, with the adults splitting up to complete tasks and the kids participating a bit but usually doing their own thing. Sundays are for catching up with big projects around the house, or doing some work that we've brought home with us. It's a boring routine, and one that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for active or creative pursuits.

But this weekend was different. Our recent storms cleared momentarily, leaving a bright, fertile landscape to explore. A hike with a friend around the rim of a gorge revealed lush wildflowers and nature- and human-carved stonework.

Then my older kids and I caught a fun community theatre production of "Charlotte's Web."

Afterwards we couldn't help but explore the fields of clover beside the theatre parking lot. Busy bees and mating beetles covered every clover.

The theatre's garden planting out front was a rich riot of color. Black-eyed susans are the most cheerful flower I can think of, and they were blooming in profusion.



My youngest son, who is almost three, seems to get into trouble when he feels ignored. And this weekend was no exception. On Saturday night, he and I ended up spending four hours in the emergency room after a poison-ingestion scare (luckily a false alarm).

So, to make up for that, we decided to spend some relaxing time as a family on Sunday. There is a ten-year age difference between my oldest and youngest kids, so it's not always easy to find something that all of us can do together without someone being bored or loud or whiney or argumentative (not to mention how the kids behave!). The one thing we know that everyone can enjoy is a trip to the arboretum. We feed the ducks, geese, and fish at the pond, and then the kids run around and explore.

The day was unbelievably cool for August, and a little overcast, giving all the colors around us a beautifully deep tone.

The kids have caught on to my mushroom obsession, so they help with sighting and photographing interesting specimens. We found some big, gnarly mushrooms under a large tree, and my daughter took some great photos of them. One of these days I really will have to start compiling them all in a field book, as Smoothpebble has suggested.

We ended our time at the arboretum peering closely at a caterpillar chomping on a dandelion leaf. This was the closest to a Zen moment that I've ever had with my boys--all of us peering intently at the little guy on the leaf for many moments of quiet stillness. And to think that this photo captures permanently that perfect cocoon of quiet seems instilled with irony. Yes, the moment is transitory, but I will always have this image to jog my memory of those fleeting little pockets of time with my kids that usually slip away from me.

What a gift of a day!



I hope your weekend was similarly rich (minus the trip to the ER)!

Breathing

I made some time for a little bit of crafting in the last few days, and I feel so much happier. I just looked up the origin of the word "inspiration," and it is quite appropriately from the Latin spirare, which means "to breathe"! I really do feel like I have new life breathed into me when I am inspired to create. It's so hard to make the time for it sometimes, but I am just realizing that doing small projects or adding on little details to WIPs can be just as satisfying as tackling a huge new project.

I added a few more details to the cashmere softie Dala Horse I started a few months ago. I sewed the trim from these three thrifted trims.


I was reading a blog about organizing one's fabric stash, and the author suggested only having enough fabric on hand for projects that can be completed in a few months' time. I'm sure that's very sensible, but it's so very foreign to how I get inspired. I love having all sorts of odds and ends on hand to cobble together into something interesting. How would I have known that the three trims above would be what I needed for my Dala Horse?

Earlier this week I also painted some simple wooden dolls to add to my (very late) Lucykate Craft's Toadstool Swap package. I used Martha Stewart's self-adhesive ribbon tape for the outfits on the wooden game pieces* I found at Michael's. Then I painted the faces and hair like Alicia Paulson's beautiful clothespin dolls.
Two small, simple projects that helped me breathe!

*UPDATE: You can order the undecorated wooden girl/game pieces at Lara's Crafts.