September 19, 2006
A New Laptop Battery is Just Like Having a New Laptop
I am waiting for apple bisque paint to dry on paper and listening to three seperate snores. It's allergy season. The windows are all open and neighbors just chunked two fireworks into the sky, exploding over the oaks, hissing sparkling arcs across the driveway. I imagine a handful of boys laughing a few doors down, high-fiving over a six-pack and rummaging the garage for more things to detonate. It's a window into the Sicore boy's future, enough to make me wince (Watch those fingers, boys!) but also smile. It's FUN to blow stuff up!
Damon and I went alone together to the gym this morning. We shared machines and grins. In the middle of the bustling gym floor I wanted to pounce on him. Watching him huff and puff drove me crazy. It was like a shot of Back in College, that undivided attention between us. So as soon as I picked up Chas at childcare, I scribbled down reservations for the rest of this week and next week--pencilling in about an extra half-hour for good measure, each day. Damon did the same. It feels like I've found a missing gasket and now I've replaced it, allowing the machinery to run smoothly again. This may have been one of those elusive missing things in my life.
We took the kids out on the lake again tonight. Austin is absolutely lovely right now, fresh out of the shower and sprinkled with joggers and children and rowers and hummingbirds. I've been dying to bring along a camera, but too paranoid that it might get wet (which it will); the setting sun just gilts everything on its way out. Chas and Ford shared the middle seat tonight, each dragging the little wooden boats that Damon made them, holding graham crackers opposite hands. The way it should be, we just coasted in and out of cypress coves, above illicit beds of Eurasian Watermilfoil and broad mats of Hydrilla, the boys humming Sonic Youth and we, the grownups, chuckling over cold beer. We ran a Great Blue Heron off its hunt five times, tracing its hunt by accident along the convoluted, wooded banks off the lake.
The paint is now dry. I'm daydreaming of graduate studies in painting here at the university. Priorities first, though. I close that window in my browser and step back to the table, dreaming up a series of paintings for a show. 'Self-taught' is satisfactory.
Posted by Steph at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2006
Home: A Collaborative Journal Project
I wish I had left the words out. Everything spoke a quiet abstract tongue to me without the embellishment, and the filigree is really grating my ribs of sarchasm right now, as I look at these pages I painted last night. I had planned on doing something completely different to weave the pages together, and then I got all sappy. I had a Hallmark moment. It happens. It might have involved wine, but I can't remember.
Edited to add: And I have obnoxious waves of sourness, too. Like last night, when I wrote this post.
Christina organized this journal project. I'm #2 in a big group of gals contributing to the book. It'll be fun to see the book once it nears completion, in all it's Flickred glory. For now, it's in a truck on the way to Houston....
What does 'home' mean to you?
Posted by Steph at 11:48 PM | Comments (3)
July 18, 2006
Free-Range
I was a free-range child, roaming on foot and bike throughout the neighborhood like most kids did. We were barefoot with scabs on our toes from the Big Wheels, flags forever flapping behind us on our bicycles. We came home for popsicles. There was a corner of the yard where we corralled box turtles, but we were always hunting for more. But we sold other reptiles: anolis were 10 cents; geckos I sold for twenty-five cents in class. I kept them in coffee cans. Back then, I thought the smell of the coffee cans was gross, like metallic urine.
Free-range days continued once we moved to Houston, but the experience matured quickly. I discovered perverts in fourth grade when a man approached me and asked me to follow him to his van. Sitting on the bench opposite me and my brother, he smiled confidently and touched my hand. Asshole. Sadly, he was only the first jerk to taint my adolescence, but I'm still alive and I was never seriously molested as a child. But I read stories all the time about those less fortunate than me.
I can smile as I look out the window at the boys in the backyard. They run half-naked around the house, building mud volcanoes on the deck, lava plumes in the rivulets running off into the woods.
What will I do when they're able to bike around our neighborhood? What will I do when I can't supervise them?
Posted by Steph at 05:16 AM | Comments (3)
July 06, 2006
Illustration Friday: Sticky
I've never seen a bear do this in the wild. In fact, I've never seen a bear in the wild. For that matter, I've never seen a wild beehive, either. But I've read The Story of Pooh many times before. This is exactly what I believe bears should be doing all the time: raiding beehives and foraging blackberries and slapping salmon out of the water. Of course, bears eat what they can, because honey and blackberries and salmon aren't always in supply. Have you seen Grizzly Man?
More Illlustration Friday.
Posted by Steph at 11:33 PM | Comments (4)
Studio Friday: PLAYTIME: 7 Layer Salad
It's difficult at first, resisting the urge to keep working, but in order to create a smooth surface texture on encaustic paintings, such as these, you have to wait at least two days for the top layer of wax to cure before you can buff it. And these have been stacked and waiting patiently on my windowsill for a week (which, incidentally, is not the best place to cure an encaustic painting in the middle of summer, but it's somehow worked so far in my home--at any rate, it's safer than leaving them on a countertop or table, where the kids can reach them!). Now, all I have to do (if I decide each is finished) is take a chamois and buff the surface smooth. The result is so buttery soft and shiny. I REALLY dig this medium. When I'm finished with thee, I'll share more pictures....
More Studio Friday.
Posted by Steph at 10:10 AM | Comments (7)
July 02, 2006
Ford,
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While I'm not happy about the fact that you watch Chicken Little three times a day on occasion, I can at least smile knowing it slowed you down enough for me to paint your portrait.
Also, thank you for letting me paint again today while you watched the movie. Again.
I'm trying to be the artist who can write a check for a trip to the Cascades so you can finally see Ranier and Hood and St. Helens in person. Because you are so so so worth it. And because I love you so so much.
Well, I'd better get back to work. |
Posted by Steph at 04:46 AM | Comments (7)
June 26, 2006
Portrait of Christy and Peter
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| I haven't had time yet to whip up some code for a gallery. All those sequestered wee hours are for indulgent painting and online furniture oggling. There was a time, about six years ago, when I'd have been golden just to poke around with a tangle of hypertext markup language all afternoon, sipping a gin and tonic on the balcony in the quiet, self-indulgent pause of life just before children. But those children, they showed themselves up and, well, here I am pilfering those last scraggly minutes of my day, trying to spin gold from little piles of straw. ...By the way, that's one of Ford's favorite Grimm's, which is funny because it was one of my favorites, too, growing up. Rumplestilksin is so greasy-good! |
| So, in lieu of a proper gallery, where I can tack up all my late-night progress notes, here's a painting. It's the wedding portrait that Tonya asked me to paint of her friends, Peter and Christy. It's okay, I've been allowed to divulge it! But I still feel al little awkward in doing so. Anyway, Tonya's springboard for me was the famous American Gothic. With that in mind, she sent me a few snapshots and some bio (the props in the picture hint at their interests). And do you know? It was FUN. And I hear they loved it. My work here is done. I couldn't ask for a better way to put myself to good use. Well, except for the mothering part. That's pretty fun, too. |
Posted by Steph at 07:55 PM | Comments (4)
...
| The encaustic class blinked by last week again. But so that I could start working with the wax at home, I thrifted a vintage electric skillet (to keep the wax in liquid while I work) and invested in a heat gun (which fuses the layers--a tutorial to follow soon). So, I'm sorry to all the spiders and cockroaches and trolls and whatever else crawls the garage floors at night: I'm moving into your space. |
| I almost finished a piece last week that I want to share, but instead I'm offering a quiet picture (above) of five minutes before class ended, a leaf, and some leftover wax. It reminds me of the ladies bathhouse atDeep Eddy: |
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| Back to painting. I'm back in the game! My second commission of the summer (and a curtsey to Tonya!). |
Posted by Steph at 06:18 AM | Comments (6)
June 23, 2006
Illustration Friday: Dance + Rain
Scanner issues, again. I save my patience for my children.
Posted by Steph at 01:36 PM | Comments (16)
June 10, 2006
Painting With Chas
It's really too hot to paint outside during that quiet time of the day when the kids are centered. If I leave Chas to paint alone on the floor in the kitchen, I begin to prickle with anxiety, because it's never long before paint begins flying across the room towards the wool rug (which, being wool, easily stains. And which, for the record, I refuse to live without.) It's a high stakes gamble, but one I can avoid if I sit him on my lap at the kitchen table.
So there we sat, yesterday, and I found I was able to engage him for a longer period of time than usual, simply by painting alongside him, on the same page. Normally, I'd discourage this--it goes completely against my teaching style, which is to let them simply create on their own. But he seemed to enjoy telling me what he was doing, which colors should go where, and he thought what I did was funny. He loved sharing the piece of paper, maybe it reminds him of sitting on my lap when we read a story. For this reason, it felt just right.
Posted by Steph at 08:07 PM | Comments (3)
June 09, 2006
Encaustastic!
Beeswax and damar resin fumes meandered out the studio door, through the live oaks and onto the lake, while I manically experimented with pottery tools and heat guns. My first encaustic painting class began today at Laguna Gloria., and it was so MUCH FUN.
I think the fumes may have gotten to my head. I drove home smiling at the deer, creeping along the ridge home. I had to get gas as I rounded our block, and found myself drifting aboard the slinking gas fumes, too. Tonight, the olfactory smorgasborg. But I made it home safe! I'm glazed over and staring at the screen, both boys asleep beside me on the bed. They're angelic in their quiet perfection, framed between us old tired people. Every now and then Chas will flail his arms in dreamscape, eyes pressed shut. As always, he smells like some deep-fried dessert. GOD he smells divine. Hey, where's the powdered sugar?
Posted by Steph at 04:09 AM | Comments (5)
May 31, 2006
Breakfast Fuzzies
Posted by Steph at 07:07 AM | Comments (2)
April 21, 2006
Illustration Friday: Robots
More robots at Illustration Friday.
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April 14, 2006
Illustration Friday: Spotted
On the granite coast, I kneel down to see layers of round shapes in a tidal pool: the glistening curve of blue beach glass, ground shell, bits of marl, littoral litter. It is the texture of a cold and unhemmed coastline, a study in extremes.
Here, you have to hold on to your life. You have to blend in to avoid being hunted, unbruised by the pounding waves, while managing to stay wet in the face of sun and wind, maintaining your heritage by staying pretty in order to attract the opposite sex. Your existence is hinged on the passage of time, good genes and pure luck: will you survive until high tide?
This little intertidal oasis, paradoxically gorgeous, has a rainbow of life crawling within it: red, brown and green tranlsucences, bumpy lumberers, glittering gems, but it is growing stagnant by the minute. At noon, the water is warming up under the intense sun; in fact, it's so sensuous to lie in the small ripples at the rim of the pool that you can hardly tell, with eyes closed, where the water ends and the balmy air begins. Then a breeze reminds you, as a shadow sheds some cool on your skin.
The estuary beyond the dunes, nursery for marine life, reminds me less of motherhood than these beautifully unprotected cavities. Here, time is compressed. Weeks become seconds. With little time to think, intuition develops. I slowly begin to trust my intuition as it gains conviction, but the experience that feeds it is time that's lost: will I still be here by high tide?
Posted by Steph at 06:44 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
February 17, 2006
Little Theories
Ford was his usual, curious self today, with the questions about Black Holes, wormholes and portals, wanting me to read A Brief History of Time to him so that we could dissect current knowledge together over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And then he sat still for a moment at lunch to ask the question,
"Mommy, does the sun love me?"
"Of course it does," I replied cautiously, "Does the sun follow you around all day?"
"Yes."
"And does the sun go to sleep with you at night?"
"Yes."
I thought about this all day. How he takes apart our concept of the universe into fragments and puts the pieces back together (Big Bang theory, bits and pieces scattered, cooled, then formed planets; the sun is a dying star, etc) and reviews it out load (he did this with the digestive system to his pediatrician at his second annual checkup). I thought about the frequency of questions, these days, that I am unable to immediately answer. I thought about how uncomfortable I feel, anthropomorphizing the sun. I took a deep breath and started to paint. In a few minutes I felt much better.
As I pulled out of the parking lot tonight, I noticed the moon on the hill, squinting through the atmosphere in a sleepy haze. As I kept driving, damned if it didn't surprise me in the way it followed me home. There was nothing usual about it. The sky was the color of the asphalt under my high-beams. Nobody else was on the road. The air, balmy and warm, smelled metallic and a light southeast breeze blew into the car at the stoplight. Winding my way home through the hills, the moon swung playfully left, and then right. It followed me out of my car and down the driveway and up to the stoop, before hiding behind the junipers. It tucked itself in, an hour ahead of the rain that followed. And then, Ford's naive question made perfect sense.
Posted by Steph at 12:42 AM | Comments (7)
February 11, 2006
Art Time
I decided to document a moment of our own famiy drawing time after reading a post about just that the other day on WhipUp. I just luuurve whipup. Can I say that, again? Just love it.
Posted by Steph at 06:04 AM | Comments (5)