What I Do and What I Actually Did Sept. 28 2013 Continued ( Creations of FVA Past)

While continuing to organize and find a spot for all kinds of things, all shapes and sizes I found an old cd that had pictures of some of my work from my first year ,second semester in Surface Design at NBCCD in 2007.
The first was a practice in assembling a new design by cutting up, piecing together and photocopying it. Then tracing the design on canson paper we were to make a monochromatic design using the photocopied design as a guide for levels of shading.

This one was to do half of the design from a wall paper in differing colors. The top left corner of wall paper sample is my painted piece and the bottom right corner is the wall paper.

Here is another wall paper sample. This time the wall paper is on the upper left while my painted piece is in the lower right.

This was an exercise in design and working with cardboard to create movement, structure and texture in design.  The design was influenced from a picture in a magazine with the hair spraying out in a similar fashion. The class was Design Class as taught by Jane Guerts at NBCCD.

This is a piece that I called Tree Spirit which was an experimental work I made in the spring of 2007. Tree Spirit was made with two sheets of silk, batiked and then put through a process of stiffening laid across rocks and brushed with fabric stiffener.  I used bendable wire wrapped and sewn around a coil of the same material that was sewn to stick out of the top. The metal wire was sewn at the bottom as well. Through travel and a variety of moves Tree Spirit lost her ability to stand.

This is an up close shot of Tree Spirits face. Through cutting down on clutter but wanting to keep an aspect of Tree Spirit I kept her face.

What I Do and What I Actually Did Sept 28/09/13

I have an AMAZING announcement! Yesterday I purchased an antique original Millville Loom and a Spinning Wheel! But that is not all! They were both given to me for.......wait for it.........$150!
I learned about the loom for sale from my wonderful Weaving Teacher, Jackie Bourque at NBCCD. While I was at school all day weaving I had my husband call her and negotiate. Later to my surprise she had offered to throw in the spinning wheel with the loom for $150. My husband rented a moving truck for the day and picked them up yesterday. She also threw in old weaving books, shuttles, threads, a warping bard and extra parts, including a picture of herself at the loom. I love that my loom is original and made of Bird's Eye Maple which is a rare and precious wood. I love that it was made in Millville NB carrying a lot of history within it's bones. And I also love the fact that the lady named Margery Acheson who sold it to me was one of the first graduates from my school NBCCD! WOW! I am so honored! Now my storage room which had everything in it and was a mess is pretty much put together and much tidier with my loom and spinning wheel set up. My husband also put it together with a few pointers from me about what should go where. I think I have my very own studio tech! I'm still not very familiar with looms and this one is a little different from the one I have been working on. For example it has a top beater rather than one that slides forward from the bottom. And instead of a peddle to roll up the back apron there is a metal handle at hand height to move forward and back to release and tighten. She also threw in a bobbin winder and a warping board!

On the warping board is an old sample scarf with sample patters that was in the bag of threads.

Here is the picture of Margery when she was young at the Millville Loom at the top. I think the bottom picture is of her also.

 And here is my new spinning wheel which is missing a few parts and in the future will be receiving a coat of varnish.

 Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!

  While Brennan worked with the loom I had a lot of re-organizing to do with multiple closets and I'm still not finished! It''s always the way that everything always takes longer than you think it will! For me it is the most stressful, time consuming and tiring thing to do which is to organize and find places for those odds and ends. But my philosophy is that an organized space is essential if there are a lot of things you want to do. I don't like struggling to find things or to shove things back in a closet when I have a place to be. Normally I have everything organized except a drawer and one room.

In between running around and finding places for millions of things I took a break with a plate of aged white cheddar cheese, vinta crackers and a thick berry smoothie! While I munched I watched a dvd I got from the NBCCD library called Art & Design.

I loved that there were so many different kinds of artists who talked about their approach to making art and how they personally apply materials, not in a technical since, but emotively. This dvd fed my artistic soul and was just what I needed to escape the frustration of organizing all my crap!

I also took a reading break with The Music Lesson by Victor L. Wooten

I'm only 53 pages in being so busy with school but already I am trying to change my mind about how I approach guitar practice and music. Over time I have absorbed a belief that the best musicians learn music theory and endlessly practice scales. Yet the musicians that reach me the most are the ones that never learned music theory such as The Beatles, who learned chords by watching other bands play in Liverpool! The best songs are felt out and listened to by the creator because that is how the best songs are made. It is the same as a write that holds the pen and the writer listens to the words to be written. The force is strong enough that even if you question those words and try to think of something else, more often than not the original passage of words will stick in your mind until you write them down. When I was 17, which was 16 years ago now, my musical playing style was simple but approached and played in heartfelt manner. Since then my writing poetry and song lyrics has improved from absorbing the wisdom in song writing and poetry writing books. But also over the years evolving musically has been frustrating in comparison to everything else I do. I am hoping that having a freer approach to my guitar and discovering melodies again that I will see the unfolding of myself musically. Creating music is something I always loved and something I can't ever give up. I'm looking for the dry period to end and for it to move into a lush and vibrant summer!

What I Actually Do and What I Actually Did Sept.15th 2013

                   Today I am reading Collector's Edition Emily Dickinson Selected Poetry.

What I enjoy about her writing is that she ventures into mystical subjects such as the reality of having a spirit or the process of reincarnation. I also enjoy that she animates nature and explores nature as having an identity and life of it's own. Her vision is wide and far reaching, able to see even tree from multiple viewpoints from a farmer to a squirrel.

At NBCCD in the college store there was a big, lined and hard covered journaling book that was catching my eye and just calling me. I finally bought it even though it's price was up there and though I had a smaller and cheaper poetry writing book. But as I write in my new poetry book the experience is different. It feels more sacred and special. Having such a book to write in is a great luxury so the money spent was well worth it. Here are the first two poems written in my new hard covered poetry writing book.

Whispers Of A Ghost

In the distance I saw him

There he stood on the empty highway, like a ghost in the trees

Mist passing between us as I watched his dark form approach 

Whispering to me,
 I heard him from across the expanse.

"Great dreams fly. Great dreams are born and never die."  

Sept.13th 2013

Blossoms In The Mire

Blossoms In the Mire

Sunlight in the trees

Fore site bridges the expanse 

Cross the stormy seas

A lamp lit in the window

And whispers in the night

A story taken out from under me

A living nightmare of fright

I live with encourage able hauntings 

Strangled reality dreams

 I struggle to voice louder 

Over these bloody scenes

Screams of lonlieness

And yellow sickness 

that threaten to follow me

The past a bog

The future nowhere

The present is all I see

The damaged goods of a nonperishable spirit

Are carried on

Into the Strength of Eternity

I Am The Blossom In The Mire

Sept. 15, 2013

What I Actually Do and What I Actually Did, Sept.13 2013

 

It's true people tend to have very generalized ideas about what artists do. 

This blog, Art and Creationz is all about what I actually do now, the skills I am developing at NBCCD, pictures of inspirational pieces and pictures of my pieces that I have made in the past that deserve some lime light.

Here is a needle felted piece in the process of completion. The vibrancy of the colors unfortunately have been lost in the photo. 

Here are ceramic pieces from my Chocolate and Creme De Menthe Series which I made at Turnstile Pottery Coop in Halifax N.S, August of 2011

Here are two pieces from my first year in the FVA program at NBCCD from the fall of 2006. The first is a ceramic relief tile and the next one is a slab and coil basket made by carefully pressing the pieces of clay and scoring the edges to mold to the next connecting piece on the inside of a newspaper lined metal waste paper basket.

Who says that you can only do one thing or that you have to choose right? 

Home

Corded muscles sway in the breeze neath the summer sun
Green fabric ripples and shimmers in the dance
Birds collect their echoing chorus to deliver onto generations
Strong and tall, ever standing
Red,yellow,orange,brown percolates down to the ground
The darkened grey, an autumn spray
The spirits dance neath the Blood Moon
Sparkled white glows blue in the night
Crunch and crackle the snow on the way to the cafe
Heady aroma filtering into my blood and bones
Soup warmth envelopes me
Everywhere is Home


Siobhan Russell March 2013