Posted in Life Drawing, Painting, San Diego, Watercolor, tagged Balboa Park, brushes, Life Drawing, Monday nights, San Diego Art Institute, Watercolor on March 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Did you know I was a painter?
I know, hard to tell from this blog, where I have focused ,on the art-making side, on drawing and collages ( no art studio, less place for canvases). But I was a painter, an acrylic one, before I learned how to draw, architecture and other things, before sketching, collages, and before trying my hand with watercolor ( I still use watercolor as acrylic).
I was not a rigidly trained painter, as my teachers encouraged expression over technique. Painting is home.
Posted in art, art,poetry,writing, Photography, Poetry, Quotes, San Diego, wanderlust, Writing, tagged bankers hill, Hillcrest, night, night photography, painting, Poetry, san diego, thinking, Walking, writing on March 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »
I walk at night.
You can keep mornings, with the aftershave of salesmen, rush hour…with the Starbucks lines and hair perfectly
well done.
(Mafalda says that everything good in life messes up your hair)
You can have the morning with its blinding light, its lack of nuances…leave the night to blur lines, to hide and to reveal.
The morning of road warriors, weekend warriors, commute warriors, checkers of life’s milestones – I lost count, and it is not my race.
Leave me the profound night, let me walk at hours of my choosing, when empty streets whispher poetry lines, if you just listen.
This is my queendom, let me patrol my land of empty office buildings, of Mexican night workers, of quiet and shadows.
The night of orange streetlights, of vacant lots and sleeping churches.
Of red windows, where the artists burn.
Posted in art, art,poetry,writing, Drawing, Experiments, Research, San Diego, sketching, tagged animal instinct, art, costume, Dr.Sketchy Anti-Art School San Diego, Drawing, Friends, fun, getting my hands dirty again, graphite, Life Drawing, Markers, model, Sitting on the floor on March 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »
On Saturday, I participated to Dr. Sketchy San Diego, a fun artistic encounter involving life drawing.
This month’s event was centered around ‘Animal Instinct’ :).
We had a very fun model.
I realized I need these ‘art dates’ to keep me engaged with making art as I find my way back… back to my art studio.
Also, I may just, finally, have found my tribe.
Posted in ArchistDesign | Studio, art, Art Gallery, Art Show, art,poetry,writing, Artuesdays, digital collage, photography, writing, architecture, Featured Artists, Link Love, Music, Photography, San Diego, Writing, tagged Balboa Park, Photography, san diego, Tribal Baroque on March 17, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In January I collided with two splendid creatures in Balboa Park, Lila’Angelique and Thoth, which together form Tribal Baroque.
I wanted to share some portraits I took of them, in order to share some of the magic of their presence and music.
Nothing prepares you for the beauty that is Tribal Baroque, but here is a taste of what’s in store if you can make it to one of their prayformances in the park.
This is the Facebook page of Tribal Baroque, so you can catch these fairies who are here in San Diego for a limited time.
{more to come…see below}
…….
Four days ago, I spent two hours crafting the perfect posts on my muses, full of links and perfectly ( to me) worded prose.
When I went to publish the post, I LOST everything. It is the first time that this has happened on WordPress, which is usually excellent at saving drafts in progress.
I have been too heartbroken to come back and re-craft my post, but I have new art from Saturday and tonight – yes i started sketching and painting again (!) – and new photographs that I want to share, and life must go on.
Enjoy this images for now.. I will come back in the morning, refreshed, and tell you its stories…
…….
Thank you for bringing the *triple* rainbow and pink sky 😉 :
Posted in Architecture, art, art,poetry,writing, digital collage, photography, writing, architecture, Photography, Poetry, San Diego, tagged Balboa Park, bankers hill, Cabrillo Bridge, Cafe Sevilla, California Building, Centenary, Downtown San Diego, Hillcrest, Horton Plaza, HTC one android camera, Museum of Man, night, Normal Heights, Photography, san diego, San Diego GaslampQuarter, San Diego Sky winter 2015, San Diego sunsets, smartphone, Southern California, Sunset Photography, University Heights on March 16, 2015| 1 Comment »
California Building Tower. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.
In the past couple of months, we’ve had the most spectacular sunsets – the most magnificent skies, really.
In addition, balmy, magical nights.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but San Diego and Southern California are becoming more and more lovely and precious each day.
It is like falling in love, all over again.
Tonight I want to share some night and sunset shots, reserving the day skies for another post.
These photos have all been taken and corrected on my HTC One camera, hence the sometimes annoying light ‘spilling’, low res and graininess.
I will start carrying my Panasonic camera again, and correcting on Photoshop. I realize that my photos look better on a small screen…
One day I would like to invest in a proper Digital DSRL, but for now accept these artisanal shots.
I have taken to making nightly pilgrimages to our Balboa Park.
This is our cultural park, with more than twenty art museums and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. The pairing of Spanish architecture and tropical greenery take me to Cuba, to Puerto Rico…to the Caribbeans. Balboa Park was built in 1915 for the Pan-American Exhibition, and is celebrating its Centenary this year!
The central plaza, Plaza de Panama, is now restored as the living room of the city.
To my eye, the park is more and more beautiful each month that goes by.
View from Cabrillo Bridge. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.
Night view from Cabrillo Bridge. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.
View of Plaza De Panama. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Arboretum. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Sculpture Garden. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Museum of Man. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
And here are other end-of-day scenes from San Diego.
Normal Heights, San Diego. January 2015.
Bankers' Hill, San Diego. January 2015.
Hillcrest, San Diego. February 2015.
University Heights, San Diego. February 2015.
Hillcrest, San Diego. February 2015.
Downtown San Diego, Gaslamp Quarter, Horton Plaza. December 2014
Downtown San Diego, Gaslamp Quarter, Horton Plaza. December 2014.
Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego. Cafe' Sevilla. January 2015.
163 South Highway towards Downtown San Diego. View from Cabrillo Bridge, Balboa Park. March 2015.
And now, two poems to the Night.
The Night is Still
by Edith Matilda Thomas
The night is still, the moon looks kind,
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
An ivy climbs across thy blind,
And throws a light and misty wreath.
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined;
I haste along, I quicker breathe,
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined,
The primrose slips its jealous sheath,
As up the flower-watched path I wind
And come thy window-ledge beneath.
The primrose slips its jealous sheath,—
Then open wide that churlish blind,
And kiss me through the ivy wreath!
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
….
A Gift
by Leonora Speyer
I Woke: —
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song,
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.
Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird’s-notes.
Posted in art,poetry,writing, Photography, Poetry, San Diego, tagged Bankers' Hill neighborhood, blooms, flower portraits, flowers, Photography, san diego, Southern California, spring on March 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »
San Diego, Bankers' Hill, March 15, 2015
San Diego, Bankers' Hill, March 15, 2015
San Diego, Bankers' Hill, March 15, 2015
San Diego, Bankers' Hill, March 15, 2015
Autobiography of Eve
by Ansel Elkins
Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.
Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.
I leapt
to freedom.
Posted in art,poetry,writing, Photography, Quotes, tagged come alive, fernanda pivano, Flylady, lessons, Life of an artist, musing, night, Quotes, time on March 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Attraversiamo! Let us cross!
Not knowing where to start, we can start from here, from tonight.
Of all the nights, why not tonight?
I picked up my electronic pen, my fingertips, so many times, only to put it/them back in the drawer.
Fragile, breakable souls…we get overwhelmed so easily…we take so much time to process.
Life is always a zero or thousand percent experience to an artist…we know no ‘efficiency’ or safety…and we crave intensity because, for some of us, that is what art and life is made of.
I tend to store moments, spaces, bodies, souls, words, in mental collages as white-hot and dangerous as rocket turbines.
Fuel for the winters of life, emotions that could only be collected in tranquility.
Yet, what if life moves so fast that there is no time to process it through artwork?
The real life of absorbing work, passionate friends, culture, travel, service, relationships, often happens faster than art, words, and poetry…and demands to be lived with our heart on ‘fingertips and tongues’, as Fernanda Pivano writes.
To be an artist, which is never a choice –or at least not a choice than any sane person would make– requires that not only we live life at its fullest, but that we show up to our craft, that we transform the energy of our life, entropically, into artwork.
As soon as things get a little off- balance, that is, too much time passes without creative outputs, the feeling of being overwhelmed begins. Because the storing of information and experiences that will translate into artwork never stops in an artist.
Sacrifices need to be made…time-outs need to take place for the alchemical crafting of life into art, yet that doesn’t/can’t always happen.
Where does one start, then?
Digging through more than a year’s worth of raw, brilliant life, stupendous falls and magnificent failures….when does collecting become hoarding?
When there is no sharing. Most of us are compelled ( condemned? ) to offer up our work. These words, these ideas, these posts, need to leave my mind so that I and them can be set free.
Then there is time, and guilt.
Time away from the craft that is transformed into guilt.
This is an evil cycle for artists, made worst with each passing day. It is a sort of paralysis, a mental block due not to lack of ideas, but due to too many — coupled with the most peculiar fear of success.
And muses, muses inspire, but also distract, and disrupt. It is in the nature of muses and we won’t fault them.
How many times have I promised myself the return of myself – in full glory? Is this it?
Then I read an introduction to an art exhibit in Rome, something about the concept of ‘taking time’ — the fact that art is also made of the fallow time it took to process life, that the in-between time of silence is an intrinsic part of evolutionary works….
Thank you to Carlotta Pisano for this photo and inspiration.
A work of art is not only what is visible to the eye, but the result of a complex journey, of going-away and re-compositions
The exhibit, which I will never see and exists as a sort of Borgesian riddle
( I have the instructions, yet no machine; this being the whole point of the instructions) aims to
“underline the value, priceless, of that golden moment which is the possibility of producing a kind of thought that looks at art , without the anxiety of having to furnish a product. These works ( we will never see them, therefore we can imagine them as we wish ) have a baggage full of the process that matured and realized them. It is the difference between looking and seeing.”
In these two years, I learned the importance of chaos, and that one must respect it and love it as an akward child.
I learned of nesting, and of working on a home as a temple.
Without order, at least for me, there can be no art, just escapism.
I learned I solve myself by working on external harmony.
(Or maybe I was just avoiding myself, and procrastinating.)
I learned patience, which is not burning anymore, but peaceful. I learned that forgiveness is part of the creative process. And so is letting go.
I learned I am not reading enough books.
I learned that, when I am too tired to do anything else, and sleep does not come, words are there, images are there…and I can go into my vaults and cellars and create something to share with you.
I can write.
It is not academic writing –that will come in time–but something that likes to combines poetic prose or poetry with images. This is the sound my soul would make, if it could sing.
This output brings me immeasurable joy. More importantly, it keeps me alive.
I was recently, and repeatedly, reminded of the quote :
Find what brings you alive,
and do it.
The truth is that without showing up here, my soul atrophies. Simply put, it has become a matter of survival.
A lady I know and love likes to say, in matters of home organization,
You are not behind! I don’t want you to try to catch up;
I just want you to jump in where we are. O.K.?
So I will start from where I am tonight, and work my way back, back through these past two years in images. As I said, I can offer more words and photographs than drawings and paintings at this point.
I decided to stop beating myself up for this.
I will jump in where we are too, with current (attempts at) drawn and painted work, back to using my hands everyday.
Consider this my artistic physical therapy after the most wonderful accidents.
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