Candle holder, pencil on sketch paper. ©Krista Simurdak

Right wing primary feather, pencil, watercolor, gouache, and Sakura Pegma pen on previously painted Strathmore Mixed Media paper. ©Lisa M. Harkins

Another week of healing.  Krista says, “I was thinking about how I was having a good time doing the drawing, music loud, when 2 weeks ago I was sad and depressed. Acceptance does come from starting new things. Weird, I wouldn’t be drawing at all if I hadn’t been so sad and had to make changes. It’s about turning the moment around.”

I find it interesting how our choices of subject matter seem to reflect who we are.  Krista lives in the West Bottoms of Kansas City, MO – a wonderful environment of tumble-down industrial buildings and architecture piled up to the horizon.  In her art and photography, she favors architectural and sharp forms, and she has an abstract style.  In contrast, I live on Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest, and I tend to lean towards natural and organic forms in my art and textile work.  I think next week, I will choose something outside of my comfort zone.

Oddly, having this deal with my sister seems to have made it easier to focus on my own work.  I’m still raising a family, and I still find a million reasons to procrastinate and not be in my studio.  These little drawings, just before a weekend, make me anxious to keep going.  I did not expect that side effect.

“How are you doing,” I said.

“Well, it’s Friday.  I come home, I make a cocktail, and I call Stu.”

“Wow, you need to find something else to do on Fridays to take your mind off that.”

One piece of advice we’ve given and received over this unreal event is that a person must make new traditions in order to move on.  My sister-in-law can’t knock about in her empty house doing all of the things THEY used to do.  Change the furniture around, change your morning routine, try to do things that will not be a reminder and suck you down into depression.

So, here’s our new tradition.  My sister resolved to come home on Fridays, make a cocktail, and draw something.

Candles on the dining room table. Pencil on sketch paper.©Krista Simurdak

In support, and because I need to do different things too, I promised to do the same.  I have to say, it’s rather nice.  You can’t really get around the fact that Stu comes to mind because he is the reason we are doing this, but for that few hours, my sister and I are thinking of each other, and that’s a comfort.  It’s a connection that is a pale shadow of the benefits of each other’s company, but I think it will serve.

Sea urchin test. Pencil, colored pencil, and Sakura Pigma pen on previously painted page of a Strathmore visual journal. ©Lisa M Harkins

The object I picked brought up some interesting thoughts.  People often turn to the sea for comfort in times of sorrow.  Its boundless energy and broad space are accompanied by a white noise that helps clear the mind.  I live on an island, where the Salish Sea brings many unexpected things to our beaches.  As I worked, I reflected upon how a living thing, or person, can be called to mind from something left behind.

We miss you, Stu.  We hope our rusty drawing skills make you smile.

I joined the local quilt guild for the monthly joy of communing with three of my dear friends.  And let’s face it, sometimes, I really enjoy working on something traditional to give myself a rest from constantly designing and making new work.  All those decisions wear a person out.

But somehow, I’ve ended up in charge of the Block of the Month.  I just couldn’t seem to keep my hand from shooting in the air when they asked for a volunteer, and I don’t even really piece that well (as you all well know).  Still, it’s been a joy to go through my grandma’s quilting books.  She bought them in the 40s, and gave them to me in the 80s.  When I learned to quilt, I learned old-school – tracing around a template for each piece, hand-sewing them together, quilting by hand.  Some of those traditional blocks seemed so complicated, and it would take a lifetime to make some of those tops by hand.  Now, it’s a fun exercise to re-draft some of them with the knowledge of strip piecing to help.  For my first contribution to the club, I chose one of my favorites – Cupid’s Arrow Point.

My favorite traditional quilt blocks are those that seem plain alone, but make beautiful patterns when you sew them to each other.  This block makes a gorgeous quilt with lovely feathered squares and nice, white blocks just begging for a quilted medallion.  If you would like the instructions I wrote, here they are.  I personally believe that one should not be able to copyright a traditional quilt pattern, but if you share my instructions, some credit would be nice.

I’m looking forward to working through my grandma’s blocks while I am on this adventure.  And who knows, maybe my piecing will get better!

Looking up from the floor inside the Guggenheim. Photo by Martin Vornehm.

While it was an inspiration to be standing inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s stunningly beautiful building, I have to say, I wasn’t so thrilled with most of the art that was in it at the time.  It was modern art in the extreme…three flourescent light tubes mounted together in a vertical grouping; black canvas on a white wall, and other similar installations.  Uncultured as I was, I just didn’t “get it.”  There were some very interesting sculptures, but there were many things from their permanent collection that I would  love to have seen that were not out.  I live fairly distant from New York, and who knows when I might get the chance to return and give the museum another chance.

Now, my chance has come, virtually.  The Guggenheim has digitized a large part of their publications, many of them out of print.  They can be purchased as e-books from sources such as Amazon, but lots of them are publicly accessible for free right on their web site.  The full press release is here, and you can access the online free ones here.

Now I know that you can check myriads of books out of the library on any given artist, but I really love an exhibition catalog.  Apart from looking at the art, I learn some interesting things from the way the curator organizes a particular exhibition, and there are nearly always essays commissioned for the catalog that offer unique insight.  Of course, it would be better to see these works in person, but a catalog can be a help, because some of this art is permanently out my reach in other countries.

I spent my morning perusing their catalog about one of my favorite artists, Alexander Calder (LOVE the catalog cover).  People know Calder for his mobiles and large, freestanding sculptures that he called “stabiles.”

Têtes et Queue in Berlin. Photo by Hans Bug.

However, he also created jewelry, tapestry, sketches, and gouache paintings.  He would twist little wire caricatures at parties with tools he kept in his pocket.  He even made a little traveling circus with wonderfully crude moving characters, which I was fortunate to see when a smaller exhibition traveled to Seattle a few years back. What a treat to see his retrospective through the wonder of the digital age.  Thanks, Guggenheim!

Images in this post are licensed from the credited photographers under the GNU Free Documentation License, and were sourced from  Wikimedia Commons.

Too bad you couldn’t see it wrapped around 20 feet of floorspace and furniture in her house.  Awww.  They’re so CUTE.

A lucet, whispered to my aunt as a potential Christmas gift for her finger-knitting granddaughter.  Somehow, the bone one she bought just wasn’t cutting it.  From my memory to her hand-drawn template, recycled wood became a beautiful tool in the hands of my father and uncles.

It is a true comfort to use, keeping hands occupied when the mind wants to wander back in time, and cannot meet the demands of a knitting pattern.  I miss you, Stu.

Paper I made from some lovely flax that my friend, Julie Johnson, brought to the annual gathering of western papermakers.

Treated with a paste made from konnyaku flour, and wrinkled to make momigami.

Folded and clamped for resist dyeing.

Into the indigo dye pot.

Rinsed, unclamped, rinsed again, and hung to dry.

Varnished with kakishibu, which is a solution made from the tannins of green, fermented persimmon fruit. The actual swatches are much more subtle, but I had to turn the contrast up a bit to get the base color to show.

The finished swatches had a lovely, leathery texture and a great color, though I had to sneak in a little card with some eucalyptus oil so the smell wouldn’t knock the coordinator over.  The odor will eventually disappear, but the swatches were going to spend some time in a plastic bag while traveling.  Nik made the annual swatches from our Western Gathering goulash, so we’ll both get books.

I even had some pieces left over for book covers.  Yummy!

This week, I could have done the Rhinocerous Auklet, but there were three beautiful magpies also waiting.  I’ve been thinking about magpies in my work lately, so I sat down with one of those.

You thought they were just black and white, didn’t you?  And that is one of the things I really love about them – the flashes of black and white when you see them flying, and particularly when you see them in groups.  I was never quite sure exactly where the white came from.  It is so lovely to see now, up close, the markings on their feathers that create those flashes in flight.

This is a Steller’s Jay that my friend Emma did.  Here is another much-maligned bird that I love.  Newly fledged, he flew right into the path of an oncoming car.  Curing a skin with broken bones and feathers that are still growing in has its own set of challenges.  My magpie was also, as Matt says, DOR (dead on road).  Its wing was broken.

And someday, maybe Matt will let me stuff and sew one shut.  But I can surely appreciate that he’s the pro.  At this point, we’d be there until midnight, as I can only manage a flat skin in 3 1/2 hours.  He did two skins in the same amount of time.  A beautiful Cooper’s hawk, and one of these magpies.

Jack-o-lanterns, past their prime at Prairie Bottom Farm

with otherworldly pink mold in the eye sockets

and a lovely tracery of black mildew on the cut surfaces.

Taxidermy.  Our local Audubon Society chapter has secured a collection permit in order to develop an educational collection.  Matt Klope, a biologist and taxidermist, is teaching some of us to cure specimens for the collection.  They come from car strikes, window strikes, natural and unexplained deaths.  There are quite a few of them that need to be processed.

My first is a female Belted Kingfisher.  It took about 3 hours.  I would have liked to have had time to sew it up stuffed, but we decided to pin it out as a flat skin.  It wasn’t anywhere near as gross as I thought it could have been.  And what a great way to get to know my favorite inspiration better.  At least they hold still for a while.