The first snowfall

I like snow in theory.  In actuality, I much prefer to be inside.  Bleh.

Happy Chinese Food Shabbat (or Merry Christmas, whichever you celebrate)

Tonight, many people in the US will be sitting down for a big meal with friends and family.  They will either be celebrating Shabbat or Christmas or a long weekend (or other holidays I'm not aware of).

Like many Jews, I grew up with the tradition of Chinese food and a movie, either on Christmas eve or Christmas day.  Since this year Shabbat and Christmas are the same day, we are having a Chinese food themed Shabbat dinner.  These pictures are of JewishGuy prepping the tofu for our cold tofu noodle dish (we also have a couple of meat dishes and soup).  He is doing all of the cooking, and I'm doing the cleaning and set-up.  I wouldn't even know where to begin with what he's decided to make!

Last year we went to our friends' house in Chicago and had a big sit-down Chinese food themed dinner (not on Shabbat).  It actually felt kind of odd to me to have the big dinner at someone's house and not at a restaurant, believe it or not!  It was amazing and we had a really great time, but what a funny feeling, since I'm so used to being at a restaurant.  It's kind of a hilarious tradition.  I remember running into people from shul at the nearby Chinese restaurant or the movie theatre.  When I was younger I was surprised, I wondered why they were doing the same thing we were doing, not realizing it's a nation-wide thing.

This year is different because it's Shabbat, too, and it's my first Shabbat on Christmas since I started keeping Shabbat (so I can't go out to dinner).  If JewishGuy wasn't such an amazing cook and was up for the task of tackling Chinese food, we'd probably just have a regular Shabbat dinner.  But still no movie.  At least, not until tomorrow night.  Maybe.




And, for those of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas :)



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Crochet Tulips

The last time I broke out the yarn was to make a piece to alleviate anxiety and weave a kind of protective symbol.  And it was about a year ago, too.  Hmm...

Anyway, I was feeling anxiety yesterday and needed something to do with my hands, so I started making these tulips.  I wore the big green one as a ring today, but my favorite is the big white one (at the top).  Today I tried making the pink and white ones, which I don't like as much as the brown and white/blue/green ones.

They also kind of look like barnacles to me.  Which made me think of this amazing installation:

(Image credit and more info at crochetcoralreef.blogspot.com)

Love it!  Maybe I should make a little underwater scene... (Not that I have anything else to do, oh wait, that anxiety is why I was making the tulips in the first place!)



Check out  Crochet Coral Reef, the blog! It is neat!

Landscape in a Coffee Cup

This piece, created by Yukihiro Kaneuchi , is a little landscape in a coffee cup that appears over time from the stain of the coffee inside the mug.

(Image credit and original article from designmilk.com : http://bit.ly/i7NoSb)

I love this idea!  It's cool to make art that changes over time, reflecting how often it's used (and making art that encourages being used).  It reminds me of Japanese tea ceremony cups described in the book Thousand Cranes, that sometimes were stained on the rim from the lipstick of generations of women.

My only concern is how the stain is able to stick to the mug... the only way I can think this would be possible would be for the bare clay to be exposed, which unfortunately isn't very sanitary.  I would be interested to know how it works!

Growing and Not Growing

 

I had this going for 5 days.  It was really hard not to move the camera... I missed having it on me at all times.  But, I think this was a fun project.  It's nice to watch plants grow.  (Maybe I'll do more plants growing, like watching roots bud or sprouts...)

Featured Blog: A plate a day.

Looking for some daily inspiration?  A Plate a Day posts a new plate every single day!  As of December 3 there are 542 plates posted, with more coming daily, so go back and look at the archives.

I love subscribing to this blog.  Every day I look forward to seeing what kind of fun and interesting plates they have in store for me!  It’s also a great way to find out about new artists, as each plate is properly credit (with links when possible) to the artists’ websites, blogs, etsy sites, online shops, and photo galleries.

Eraser Landscape

I took an impression of the pieces of eraser left on the art room table today.

It was a lot. A lot a lot.

Some people demonstrate anxiety by
pressing down on a pencil or crayon really hard,
some people
color with a marker over a spot so many times that the paper rips. 
There are countless ways people demonstrate anxiety
with art materials.

One of those ways is erasing.

Erasing until the eraser is gone,
until it's just a nub. 
Erasing until there's a rip in the paper. 
Once a mark is made it's almost impossible to completely unmake. 
Must keep erasing. 
Even after it's no longer making any changes,
erasing, erasing, erasing. 
The eraser is ripped to pieces
and you blow the pieces around the table,
or maybe make a pile of them as you deftly wipe them off the paper like garbage. 
These little sticky white rubber pieces that aren't useful anymore,
not that they were useful in the first place,
at least after the first few passes.

The art room was empty. 
I couldn't resist. 
I saw a mountain range of pilled-up eraser pieces
and I had to have a picture somehow. 
I didn't have my camera.

So I gently laid my paper
over the mountain range
and rubbed with a pencil.

First, I rubbed lightly,
but it wasn't coming out how I liked
so I tried adding pressure. 
Then I just kept going. 
And the rubbing of the pencil
seemed to mimic the movement
the eraser must have made. 
A dance to honor the death of a once-useful yellow artist's eraser.

I made four xerox copies of the rubbing
so I could keep it
without getting graphite all over myself
(too late).

 

It wasn't enough.

When I got home I took an eraser and
erased the rubbing of the eraser. 
Erased, erased, erased
until I ripped the page. 
Then erased some more. 
It's very hard to erase a xerox,
and the eraser is useless
after the first layer. 
At first I thought I might make a design
but I realized quickly that was impossible
so I focused on simply erasing the pigment from the page.

Tectonic plates collided,
earthquakes formed a new landscape in the wrinkles of the paper.

I erased so much
the fiber of the paper cracked
and felt soft and smooth like cotton.

I stopped because my hand hurt and
I felt like what I was doing was useless.

After all that work,
all I had was a ripped sheet of paper
and a used-up eraser.


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Haggadah Project, here we go!

I'm working on my illustrations, trying to make up for some lost time.  Working on the pages is making me so anxious for some reason.  It takes me forever to sit down and actually do them, and even though each one doesn't take very long to make it takes a long time to actually put brush to paper.

This painting will be the illustration behind motzi matzah (where we say the blessing over the matzah).  Imagine it without the watermark, and instead having the text formatted beautifully around and through the image.

(Read My first post about the haggadah project!)

Art Room Ladies playlist

I am working on some playlists to bring to the different art groups that I run.  Generally, I don't put music with words on in the art room, but lately I have been rethinking that approach.  I started playing some Carol King in my women's group and I realized that sometimes songs with words have a place.  I've made an "art room ladies" playlist for the groups when we are making art about fun things, or making fun things.

Like yesterday, we are making fun sailor hats so that when we talk about what makes us feel special we can wear hilarious hats.  And I'd like for these hats to make a reappearance after we have discussions about heavy things, like what makes us feel angry or what makes us feel disappointed.

(I don't know if I mentioned this here, but we are working on a long-term project, a book about "What Makes You Feel..." with words like "special," "beautiful," "angry," "disappointed," "vulnerable," etc)



So here it is:


art room ladies
36 songs, 2.1 hours

Everyday Is A Winding Road - Sheryl Crow
Heal Over - KT Tunstall
Just A Girl - No Doubt
Dance Anthem of the 80's - Regina Spektor
Say Aha - Santogold
Finally Made Me Happy [Feat. Natalie... - Macy Gray
I Feel The Earth Move - Carol King
I Tried to Rock You But You Only Roll - Leona Naess
Ice Cream - Sarah McLachlan
Folding Chair - Regina Spektor
Better Version of Me - Fiona Apple
Halo - Beyonce
Sweet Rosalyn - Sheryl Crow
Come Round Soon - Sara Bareilles
Can't Hide - Sarah Jarosz
Four Walls - Charlotte Martin
How Sweet It Is - Joan Osborne
Record Collector - Lissie
Wish You Well - Katie Herzig
True Colors - Ane Brun
I Was A Daughter - Basia Bulat
Bad Body Double - Imogen Heap
Chasing Pavements - Adele
Hard Believer - First Aid Kit
Rhiannon (Single Version) - Fleetwood Mac
You Can Do It - No Doubt
M!ssundaztood - Pink
Miniature Disasters - KT Tunstall
Many Moons - Janelle Monae
Dog Days Are Over - Florence and the Machine
Strange Little Girl - Tori Amos
Mr Zebra - Tori Amos
I Saw A Bird Fly Away Feat. John Pop... - Dar Williams
Out Of My Sight - Frente
Giggling Again for No Reason - Alanis Morissette
You've Got A Friend - Carol King

Lilly in "Sleep Mode"

Lilly went into "sleep mode" (as my supervisor calls it, when the cat tucks her feet in and sits with her eyes closed), so I took some pictures.

Lilly has been begging for some extra attention the last couple of days, which is great, except for when that begging involves sitting directly in front of the computer screen in such a way that I really can't see anything at all.  She has a blanket on the windowsill but she never sits on it because it's too cold over there.  So I moved the blanket to the desk and she immediately went over and went into sleep mode.

The good thing about this for me is that now she is in prime position for me to annoy her all evening!