GOventure.

Elise serves as a constant source of blog-spiration for me so when she teamed up with the talented Kal on a spectacularly creative GOventure, I decided it was time for me to jump into blogland again with a creative challenge.

I'm going through some weird times right now* so the "green+dizzy" prompt came to me, obviously, in a mess of marker, crayon, pencil and (oddly enough) a tube of mascara I was throwing out.

I'm trying to tap into my art again. Find a place for it. Big changes coming in my life. And hopefully many many GOventures to come.

*I've decided that 26 is a pivot age. A year that exists solely to cause stress, to cause a ridiculous amount of questioning and to see how much self-doubt and strange changes one can endure in a year long time frame. I'm having a love hate relationship with 26. I think we'll grow to like each other...it has only been one month tomorrow since we first met.

I wish I drew this

Carolyn Alexander via http://reubenmiller.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341ca70953ef011570b803a1970b-pi

Etsy obsession

I go in and out of my Etsy obsession. And right now I'm in. Way in.

Check out this sweet artist...

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5205714

i love mail.

http://andrewbush.net/envelopes%202%20pwg/index.html
you must see this.
It's fantastic.

Long time gone...

Can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post!

So much happening here, I barely have time to blog (not true, I just don't have much to say as of late and have been too busy reading other blogland peeps' blogs to feel like filling my own.)

New post on etsy...

I like it. Can't wait to see if anyone else does...?

NEW on Etsy...

So there were lots of leftover Valentines from the shop that were expertly distributed to friends and family, but now I've added some more postcards...equally as loveable but good for all occasions...

My mini me to date.

Thanks to lots of inspiration from ELISE and many other cool pages my scrapbook-art-stalking has led me too...I decided to try my hand at creative documentation. FINALLY I have taken on a project (I think) I'll see from beginning to end.

I worked feverishly last night after my late night of real work...it was like in Heroes when Isaac would have his eyes glaze over while he painted...and here is the cover of my little bitty favorite things book:

When I get all the pages filled in (which will hopefully occur tonight!) I'll post the rest!

new sculpture in dsm.

On one of the only semi-warm days we've seen in January, Jeff and I went downtown to pose for some photos with this incredible sculpture new to DSM.

Read more here.

Etsy official!

Hooray!

http://ljpalmer.etsy.com/

Check it out!

You can see things like this:

Happy Caucus Day!

TWO things to report today.

1- TODAY is Caucus day! I can't even explain how proud and excited I feel. I mean as a lifelong Iowan you are often mocked for living in a town of less than 30,000 (or in some cases 30) and seeing cattle and farming equipment along the side of the road. I take these things for granted. Yes I grew up in a town smaller than any suburb of Chicago. Yes I drive past corn that's knee high in July and crisply tanned in the fall. But I love it. And today the spotlight is on my beloved state. I get to Caucus. I get to sit in a room with politically passionate people and exercise my right to vote in a truly unique and empowering way, as an Iowan. That is awesome.
http://www.iowacaucus.org/ Read more. You might understand my excitement.


2- My PAPER ADVENTURE with Elise and her blogland faithful began on January first.

The first step was making my binder ringed book...a first in my new adventures in "scrapbooking". I covered my book with some Martha Stewart wrapping left over from my Christmas gifts... and this week's challenge is balance. Now I lack balance in all aspects of the word. In fact, my tenth grade fitness test showed that I, unlike most 15 year old girls, had frighteningly low scores on the balance portion. I couldn't do a pull-up either, but I nailed that sit-and-reach. My lack of physical balance aside, I have a hard time balancing ALL the aspects of me at once. How do I put together all these things I value in a way that brings me peace, balance. I'm hoping for a fresh start in 2008. Something GREAT in 08. And this first paper adventure challenge was fun...so fun that I cannot wait for next week's. (I even added a little tag as page 2...I couldn't help my creative impulse.)

New projects. and inspiration.

Taking a note from some of blogland's finest, I started work on some mini-projects. New ways to catalogue my photos...in print...for once. I will speak more about my warming up to "scrapbooking" in a later post, but for now, I have project B (the photos of project A turned out dark and gold-toned, unfit for blogging). Last week (as written here) an ice storm blasted the midwest leaving many (still!) without power. We took pics to commemorate the snow day and last night (while watching, shamelessly, Clash of the Choirs) I made this little book. I shot a few pictures of the pages. Currently there are only twothat didn't turn out gold toned. I glued pieces of blue scrap paper back to back to make sturdy pages and then punched holes (I heart the hole puncher) to fit the binder ring and to add "festive" snow to the pages. I like it. A lot.

Sale #1.

I sold these today. These sets of notecards, postcards and gift tags or different shapes, weights and sizes. That I lovingly labored over. That I carefully packaged and repackaged until they looked just right. That I smiled at constantly while they waited for pick up on my desk.

I sold these. I did. My work. Sold.

The first of many...

As I begin to work on inventory for an etsy shop (finally getting the guts to take on the world and see if anyone wants to buy what I handmake)
...I am working on some projects for friends to give their friends and family as gifts.




Here's greeting package #1:


I'll keep everyone posted on when the etsy store officially opens.
I hope the few folks who read this will check it out:)

A room full-a-Rothko.

Written October 15th. At the Tate Modern in London.
Dimly lit grey room. Big enough to only hold the 9 giant paintings. I can barely see the paper I write on. Wooded floors with track lighting and two curved benches. I teared up upon entering. The soft, almost sad mood of the room and the sheer joy of this many Rothkos at once swallowed me. Gray. Grey. Mauve. Deep Purple. Maroon. Black. Scarlet. Rust. Red. Black. Crimson. Violet. Two tall rectangles as you walk in to the left. Mauve squares with purpled lines. Edges are feathered. Solarized. Depth of color. Fields. Strength of hue. Enveloped. Lost in the Rothko.

Here's one of the Rothko works that covered the room.
Here are the others. (Only the dark ones)

I scribbled down my thoughts as fast as I could in that room. It was amazing. Simply awesome. More of my London notes soon...

Participation.

i'm not doing a very good job blogging these days. work is very busy with many deadlines approaching, but in honor of the art-filled sunday i had, i wanted to write a little bit.

this weekend was the Des Moines Arts Festival... under clear skies and sun, throngs descended upon des moines to celebrate and participate in art. the picture above is an "interactive" work of art. people created a piece of the van gogh paintings and they were put together to create larger than life collaborative creations. i spent hours weaving in and out of the artists' booths, longing to spend my entire paycheck on their wares. there were so many inspired pieces...i just had to share the links of a few i particularly enjoyed:

Michael Baxley won best in show and for good reason. his works are SO organic...and the mix of ceramics (which i constantly admire and cannot create) and "painting" is fresh, energetic and simply perfect. i spent a long time gauking over his bottle sets and the mixed media stuff.

i also really liked Steven and Cheryl Ward's booth...a husband and wife duo with a variety of creative talent. i was in awe of their prairie grass art. i honestly was entraced by it! hand painted cattail reeds laid side-by-side to create a spectrum unlike anything else at the art fest. Take a look and see for yourselves, but i must say- they are much more intriguing in person.

after a creative surge from new artists, i went to visit the old. the des moines art center has a Rothko i tend to visit occasionally, so after a warm day of art festing, i ducked into the air conditioning and admired the fields. (of color.)

Here's a card from the hulaseventy swap.

Hulaseventy postcard swap ...
Originally uploaded by palmer1007.

This is one of my favorite cards I sent out for the hulaseventy postcard swap this month. It has been so much fun not just to make the cards, send out the cards and receive them, but also to be able to see what other people are making and sending and receiving on flickr.
I can't wait to send some in the fall.

Edward Hopper.

Let's try to post this again...

Finally, a few moments of time to write about Hopper. Today was one of those days where I really felt like staying in bed for an eternity. (I did in fact lay around the house until 4pm!) I spent time flipping through my notes from Boston, both from my enlightening conference and the trip as a whole. I also walked through, for perhaps the twenty-third time, the book of postcards (or as I think of it, the cheap alternative to the exhibition's book) that I picked up at the museum book store.

The exhibit was set up in four rooms, each devoted to one or several periods of Hopper's visual eras. The rooms were packed with people speaking a multitude of languages, looking at the art close and from afar, dancing around each in search of a better view. I weaved my way through the maze of people, getting as close as I could to the paintings I had only seen in Mark Strand's book and those I had never had the priveledge of viewing. There is something magical about seeing the majority of an artist's life pasted on the walls, in the same place. I felt like I could truly SEE the progression, and the changes, and the strokes, and the beauty in each work as it related to the next.

Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.

More soon, but for now, enjoy the poem above...the link features Mark Strand reading "From the Long Sad Party" of which this stanza is the first. These four lines describe some of Hopper's paintings....look at Cape Cod Morning