This n that: Remembrances, music, art

So in the course of packing, sorting, purging, and whatnot, I have been finding things I forgot I have. That’s always how it goes, right? Among the things I’ve found, I found/remembered I had a set of gorgeous 18th century-inspired sculptures of French ladies playing instruments. They had belonged to my grandmother on my dad’s side; three she’d had at her house and one she’d given to my parents ages ago when they’d married. My mom had kept it until a few years ago when she’d given it to me (it sat on our piano when I was growing up and long after). When my grandmother passed many years ago, my aunt took possession of the three sculptures she’d had at her house. Then a few years ago, my aunt sent them to me, to join the one I already had from my mom. The three she sent sadly had some damage despite her very careful packaging, and one day I’ll have to unpack them and try to fix them. Here is a pic of the one I grew up with:

If I can, I’ll take her with me on the move.

And in the spirit of finding reminders of my mom, I actually found this collage pic she made on her computer and sent to me a couple of years ago; it is of her at a craft show and some pics of the things she was selling that day (I TOLD you she was a good artist!):

I am planning to take pictures of all her work that I and my roommate have and then make the images into a digital collage (with digital scrapping elements to really dress it up) that I can print and frame and send to family members, ideally for Mother’s Day this year.

Moving on, so I don’t get too sad…

Today I found one of my very very favorite 80s rock albums for sale on iTunes, and just hadhadhad to get it: Four Winds by the band Tangier (I mention on my About Me page that I used to be a hair band groupie fan; I was, and while I was really into Skid Row, Warrant, Poison, Motley Crue, etc, I loved plenty of lesser-known bands…oh, the tape collection I used to have! Every month, Metal Edge magazine would come out and mention new bands, and I had to go out and buy the tape…hehe…but that’s how I found Tangier). I used to have this album on tape, no idea where the tape got to (but I’d played it to death), never had it on CD, no one I knew had it, so I sucked it up and paid “full price” for an older album. ;-) There is just something about this album that has always spoken to me, and listening to it now makes me smile as much as it did when it first came out in the 80s. They have a bit of a bluesier feel to them, I suppose you’d call it, especially compared to other hair bands back then. Here’s a video of one of the singles they put out; one of the great songs from the album:

Back to art…yesterday I did a bunch of pixel sigtags for spring…check them out in the right column or on my pixel page. They were a lot of fun to do; I’m starting to really like doing animations again, too.

I started working on Leonie’s Creative Goddess Sunday yesterday because it was TUESDAY!!! I apparently loooove to do day-specific blog projects on the wrong day! Yippee! *does a happy dance*

Heh. ;-)

The first part of this week’s project included (re)chosing our power/intention words for the year. Mine are LOVE, CREATE, and BLISS. I’d originally chosen the word LEAP, which is still powerful for me, but when I did this particular exercise those three words lept (haha) out at me. I’m definitely leaping this year, but my intentions for the year are to create and accept more love, to be an art-making fool (in all mediums that call to me), and to follow my bliss and live from it. I then put those words into my statement, which came out as, “I am a loving/loved artist living my bliss.” Interestingly, lots of resistance comes up when I say that to myself, which tells me I need to do some work around it. Those words came up for a reason. I love when these exercises really help you dig into stuff. The second part of the project involved making artworks that featured the words. So I took out my business-cards-to-ATC-canvases and starting playing around. Here is the progress so far:

I’ll finish these up today. :-)

And finally…while I was painting and pixeling yesterday, I snapped some uber adorable pics of Bast…because I can’t not take pics when she’s being so cute…

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Back to it…happy creating, everyone. :-)