bits and pieces

after much sighing and staring, i decided that the only thing to do with yesterday's painting was tear it up into small pieces... i'd backed myself into a sort of quadrant thing, and it did not make my eyes happy-- and i couldn't see any way that it possibly ever would! so i ripped it up and put the pieces on the front and back of two new pieces of watercolor paper.

i've cropped out most of the white-- it's blinding! this whole photographing of paintings thing is perplexing me. scanning sucks the life right out of them, and outside light is often not the best... hmmmm.... will keep investigating... having spent many hours in front of a photo tent taking pictures of glass beads, i'd rather not get too serious about photographing anything again. well, that kind of photographing-- i'll willingly give myself to hours of random picture snapping!



each 'page' now has a little painting on it like this...



a close-up...



a beetle has his own page...



three pieces together...



and my journal is gathering other stuff besides paintings and pebbles... feathers and a page of text now. i'm writing down words that i want to be reminded of-- things i've read in books recently.



on sunday i made this mala ... i'd seen a hand mala somewhere on the internet earlier in the day, and knew i wanted to make a short, hand mala. they're supposed to have 27 beads, but my design wouldn't have been balanced with 13 beads on one side and 14 on the other.... more sighing and staring. would the mala gods reject all repetitions done on a 28 bead mala?!!! seemed unlikely... so aesthetics won. as if there was ever any doubt! the best part is the sound the copper tag makes tinking against the beads!! i sawed the copper tag from 26 gauge copper sheet and stamped the mantra with my largish letter stamps. i think i want to take the plunge and buy a set of 1/16" letters. there's something very satisfying about stamping out words... the beads are 12 mm rutilated quartz and pink opal. the 'dagger' is a tibetan ritual item symbolic of cutting away delusion. i can't remember the proper name for it... it's also rutilated quartz.



looking at the rutilated quartz in the mala this morning got me thinking about the wondrousness of rutilated quartz, and this crystal in particular...

i'm leaving tomorrow morning to visit friends a few hours south of here, and will be back early next week. before i leave, though, i have one very important thanks to pass on... the WAY talented robyn at 'art propelled' has given me another award, and i'd like to say a heartfelt thank you for that honor. it's actually quite staggering to me that talented artists like seth and robyn would pass these awards on to me. it feels, well, wonderful!! thank you so much robyn!!! if you haven't checked out her blog, please do!

as i sit here typing, planes are zooming around and smoke is blowing in from the southwest. a tanker plane's made two passes not far away, which is making it somewhat hard to concentrate! so i'll say goodbye for now... and see you next week!