mt. shasta

everyone who knows me knows that i'm in love with this mountain. i've been visiting it regularily for 16 years, and each trip is full of magic, each trip is a small pilgrimage...



i always love to take a pic from this spot because it shows how large the mountain looms over the surrounding countryside.



in the town of mt. shasta, this is our first stop...



look at the crema on this coffee...



and this scone.



the bookstore is next. this is where i bought my little green travel journal (below).



this shop has everything metaphysical. it's nice just to see what's there each time, and i always buy prayer flags... yep, i got a set of vertical ones this time.



from the outside you wouldn't give this shop a second look. in fact, it's on a side street and i missed it for years. but inside, oh my. it's full of magnificent crystals of all shapes and sizes, and quartz crystal bowls. this picture was taken in a room full of bowls-- there are more on the wall behind me and to the left. these all have a quartz base with another mineral on the outside. they no longer allow customers to play these, but when the owner plays them, oh. my. goodness. their sound is beyond description. the good thing is that customers are welcome to play all of the plain quartz bowls, and they have a lot of them. when you walk out of this shop you're not the same as when you walked in...



here we are about halfway up the mountain, looking towards the top. i've never seen it like this-- with so little snow. i left this pic large so if you click on it you can see some details of the rocks. (in case you're a mountain/rock lover like me : )



we're at the end of the road (but nowhere near the top), looking west.



besides generally wandering around after we get out of the car, we check in with this water... it's not on a trail -- our son happened to find it on one of his wanderings. i always wonder why the pipe is there, and i always drink some...



there's lots of rock art...



we're driving back down (to wander around below the tree line). i got out to take this pic that shows the path of an avalanche. while the trees on either side of the path don't look large here, they're all 1 - 2 feet in diameter. the road was closed to cars the summer after this happened, and i remember walking up the road, wondering why it was closed, and then coming to the spot where the avalanche had crossed the road. all of those giant trees laying like toothpicks, facing downhill. it was truly mind boggling.



hours have passed... we've wandered around at a lower elevation, eaten our supper on the side of the mountain, and now we're heading north towards ashland. one last shot of this glorious mountain...

gratitude redux

in the month or so that i've been blogging, i've been given a lot... it's taken me by surprise. i had no idea i'd meet so many kindred spirits, receive so much support, and feel such joy at interacting with the cyber art community. thank you...

i wanted to give away something as a way of saying thank you, something that came from me... so i made two beads, a bone and a heart -- two shapes that are meaningful to me and that i love to make. yeah, i was so motivated to have a proper way of saying 'thank you' that i fired up the torch - a rare event these last months!



a close-up... copper, silver, gold, and paladium leaf, as well as miscellaneous powders and frit on the surface.



just plain ivory (moretti, for people who know glass)... the base of the heart is ivory too. the heart's about an inch tall, and the bone not quite two inches. you can go here to find out why i love to make bones...

i'll put the name of everyone who's posted a comment in a hat on sunday and draw a name. and, if you want to comment but don't want the beads, that's fine too! just let me know in your comment...

if you're not a bead wearer, you can:

1. set them on a shelf and gaze at them
2. hang them from a keychain
3. hang them from the spine of an altered book or journal
4. use them in altered art
5. hang them in trees
6. bury them for future archeological expeditions to dig up
7. hold them
8. give them away (probably the most important)

okay, now i'm going to try and win something on this blog!!



lisa blackwell of zoa art just painted her studio and posted pics of it on their blog. it's fabulous... you'll see... she's going to give away one of her bronze pmc pieces to someone who posts a pic of their studio. so lisa, does this count?! it's not much compared to your wondrous space, but it's my teeny, tiny little art room!



jim and i are leaving tomorrow for a trip to mt. shasta and ashland, oregon. i'll be taking my little (3" x 5") travel journal with me...



i paint simple little pictures in it... something to remind me of the way a place feels. this is the first pic i painted in it, sitting on a rock on the side of mt. shasta almost two years ago. i remember being careful not to tip the tin of caran d'ache crayons over and have them roll down the side of the mountain!



this is the last painting from mt shasta. it was cold out and i was sitting in the car. wow, if i hadn't put them in this post, i don't think i'd have noticed the similarities in the two pieces... in the first one i painted a flower just emerging, and in the last one the flower is in full bloom. and they both have hearts in the bottom center...



in ashland i'm going to be sharing art stuff with friends, so i'm taking my journals from the last year. one year's worth here...

goodbye for a few days, and, muchas gracias!!

tape and pocket houses

more soul journaling...



the assignment for day 9 involved putting various kinds of tape on two pages, so i taped up the front and back of a sheet of heavy watercolor paper from india. duct tape is missing here-- must get duct tape. i think we were supposed to leave the page with just the tape and paint, but i added some strips of tye-died velvet that a friend recently gave me. i tried to take a close-up of the threads that came from unraveling it, but the camera didn't want to focus on them. boy, is this a contrast to the 'soul armour' page that it falls behind in The Book or what?!! i don't know if my eyes are smiling at the contrast or not!



the back... oil pastels, paint, india ink, a strip of muslin, and a piece ripped out of a catalog. oh, and see that beautiful blue green in the upper left corner-- uh huh, that's the black crayola marker smudged around with water.



this is my 'pocket house'. i didn't use a brown paper bag for the pocket, but instead some cool lokta paper i found in my paper drawer. it took about an hour to paint the pocket because the lokta paper is only slightly less absorbent than a sponge. and here's our son, outside the pocket, flying by. being twenty and the beautiful person he is, he needed wings... miss independent said she would tip right over the edge if i made her do a whole family of paper dolls, so i only made one. she had to admit she kinda liked those wings though...



and my neighborhood. i forgot to add the collage elements, so it's just watercolor (twinkling H20s) on st. armand paper-- the back side of the pocket house page. i'd really like to have some of those vertical prayer flags here at our house.

and now for something REALLY important! the incredibly talented caroline douglas has started blogging ... the name of her blog is come clay with me. caroline's work is, well, beyond words... and she is (truly) one of the kindest souls on the planet. go see...

a week's worth...

inspired by jackie at art4moi, i made the leap and started soul journaling this week. miss independent, i-do-my-own-thing is harrumphing in the background, but i'm ignoring her.



before i started following sarah's prompts, i did this little piece on st. armand paper.



the back side... from now on i'm going to stick photographs on the back side of paintings instead of doing a painting on each side. i like the mixture of paintings and photos. although now that i'm doing the soul journaling, i don't know how that'll work out.



sarah's first prompt was to create our 'soul armour'. as you can see, peace and love are all i need for protection -- except for that little bit of flame coming out of the sword. i'm wearing flip flops because the thought of having my feet inside armour just gives me the shivers. my toes like to be out and breathing until they're forced inside a pair of uggs in late october.



my pajama bottoms and this year's pair of reefs. a nice, new pinkish color. okay, okay, sometimes i do wear those tennis shoes when i go out hiking.



the page where we were supposed to write our name a bunch of times. i was amazed at how many nicknames i've had over the years. they just kept popping into my head.



the next 'assignment' was to cut out a bunch of pictures following her prompts. since i'm putting this in the journal i'm working on, i had to figure out a way to get all of those pics on one sheet of paper. so i taped three pieces of fabriano artistico paper together with masking tape (of course), leaving enough room between the sheets for them to fold easily, which made an accordian page.



i still have to add a piece on one end for the eyelets... without that it won't fold back on itself entirely once it's bound.



a closer look, taken with the scanner. we were supposed to follow prompts for putting specific kinds of borders around the images, and writing words, but miss independent took over here. i think i just didn't have enough room for them either. what i did was sit in my chair in the creek while scribbling lines around each image with watersoluble pens. then i dipped my fingers in the creek and smudged them around. most of the 'smudgedness' is from a black, crayola wide tip marker. i love it!!! that smile... yes, that's ingrid bergman.



the images on this side are clearer because i didn't smear paint all over them in that step. i like it better this way... and of course she never said to smear paint all over the pictures. she said if we got some paint on the pics, that was okay. i just got carried away.



you're going to get tired of pics of 'the book' from this angle, but i can't seem to help myself! the part of me that grabs the camera when it sees something picture-worthy just takes over!



now we're in alturas two days ago (time traveling : ). this is the feed supply store, taken from the gas station.



we're closer now because jim's inside checking out their cat food. i love this building! no, the sky wasn't quite that intense... i PSed it. but it was pretty dang blue.



and while i was taking pics of the top of the building, this hawk appeared...



one last shot... avaloketishvara's foot, taken yesterday morning. i was thinking how nice her toenails would be in this photo if they were reddish.

sun flowers

drying flower heads, snapped at sunset in our non-yard. if you have a minute, click on them... they really are so much nicer full size.

ahhhh, sunlight. what a magician...

process and progress

i've been working on my journal this week... organizing, printing out photos, making pockets, putting eyelets on pages, etc. it's a lot more work than i thought it'd be! i'm winging it since i don't have an overall vision for the finished book, and this is the first time i've made anything like this. i seem to be using a lot of browns and going for the antique-i-fied look, which i like but it quickly becomes boring, and well, very brown. so i've been experimenting with ways to color it up while still keeping it more or less neutral. the cover of the book is old (of course) and a beigey brown -- maybe that's why i'm going for the old look?



anyway, i printed out my favorite pics from last month and glued them onto 4" x 6" deckle edge watercolor paper -- front and back, then added eyelets for binding later.



the shasta lilies pressed between wax paper. i am LOVING pressing stuff between wax paper. no matter what kind of journal i decide to do next, it'll have room for stuff pressed between wax paper. i'm also enjoying using masking tape with abandon. any excuse, i'll use it.



a rose of sharon blossom and an oak leaf. i stitched on both of these pages, which is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.



a darkish picture of the pocket i made to hold the pebbles. i put gussets in it so it would hold plenty.



the pocket that holds last month's paintings and misc. stuff. it was a red letter month for blue jay feathers, so i tied them into a bundle and put them here.



the book is this thick now... yeah, i love that!



another sunset... everything is beginning to get quite dry and brown. compare this pic to the one below, which was taken in may.





the tallest cairn that i've built in the creek. i must've taken 50 pictures of it, but they never seemed to turn out. finally, one i like! the top three rocks are from a beach near port townsend, WA, and this person helped me carry them back to the car...



do you recognize this?! yep, just plain 'ol beautiful blue sky. i took it a few days ago while sitting in the creek. i decided last week after driving through miles and miles of smoke that if i was gonna make a sign it'd simply say~

i heart blue sky.