Big G

I made it in time to the Grand Canyon village to register for the adventure of the summer - the mule ride down to Phantom Ranch. On D-Day, I woke up early, prepared the yellow rain coat identifying me as one of "the chosen ones", filled the water bottle, had a good breakfast and showed up for the briefing. I have to say that all we have been told turned out to be true: by the end of the day we smelled like mules, we were dirty like mules. And did I mention we were sore in places we did now know we had. Some of us (me!) had trouble motivating the mules. Bad idea! Mules have to walk head to tail for security reasons. My fate during these two days was closely knit to that of Big-G:












Kevin was our guide. The first 5 min in the saddle were terrible. I had to bite my tongue to not tell them I wanted off the darn animal no matter what! Mules are steadfast, but they are not ballerinas. Big-G seemed to move like somebody who had too many drinks on the rocks, shaking form side to side and on the edge of the precipice. It took a while to find my balance, but once I did, the rest was fun. I wonder on how many cameras I ended up, proud mule-rider! We left late in the morning so by the time we made it to the Indian Gardens, half way down, it was already very hot. We had lunch there and we proceeded in blistering sun and 115f heat. No shade. Hairpin slopes. Sometimes I had the feeling that half of me dangled above the void. Maybe it was just a heat stroke. We finally saw the river, but that did not mean it was the end of the journey. We still had a good hour if not more to reach the second bridge where the mules can cross and then after another 20-30 min, finally get to the ranch. I jumped in the creek - such a blessing on that heat (120F at the ranch).
Amazing how tired and hungry I was considering the heavy work was Big-G's task. We had a hearty supper and went to bed early. Luckily by bed time, the light was back on and the AC was working.

Next morning, back in saddle. Again, left a bit late. South Kaibab trail has absolutely no shade and no water. The trail was not as bad as the day before and we stopped more often to rest the mules. WE made it back around 1 PM or so.

I am hoping to do this again sometime, maybe in the winter. And I want to hike rim to rim too! Not in August though.

The day after, I hiked to the Indian Gardens and back. And that was the end of the adventure. Pictures coming soon.

Sunset Crater and Wupatki

On the way to the Grand Canyon, I stopped to visit the Sunset crater. It looks like a lunar landscape. Apparently, the site has been used for filming science fiction movies. Walking around the field of lava was surrreal. But I was in a hurry! Next stop - Wupatki - an 800 years old pueblo.
strange how these pueblos emptied out so suddenly, after having flourished in such difficult conditions.

Taliesin West

Residence of Ffrank Lloyd Wright in Scottsdale. Small, but conceptually interesting. The antipode of modern McMansions: use of natural materials, integration with the landscape, reduced impact on the environment and resource consumption, small living quarters. The opposite of the wasteful, tasteless architecture that suffocates cities everywhere. Check it here.

Cosanti and Arcosanti

Both places are creations of Paolo Soleri, one of Frank LLoyd Wright's fellows.
Cosanti was the first one, built in Scottsdale way before the area became full of expensive mansions. The famous windbells are made here. Arcosanti is the site of an experimental project that Paolo started in the 70'. The idea for the project is from the 50s. The project was intended as an experiment in ecological living - using less space, less resource, with little impact on the surroundings, fostering a sense of community. Basically, the exact opposite of how cities developed in the last 50 years in North America. It was sad to see how little of the project has been completed to date. Even like this, one can see that the ideas were way ahead of the times. The plans and drawings exposed there were spectacular. As for Arcosanti, depending from where one looks at it, it certainly has a bit of a extraterrestrial feeling to it.

Phoenix - desert botanical garden

The art-making was over and there was time for some more sight-seeing.
First stop - desert botanical garden:

Army run

Leaving for Ottawa. I will be racing tomorrow in the first Army run - a half marathon. I fell off the training wagon this year, so I had to surrender to the evidence that I will not be running a marathon this fall. As for the half, I am not expenting much better time than in the past - most likely around 2:15. It has been a very uneven summer for my running feet. Will try again next year.

Marbled paper

A while ago, I bought a marbling kit from Winners. A couple of weeks ago, I got around to do it. I have been warned that the process is long and difficult. It surpassed my expectation. It was indeed long and I had a problem with the pigments. They have to be deluted to the point where they spread easily on the surface of the size. Some pigments are heavier than others. In this case, the most trouble I had with the blue. The magenta was a bit better, but still not the way it should have been. I kept adding water to the paint to no avail. In the end, the pigment was all in the size. It became so muddy I could not see what was on the size and what was in the size. If the pigments do not spread on the size, then the designs will not work. I came up with my own version of nonpareil, stone, chevron and the like. A master marbler would fire an apprentice like me, I suppose...

Here are my papers - they are fun nontheless. They will make nice backgounds for collage.

Assemblage

Michael deMeng taught 4 classes in Phoenix. I took 3 of them. I don't think I ever worked so hard for fun! There was so much to do and I wanted to finish my pieces. I altered a cigar box, made the Morpheus box and 2 sculptures using electrical outlets. All of these pieces use junk parts from the junk yard. I had to follow my intuition - there was not enough time to change the design around too much. I'd grab the stuff that appealed to me for whatever reason (I did not question anything. For those who know me, thes might be a surprise as I suspect they will all agree that there is not one thing under the Sun that I do not turn upside down. But that is a whole other story). Then, with a generous amount of caulking, stick everything together. Pray that it dries. When prayers did not work, used all other means to my disposal to speed the process (heat gun, sun). Apply washes. Screw, nail, glue, wire, tie bits and pieces. Some people knew what they wanted to make, they had a theme and all the necessary doodas to get where they wanted to go. Not me. I have hard time working with a theme. 99% of the things I made start the same way, sometimes from a focal image, a color, something I find on my desk. I keep adding to it until I feel the piece is complete. Then I try to read the story. There is a story in everything I make,except I do not know it all.
I will post pictures of the finished pieces soon.

Selling art

Judy Wise lead this workshop one evening. I knew her art from her blog.This topic is seldom discussed, so I was curious. One of the things that came up was blogging. I mentioned that I use a pseudonym for my blog and this raised some eyebrows. How do you want people to find you then?! Truth is, I do not want everybody to find me. Ok. I am privacy-freak, I confess. In this day and age when anything and everything is up for sale, trade and to the mercy of hackers of all kinds, do I really need to have my name out there for the eternity? But things are not so simple. They never are. If my name was not on, I could still hide. Pretend it isn't me. Show the blog only to the chosen few. Not worry about criticism. In the end, I took the plunge. I put my name up there.

Collage of metal

I have never worked with metal before. I don't think I will a lot of this work, but I will probably do some every now and then. Metal adds a nice touch in mixed media pieces. Jacqueline Sullivan gave us a lot of information, tips, recipes etc. There is no control over how the metal will turn out though. It takes a lot of practice, patience and let go because the patinas will work in their inprevisible ways.

Composition

This was a fun class. Three hours of pure play. Don't get me wrong! All classes were fun, but there was a lot of hard work, too. This time, I let loose the 5 year old who has been told she has the ugliest drawing of the whole kindergarten class! I've got my revenge allright!
The class was fast paced. We received instructions and we had a limited time to work on the page, so I went with the flow. I worked on five pages:

Figurative fabric

This was a two-day class taught by DJ Pettitt. What a challenge this was! First, due to my inability to paint faces. I have tried in the past, with disastrous results. This time, I was well prepared. I even made my own sketches! It was to paint, the heat dried the paint almost as soon as they came out of the tube. The first day, all I seemed to be able to mix was an awful shade of grey for the darker areas of the face. And no matter what I did, the painting just did not have the shinny finish that I was looking for. Only later in the process I learned that the finishe painting has to be ironed to flatten the paint and achieve the smooth appearance I wanted. I enjoyed the class, it was very well taught and we had guidance all along. I painted the second painitng all by myself (the blu-eyes one)! Very proud! I hope I will remember what to do when I will find the time to sit down and paint another one!

































The inspiration for my sketches came for an unlikely place. I was watching season 2 of Lost and, as usual, I had my sketch book handy, waiting for the muse. I don't remember the episode, but there was a nice close up of Mr. Eko which seemed like a good idea to use as practice. I wanted to draw him - Mr. Eko! Instead, I drew her - Mrs. Eko! She is the one with brown eyes. Go figure ....certainly, the mind has a funny way of putting things together!

Leather image transfer

The class was taught by Dorothy Egan. I worked with image transfers in the past, but not on leather. We used the image to make a buckle pendant. Mine looks like this:

Collage Purse

I am behind with the updates to the blog. School started last week. I am taking French translation 1. I waited so long to register that I almost did not make it. All the other courses were full, so I have to settle for only one course this semester. I also signed up for the chunky technique book for ArtUnraveled. Each participant will make a number of pages with techniques learned in Phoenix. Maximum 45 pages. I have never done anything like this and since the pages are small (4” x 4”), I decided to try.

But back to the updates from Arizona ...
I took the Collage Purse workshop with Kathy Cano-Murillo. In retrospect, it was a bit stressful because I did not have a sewing machine, not to mention I did not sew in many years. I was never very good at this anyway. Always struggling with straight lines. But it turned out that there is no need for straight lines!!
I also wanted to make sure I finish in class – and this was true for all the workshops. Always rushing to make sure I am done. I did not even take lunch breaks! Kathy had a lot of wonderful fabric to choose from. Really hard to make up my mind. Then, I had to decide how to place the designs – and since I cannot stand anything symmetrical, I placed them in an “organizes disorder”. Here is the final product:





















Here are other samples from the class:

Sedona

Driving into Sedona, the landscape changes, the red rocks emergeing suddenly. The landscape has the look and feel of a Martian view. We drove to town, had lunch at the Wildflower and then strolled through the art galleries Tlaquepaque village. I bought some Zuni jewellery. For the night, we stopped at the Desert Quail Inn. Sunday morning, I went for my 20 km run all around the neighbourhood behind the inn. It was early, but I met lots of people taking advantage of the cooler hours of the morning. The sunrise was gorgeous. We then spent the morning at the Cathedral Rock and after lunch took off for Tuzigoot, Jerome and Prescott.