Holiday paintings

With Christmas approaching, I have been in crazy rush mode with wrapping up projects. Today while I was waiting for a client to get back to me on some digital art I am creating, I had some time to make some tangible artwork.

Winter birch  4" x 6" acrylic

This little painting is a winter study, one I will likely gift as a Christmas present. There are several more paintings I am hoping to complete this week, and for ease of transport, I think I will be working in acrylic on all of them.

Art Hearts for Olivia's Heart Fund

As referenced in an earlier post, I've been working on a project with family members who have created a charity for children who suffer from heart defects. This project began for me as a strong desire to create a series of paintings that would be shared with people, with the hope of incorporating portraits of the recipients into a companion multimedia presentation. I had been creating some small heart pieces and trying to solidify the plan, posting the images to Facebook when my cousin in-law Julie responded to the artwork. The hearts reminded her of her daughter Olivia, who had been born with a very rare heart defect, and tragically, had died at thirteen days old. Here is part of Olivia's story from the Heart Fund website:

“Our daughter, Olivia Marie Ostiguy, was diagnosed at 22 weeks and 6 days with HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome) -it is one of the most severe congenital heart defects that only affects 8% of babies with CHD. Heart defects are the number 1 birth defect, occurring in 1/100 babies. Olivia was born on October 16th 2008. She had her first surgery (Norwood) at 6 days old. It was during this surgery, that doctors discovered that her heart was much worse than pre and post-natal echocardiograms had shown. Her left coronary arteries were not in the proper location and were very underdeveloped. The surgeon had never seen this particular defect before. Olivia was on ECMO for 7 days while she waited for a new heart. Tragically, her kidneys failed before a new heart was available. Olivia went to heaven on October 29th. She was 13 days old. My husband and I remain committed to educating the public about CHD and to helping families and children who are impacted. It is how we will ensure that Olivia's battle will never be in vain.”

For me, this was the moment when my desire to create artwork for the heart project and also to have a purpose beyond my desk job just came together naturally, in an unexpected way. Julie and her husband Peter have created a charity, Olivia's Heart Fund, to support congenital heart defect research. The artwork could be shared with families of children who suffer from CHD. If they were willing to participate, we could potentially display the artwork, bring awareness of CHD and perhaps raise money for research. With Julie and Peter, and their contacts who have volunteered to help, the Art Heart project is taking shape.

I just completed the first heart - "Olivia" this past week. As much as I wanted to begin this project, I felt a bit nervous about the piece. It's one thing to make artwork that feels right for me, but this project has such significance, and I really wanted it to resonate with Julie and Peter. Now that the first piece is done and the media, dimensions and tone are established, the other pieces should go smoothly.

The heart template

Because I wanted a consistent heart shape across the series, I created a template out of cardboard. The series will be 10" square.

Heart on the artboard

I taped watercolor paper with the sketched heart to my drawing board, and pinned a few of the heart studies I created earlier up there for my reference. I blocked in some blue and purple watercolor for an underpainting, and when that was dry, got started on the wings and the texture around the heart with pastel.

I foolishly tried to create a spectrum in pastel but the effect was too muddy for me, so I had to wipe this out and start it again with acrylic. There is no undo button on tangible artwork (drat!) and the pastel has limited opportunities to rework when something does not go as planned. The acrylic did do the trick though.

The completed painting

I then created 13 stars (one for each day of Olivia's life) and added silver leaf to bring them out. The last steps were to blend some more pastel through the sky portion of the heart, and add clouds near the base. I sprayed the pastel with some Spectrafix to make it less fragile.

One element I want to add is a phrase inspired by what Julie wrote in her carepages blog, of which Olivia reminds me. Every day is precious. I would like to incorporate this under the heart shape in the negative space there. I just want to be careful how I do so, and keep the image balanced.

The Art Hearts will eventually be a series - we are shooting for 20 pieces, with a diverse pool of recipients. I will be donating the artwork to Olivia's Heart Fund, to go to the families, and prints of the paintings should be available at some point to benefit the charity. I am hoping to also create a multimedia piece and if all goes well, there could be an show of the artwork with an interactive exhibit to explore the stories of the families and the mission of combating CHD.

I will post more on the project as it progresses, with images of the artwork as I paint. Please visit Olivia's Heart Fund website to learn more about the charity, and to donate (if you are so inspired).

Tell me a story

One of the connections I am enjoying right now is with a group of friends and artists that generates inspiration for creative work. Our Art Group meets about once a month, and at each meeting we discuss the artwork that members have created, catch up with each other, and have a lovely meal before selecting a word or phrase for the next piece.

Our latest project is especially interesting. My dear friend April suggested we each create covers to an art book, and decorate the covers with a theme in mind. Books would have to be created in such a way that pages could be added. Then we would trade books around the group, and each artist would add a page with artwork based on the book's theme.

For my book I created a square format with 10 pages for the other artists to mount their work. My theme is "Finding yourself" or "Your life's path". That's been a focus for me lately, so that's what came to mind as I was building it. I will have to add photos of my covers when I get it back at the conclusion of the project.

We all drew names to determine what book we would work with, and I got April's book first. Her theme is "Tell me a story". After some thought, I decided to look into creation stories and settled on "Raven steals the sun" (sometimes told as Raven steals the light) by the Haida people of the Queen Charlotte Islands. I tried this piece in acrylic, and am happy with the results. Enough so that I kind of want to steal the painting back. :-) I think I may create a full series of panels on creation stories in the future.

Here's some photos of how the painting progressed.

Rough sketches

The drawing set up on my art board

Paint roughed in

Complete background, and more detail on the raven

The final painting with additional details and metallic gold paint for  the radiance of the sun

The story written on the back of the painting

The final painting mounted in the book

This was a great project, and there are 5 of us in the Art Group, so I have 3 more pages to create. I have plenty of space in my book, so perhaps I can add some paintings of my own to it over time, or entice other artists to contribute. I'm looking forward to the next painting.

Here's the story in its entirety:

Raven steals the sun

This is an ancient story told on the Queen Charlotte Islands and includes how Raven helped to bring the Sun, Moon, Stars, Fresh Water, and Fire to the world.^[1]

Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray Eagle was the guardian of the Sun, Moon and Stars, of fresh water, and of fire. Gray Eagle hated people so much that he kept these things hidden. People lived in darkness, without fire and without fresh water.

Gray Eagle had a beautiful daughter, and Raven fell in love with her. In the beginning, Raven was a snow-white bird, and as a such, he pleased Gray Eagle's daughter. She invited him to her father's longhouse.

When Raven saw the Sun, Moon and stars, and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagle's lodge, he knew what he should do. He watched for his chance to seize them when no one was looking. He stole all of them, and a brand of fire also, and flew out of the longhouse through the smoke hole. As soon as Raven got outside he hung the Sun up in the sky. It made so much light that he was able to fly far out to an island in the middle of the ocean. When the Sun set, he fastened the Moon up in the sky and hung the stars around in different places. By this new light he kept on flying, carrying with him the fresh water and the brand of fire he had stolen.

He flew back over the land. When he had reached the right place, he dropped all the water he had stolen. It fell to the ground and there became the source of all the fresh-water streams and lakes in the world. Then Raven flew on, holding the brand of fire in his bill. The smoke from the fire blew back over his white feathers and made them black. When his bill began to burn, he had to drop the firebrand. It struck rocks and hid itself within them. That is why, if you strike two stones together, sparks of fire will drop out.

Raven's feathers never became white again after they were blackened by the smoke from the firebrand. That is why Raven is now a black bird.

New Beginnings

So a while back I posted my feelings about my day job and its effect on my happiness. Since then I came to a decision to make change in my life and become the person I really want to be. I want to be someone who spends more time creating artwork and working on projects that are meaningful and/or of interest to me. I want to be less cranky and more graceful about the ups and downs of life.

So how do you go about changing your life? For me, I had to let go of some things that confused my life path. Believing that I should value myself by the salary I earned or the title I achieved was a problem. Driving nearly an hour to and from work was frustrating and sucked up a lot of my free time and energy. Watching people I cared about, trained, and built loyal business relationships with get fired or leave my company, one after another was demoralizing.

So I decided to start over.

I am very lucky to be married to an understanding man, and in a position to be a little flexible with finances. Together we agreed that I would be able to leave my job and focus more on the fine art work that I really wanted to create. I would also take on freelance multimedia projects to supplement our income, and start working towards more rewarding projects with our company Pixel-Artistry. We have created some screensavers and multimedia together in the past, but generally time constraints prohibit us from doing this very often. I have so many ideas for media projects in my head, and now I can make some of them a reality.

It's already been about three weeks since I left the day job to work on my own. It's been busier than I thought it would be. Because of leads from some wonderful friends, I have had a couple of paid projects to work on, and some decent communication about future ones. I attended a fantastic workshop with Annie Silverman at my alma mater MassArt on course design, and am writing a course description that I hope will lead me to some work as a teacher for summer of 2010. I have been doing more painting, and have joined a women's creative group in Providence where I can connect with new people and attend more art events. I have also been brainstorming a special art project involving a family member's charity for children afflicted with heart defects. This is a long-term project that I will write more about later - it deserves its own post, and I would like to blog about the process as it develops.

There's so much more to accomplish! But I am so very, very fortunate to be able to work like this. I am feeling happier, more at ease with my daily routine, and that I am on the right path to the future I want. I will have to give up some things to keep my life more cost effective, but the tradeoff is so worth it. I'm home with my husband and our animals, I am more engaged in artwork and the artistic community, I'm meeting and working with new and exciting people, and I laugh more. It's wonderful.

So I'll do my best to increase my posts and show some of the art I am creating. Here's to new beginnings!

A night out at Waterfire, Providence

Waterfire, Providence

A few weeks ago my husband and I met up with some friends for dinner in Providence. Both Brian and I used to live in Rhode Island, and I love being back there. There's such a wonderful artist community, with support for the arts through galleries, theatre, festivals, and events such as Waterfire. The Waterfire phenomenon began as an installation that really took on a life of its own, and now runs bi-weekly (and sometimes more often with partial lightings, depending on sponsorship) from spring through fall.

Fires in the basin

From the Waterfire website:

Barnaby Evans created First Fire in 1994 as a commission to celebrate the tenth anniversary of First Night Providence. In June 1996, Evans created Second Fire for the International Sculpture Conference where it became the gathering place
for thousands of participants from all over the world. Ardent art supporters convinced Evans to create an on-going fire installation and started a grass-roots effort to establish WaterFire as a non-profit arts organization.
With the support of hundreds of dedicated volunteers, a hard working staff, generous donations from visitors, contributions from corporate leaders and support from the City and State, WaterFire’s bright flames now regularly return to illuminate downtown Providence.

If you've never been to Waterfire, and you live in the Rhode Island area, I'd recommend you make the time to see it for yourself. The waterfront is alive with people, atmospheric music is played on speakers throughout the installation, and the sound and smell of the burning wood permeate the air. Watching the volunteers stoke the fires with fresh timber is a treat - we stopped to watch their progress down the river, dressed in black and silent as they worked. There is always interesting performance art in addition to the fires - I've seen fire dancers, living statues, musicians and singers - the week we were there was a celebration of opera. We caught several performances on stage.

Starry starry night in Memorial park

A new installation that I participated in is Starry Starry Night in Memorial Park. A hundred illuminated paper stars hang from the trees, casting a blue glow in the park. Brian and I purchased a star package to support Waterfire. I received a ribbon on which to write a wish, which was attatched to a star, and then hung in a place of my choice in the park. I also was given two luminaries and cards to write dedications, and a star to bring home with me. For my wish, I added the intention to find the path I am meant for - I've been feeling that I have missed my mark lately, and need some guidance in that respect. For the luminaries, I dedicated one to my husband, who is incredibly supportive and inspiring to me, and one to a dear friend who is suffering through a divorce - wishing him peace through a difficult time.

Looking out over the lights in the park, I was feeling truly connected to the community at Waterfire. It was so moving, and just a lovely experience.

There is one more Waterfire scheduled for October. It's always a busy month, so I don't know if I'll be able to make it back, but with luck I'll be able to sneak out there for a little while.

My Etsy store is open!

I finally got my Etsy store open, and have some work available for purchase there. I have lots of pieces that I want to add soon, but I'm glad to have a decent start.

For those of you unfamiliar with Etsy, it is a website of hand-made items for sale by numerous artisans. Think Ebay for artists and crafters. Etsy also allows the sale of materials for crafts and vintage items.

My store's name is LisasArtwork, and I will be adding some pastel, acrylic and mixed-media work as I can. Mostly I was unsure how to handle postage and shipping of the artwork safely, so I took some time to browse other Etsy shops for policies and shipping information. Etsy also has a nice blog full of info on getting your store up and running, which was very helpful.

To make things a little easier, I am offering free shipping of my artwork to addresses in the US and Canada. As things progress with the store, I may post separate shipping charges, but thought that might be a little more streamlined for now.

So feel free to browse my shop! I'll be adding more items soon, as well as creating some artwork for local fairs for the holiday season.

Happiness

I've been doing some heavy thinking about happiness lately. You see I am somewhat successful at a day job where I am in a position of authority - an Art Director at a multimedia company, and I create some pretty cool stuff. I'm not even lying when I say that I'm good at what I do.

I'm one of those people you probably knew and despised in grade school. I loved to learn and work hard and prove it to the teachers. I thought that my value as a human being was based on how I performed and wanted tangible grades to show that I was Good Enough even if I was just a girl with artistic talent. I knew I wanted to be an artist but always felt that I had to show I was smart too.

So I started out as an illustrator, but quickly moved into animation and digital art, then multimedia and Actionscript programming. I love the way you can plan and create and make something start to finish that is both beautiful and functional. There's so much about Flash development that is satisfying - it's challenging and it blends an artistic sense with practical knowledge and usability. It allows me to use both parts of my brain. Awesome.

But there's all the other stuff that comes with the day job. You will have to compromise yourself and work past your disagreements and you won't always get satisfaction from this job no matter how hard you work. You can really burn out if this job is diametrically opposed to your core beliefs and needs.

I think one problem for me is that for years I have invested myself personally in the job I have been doing. Not just in that I want to be there fully and do great work, but that I am expecting a sense of fulfillment creatively from these projects. And maybe that's asking too much from the day job. There's a whole life full of things I want to experience. Over time I've become a person who values people and relationships, art and music, freedom and time to myself, being with friends and family well over that accomplishment from the day job. I don't think I ever really valued the day job more than these things, but have become more honest with myself about how much I want them, and how pursuing career benchmarks distract me from what brings me happiness.

I have been in a state of self-examination for quite a while, during which I've been practicing more fine art. It's very, very hard to separate my value (perceived value) from how much I make and my title at the day job. But I know that there's other aspects of my life that make me happy. That I want to focus on and enjoy while I'm here.

Penelope Trunk has a great blog on career advice, and I recently found this post on building a career as an artist. It's a bit of tough love on being an artist in general, but I really identify with her thoughts on work/life balance. If I'm lucky enough to create a name for myself as an artist, I'll feel much more freedom in my life in general. But if I do need to balance the fine art with the day job, I will not look for the job to provide my happiness. I'm looking for ways to open my life up to the joys of friends and family and taking time for the arts. This will mean valuing myself for the other things I am good at. Loving people. Being compassionate. Laughing and being silly with my husband. My goofball self-depreciating humor. Being this crazy person is more important than how many hours I spend at work. I don't want to wake up panicked in the middle of the night thinking I haven't lived my life the way I should have.