creating art with food

Some of you may remember that this summer I headed to Vermont for a live art installation at Wanderlust Festival.  During the four days of the yoga festival, I worked on a 14 ft. mandala piece using only seeds, dried fruit, beans, grains, and other natural food ingredients.

The mandala depicted the different stages and elements of a seed's life: roots, sprouts, rain, sun, and flowers. In the photo above, I was forming organic vanilla bean into raindrops.  The mandala was smelling so good!

The installment was part of the Kashi booth at Wanderlust, and the work was captured on film by a New York crew.  For the last couple of hours I thought it'd be fun to get the community involved.  So a number of folks jumped in to help finish the mandala piece, including a few children who had been watching the process from the start. 

After snapping pictures of the finished work, the mandala was dismantled.  The ingredients were then given to a local farmer to use as feed for his animals.

Here's a short video that Kashi put together of the art installment:

Summer dreaming

Eagle Creek Trail, Oregon

Summer is nearly here, and you can feel the excitement in the Portland air.  Folks are showing off their dazzling white legs, and there's talk of backyard barbeques, festivals, and adventure trips in the Pacific Northwest.  

Now that the kids are out of school, I look forward to day trips to the coast and mountains.  A couple of months ago, we hiked the Eagle Creek Trail in the gorge.  The water was a little too chilly for wading, but, come July,  I'll be ready for some creek walking!

My summer schedule is quickly filling up with family and work-related activities.  Next week, I'm headed to Vermont for an art installation using food! During the Wanderlust Festival at Stratton Mountain, I'll be creating a 15 ft. mandala for Kashi using only natural food ingredients, like seeds, grains, beans, and nuts.  

I love to cook, but this is the first time I've used food to create large scale art.  It's been fun playing around with the different ingredients on our dining room table, and the vanilla bean, coconut, and cinnamon sticks make the room smell so good!

If you want to follow the the progress of my mandala art at Wanderlust Festival, I'll be posting pictures on Instagram. 

Lately, I've also been busy creating new work for my online shops.  Phenomenon is my newest art print, and it's available in two sizes.  

I've been wanting to mesh my mountain painting and weaving worlds for a while now, and Azure Mountain is the result of that coming together. Created on a lap loom without a drawing, the weaving process was slow-going.  But I enjoyed "painting" with yarn and seeing the piece evolve. 

Azure Mountain is currently available in my big cartel shop, as well as the weavings below.  This weekend, I'm running a free shipping promotion.  Use code HELLOSUMMER, and receive free shipping on your order. 

Weavings: Laguna, Summer Dream, Sea Breeze, Native Land

hello spring

my friend, Korinne, with my newly finished crocheted blanket

It's so satisfying to finish a project, especially one that has taken nearly two years! I started crocheting this zigzag blanket to use up my nice yarn remnants.  I must be horrible at estimating yardage because I ran out of yarn early on in the process.  So, some of you may remember that I swapped art for yarn on my blog awhile back.  I wanted to primarily use remnants or reclaimed yarn for this blanket, but I eventually had to purchase new yarn ($$!).  

Although this project took much longer than expected, I am thrilled with how it turned out.  It's actually quite dense, and the family has already put it to good use on some of the chilly nights we've had in Portland.  

wood and shells from the Oregon coast

My husband was in Rwanda for the first part of March.  When he returned home, we broke away from city life for a day and headed to a remote spot on the Oregon coast.  We had the beach to ourselves, and it felt like time stood still as we leisurely looked for beautiful shells and driftwood in the sand.  The weather at the Oregon coast can be hit or miss, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky!

we stopped at the Wilson River on our way home

And when your husband's away, that's a good time to make big purchases!  I bought this vintage Allen floor loom on craigslist while my husband was in an airplane and unreachable. . . um, it's not like I planned it this way (wink, wink).  I did do a bit of research beforehand and talked with an expert at a weaving studio in town.  These folding looms were made in the 40's and 50's, just miles from my house.  Although it had three owners (mother to daughter to friend), apparently this particular loom had only been used once!

My sweet husband helped me set up the loom within hours of getting back from Africa.

I'm excited to start weaving larger wall hangings.  The first items I pulled off the loom were these small sample pieces:

I liked how they turned out, so I tied them to driftwood and added them to my online shop.  I recently updated my shop with new weavings, including this piece handwoven on the lap loom:

Drift Creek

I was inspired to create this piece after finding a vintage spool of purple yarn at an antique store in rural Oregon.  If you look closely, there are four turquoise dots in the creek design.  For additional information about the weavings shown above, click here.

waking from hibernation

seeking beauty and solace at the Oregon coast

Finding balance between two worlds- family and work- is probably the greatest challenge for a working mom/wife.  Add the home as the workplace, and the lines get blurred even more.  I pride myself on being an effective multi-tasker, but even then, there just isn't enough time in the day to get everything done.  So dishes pile up in the sink, a shower is skipped, and time at my art desk is captured in wee hours of the night.  It's not the ideal situation, but I am grateful for it. 

The last six months have been some of my busiest- new collaborations, commissions, and the holiday hustle and bustle.  With the labor force still at one (just me), juggling all the new commitments have been quite precarious.  To maintain some assemblance of sanity and order, I've had to say 'no' to many things.  I wasn't expecting one of those sacrifices to be my blog.  But looking back these past few months, it was much needed.  I guess it was a hibernation of sorts.  Animals hibernate to store energy and survive the winter.  I was trying to preserve my creative energy.

Now that the busyness has waned a bit, I'm getting back into my old routine.  I'm breaking in a new sketchbook, and I'm currently working on a couple of paintings and weavings- not commissions, just for fun.  I'd like to get back to blogging on a regular basis, ideally a couple times a week.  I have over a dozen unfinished posts sitting in my draft queue, but I'm curious to hear topics of interest from readers.  If you have an idea or two for blog posts, feel free to list them below. 

Thanks for sticking with me.   

2014 commission: 4' x 8' chalkboard drawing of Pebble Beach

remembering summer

The transition from summer to fall in Portland has been quick and downright harsh.  September is normally a glorious month in Oregon, so I feel ripped-off that we've been pounded with torrential downpour for days on end.  Flooding in the basement- what?! That normally doesn't happen until November.

I really dislike the word soggy, and yet that may be one of the better descriptors for the Pacific Northwest right now. 

If I could, I would will summer back.  But, the best that I can do is flip through my photos and try to hold onto some of the most cherished memories of my year. 

Here are some snapshots I took on our summer trip to the Olympic National Park  . . .

lost coast and the redwoods

Appropriately named, California's Lost Coast is a stunning 80 mile stretch of rugged shoreline that begins north of Mendocino.  Most of the coast land is undeveloped and quite remote . . . it's like stepping back in time.

Our first destination was Glass Beach in Fort Bragg.  Fifty years ago, locals used to hurl trash right over the bluffs into this small cove.  Once a dumping ground, the beach is now an incredible spectacle of tumbled glass and pottery.

For most our visit, we had the sparkly shore to ourselves- not at all what you'd expect from a California beach.  And we were gifted with beautiful weather. 

Exploring the Lost Coast by car can be precarious.  Undeveloped land means undeveloped roads.  We decided to spend one morning driving down Usal Road, which is a narrow and steep dirt road that hugs the coastline. 

It took us an hour to drive 6 miles, but we managed to make it to the beach without any car mishaps or car sickness.  On the drive, we saw some amazing "candelabra" redwoods, trees that grow multiple trunks. 

From the Lost Coast, we drove to the heart of the redwoods.  We took a scenic 31 mile highway that led us to groves of giant trees.  The fallen tree shown below was 362 ft. tall and 52 feet in circumference.  And it was at least 1600 years old when it finally fell in 1991. 

Walking amongst these giant trees, I couldn't help but think of Tolkein's talking trees in Lord of the Rings.  Ent, after all, means "giant" in Old English.  And Ents were considered the oldest living creatures in Middle Earth. 

That doesn't make sense to me. But, then again, you are very small. - Treebeard, the oldest Ent, to a hobbit.

Oh, how true that is.