BLUE!

BLUE is...

 the James River in Richmond, Virginia on this particular day in October...

 The clear sky on a fall day at Shabo Mekaw...

The cystalline water of a Rocky Mountain lake reflecting the beautiful azure sky...

Don't Forget to Breathe...

 One of my favorite early spring flowers,

the tiny and delicate bluet...

and last but not least, this Rocky Mountain beauty...



Please visit the blogs of Jennifer Coyne Qudeen and Julie Booth, our wonderful 'Searching for RoyGBiv' hostesses, for links to lots more blue!

Some Questions, and the Final 'Pulse'

1)   Where have I been?
Well, not here in blogland, obviously. This is the busiest time of the year at work, trying to write new IEP's and get all the paperwork together for my eighth-graders' high school transition meetings.  But I promise, I'll be around to visit everyone's blogs soon. That's all I'm going to say about that; otherwise, you might have to call me a wahmbulance.





2)   Why can't I leave well enough alone?
I think I've addressed this before. If I'm not quite satisfied with a piece, I will sometimes just keep messing with it until I've overworked it into the ground, if you know what I mean.  I hope that's not the case with Don't Forget to Breathe.  While it looked alright before, it was really pretty boring. Nicely boring- but still, boring. After giving it way too much thought, I decided that the problem was "a failure to communicate". Art, at its most fundamental level, is an attempt to visually 'say' something, whether it includes actual written words or not.  To see the earlier version and read the accompanying text, go here. To me, it just didn't 'feel' the way I felt when I made the piece.  I considered a few different possibilities, and decided to add water.

After I did that, I realized the blue of the water was too bright and cheery, so I covered it with mica, and stitching... I'm not exactly sure  how I feel about it now, but I refuse to do anything further.  I do, really...


3)   Can I use raw, un-melted beeswax in artwork - and if so, how?
Sadly, my husband's bees died.  He took the wax out of the frames and threw it away, but I quickly rescued it from the trash, because... there must must something I can do with it, right?

4)   If you change the name of your blog will the search engines be confused? Or is it better to retain the old name for official purposes, but just leave it off the header? I know the url will still go to the same place, but are there any problems I should know about?

I received an email from Seth apter saying that "your response to the question 'what is the one thing that you know now that you would have liked to have known when you first started to create art?' will be highlighted in my blog post on Sunday, February 24th as part of the series Tell All. In case you do not remember, this is part of the series of questions you answered for this project way back in June 2011." Since I don't remember my response, I'm curious to find out what I said.  I hope you're curious, too; just click on the 'Tell All' banner above.

And don't worry- if you're waiting for 'Dressing Up, part 2', I haven't forgotten; it will be posted soon!