2011 was a rewarding art year for me

2011 was a very fulfilling year for me art wise and I couldn't be more grateful for the opportunities to create.

My family supported my time spent in the studio so that I could finish my Dust Bowl Glimpses paintings (a year-long + project in the making). My daughters and I embarked on a clay project, "Tiny Rabbits". I stretched and gesso(ed) a stash of organic fabric that I later adhered to salvaged Mexican Chechen hardwood to make eco-canvases for my oil paintings. I met some incredible artists and artisans through my participation in several Poppytalk Handmade markets and through members of the Etsy Folk Reveries Team and Etsy -- you are such an inspiration! I also deepened relationships with dear, dear friends from within my art circle-- you are my heroes! And, I had a guest art tutorial published on the AMAZING design blog, Poppytalk: "Drink up these these kitchen colorants".

It couldn't get better than that, right? Well, I've just learned that my art tutorial has been chosen as one of Poppytalk's "10 Most Popular DIY's for 2011" as well as included in Poppytalk's "10 Gorgeous Wall Art DIYs". I'm speechless...it's truly an honor to be included here. Thank you Jan + Earl for promoting the handmade movement, indie artists/artisans, emerging designers, and trends -- you make our lives more beautiful!

Here's to a fruitful 2012 for all of us. Cheers!

shorpy finds: metropolitan museum of art

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (circa 1902)

Someday I swear I'll take my daughters to this place. For now, this photo will do the trick.

One of my goals for 2012 is to visit as many local art museums as I can -- thankfully there are plenty to choose from here in the Pacific NW.

Cheers + Happy New Years!
Mandy

taking the mother road -- the first story

NOTE: This post was originally published on August 29, 2011.

"Taking the Mother Road" - limited edition giclée print

Please allow me to share a story for each of the six paintings from my Dust Bowl Glimpses series, my first in some years now. They are dedicated to the impoverished people who, despite hardship, extended a hand to help strangers because it was the humane thing to do.

The first, "Taking the Mother Road", sets the stage for the remaining five:

They didn’t want to leave but they had no choice. Drought, dying livestock, foreclosures, and acres of topsoil blown into their homes and lungs drove them away from the only life they knew. California offered promises of steady work and fertile ground—a fresh start. They were taking the mother road.

"Taking the Mother Road" - 8"x8" acrylic on cradled wood panel

The colors are intentionally-muted. The landscape appropriately desolate. "Taking the Mother Road" attempts to capture the constant migration of families.

One by one, impoverished families of the Dust Bowl (1930s America) crawled onto Route 66, the mother road, in search of a better living out West. While some families stayed put, most could no longer endure the merciless conditions created by what would become a record-breaking 10-year drought, uncultivable land, and devastating winds that blew an estimated 100 million acres of topsoil across the region into homes, schools, and townships. One storm no dust bowler ever forgot was “Black Sunday”, a debilitating dust storm on April 14, 1935, that rolled across Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas.

My research on this project involved:

• Reading John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath
• Listening to my mom share stories of our ancestors who homesteaded on the prairies of Kansas and Colorado during the 1930s
• Viewing PBS' American Experience (love their whole body of work) Surviving the Dust Bowl
  
• Viewing the government-sponsored documentary released in 1936 The Plow that Broke the Plains
• Visiting a variety of online sites
  

For those of you interested in learning more on the subject, I highly recommend watching the aforementioned videos. Interestingly, I chose not to watch the 20th Century Fox movie version of The Grapes of Wrath for fear of being influenced by the images. Not sure why I thought that, but I did. The Oscar-winning movie is now in my Netflix queue.

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Click here to read the stories on the remaining five DUST BOWL GLIMPSES paintings. Galleries have also been added to my Web site: www.weatheredsilo.com.

inspiration: p.e. guerin

One of my favorite sources for inspiring artisans is the anthropologist via anthropologie.

They profiled P.E. Guerin, the nation's oldest decorative hardware firm. Today artisans craft intricate metalwork just as they did when the company was founded in 1857. I can definitely see myself working for this business -- oh to be lost in the process.

Enjoy.

inspiration: forever roam

I can't remember exactly how I came across this blog yesterday, but the title is apropos! FOREVER ROAM is curated by two designers "on a mission to inspire people through art, music, fashion and life." Enjoy!