Julie Dru and I: a new doll project!!!

A hint of (wonderful) things to come:

Talented Artist Julie Dru and Yours-truly are starting together a wonderful project. We are going to make dolls together, I am so excited about it! I will make the body, send to her ; she will paint them and some fabric and send everything back to me, I will create the outfit/headdress or what ever it needs and then she may still work on it some more!

It's up to me to start now! ...and I did, and here is a little peak at my begining. I picked this brown material because I love the colour. I don't know - Julie - if that will be hard to paint, but I know you: you can handle any creative challenge!!!  I will post more as I go along!

To quote someone I know, "YeeHaaaaa!!!"

Check Julie's wonderful Art!
Julie's websites:
www.etsy.com/shop/SomeMilk?ref=si_shop
http://www.julied.jimdo.com/

The winds of friendship

I believe I may have posted this image here before, but it is ever so fitting today.

Today I was reminded. We all learn sooner or later that life does not owe us to be fair, friends do not owe us to be faithful, and even a love that can be 10 or 40 years old can suddenly implode, and life is this ever changing flow that you can just only ride, like a leaf in the wind, and be ever so thankful that you were aquainted with these souls who shared with you their ever so sacred existence. That is enough.  There is beauty in all the confusion, the illusions, even in pride, ego. They are the great winds of life. And when a relationship implodes upon itself like a souflé, there is this realisation once more of the nature of life which is suffering. There is the realization once again of the impermanence of all things. And in that moment we grow tremendously. And we treasure the love that we have for ourselves, it is a rock, eternal, an island that no wind can blow.

We are our own most precious friend.

The Art is here!!!

This is a detail from the Art I did for lafolieemilie (alias LÔ) for "The sketchbook project".
To see all the Art I did or what all the talented other artists have done so far, visit her wonderful blog at:
http://sketchbookproject4lo.blogspot.com/

rainy day and leafs

I so enjoyed taking pictures of all these leafs on that rainy day in the Kortright Nature Centre, north of Toronto!

the beauty of repairs

This old towel was my very 1st purchase for a home of my own, when I was 18 and moved to a student room centre near my Luminy school of Art, near Marseille in in France. It had these beautiful colours, my favorites at the time: turquoise blue and hot red!

It has over the long years slowly fallen apart and I realized a few months ago that I had to either throw it away or do something with it. But I am pretty sentimental about my "firsts". A pathetic Romantic. So it had to stay. Then I did these repairs, in a very folky and hommy style, and I do love how it looks! I even wish it had more holes so I could make more patches!

I will add to it as time goes! 

One day there will be no towel left, just the repairs! I really wonder how that would look!!!

set back

Oh... I can't tell you how upset I was, last week , when I discovered that my kitty Loulou, in a fit of rage at not beeing allowed outside when she was in heat, peed on my Sketchbook Project and reuined the whole thing... and everyting that was on my desk that day.  I was very mad but ...hey, I cleaned thing up, we made up since, yes - because we must - and , I guess, I will reorder a book and start all over again.

...my punisment for procrastinating perhaps.
Life will go on. I think.

the red handed child in ceremonial head-dress

Here is the first finished doll of the series of 4 you saw previously, that are smaller and simpler... but, I hope you will agree, succesful just the same! I am really happy with this one, It has the spirit I wanted for it.

I have repainted the face, I think for the better. I like this startled expression, fitting for the ceremonial head dress alluding to an important ceremony in the life of the young child! a child of the future, a child of the light!

finished dress

I thought I would show you brown doll with her finished dress. I love the material, and the straps took care of her wardrobe malfunction issues!!! she is waiting now for a garment that will go under the dress and cover her arms.

2012 world tour sketchbook project - It's here!!!

 Here it is, "The Sketchbook Project" has arrived (woh! that was fast!)
I started on it right away, I was so motivated! I hope it keeps that way. I want to do something special, inspired knowing many hands will visit it in the Brooklyn library for years and on the 2012 tour! It's exciting!

May my muse be there for me!

The Wheel of Time

I thought I would give you a link that speaks about a great book series called "The wheel Of Time" by Robert Jordan.

I am falling in love with it more and more.

 (I just started the 2nd book) ...I can not quite figure out why I love it so much exactly. It seems full of wisdom and beyond that a vision of a better world possible where wisdom is well guarded and well tought. That is something I cherish terribly: this idea of wisdom being tought and protected, which lacks so sadly in our world.

Here is a great article about the books by Abby Goldsmith:

http://www.sffworld.com/authors/g/goldsmith_abby/articles/jordan1.html

I agree with everything she says.

I love also this idea of a God called the Light, which fits my beliefs in NDE teachings...

...so...

... "The Light protect you"!

sketchbooks... sketchbooks... everywhere!!!

Yes!
I started a journal with my friend Chantel from work about coffee tasting...

...and just now I registered for this sketchbook project:
http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject
isn't it cool???

I also joined before that lafolieemilie's very own sketchbook project
...here:
http://www.sketchbookproject4lo.blogspot.com/
What a wonderful idea she had!!!

And then of course I have my own Note Book blog (not very up to date but ...some day...!!!)

I guess I love all manners of artist notes and sketches!!!
And it is so great to exchange and interact with other artists! I love that!

...so friends, see you out there on the Arthouse Sketchbook World Tour... or on Emilielafolie blog!!!!

Arh! funfunfun!

Peaceful paradise

        A slice of Paradise

               ...out of my favorite place on earth:

                           Algonquin Park!

Dolls in progress

This is where we are at. step by step we will get to the end.

Just so you don't wash your hand off me, I have booked some serious vaccations in september to do some serious Art. Of course it is very dangerous for a full time procrastinator to make any kind of promise but between now and then we should make some head way. That's all I can say really .

...You know me.

dolls essay

Here are some trials for possible driftwood dolls.
and some finished rough bodies for small one, maybe a little series of 4...
from my Toronto island drift wood collection !

I am back from a short trip to Algonquin and feeling so wonderful about it.

So many wonders there to see!
...amazing things.

Like a woolf howling just meters away!
...a snaping turtle coming to say hi... a tendem of loons racing under water with our canoe!!!
...thousands of dragon flies racing around us catching all the mosquitoes
perfect weather, the sound of water gurgling around our canoe...

Must I go on?
You get the picture.
You think "Damn lucky gall!"
You are right!

Damn lucky.

- but I took pictures so you can live vicariously through me... or my friend Renee, or her dog Emma!!!
} just go to my flickr page!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kipikart

My Art

My Art , a set on Flickr.

my flickr page! with more art and photos...

High-and-dry!

*This* ...is how, when you are around a lot of pens and paint brushes, you tie your hair up!!!

March

March is so interesting. The ice and packed snow melts ever so slowly, revealing layers of life and death, revealing Lost Treasures and Acorns, and  Traped Leafs are being freed again, free to rot and enrich the earth. The great Dance and prelude to Spring has started!!! ...Like a secret operation being quietly devised, a formidable show to come and be deployed,

...the Olympics of Nature!!!

A new direction or rather new exploration. It has been bouncing around in my head for a long time: this idea of an archeology of the future, a past in the future tense, a glimpse of what is possible. Only a glimpse because only our children will know what we can truly accomplish next, they are the one who will come up with ideas we were not able to come up with, see things we were blind to, think of things no one thought you could think of. That is, I guess, what this is really about.

Perhaps the inspiration for this came because I was so uplifted by the idea behind the Avatar movie: to see that Hollywood for the 1st time had imagined a world better than our own, filled with beauty, life, joy... and that this could be us one day. I realised then how important the job of artist is: to give people without imagination a vision of what could be. And what a magnificent task that is!

To me that task is what is sacred about Art.

Especially since, most artist will tell you, vision never flows from us, always through us.

Winter weeds

New work

Apologies - I have been away. In my mind. In the limbos of my heart.
I am back and you are back and we are friends again!
I have been painting - feebly, and what was born was something soft but potent. From a more quiet part of my soul, but a fertile place.

I hope you will like this. I want to know what you think.

Tell!