My Next Big Project: Our Wedding!

Yes, it's true! My next big creative project is going to be our wedding and it's going to be soon! My mister and I have been together for 10 years, we've been engaged for 1 year, and we just decided in December that we're getting married this April. Eek! It's all very exciting. And very distracting, let me tell you.

So my studio is now dotted with guest lists, potential invitation designs, vintage family wedding photos, and all sorts of drafts for dresses, theme colors, and cake tops! No, we won't be making everything our selves and we won't be having a big traditional day. But, yes, we will be aiming to have an eco-friendly wedding and a DIY spirit for a small beloved gathering of family and friends to help us celebrate. And, I can't pass up the opportunity for a pretty dress, a good meal, and a bit of dancing all adorned in flowers and romance and dear friendships!

My two bridal bibles have been the Anti-Bride Wedding Planner and The DIY Wedding. Not to mention, a handful of smart crafty married friends with all sorts of pointers and references and good ideas. One of my favorite ideas? A vintage metal birdcage for the cards on the gift table. If the slots are wide enough, the envelopes slip right through. And another fun idea is somehow using vintage family photos in our decorating theme. Good grief, I'm going to be a bride! The great thing about planning a wedding in 4 months is the liberating effect of making decisions somewhat quickly and moving on to the next decision. Oh my!

Forgive me for a bit of dreaminess and distraction but 3 months is a only a little bit of time. And somehow, in these moments, the loose threads of life & art & love & grief & inspiration & creativity all seem to tangle together at the ends. Suddenly, my wedding invitation designs are scattered among recent Polaroids, tucked under my new Denyse Schmidt quilting book, all just next to the list of publishers I'm soliciting with my poems. (Dear studio, forgive me, in just a few months you'll be all cleaned up again. I promise!) I guess sometimes the lines get a little knotted and art becomes love becomes life. Oh, swoon. Dear friends, I'm getting married in April!

A Little Collection of Things & a New Look!

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Happy MLK day and happy inauguration day too! A very exciting 2009 is on its way. And, I've created a new blog look for the new year. I figure: New year, new look. I hope you like the new banner, I'm glad for a little change. The top Polaroid photo inspired me to create a new banner/ logo/ image. Something about it seemed to capture my work as a poet and I hopped on the opportunity to incorporate more of my disparate creative parts into one look. Fun! I've also been scanning in a bunch of little lovelies so these photo booth images have been tugging on my heartstrings. (Hi, Mister Sweetie-Pie!)

(makes me giggle.)

(the classic photo booth pose: kiss, kiss.)

I'm still taking inventory of my studio and trying to decide how best to prioritize my Big Art Dreams for 2009. Of course, this is an ever-shifting and always evolving task but I like taking this time at the beginning of the year to reflect and refocus. How to balance the day-to-day ritual of creating work with the bigger dreams for the work to evolve? That's a challenge, for certain. For me, it means putting my work out there to publishers, curators, grants panels, and editors and to put the work out there consistently and fearlessly regardless of everything else. Hrmph. So, I'm starting small with 2 submissions a month and hoping that will nudge me to the bigger things.

Honestly? I could just keep taking photos, writing poems, collecting ephemera, sketching in my journal, and dreaming up new prints all the day long. And some days I do! The art-making and art-business balance is a tough one. I know so many of you also struggle with this too! The balance, the balance, the balance. There certainly is no shortage of inspiration. (I am also currently super inspired by Denyse Schimdt's modern quilt designs, particularly this one. A friend pointed me in her direction and I'm getting a hankering for some craft-time. A quilt? Maybe. For now, I'm just enjoying the browsing.)

A few bits of ephemera I'm currently loving are these postcards from John Derian. I visited his lovely shops when we were in Manhattan. Dreamy, dreamy.

(John Derian, "Trinkets". The text was taken from letters found in an old hotel.
This certain makes me swoon.)

(John Derian, "Blue Chair". Isn't that chair adorable?)

(John Derian, "Script". All that handwriting = swoon, swoon.)

(John Derian, "Horse". Oh, I have this thing for horses.)

A few more things... I went to the SFMOMA last week and the show was so interesting that I'm going back. Take a peek at their website for The Art of Participation and Martin Puryear summaries. I also had a double-date at the Asian Art Museum and completely fell in love with this tiny sculpture which I can't find on their website. (Ho hum.) It was from the Afghanistan exhibit and it was just 2 inches high, part rooster on the bottom and part human on the top. It was delightful! And if that wasn't enough culture sightseeing, the poetry reading series have kicked up again and SPT hosted a delightful Poets Theater on Friday night and on Saturday night, the reading at the Canessa Reading Series was quite fantastic.

Hooray, poets! Hooray, museums! Hooray, postcards! Hooray, little pile of Polaroids on my desk waiting to be scanned. Today I am taking it slow and easy. And for my American friends, I hope you are enjoying a day off for MLK day! For friends everywhere, I hope you are enjoying your day regardless. xoxo, k.

A Mega Catch-Up Post!

1. Another winter walk, this time in the city.

2. Snow and wind and winter beard.

3. Trying to photograph the wind.

4. Bare trees and dark sky Brooklyn.

5. Dear friend.

6. Storm clouds and winter beach in grays.

7. The bare bone tones of winter.

8. A bit of sand art. (See the "peace" in the corner?)

9. And then there was sun!

10. You, dear boy.

11. Sand swirls, too pretty to pass up.

12. Birds and boys chase to scatter.

13. With peace, we welcome the New Year.

I've managed to edit down my favorite travel photos to a few small batches, which I've shared with you here. The previous post showed photos from our stay in rural New York but this batch shows Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Jersey shore. It was so cold in NYC! So cold that as we treked through the streets of Brooklyn on New Year's Eve, I was quite certain my knees were getting frostbite right through my blue tights! My goodness, dear winter.

And finally in the last few days before we flew back to California, the sun made a grand appearance at the Jersey shore. Such dramatic winter weather, I must admit I love its intensity and the constant reminder that we are just a part of this big lovely earth and with one fell snowstorm we can be begging on our knees for mercy. (For the record, I surrender!)

Quite the opposite here in sunny California this weekend as I soiled my fingernails yesterday with the first 2009 weeding of the garden. I think I even got a little sunburn on the bridge of my nose. The sunlight has been piercing through the leaves of the lemon tree outside our front window. It's so dramatic from the living room looking out, as the afternoon sun makes some leaves chartreuse, some leaves the color of avocado skin, and other leaves nearly as yellow as the hanging lemons. Ah, the whims of winter.

And with that, I am also full of annual New Year energy to purge the studio shelves, the kitchen cabinets, and the storage closets. I'm ready to purge out the old year and make sure there's enough space for the New Year to find its way around. I've dragged the poetry manuscript back out of hibernation and I'm editing another "final" draft, yet again! I'm also preparing poems for submission to a handful of journals, researching grant deadlines and gallery guidelines, and taking a moment for a general look around my life to reflect, re-evaluate, and re-prioritize for the New Year. While we were on vacation, I scribbled a few '09 goals into my journal:

1. Submit my work 2 times each month (journals, presses, galleries, or grants.)
2. Buy a digital SLR and learn how to use it.
3. Build a website to capture all my art parts.
   
4. Buy more original art for our home.
5. Purge my studio, home, and office to the theme, "Focus on what you love".
   

And with that, I'm heading back to the manuscript edits for this afternoon. I'm enjoying a little bit of downtime to take a peek around my portfolio, my studio supplies, and my computer files to see what I've done in the past year and how I want to intentionally move ahead into 2009. And, there's another very good reason I'm somewhat distracted and full of reflection--I'll tell you more about that soon. Happy day to you, my dear friends. And again, Happy New Year.

Wintery Wonderlands

It's hard to believe that the past two weeks have come and gone and I'm now sitting back in my studio editing photos from my holiday trip. Hard to believe it's only been two weeks since my last post and while it seems like I've been away from my Californian life for months, I've actually only been gone for a little under two weeks. My goodness. Time has a way of warping in strange shapes with the holidays and various time zones and many legged trips and travels. (Hello there, 2009. I'm home!)

I took over 200 photos on my East Coast trip so I'm going to edit and post them in batches to keep us all from overload. The first leg of the trip was to my hometown in western NY--a wee little town that you haven't heard of unless you're from there--and I managed to take a few Wintery walks with my mister, my mom, and my older siblings. It's amazing how we seem to play the same roles as we did 20 and 30 years ago as soon as we pull on the fuzzy boots and silly hats and start tromping through the snowy woods. It was hilarious.

And what could be a sweeter greeting than snow when flying in from California? I'm forever inspired by the bare brown branches, the silhouetted overhead birds, and the hues of gray and white that pirouette and leap off the thick snowy earth. There's rarely a blue sky in my hometown all winter. So that means the white ground often extends to a white sky and the bare trees are the only objects to break-up the horizon. It's so desolate and dramatic. Striking and sparse. It reminds me of being in the desert-- there's nothing to hide behind and somehow in that sparseness there's a simplicity and a harrowing, howling silence. A penetrating peace that I often crave.

Soon, I'll post more photos and other creative news from legs 2 and 3 of my trip. Tonight, I must tackle the large suitcase in the center of my bedroom or it threatens to stay there all through the work week. Happy 2009, dear friends, I think it's going to be a good year.