Almost Spring and Summer Dress Dreams

I want to make a dress like this one. Something like this from the front side.

Like this from the backside.

Like this from the front and back sides.

I will use these two designers and these two books to refine my sketches.

I will use this fabric.

And, oh, how I love the African Ikat patterns on fabric. And how these colors remind me of the blue sky and tan fields all along the hillsides in the summer in Northern California.

And then I start thinking of girls in fields in dresses.

And I want to make this dress because February is promising spring and spring is always promising summer.

And it's all a result of just a few sunny days in Oakland that make me dream of summer dresses and bright summer sunshine and girls twirling around in frocks in imaginary forests and fields. So...

As soon as I can dig my sewing machine out from the unpacked stacks in my studio I am going to sew. And I am going to make some new prints on fabric. And I am going to make this dress.

And I am going to make a new inspiration wall to hover above my desk, full of patterns and prints and postcards and dress design sketches. I keep imagining where the inspiration wall will be, like it's just under the fresh layer of paint waiting for me to peel back the edges.

My best friend is visiting from Michigan and we are spending our time chatting and giggling and going to performances and giggling and chatting and watching the Oscars and taking a long Sunday hike and also giggling and chatting. Maybe our photo shoot from a few summer's past is inspiring all this dreamy summer dress thinking.

Or maybe my hands are just ready for thread and needle, ink and linoleum blocks, like the sun shines and suddenly the world needs more Polaroids and love letters and summery dresses. xoxo, k.

Mini Artists Retreat: Tomales Bay

Sometimes a girl just needs a getaway, right? That's what we thought too. So this weekend I was part of a mini ladies art retreat just north of San Francisco. I joined forces with a handful of Bay Area artist bloggers and we took to a cottage on Tomales Bay where we cooked, rested, giggled, painted, beaded, strolled, adventured, and otherwise sat on the dock overlooking the bay and marveled at the birds and sunsets.

I haven't been on a proper art retreat since I spent a month at the Vermont Studio Center in summer 2005. And there's something so special about surrounding yourself with other artists as you carry out your daily activities. There's a true sense of community and communing when we tend to gravitate towards the same things, just in individual ways.

It's kind of amazing to look out at the clouds changing colors and realize the person next to you is grabbing her camera too, putting her beads down and resting her paintbrush to pull on her coat and head out to the dock before the light changes. To remember that our instincts are shared by other like-minded folks, it's just the individual view that changes from lens to lens. Le sigh.

I hope you had a lovely weekend too, friends. I wish every one of you could have joined us on the dock for just a few days. If we do it again, maybe we'll get more organized and figure out how to integrate more artists. Imagine the possibilities! xoxo, k.

Please, Pardon My Mess!

(the front door, where the nest begins.)

(the front steps, lined with potted plants.)

(the front window, full of raindrops.)

We have moved! The final boxes made it into our new apartment this weekend and I am elated with the possibilities of our new space. Yes, I dare say "elated". Though, the feeling of elation is not yet evident when you walk through the front door and enter the stacks of boxes and bags.

I'm certainly not ready to give you a tour quite yet but in a few weeks, I promise. (Oh, the excitement of having my studio unpacked, my kitchen ready to bake muffins and scones, the bedroom ready to provide a cozy retreat.) After we moved it started raining and became very obvious that we should stay inside and deal with our sweet mess.

I wanted to show you the bits of the garden that made the move with us and now line our front steps. We will mostly use "container gardening" until spring when the backyard can demand our full attention, but the herbs are happily stationed for now. I'll be back next week with a non-move related post and will return to posting on Mondays. Oh, dear friends, please pardon my mess!

PS--I am loving Just Kids by Patti Smith. It's her biography of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and as the publisher says, "Begins as a love story and ends as an elegy". So, so good.

Moving and Unearthing Things

*one*

*two*

*three*.

Dear friends,

Our move is now just days away. As you can imagine, the boxes are stacking up and towering all around us. We now have to leave paths to get from the kitchen table to the refrigerator and from the front door back to the kitchen table again. We have to be careful not to stub our toes and bang our elbows as we navigate!

In unearthing stacks of journals from the studio I was struck by my earliest artwork and writings. A bag of journals written by a-very-young-me revealed the difference in my intuition and my "attempts to be a poet". The same was true for the visual artwork. I finally took a stack of lifeless paintings on canvas to the recycling bin while treasuring the early botanical sketches, dress designs, and photographs. It felt liberating! In short, I kept the work that looks like me but I purged the work that looks like I wanted to be somebody else.

An art teacher in college told me, "Fight like hell to hold on to your style, they'll try to take that away from you, but you'll ultimately realize how much you want it back." So true. This purge felt like I was honoring her advice from 15 years ago: Hold on to the parts that are yours, disregard the parts that aren't. And very soon, dear friends, we will be moved into our new nest and the boxes will be emptying instead of filling. Oh, what a promise.

xoxo, k.

PS-- Some favorite annual events are coming up in the Bay Area: The SoEx Monster Drawing Rally, the White Elephant Sale, and YBCA's Bay Area Now... just for starters.