Monday Treasury

Musical Clocks

  

Every clock I have produced has a story behind it.  Whether it’s from my friend’s famous pies or my mother’s craft room, every idea has an origin.  The guitar pick clocks are no different.  In fact music has been a constant theme in my art.  I have always had a passion for music.  If I did not go the visual artist route I would have ventured into the musician world. 

As is my brother went the musician route.  He played the piano as a kid and latter on picked up the guitar.  It is his outlet and passion.  He studies other artist, mostly rock and roll and country, composes his own songs and will play for almost anyone who will listen.  I use to love sitting around after work and sketching while he played.  A couple of years ago everyone pitched in and got him a drum set for Christmas so he could jam with others.  Since then his music room has grown, earplugs are mandatory, and good friends have started to take drum lessons to accommodate.

When I started thinking about clocks I kept my brother close in my mind.  He is not the kind of person who would shop on Etsy, partially because he is a last minute Christmas Eve mall shopper, if not a giver of cash in a store bought card, but mainly because he doesn’t have a computer.  But if I could create a product he liked, then I would be reaching a target audience.  A musical audience!  So when I came up with the guitar clock I gifted him one of the first I made.  It’s still on his wall, made of wood instead of a vinyl record, and all his buddies love it.

The guitar pick clock has come a long way since my first wood prototypes.  I switched to vinyl when I ran out of the scrap wood I had sitting around my studio.  It was a brilliant choice and is very appropriate especially for my musical orientated clocks.  I have many versions of the guitar picks now and can’t seem to keep enough in stock.

I’m always open to custom orders.  In fact I have an uncle who wants me to take a pick of his with a lot of personal memento and use it on a clock for his music room.  I’m more than happy to accommodate, but first he has to get me the pick! 

I’m always playing with new ideas, and thinking of different people in my life.  I never know who will inspire me next. Maybe it will be you!

  

Reworking my Etsy "About"

So I have decided to change my About section on my Etsy page and after playing with it awhile I'm not so sure if  I'm on the right track for myself.
I'll walk you through my thought process.

I've had the following since I started my shop in early 2010.

I am a visual artist who is finding ways to incorporate my talents and passion into functional art. I love to paint in all mediums available to me. I also love to print, and to teach others to print. 

Right now clocks are a big thing for me. I collected clocks as a kid and my love for the ticking and tocking has never died. A while ago I was looking for a new clock for our new home, but I wanted something fun and original. I didn’t find anything I liked, so I started to make my own. Since then I have had tons of fun with it.

I have transformed the den in our house to my studio, and am constantly fighting with my green thumb husband about how much space he can have for his plants! I have had a studio in every house/apartment I’ve lived in for the past 16 years, even if it meant I didn’t have a living room. Having a studio was a prerequisite before getting married or buying a house. 

I love to create. It makes me feel accomplished. I sit at a desk for my day job and at the end of the day there is nothing I’d rather do than play in the studio.

I felt there was not enough of me in this description.  I was telling about my products but not enough about me.  I wanted to describe myself with more of my voice.  I also wanted a little bit that others could relate to.  So I came up with the following.

I love stories I can lose myself in, sun soaking kitties, kayaking the Puget Sound, skirts with pockets, playing footbag with my husband, and homemade breakfast burritos for dinner.

As a kid I would read books in my favorite trees, swim in the river, beat all the boys in bike races with no hands, collect fun clocks, and of course get my friends to craft with me.

As an adult I barley have time to read books in one sitting like I use to. I still swim the river at least twice a summer and I look longingly at my bike every morning as I leave to my day job.

I have transformed the den in our house into my studio, and am constantly fighting with my green thumb husband about how much space he can have for his plants! My studio is my sanctuary where I spend my time printmaking, sketching, painting, making clocks and inspiring others in random craft projects.

I believe everyone can harness the power of creativity and use it for greater good. My ultimate goal with my art is to motivate others, and motivate myself to live up to my childhood expectation of being an adult.

I then got to thinking that this says nothing about how I got to be on Etsy.  So I started from scratch again and came up with the following.

When I was a kid I said I wanted to be an artist and had elaborate day dreams about how life as an adult artist would be.  As a teenager I would have similar day dreams, but shortly after that I got caught up in everyone else’s expectations and forgot all about these dreams.  As I worked my way through college for literature and various other subjects, art was always and only on the side.  It was something I was good at but not a career path.  Even while working at the local art store I never considered pursuing art as my business.  In hindsight this is very surprising because I always had studio space wherever I lived, even if it meant I slept in the closet.   But I never once took my childhood artist dream seriously, I had pretty much forgotten about it.

 

Since I have opened my Etsy shop in earl 2010 I feel like I have found lost pages of my childhood diary.  All of a sudden I remember those day dreams and desires and now I am working hard at making up for lost time. I want to be the adult I once dreamed I would be.

I have transformed the den in our house into my studio, and am constantly fighting with my green thumb husband about how much space he can have for his plants!  It is the best studio space I have ever had.  It is my sanctuary where I spend my time printmaking, sketching, painting, making clocks and inspiring others in random craft projects. 

As you can tell I like the line about my transformed Den.  I think it's important for people to know where I work.  What I did leave out was that I work a day job, I'm torn about this.  I want people to know I'm struggling like everyone else, but at the same time I feel strong as an artist and don't feel defined by my day job.  

I realize that I don't talk about my process or my material in this introduction.  I feel this is better left to the individual listings.

I would love to hear some input about these post.  With each rewrite I'm becoming more and more unsure of what my "About" should say.

Help!

A Working Weekend

Right now I'm working every other weekend.  This last weekend was the Made by Heart and Hand event for Mothers day.  I think it was a particularly successful event considering it was the first of its kind in the Wave Studio.  I will definitely participate in their next event if given the opportunity.
I made some new friends and met up with some old friends.  It was a wonderful day.

Mothers Day Show

If you are in the Olympia area don't forget to come by the wave studio when your out and about for the Wooden Boat Show this weekend.
It's sure to be a great collection of artist and crafters.  Look for me and my clocks!

Treasury Tribute to Pickling Asparagus

Pickling Asparagus

Every year my husband and I get two or three lug of asparagus it pickle them up.  My husband is from Yakima, WA and we get the asparagus pretty cheep when we go visit his folks on the other side of the mountains.

This year I made my own pickling spice

The LAST jar from 2010   Good timing

fresh fresh fresh

Last night we pickled the first lug.  I couldn't find my recipe from the previous year so I thought I would try something out of this Put em Up book we got this last year.  I didn't think anything of the recipe but I did make a few changes according to what spices I had on hand, nothing that would have a huge impact on the final product.  This morning I wake up to my husband saying we boiled the jars too long.  Now I remember boiling the jars for the same amount of time, I was positive of that.  But something did go wrong.  Upon inspecting his claim I found the asparagus to be stringy, limp, looking nothing like our previous years.

Jars just out of the pot

Next morning.... all wrinkled???

So I went on a hunt for my old recipe this morning and found it.  I also looked at a whole bunch of other recipes while I was at it.  All the recipes vary from 10 min. bath to 20 min. bath.  So I'm fine there.  No way would a few minutes cause such a deformity.  So I started to look into ingredients and guess what.  Every recipe I found has either equal amounts of vinegar and water, or either more water than vinegar.  The recipe I pulled from our canning book had us do a 4 to 1 ratio with vinegar being the 4.  And the vinegar they suggested was cider vinegar.  Here is a link to the page. 

We are expecting our next couple of lugs this weekend when his folks come to visit.  This time we will use our original recipe.

I just found this page that gives me a lot more information about our Yakima grass.   Link
It tell me that the wrinkling will go away after a few weeks on the shelf and it also touches on the subject of vinegar.  From what I can conclude I think this batch will be OK but we will use our old recipe next time.

Fantastic Mural

My husband and I live close to the Western Chehalis Trail.  It is a wonderful trail that goes for many miles accessible to bikes, roller skates, and walkers.  We have ridden our bikes out to the monarch sculpture garden; we have ridden to friends houses, and once upon a time before life got too busy I would ride ten + miles a day after work just for giggles.

The trail has had a lot of work done to it over the last few years.  There is one building along the trail that has been transformed to my liking.  When walking the trail to my husband’s work the other day I got a chance to take some great pictures.  Hope you enjoy.

Norman Rockwell Exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum

I had the pleasure of going to the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum this last weekend with my good friend.  This was an extraordinary experience for me; beautiful weather, great company, and a revelation about an artist I hadn’t put much though into before.     

My favorite permanent installation
at the Tacoma Art Museum.

If you could not tell by my prints, I love to tell stories with art.  I have always adored Rockwell’s images for the stories they tell but I never once put any thought into what medium he used or how large the originals were.  That is until I found myself standing in this gallery looking at these large oil canvases and being struck dumb by the amount of work that went into each one.  Yet he did not consider himself an artist.  He preferred the term illustrator because of his lack of passion. 

There was one statement made by Norman that struck me the most.  I cannot quote it word for word, but it was the idea that he was envious of students who swooned over the Mona Lisa.  This was because he did not have that kind of passion for art work, he considered himself more analytical.

This idea makes perfect sense to me as I begun to see his process unfold.  It was almost scientific the way he would pose people, photograph them, collect data, take notes, and make numerous studies in charcoal and paint.  Every smile, every embellished eyebrow, every wrinkle, every detail was calculated out before the final painting was started.    

Even with all this exact science or analytical style of painting, I consider him a master of the art.  I know some don’t consider him an artist for the same reason he did not consider it himself, but I have absolutely no problem referencing him as a great.  Nor do I have a problem falling deeply in love with his work after being in the presence of his original oils on canvas.  It gives me a whole new perspective of his work, and the medium he mastered. 

   

If you are in the area, I do hope you make a point to stop by and visit this exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum.  Not only did we see the Rockwell Exhibit but we walked over the bridge of glass and witnessed a bell choir performing the Phantom of the Opera.  It was a beautiful day that ended with us eating watermelon in the sunshine.  

If you have never walked over the bridge of glass you are missing out.

And the winner is....

Alessandra @Tribal Times!

Congratulations Alessanda you have won a free clock of your choice!
Thanks to all for participating in my giveaway.