Uplift Artisan

03/10/2022

I’m not gonna lie, my family has been eating Ramen, burritos, and a lot of takeout lately. I’m loving the creative process of making costumes for the school musical (Descendants at the Avo Theater—message me for tix), but it doesn’t just consume time, it’s a lot of mental energy! I’m so old school, someone asked me if I had a spreadsheet of what I was doing and I laughed. I have pages of everything written down attached to a clipboard and I check off and highlight in my own little system. I know exactly what’s happening, but if you approach me out in the wild, I‘ll 9 times out of 10 not get the kid’s name or character right. There’s a lot of them!
What this all means is that doing a painting a day for 100 days is its own challenging entity. For the past week I’ve been on my own case for not getting to it (along with cleaning off counters and other domestic duties and pursuits).
Today, I decided I needed to re-ground myself out in nature and took a long walk on the beach. I also decided to get off my own case. I’m still going to do , but they might be a little spread out right now. By the end, there will be 100 works of art with the theme , but it will be on a timeline I decide and feel good about.

02/19/2022

I don’t have a story today. I didn’t get inspired from something out in nature that I saw. This was inspired by a box in my studio that holds a bunch of ephemera. I just looked around and thought, what can I paint? I am such a rookie, I’m giving myself permission to just copy something I see sometimes. That means I can’t give credit to the original artist. It’s just a box covered in flowers from Michael’s.

02/18/2022

If you know me, you may know this bird story. A few years ago, every day, this black and white bird would show up perched on the glass partition that makes up part of our wall around our yard. Every day.

I like to sit out there in the afternoons and read. Our yard overlooks the canyon and it’s surprising how much activity you can see if you just sit still.
This bird would come around 4:00 PM EVERY DAY and it didn’t seem scared of me. Then I started noticing that I would be thinking about the bird, sometimes when I was in the kitchen doing dishes for example, and I would look out the window and all of a sudden, THERE WAS MY BIRD!

It was starting to get freaky, and yet, MAGICAL.

I would think about the bird and she (I feel like she’s a she, just like I think our bunny is a she, but the jury is out) would show up. I always had this phrase, “Where is my birdie? Birdie-birdie, where are you?” (said in a sing-song voice). And again, I’d look up and there’s the bird!

Friends would even come over and I’d be like, “Do you want to see my birdie?!!” And I would say “Birdie birdie, where are you?” AND SHE WOULD COME. So, there are witnesses.

This would go on for months, and then the bird would disappear for a while. And then, back for a few months! That was the pattern for a couple years.

I feel like it’s been a while, or at least more sporadic. Either that, or I have not been paying attention.

WELL, two days ago I pulled up in the driveway from picking my son up from school. And I was telling him about my .
GUESS WHO WAS HANGING OUT ON THE SIDE OF THE DRIVEWAY?!!!
I took a photo lest you think I am just talking smack.

Magic is real, y’all.

I think this bird is called a Black Phoebe.


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02/16/2022

Part of my inspiration are the vintage cards I have from some long-forgotten estate sale. I did some digging. From the 1880’s and lasting about 90 years, Arm & Hammer included bird trading cards in their soda boxes. They were called ‘Useful Birds of America’.

I’m obsessed and may need to get a magnifying glass because the words are TINY and I am blind. Speaking of tiny, this is the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. Here’s some bird education for ya from the back of the card:

‘This, the smallest of our birds, is well-known to everyone who has a luxuriant flower garden. It poises itself gracefully, thrusting it’s long beak into the heart of the most conspicuous blossom, extricating the honey of which it is so fond. Tiny gnats and spiders supply the remainder of its diet. The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird is the only northeastern representative of some 500 hundred tropical species. The nest, made of plant down bound with spiderweb and ornamented with lichens, is about as large as a watch, while the two white eggs are no larger than peas.’

Each card has this message at the end:
‘FOR THE GOOD OF ALL, DO NOT DESTROY THE BIRDS.’

I will definitely be digging into more research about this and I will share as I go along.

02/15/2022

This feels kind of intimidating! I have no formal art training. I dabble here and there, wanting to learn all the things. I once took a beginning art class 20 years ago at UCSD, but I was either late because of work or I would skip it altogether because I was GOING to be so late. I wish I could go back to college because I would take allllll the art, literature, and art history classes—all of them!

I’ve also decided that just because my chosen theme is birds and blooms doesn’t mean that every day there must be a bird and a bloom. It can be an and/or because I make the rules, YAY! And it can be whatever medium I want, double YAY!

Today we went on a hike in the hills before dusk and I found these sweet, little flowers.

02/14/2022

Yesterday began . Every year I contemplate joining in along with other creative friends but. . .I don’t.

I can never come up with anything I’m compelled to do which is kind of lame considering my brain is filled to the brim with projects I want to tackle and things I want to learn.

Today, I see that this yearly endeavor begins. My friend described it as “commitment energy” and that pulled me right in. And knowing that our other friend was doing it, too, clinched the deal.

So, I had to think fast. I thought of sitting in the sun this morning, smelling the jasmine and watching a hummingbird and I had an idea, .

Honestly, I have no idea what that will look like, but that’s okay. It’s all an exploration.

I wasn’t home most of the day, so Day 1/100 entailed me digging up out of my studio these sweet vintage cards from an estate sale years ago that I’ve had no idea what to do with.

Perfect inspiration.

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04/08/2020

FREE online cooking classes from MILK STREET.

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04/08/2020

Mad World.

One of the songs that I played over and over again growing up was Mad World by For Fears Youtube. Hard to imagine a song that seems more relevant righ...

04/04/2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/arts/design/liza-lou.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR3XwWD8vO-iwriuKsyRoYtrmCiD75SHWmasRFPvKAKwNbfB3IJkXyLxK6E

You can craft your way to a sense of community, says the artist Liza Lou. She’s creating her “comfort” project on Instagram in real time.

04/03/2020

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04/01/2020

I've been doing these 21-Day Meditations with Deepak Chopra & Oprah for a few years now.
They have a new free one, 'Finding Hope in Uncertain Times'.

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