Fran Meneley

Alterations

I spent the afternoon in the studio (one eye on the fires smouldering in the distance) with a couple of friends making altered postcards. It is just what I needed after yesterday's 100 plus temps, roaring winds and freakin' fires billowing smoke down into Boulder! Today was a cool drink of friendship and some much needed soul soothing. Frida altered with dreamy shoes and a wreath of roses...as the rain fell outside, cooling all living things down! Thank you, goddess!

And this little Cy Twombly postcard a dream of sailing away on a leap to another realm and a reminder to Be Brave. Keep watch. Breathe. 

Oh Yes...

Did I mention I love June? With peonies galore and sunshine and afternoon rains and greenly trees and ice cream runs just as it gets dark and bare feet and smokey grills and sunshine drifting through sprinklers? How much joy can one person hold???

Yes, Please

Playing around in the studio this week I found these beautiful and amazing labels over at Miss Moss's Cottage...a.k.a. Dispatch from LA. Mary Ann has made a big 'ol batch of Quirky Handmade Labels available to us out here in bloglandia. Click on over here for the details...nine bucks and you get all the labels you see here plus a PDF. Quite a deal...just print them out on sticker paper and voila....

...they are ready for YOUR journal. I started a new journal, a new journey, so chose deep listening as it's talisman and the reminder that we are always ready to begin anew. 

It's the first page in this journal, made a while ago...I learned this neat journal form from Miss Moss as well. You can too...just click over to here. I'm a BIG fan, if you can't tell.

Summer's on in my book and I've made this little alter in the corner of my studio as an ode to my favorite month, June. The month seems so full of promise and the days are still growing longer...

...the perfect time to say YES, every chance I get!

Speaking of Mixed Media

Well hello there. I've been away, I know. Getting into a new house and out of the old has been a much bigger task, in every possible way, than I had expected. The new studio is coming together in a beautiful way and I'm itching to get to work on some new things. All in good time.

If you are looking for a fun Saturday event, stop by Two Hands Paperie tomorrow at 10:30 to meet The Pulse of Mixed Media author Seth Apter and hear a panel discussion with myself and three other contributing artists in the book - Lisa Hoffman, Sarah Fishburn and Marie Danti. We'll be speaking about what inspires us and moves us to make art - a book signing will follow.

I've just started a wonderful new book, The Anthropology of Turquoise and felt inspired to share this little snippet:

"But colors are not possessions: they are the intimte revelations of an energy. "Colours are the deeds and sufferings of light," wrote German poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Geothe. They are light wasves and mathematically precise lengths, and they are deep, resonant mysteries with boundless subjectivity.

Colros challenge language to encompass the. (It cannot; there are more sensations than words for them. Our eyes are far ahead of our tongues.) Colors bear the metaphors of entire cultures. They convey every sensation from lust to distress. They glow fluorescent on  the flanks of a fish out of the water, then flee at its death. They mark the land of a woman deity who controls the soft desert rain. Flowers use colors ruthlessly for sex.

 Moths steal them from their surroundings and disappear. An octopus commincates by color; an octopus blush is language. Humans imbibe colors as antidotes to emotional monotony. Our lives, when we pay attention to light, compel us to empathy with color." - from Ellen Meloy's excellent book, The Anthropology of Turquoise. Wow.

Hope to see you tomorrow at Two Hands Paperie!

New Studio View and an Aesthetic Intervention

Hello again! The move is mostly complete and I'm settling into my new studio above the garage. We are having spring about a month early this year and so already the trees are leafing out and I have this fabulous feeling of being in a tree house! I'm loving it and can't wait to get the move completed so I can get back to the pages of my journals and who knows what other great schemes and projects now that I have more space!

 

As spring makes it's return, I wanted to share this really sweet video about Steven Wheen's guerilla and miniature pothole gardener art project from the O Gallery (thank you Andrew). "The idea is simple but the effect on the everyday mundane traveler and pedestrian on the paved over city environment is dramatic. It is a place where nature will eventually win... underfoot in the cracks and holes of our streets and sidewalks." Love the beautiful serendipity of this!

PLAY Spaces

Some more inspiration from the PLAY retreat. This page from my friend Leslie's journal just blew me away with it's insight and wisdom. She had taken a class at the Artfest Annex in Seattle with Jesse Reno and this quote above came flying out of his mouth. And seriously. When you think about it, how true is that? Kind of puts it all in perspective for me. 

There was so much creative goodness in our big studio in the Commons. One morning, early, I just walked around and looked at people's work spaces. So, so inspiring just to see the temporary creative encampments people had set up...

...really, really amazing stuff. And that wasn't even the work they produced! But work we did and here are a few snapshots of my cohort's talented journal pages.

LOVE this finished mandala by my friend Mardie. It just sings with energy and color and beautiful directionality. Hope you enjoyed the tour of the room. More of my PLAY journal pages in the next post. 

The Sketchbook Project 2012

Just back from the PLAY journaling retreat in Port Townsend. It's such a wonderful get away in the depths of January. And so great to reconnect with all the creative souls that make the sojourn. I mostly worked to get my Sketchbook Project journal finished. Which I did and mailed off yesterday, within a hair's breath of the deadline. Above is my workspace in the great hall of insane creativity. The theme for my sketchbook this year was, "In Ten Minutes". It was a challenge to keep it to ten. I work s.l.o.w.l.y. and not all pages kept to the ten, but most did. More on the PLAY retreat in upcoming posts. In the meantime grab a cuppa and have a little virtual tour.

 

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

 

Dreaming of this...

...while looking at this...

...have escaped into my new watercolor box working in my "In Ten Minutes" journal for the Sketchbook Project. I have procrastinated like a freakin' banshee on this one...4 pages done and it's got to be mailed a week from today : (

My saving grace is that tomorrow I head out for the PLAY journaling retreat where I'll have four glorious days to journal! This weekend I laid out some collage for a new journal cover...sewed it up, added some brand spanking new blank pages and will tuck it into my traveling bag. Hope you are finding some escape in your late January days!

A Passion for Pinning - In the Studio and On-line

I have always been a pinner. The humble bulletin board. That’s right. Somewhere to pin up my favorite finds. Photos, studio dreams, favorite postcards, artwork, heroes and heroines, hearts and hands - some of my favorite visual things. I talk about this in my classes as a way to develop a visual dialogue and to really discover what it is we really like and love - a way to develop our voices as artists. We are bombarded by images in this media age and by selecting and choosing things to pin up, we are forming a personal aesthetic. A bulletin board, whether it's a big one like the one I have in my studio or an area on a blank wall marked off with tape, begins to inform us about who you are and what’s important to us. I don't see this as some kind of art “thing”; it’s a living dialogue and needs to be changed and refreshed from time to time. Just like my studio has evolved and changed over time, I evolve and so does my bulletin board.

And then I found... 

Oh my god...it's like my bulletin board, only on mega steroids. Really. 

Pinterest is an on-line pin board - "a virtual pinboard — a place where you can create collections of things you love and "follow" collections created by people with great taste. People use Pinterest to collect and share all sorts of things -- wedding inspiration, favorite T-shirts, DJ equipment. You name it, people are pinning it."

You can create different boards for different areas of interest - the graphic above is a screen shot of 6 of my boards - Color Palettes I Love, Frannie Likes, Hidden View, Dining, My Idea of Camping and Inspiration. You create your own board topics. When I'm online and see an image that I like I can easliy "pin it" to one of my boards with a "Pin It" button I've installed on my Bookmarks Bar - super easy - they tell you step-by-step how to do it. I can access lots of other people's pin boards or just search by topic. It's really easy and really addictive. A totally wonderful time suck. I found a really great tutorial on how to get started on Pinterest - it's free - here. Pinterest is really simple and if you'd like an "Invitation" leave me a comment and I'll send you one. I don't understand why, but you have to be "invited", you can't just sign up. You can also request and invite from the Pinterest website. Once you get your invite, just set up an account - super easy and they don't ask for more than basic information. And start pinning. It's like the bulletin board in my studio, which I will of course keep pinning to, but with Pinterest I have the entire internet of images to choose from. I love seeing what really catches my eye, that wow moment when I'm really caught by a bit of beauty. Pin it. Keep it. Return to it. 

Pretty soon you'll have this tattoed on your forehead. I kid you not. 

p.s. To see my Pinterest boards go here, or click on the Pinterest button on my sidebar.

I Have A Dream...

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Martin Luther King, Jr.