Vision Vessel Valentine's Day Afternoon Fun

 Art has the power to transform and it was with that intention that Lisa and I hosted our first ever vision vessel Valentine workshop. We started with reading a list of affirmations and a short guided meditation to set the tone. Once everyone got settled into decorating their miniature cardboard houses, it was pretty silent and focused. Everyone worked with scissors and glue to collage the surfaces. After an hour, the houses were spectacularly unique. We felt refreshed and inspired. I could not stop smiling. 

I am still waiting for photos from Doug, Bobbi and Elena!

Some focused on their goals, or warding off their neighborhood  threats. Others focused on dreams of vacations, or getting back into their hobbies. Others focused on manifesting their affirmations.

Vision vessels are really 3D vision boards. We collage on top of a house everything we wish for our "nest". It is reinforcing positive vibrations and giving an image to what we desire.

To help the art work it's full magic, the houses have to remain visible for a while. Many have openings, (doors and windows), where we can stuff little notes of dreams or worries as we manifest big changes.

Valentine's day Crafting project with "Art Angels" in your own home

Are you looking for something fun and magical to do on Valentines day? 2pm on Sunday, February 14th join us on line for a little dreamy fun.

Art Angels, my dear friend Lisa Marie and I, will present a cozy crafting virtual Valentines event in the privacy of your own home. It is a perfect opportunity for both individuals or couples who would like to manifest the life they've been dreaming of. We will do this by collaging colors, words and images onto a 3D, made from recycled cardboard, bird house or "Love Shack" if you will.

February 14th is the traditional day birds look for their mates and start to prepare a nest. Our crafting session will begin with a short meditation embracing our intentions for our Love Shacks (love birds optional) You will be provided with a template to make a 3D "birdhouse/loveshack", or you can channel your inner architect and fashion one on your own. Then we will treat the surfaces as if they were a vision board! Using magazines, colored paper, pens or any coloring agent you have, we will decorate our "love shacks" with the intention of manifesting all our dreams. This is a powerful move and it really works!

So join us for the fun as we share tidbits and advice while you work! Spaces are limited but you are welcome to do it on your own or have a lover or friends in your own house. This will be fun. In addition, we can guide you with a recipe to make your own love bird sculptures with whatever you have in the kitchen.
Email your interest and Paypal donation to Tillystudio@aol.com, then we will send you the link to join us.

Supplies for everyone: Recycled  thin card board (cereal boxes: preferred)
Scissors, tape, Glue, Colored Tissue paper, Magazines, something to color with.
Dough love bird recipe (upon request)
Cost: $0 - $10.00 Donations accepted

Simple ingredients make a funeral feel happily ever after

 

1.     Location, location, location. Inside or outside, weather permitting.

2.     Find someone with a spiritual bent to ease spirits and address loss. It doesn’t have to be clergy, but often they have the best language for the situation.

3.     Music can build a nest around everybody pulling them close in grief and lifting spirits in memory.

4.     Story. Any and all shared story about the deceased is helpful to mourners looking for a sense of belonging in community at the time of loss. A story can make you laugh and cry and it should honor the soul that is gone. Spoken words combined with social participation grants us a structure to mark the milestone along the arrow of Time.

5.     Food- It is important to nourish our bodies as we grieve and sometimes the preparation of food is devastatingly mundane for those close to the deceased. Donations of food are a treasured balm to ease the suffering and remind us of the need to live.

    6.             Flowers and other additions of nature remind us of ephemeral lifespans and add             beauty to the setting.

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New paintings on throw pillows (and more)!

I have been posting my art for public licensing on Fine Art America for a dozen years now. My Sketches traveling in the South of France are there and are a hit for notecards. Prints of my Empty Nest Series always sell well, but think of a pillow now....(couldn't you just snuggle up to that one?). You can find my Month of Sundae Ice cream series on there as well for fun posters to brighten any room. Last night I uploaded some newer work. Check out my newest road trip paintings and how cool they look on totebags, notecards, shower curtains and even throw pillows!
Also the roads are fun images to put on a $20 Iphone case... just don't text and drive on the highway!

Here is a sample idea and possibility for unique holiday gifting. I got my son's each a printed pillow two Christmas holidays ago, and they are of great quality and still holding up really fine, even competing with a cat and a nomadic lifestyle!

1 - 12 of 12 throw pillows for sale

https://fineartamerica.com/artists/tilly+strauss

 

Underpass At Nighht

Tilly Strauss

$24

Three Trees In The Median

Tilly Strauss

$24

Underpass Z

Tilly Strauss

$24

Starry Night Traffic

Tilly Strauss

$24

Curio cabinets

I love collecting seed pods and nests and all sorts of bits of nature from my evening walks. It offers a momento of the occasion as I study in awe the handiwork of other living beings. That said, I have to ask...Why do we kill and stuff the beautiful things in life? They ... collect dust... I have regrets.

mother's day and earth day is around the corner

Here is my Crane and Chick painting. It is 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas.

Look closely, there is a lot going on. Life is not simple. Being a mom is about handling distractions and still being able to focus! An escape route is only a short-lived fantasy.

If you are interested in purchasing this painting, (and helping me get to my summer residency), send me an email! Thanks- Tillystudio@aol.com

Trying too Hard

I think it is impossible for me to paint a painting about the love I have for my sons. It is a selfless love, and so there is less of me, a sacrifice of sorts, of my self for them.  But I can't paint it. Here I tried:

Took out the "Madre" banner, and think it works better this way

 I am so pleased with how much they love each other and the true bond they share.

I want to take a chain saw to this piece but have decided to hide it away for a while and come back to it later. It's good to get a little distance. it is so unlike me to work so long and hard on one piece! I'm a "daily painter", for goodness sakes!

Mother's day: only a week away... think artful gifts

Affordable Itty Bitty Sale. These (3 inch by 3 inch canvas) paintings of party birds may satisfy your wanderings for the unique token of affection. Pass one to your mother, or someone else who deserves a little color in their lives. Birds sing, fly, nest, mate, and pollinate our world. They certainly inspire me. I painted them in flight, feeding, resting, singing, gloating, brooding, guarding, traveling, and more! All together, there are  50 itty bitty paintings painted over the last two weeks, and I am asking $12 per canvas. I hope most everyone can find a reason to buy one. The proceeds will help me bridge the gap in my finances needed to participate in the summer painting residency program of my dreams.

We are having a studio Party (One year anniversary) on Friday the 8th. I am taking pre-party sales on Wednesday and Thursday. Reserve your favorite one and, if I get paid before the party on Friday, I will mark it sold!

Itty Bitty fundraiser in progress

this is how I really feel

holidays

The truth and the dream are in separate pictures

I am grateful (really!) for the truth of the situation and I attempt to not hate myself for  dreaming of what should have been and

 how I never got it.

Perhaps I am suffering from PHS. Post holiday stress? Holidays are times were we seem to run ragged on obligations and inevitably I focus on the shortcomings of my reality. Everyone else seems to have it down- seems to do it effortlessly, seems to have the happy family unit in place. I have found myself on the short side of the ideal, if it is measured in picture perfect cut-out family. Too much time has been spent on lighting the candles and setting the table and waiting for love to show up. 

And it is always late, slightly incoherent, and imperfect when it does.

In painting these paintings I realize how frail and flat the ideal is, and...just how rich my nest actually is! My life is full of good questions, helpmates, positive energies, bright lights,

 and nurturing food. 

FYI: Painting helps me get over mood swings.

I painted 126 works this year, oversaw two school murals, collaborated on three school theater sets and 22 sculptural valentines. I also participated in 4 exhibitions from Miami FL to Easthampton MA to Pawling NY. All the while working a full time job. Until I did the inventory yesterday I thought I had done nothing! 

Before I quit blogging for the Muse- I want to finish on a positive note.

Showing up here has kept me on track- made me do the work, and bestowed an abundant reward for which I am barely deserving. Thanks, all you readers and visitors to the site, for being part of the motivation.

These are paintings # 48 and #49 of my series 

50 ways to find Joy

#48-nest (collection of R. Vogel).

Flamingos and Easter egg

Two color printed linoleum blocks, edition of 30.
Today is the day to prepare for great joy.
Things can look rather bleak and overwhelming, and dark and silent... everyone I know seems in turmoil.
But now my son and I color eggs, and make plans to celebrate at the oceans edge, catching the first glimpse of the rising sun tomorrow morning...7:04 am


Rolling under the tide...Ink and mixed media on paper.

Titania's Faery Nest is ready

for Mid Summer's dream... the set up, and the director, Cait Johnson trying it out!

Also here are a couple of the umbrella flowers opened to reveal themselves.

The play is one night only, June 18, rain or shine (umbrellas are the main props anyway). 8pm at the Center at High Valley on Sunset Trail in Staatsburg, NY

Just another nest with wings

Flying about the galaxy... with everything including the kitchen window! There is a map of New York for grounding... are you on the move? Sometimes, you just got to pick up and go.
paper with mixed media, 6 x 10 inches.

Hanging artist hopes not to shoot self in foot

wrapping, labeling and such and such... I have works needing to be documented, labeled, and cushioned, going out to 4 area group shows- an ice cream painting to the Noble Horizons show of 14th colony artists will be opening May 6, and three nest house paintings to Maplebrook's show of "local colors, local flavors" which will open May 7th. The Barrett house in Poughkeepsie is hosting an auction fundraiser at Locust grove and the catalogue needs an image yesterday...and
Opening this Friday at the Rhinecliff Hotel my work will be in the dining room. If I gather enough friends who want to stay out late we can have the artist special- a three course fixed price meal for two for $28.99! Actually I see I only need one other friend for that (haha).

Meanwhile I have an interview at an exciting middle and high school next Tuesday and need to prepare a lesson plan and gather all my loose ends, paperwork, thoughts and questions. I could get just wrapped up enough in the details here to forget to do that.

Phoenix rising

Yesterday I held my first mixed media class of this season @ Mill Street Loft. The kids were very hard working as we transitioned from pulling on our imaginations to copying reference materials to drawing from life. We worked in pen and watercolors to warm up. Then, acknowledging the oldest media known to man, we used ash from the fireplace, charcoal and beeswax. The subject matter was the mythological, fabulous, phoenix. Each child had a different perspective on the gifts of the bird and the significance of the fable.
My little 14 x 5 inch example piece has tissue flames and oil pastel added to the surface collage in wax. The phoenix rises from my head as well as from the nest...it's like a dream.

HEART Chambers

some sample shrines

Thinking of Alaska

I remember lugging suitcases after suitcases from pit stop to pit stop and noticing that my sons never once changed their clothes! When I threatened to burn their khaki pants, they responded in horror and protest. When I suggested I cut them up and make paper out of the pants, my sons readily agreed. So that was the brilliance behind a brief thought to do a series of paintings of Alaska on the seat of my son's pants. If you look closely you can see larger chunks of hem and even a zipper fragment in the paper. The baby eaglet in nest, the mother & son bears at water's edge, the avian rookery, and the bald eagle totem were all subjects for paintings I did when returning from a summer trip to Alaska. Then they went in a drawer... 9 years ago. Not sure what to do with them now- maybe apply for a residency up there and try it again? That's if I don't get a job, like I am supposed to!
The paintings range in size from 8.5 x 6.5 inches to 11 x 7 inches.

I land in an island bed

The feeling is hard to explain and so I am sort of ATTEMPTING to get there with this picture. I used ink and watercolor, collaged maps, and then wax, and then tissue and oil pastel and more tissue and pencil and then ripped off tissue and added more pastel and somehow i lost the whole feeling. Perhaps I should have used clay?
Sometimes in my most hedonistic lazy glorious awareness I feel as though I am an island with nothing around but a shore line dissolving under waves.

Painting one of the Hens standing in balance

...On the edge of her milk crate-turned-nest, I contemplate my own off-kilter existence. I am not at all balanced... in any realm!
I can't get all my picky lists done. There doesn't seem to be enough of me to please everybody. Could it be, in fact there doesn't seem to be enough of me for me? The inner judgement is an exhausting voice that tells me I am fat and lazy and should be calling so-and-so and getting those letters written and looking for that job and... I feel so empty yet my body seems a fragile thing with murmurs, eruptions, aches and so aside from balancing the outer world with all it's fast paced to-do-lists, there is an inner world that seems out of balance as well.
I am hoping this daily practice of painting again will help center me and gain me some... down home balance!
Sewn painted paper, 4.5 x 3 inches $35 plus shipping