Three reasons why “serious” artists need to make valentines too

 

1.     Materiality

Don’t worry about archival quality, Get over it. Grab a pair of scissors and go ephemeral. 

Use cheap and fun materials that you haven’t used since grade school, such as

glitter, doilies, stickers, crayons, and tape. You can spend a lot of money or none. It’s time to scour the junk drawers and baskets and find those cool wrappers you couldn’t throw out.

It’s a great time to recycle and use up saved detritus, like postcards, and ticket stubs.

 

2.     Message

It is all about generosity of spirit. Receiving and creating Valentines are meant to alleviate sorrows and burdened hearts. They aren’t about whether you are loved or not- they are playful exchanges of color and whimsy. Make one for the mailman! Give one to the cook at the restaurant! Share with strangers. (Though – I once gave one to an older gentleman who regularly sat in the last pew of my church. I was grateful for the way he always offered a smile when I needed it most. He pulled me aside the following week to nervously tell me that he was a confirmed bachelor!)

 

3.     Method

Play. Be silly. Cultivate a little garden of color in your own heart.

Lighten up. As the winter darkness weighs heavily on most of us, I believe the crafting of frilly pink cards can be a spring to the spirit. Let it all hang out. Creating these small tokens of color can be a meditation on all the connections we have to each other.

Don’t be so self-important. Create free art!

 

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

Are you using the latest Stamp on your Love Letters?

My series of drawings and history of the USPS love stamps was printed in the February 6th, 2020  edition of the Lakeville Journal, page A3.

Because it is the week for mailing out Valentines, we can look forward to the unveiling of the new 2020 Love stamp. Every year, on and off since 1973, the US Postal service has issued a new love stamp for the purpose of sending out your cards of intimate sentiment!

Sue at the Amenia Post Office shows me the new stamps

The first official love stamp featured the iconic stacked LOVE design by Robert Indiana. It cost eight cents!

By Robert Indiana

It was created for the Museum of Modern art's Christmas card and never copyrighted, so it has popped up everywhere. Poor Robert Indiana doesn't get a penny from it. Another design, a few years later, was created by the the nun/artist/activist, Corita Kent.

Corita Kent

There used to be a water tower in Boston that featured her rainbow slashes.Wonder if it is still up?

This year's love stamp design is by Alberto Alcala. He also designed last years. He is one of 4 art directors with the post office. You have probably used his stamps many times. Last spring he made the stamp of the waving flag. It is from a photograph he took while walking along the shores of Lake Michigan. Another Forever stamp series he designed last fall was of holiday wreaths against doors.

Alcala's stamps

More about it on page A3, under "The Season for Romance"!

Lakeville Journal

Velentines Recap

Printmaking set up

I was late this year.
Part of the excuse was another event I got involved with that took most of my creative time.
In the spirit of finding something significant to do for Shrove Tuesday, I found myself working with St Thomas Episcopal church (here in Miami) and Didi Bertrand's Women and Girls Initiative to help traumatized women in Haiti and Rwanda get access to healing, education and leadership training.
I volunteered the art club students and several of my colleagues to make decorations for the tables for an event that would raise money. We had a silent auction, and ate crepes. Didi, a medical anthropologist and the wife of PIH Paul Farmer, shared about the work she is doing and her enthusiasm was infectious. Access to an educatation is vital and life transforming. Changing the life of a woman actually changes the economical status of her family and heals a village. Women are care givers and want to give back.
So that is how I came to draw the image for this years Valentine print. A pencil signifies school supplies, and the heart grows as we work together. I printed it on an assortment of recycled paper scraps, so each one is different, but with the same message. Love is a choice. We can all do it!

Lino Print, edition of 34 plus 4 AP

2016 Valentines

 One good thing about getting older is that winter seems shorter compared to when you were little. Now we are a month and a half into the new year and near the best celebration day of all- the day the majority of this planet's living species start their dances and rituals to celebrate love ... including a massive frolicking in the wild seas, forests, lakes and prairies!!! Just last night I watched the series of Blue Planet and saw the squid mating dance!!!! The males change colors as they perform a ballet for the females. Isn't that fabulous?

Inspired by the playfulness of the artist Jim Dine, I pushed the pigment as a squid dances and made this year's collection of outgoing cards.

Obsessively and quietly drawing with threads

This is for my son who has had issues with his hands this winter.

And this one is for my trip to Haiti next week...

I am trying to get these cliche images out of my head once and for all. I figure if I toil over them and put every single iconic heart image I think of in one blanket, I literally can wrap it up and move figuratively past the use of these trite valentines in my Art. Maybe. It's an exorcism of sorts.

Happy Valentines day everybody

 I hope everybody did their best to spread the love today. My valentine pictures are not loading so here is one of my prince charming, cracking me up:

prepping for the big V day

My heart is burning inside me.

Put a band aid on it

5 x 4 inches, acrylic on canvas
#34

It is darker inside me, than out.

I think I am a nice person. I enjoy my life. But painting happy pictures bores me to no end.

It's taken me MONTHS to do this series... "Where to find Joy"... I set myself out to paint 50 of these small canvasses LAST FEBRUARY!!!! This painting, a heart with soggy wings, in egg tempera and metallic acrylic on canvas panel, is number 30. You'd think I could do better. You'd think I could make a list of the things I love and illustrate them. But I have been stuck. I just finished watching Frida, a favorite movie of mine, and realize it is all about painting your soul, what is inside you that matters. Joy is not in the things you do or have. It is not in the way things look. It is a movement, a symphony, a smell, and maybe a color. When I painted this heart I thought of the flutter sound of a flock of ibis overhead, the punctuation of a palm tree in the landscape, the heave of a chest in lovemaking, and the radiance of clouds at dusk.
(Collection of S. Wood)

what a meal

A story in pictures.




My valentine overtook me like the Miami weather and cooked up a sultry concoction of Chillean Sea Bass and Lime Chili roasted corn... and now we are finishing it with Creme Brulee!
Must do this again.

party!

Not many pictures (but for Krisse!). It was a fun night for Michael and I. So great to see friends, new faces, new friends. Sold five valentines! Thank you.

Visual bird nest poetry

This one just kind of made itself.
Come see the whole batch of valentine sculptures at the Bakehouse tomorrow night. Downtown Miami, 7-9pm.

Love you in 9U!

Prices: $50 and up

Fly

SOLD
Sometimes in grief or fear our hearts are squeezed tight as if in the grip of a hand. But there is always hope that can leak out and fly free.
We are praying today for the improving health of Mr. P.

Hope - By Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Cherry Blossom heart

SOLD Historically, Valentine's day fell on the spring day set aside since ancient times to celebrate the rejuvination of nature. The holiday commemorated the joyous rites of spring, as seen with the blossoming of the trees and the songs of birds mating.
I went to high school near D.C., and each spring pink and white cherry blossoms would pierce the winter backdrop and bring ecstatic hope to our souls.
This heart can hang upright (sorry about the picture orientation)

Spilling over

I can't help but keep sharing the valentines we have been making. This collaboration is revealing a duality of many elements. The smooth, the rough, the inner and outer, the liquid and dry, the hot and the cool, just to name a few.

I love working like this!!!!

Hint: if you don't buy one of our sculptures, at least try to make one of your own. It is fun. Be wacky. Valentine's day is a day to throw caution and self-censorship to the wind. Bring out the glitter. Don't worry about the mess!