Guila's Art & Other Assorted Joys
Let's make the world more beautiful…together…
Writing this on my status update last night felt very good and really brought the whole day into focus. I’ll bet that if you stop and think for just a moment, that you can come up with a similar list for your day. Even if lousy stuff happened – think of the moments that made your day special. Our lives are made up of many thousands of moments like these. Savor each one.
Today was a regular day but one of those days when everything just feels good. And here are some of reasons why. As I said, nothing out of the ordinary, just being aware and savoring each moment.
Thursday Delights
wearing brightly patterned socks
granola and yogurt with blueberries
browsing the art supplies in my favorite store
the sun’s gentle benediction
a visual feast of pansies and snapdragons
mixing colors in art class
finding a missing pattern book
filling a donation bag for pickup tomorrow
agreeing to raid the ‘frig for dinner
music in the car; music in the studio
talking to friends and family
giving and receiving warmth and caring.
The Blue Orchard: A Novel by Jackson Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Set in the 50’s in and around Harrisburg, PA. This very well written book tells a good story and at the same time raises many questions about hotly debated topics in the news today. The protagonists are involved in providing what was at the time illegal abortions. Various aspects of the whole abortion issue are raised in the context of the story and can lead to some great discussion. A lot of the action also focuses on the political machine in power – again leading to inevitable comparisons with contemporary U.S. politics. The issues of racism and women’s roles are also explored.
The story begins in the midst of the Depression years and we get a glimmer of what life must have been like as we accompany the main characters in their struggle.
Very good characterizations are a hallmark of this book. All in all a great story and I highly recommend it.
Please excuse if you see this more than once. I’ve cross posted it to the Quilt Art list and on my Facebook page as well.
I have a logistics/design issue that I’ve been working on and am not happy with my solutions so far.
I’m SURE there must be one or more of you out there who has happily solved this.
I have more than a dozen small quilts that vary in size with the largest about 12 x 12.
They do not have a cohesive theme of any kind.
I would like to put them all into book form for viewing – but want it to be fairly easy to remove them and of course not damage them in any way. I do not want to put them into ‘jackets’.
I have looked at several tutorials and patterns and everything I see is related to making a cover for an existing journal or sewing/quilting a journal. Some of these are extraordinarily beautiful but not what I need.
Ideas???
Thank you!!
Well, this is primarily a visual arts blog so I’d better do a quick entry and bring you up to date with what’s on my wall. The nice thing about having so many pieces in progress is that I have a variety of styles to work on and will never ever get bored. The bad thing about having so many pieces unfinished is having so many pieces unfinished.
I started this awhile back and am in the midst of quilting it. Almost there! I based it on the Hollow Box block by Sara Nephew then designed the overall quilt. Not sure if this would qualify as an art quilt. I’d probably call it a contemporary quilt if pressed to pigeonhole it.
What would you call it?
A very interesting article from Larry Lootsen’s blog
I have asked myself this question before but I’ve never really written about it. I thought this deserved a look.
With the recent death of Whitney Houston I was struck by what amounts to a truly insane reaction. People who never met her or got to see her perform weeping like their own mother died. You can flame me for this but it annoys me. A lot.
Whitney Houston was a great talent. But I definitely don’t lump her in the same category as Elvis, John Lennon or Michael Jackson. She burned bright and burned out. She hasn’t done anything of note in years. Being dead doesn’t make you a legend. It isn’t even a requirement.
So I started asking myself, as a U2 fan, how would I react if Bono died?
Would I cry? Would I run out and find a vigil to attend? Would I start my own…
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Do you sometimes wonder if an occurrence was a coincidence or……if other forces were at
work? A friend and I were discussing this the other day and I told her a story about something that happened to me a while back.
I’ll change a couple of names here – for the privacy of the individuals. But the rest of this tale is absolutely 100 % true.
One of my classes in grad school was The Nature of Stress and Health. For our term paper I had decided on the topic “The Relationship Between Stress and Cancer”. My classmate and colleague Valerie and I headed over to the Cal State Northridge library after work to hit the stacks and hopefully to make some progress on our research.
Valerie and I both worked in Nursing Administration at a local hospital; I was the Director of In-service Education and was pursuing my Master’s evenings and weekends.
We spent close to three hours going through piles of books and journals. I was looking for scientific studies that pertained to my subject matter of stress and cancer; they were scarce but I did find several anecdotal reports that were fascinating. And you know how it goes when you start doing research; one article leads you to another and yet another: something like web cruising actually.
So I copied up the few that looked promising but was frustrated by not being able to locate more. There were two that I was especially disappointed not to find. They had been referred to in yet another publication as a source and had been written by a psychologist named Arthur Barnwell. One referenced a paper he had written; another referenced “personal communication.”
So Val and I packed up for the evening and went to our homes to continue our reading.
The next morning I was back at my desk by 8:30 and got busy organizing a full day of nurse orientation and specialty training classes.
At just after 9 AM my phone rang – the caller said: Hello Mrs. Greer, my name is Dr. Arthur Barnwell. I coach medical personnel in stress reduction techniques and would like to talk to you about setting up a session for your staff there at the hospital.
After I regained consciousness I responded: I’d be happy to talk to you further about that Dr. Barnwell. But first I have a request for you. You know that article that you wrote about Stress and Cancer 2 years ago? Where can I find a copy of it? Then I went on to explain what had happened the previous evening.
We finished our conversation and I immediately ran into Valerie’s office jumping up and down and screaming at the top of my voice: “You won’t believe who just called, you won’t believe this!!!”
Epilogue: I got my articles directly from the author a couple of days later in the mail. And the following month our nursing staff got some hints as to how they could lower their day to day stress level at work. Oh, and I got an A in the class!
I’m still reluctant to call what happened a simple coincidence. What do you think?
February has rolled around once more. This year our Haiku prompt word is ‘moon.’ When I get back to the Valley I’ll work on the challenge, writing my haiku based on the prompt and completing a piece of artwork to represent it. In the meantime I’m jotting down some ideas – a stream of consciousness series of associations for the word ‘moon’.
Last year the February prompt word was ‘love.’ With so many new people on board this year I decided to encore the February 2011 haiku and art work. The piece was and is one of my favorites. My goal for the artwork was to illustrate feelings resulting from the loss of love and the subsequent attempts to hide emotions from others.
All the red “shards” combine to form one complete heart. The pieces have been attached to the background with a lot of heavy quilting. I used heavy cotton plus metallic. The ribbons are hand tacked. Under the ribbons are tear-shaped beads peeking out. I purposefully left the thread tails and frayed edges alone as they are part of the over all feeling that I wanted to generate.
Dear Blog Followers:
This is an art blog and as such I strive to avoid topics that are controversial or that could be construed as political. However I take the recent decision by the Komen Foundation to defund mammograms offered by Planned Parenthood very seriously. My younger sister died much too early from Breast Cancer and it is appalling to see so many more women put at risk by this decision.
Please do whatever your own conscience tells you to insofar as decrying or applauding this decision but please do give the situation some thought as well as the overall impact on women and their health. My hopes are that you will let the Komen foundation know that you think it is an outrage – if indeed that is your conclusion.
Please take a quick look at this graphic (click on link) for some perspective. Thank you very much.
tumblr_lyqkrckXlJ1r65lwbo1_500.jpg (JPEG Image, 490 × 513 pixels).
Guila's Art & Other Assorted Joys 
