Finished my painting this morning and thought I would update! There wasn't much of a consensus on whether or not to mess with adding animals and/or bugs in the bubbles, but in the end I decided to let it be. Might be too much, and I can always add those in later. For now, I'm just going to let it hang on the wall for awhile and see how I like it. ;) Can't explain how much I've been needing to paint something like this. Feels great! Especially when this particular imagery has been rolling around in the back of my mind and pages of sketchbooks for far too long. Was about time it got made. :) Now going to go out and enjoy the sunshine. Happy weekend everybody!
First off, I have to share some exciting news!! I was brought aboard to work as a muralist for a company that builds and manages memory care and senior living facilities all up and down the west coast!! The sad part of this is, I will be taking over for a muralist who had worked with the company for 15 years, and sadly passed away before he could finish one of the projects. So my first job will be to finish that up. That facility is in Eastern WA., so I will be heading up there to work on that very soon. Luckily, I have a stellar boss at my other job, who supports my mural work 100% and will let me re-arrange my hours at work so that I can go up to Washington for a bigger chunk of time than just a weekend. This is exactly the kind of thing I had been envisioning and hoping would happen with my mural business. I've only been in Portland less than 3 months, and already I got connected with an interior design firm who gave me a great nursery job, and now this other company who could potentially turn into a long-term, repeat business type of deal. It's really crazy to me how things are all of a sudden happening once I: #1, moved to a bigger city, #2, deliberately decided that murals are the kind of art I would most enjoy making for people, and then #3, worked really freaking hard and learned all I could to make that happen. Then the universe just kind of started dropping things in my lap. Pretty grateful for all of it, and feeling so stinking lucky.
In other news, please help me decide what to do with this painting!!!!! I posted a blog about it last time...part of my Madagascar series, and kind of just about how it feels to live in another place and culture and make it your home, and then come back to where you lived before. Adjustment. Re-adjustment. And also it's about this Malagasy proverb: "Tsihy be lambanana ny ambanilanitra", which basically means, "everything under the sky is woven together like one big mat." So. I'm definitely going to be writing those words in the border - the Malagasy on top, and the english along the bottom. What I'm debating about, is whether or not to put little critters in those circle bubble things in the middle. (I used a cut paper collage for this and then painted over it). I was thinking different cool bugs - dragonflies, etc. - one inside of each bubble. Paint those in, or leave it the way it is??? Help! I can't decide. Leave me comments if you have an opinion :) Feels really great to get into a groove on a painting I'm making for myself again. Will post again when this is finished... so close!
I'm starting a new painting! Always nice to get my brushes in the paint, and especially when it's on canvas, for myself. (Although I have to say I am in the mural-mindset... feels weird to use such little brushes, and I'm squeezing out WAY more paint than I'm needing) Anyway, here's the start:
It's a new painting that will be part of this Madagascar series (about my Peace Corps experience there, in case you are brand new to my blog and haven't heard me mention that a thousand times!). This one is based on the Malagasy proverb: "Tsihy be lambanana ny ambanilanitra", which basically means, "everything under the sky is woven together like one big mat." I love that.
I felt caught between two worlds a lot. It's the old metphor they teach you during Peace Corps training. They say that before Peace Corps, you see everything out of yellow glasses lenses. Then you go to your host country, where they see out of blue ones. By the time you're out of Peace Corps, you end up seeing through green ones for the rest of your life (cuz they mix together. color theory and stuff. right?). Anyway, sometimes I feel so far removed from how I lived there and my friends that are still there that I have no way of contacting. This painting is kinda about trying to feel connected to that still... hence the Portland cityscape that's starting to come together on the left, and my village I lived in on the right. We'll see...long way to go yet, but I'll show you when it's done. Painting this tonight has got me all sentimental and listening to my Malagasy music playlists and reading through old journals for inspiration. Found one from St. Patrick's Day, 4 years ago:
"Happy St. Patricks' Day! Wishing I had a big green Guiness to celebrate with right about now. Yesterday was a good day. Lori fell asleep laying her head on my lap at Silvio's party, which went late into the night. The moon was already high in the sky, shedding blue light onto everything, the petrol lamps shining yellow light in pools. Warmth. Lori's heavy, sleepy head on my leg, her little body curled around my knee. In this light, my skin didn't glow, and give me away as different. Not tonight. Not dancing and clapping and singing... tonight I am just a person in the dark. To Lori, I am still just Kori, just "Mama", Soa Vanona (my Malagasy name), her friend."
"Art and Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Have you read it? If not, I recommend it for all you creative-types. It was assigned to me by more than one professor while I was in college. Here's a quote: “To require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do – away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes.” I feel like those words really ring true for anyone who's ever gone through the creative process - in any artistic medium. Here's how it plays out for me: I feel like my creative energy is like money in a bank. I spend it in different ways - painting, beading, sewing, re-doing furniture, etc. etc. I will wither and die if I don't get this energy out somehow! I know that sounds dramatic, and it is, but that's kind of how it feels. I spend a lot of this energy on projects that I'm working on for a client or a boss. Today I reclaimed some of that energy to use on a painting just for myself. No client, no one else's aesthetic to attend to but my own. The possibilities are so wide open for this big blank canvas that is just MINE. I'm working on an ongoing series of paintings I've been making since I got home from the Peace Corps. I've got 9 paintings now, and countless drawings for more. Though I have been working on other series too during that time (Literary Heroines - both series can be seen here), 9 paintings is not a whole lot for me to have done since 2010. It's sometimes so paralyzing to start a painting in this series. Just like the quote says, I end up procrastinating and working on other things because this series is SO CLOSE and important to me, that I'm afraid to ruin it. If I don't start a painting, I can't ruin it. See what I mean? I've talked to my best friend about this a bit, who is a writer. It's sometimes the projects that are the very closest to your heart that are the hardest to get started on. You want to do them justice. You want to make them as good as you imagine them being in your mind. Today I pushed through those feelings, and just made the first colors appear on the canvas. I'll keep you guys updated ;) And in the meantime: Just. Get. Started. !
This is the Kickstarter project that never happened. YET! I say "yet" because the project is still on my lifelong "to do" list. The video below and this website all happened thanks to a UO journalism student who interviewed me and made them for a class assignment. At the time, I was still teaching art in the schools and had just completed my first mural for Madagascar with a 4th grade in Eugene. If you have no idea what project I'm talking about, watch the video and/or click the link above.
The video was made last Spring. That following Summer, I was in Madagascar for a totally unrelated short-term job. While I was there, I asked the Director of Population Services International in an urban center of Northern Madagascar, (Diego-Suarez/Antsiranana) if they would be willing to help distribute and install the cloth murals around to rural villages when they go out to do their health presentations. The Director was beyond stoked on the idea, and agreed to help me whenever I could make more health murals with U.S. students and mail them over to him. I was of course, beyond stoked as well.
Presenting my project idea (in Malagasy of course ;)
This means that the project would go like this:
1.) I go into a school and teach a week(ish) long workshop about Madagascar to K-12 students. We learn about the country, and also do art projects relating to it. We also learn about mural-making, and make a mural together that visually explains a health issue (such as the care of mosquito nets, and/or the importance of using them to protect against Malaria).
2.) The mural (on cloth) gets shipped to the Director of PSI that I spoke with last Summer. He gets his Malagasy health professionals/presenters to bring the mural out with them when they go out to rural villages to do their presentations to communities. They install the mural (with the community's approval) on a wall somewhere in the village (hopefully at a clinic/hospital). This feels good because it is Malagasy people doing all the talking to other Malagasy people, and just using our mural as a visual aid for their presentations/reminder for after they leave. And on our end, I'm helping expose American kids to another country they might not have known much about before.
3.) Repeat steps 1-2.
Someday, I will do this again. And again. Posting this blog so I don't lose my momentum, or let this one slip through the cracks while I'm busy focusing on my JOB job, and mural business. Not letting it go!
