kom med mig... / come with me...

my friend christina and i have been planning an exhibition together for over a year. and by planning, i mean we made a pinterest board in january of 2018. we've put it off a couple of times because life and mostly work got in the way and we didn't manage to create anything worth exhibiting, but on saturday, we redeemed ourselves and held an opening - with snacks and drinks and everything! and i have to say that i'm really proud of what we made.

back in october, we had a getaway on the island of samsø, where christina's sister has a lovely summer house. while we were there, i made sewed up this little paper feathery dress that had been rolling around in my head for ages. once i allowed it to come out, it came out very quickly and i had it made in under an hour or so. i had painted abstract atoms on the newspaper and cut out the feathers in advance, so it was just a matter of coming up with a design and sewing it all together. when we were first hanging the works, i didn't think it was going to work as part of the exhibition, but was very happy that we found a way to show it as well.

the centerpiece was this mannequin with a spectacular headpiece/bird mask (more about that below), encircled by long banners of different scenes painted on old book pages and sewn together on the sewing machines in long garlands of 7 pages each. the book was chosen randomly from my collection of old books that i was saving to violate.  it was the right size and the pages were quite thick, decent paper and there were illustrations, so i cut it up and painted a whole lot of abstract atom-like shapes on one side using payne's grey ink. those abstracts are my attempt to try to break out of my fear of placing brush to paper and of making mistakes and being a bit more wild. it's surprisingly hard for me to do that. but after painting a 100 or so pages, i felt a bit more free.

christina then got to work painting her speciality - birds and bits of birds - on the other side of the pages - sticking to a limited palette of payne's grey, bordeaux and yellow, with small accents of a more true red and some black. the book turned out to be biblical illustrations and a retelling of the old testament from 1923. though the book was chosen rather haphazardly and without thought for the subject matter, the pages began to speak to us - causing painted wings to seem like they belonged to angels, rather than birds, and provoking christina to paint a few scenes with breasts.  i painted quite a lot of birds and feathers as well. and a whole lot of small boats came out here and there. i found myself surprised by what ended up on the page when i gave myself over to the process and let it flow.

we knew we didn't want to hang the works on the walls, but have it be more of an installation. we painted ourselves a payne's grey forest on sheets of plastic that's normally used under insulation in building a house. the way the light comes through it looks pretty amazing and we hung it in two rows so that it felt like you had to step into the forest to enter the world of the exhibition. we did one tree in bordeaux, which was one of the other colors we had in our limited palette. the limited color palette helped our individual styles come together and harmonize, despite the differences in the way we paint and the lines we put down on paper.

i spent hours cutting out paper feathers for this mask and enlisted husband's help in forming the headpiece itself - which is a beak. it was originally a mask in our minds, but ended more as a kind of hat. the creative process sometimes takes you in surprising directions. naturally, when husband got involved, he wanted to use wood (i had been thinking paper or maybe papier mache). he used a big hunk of wood and started off what ended up as an absolutely exquisite piece, by whittling down the log with a chainsaw. i wish i'd filmed that.

he also was the one to place the paper feathers i had cut out, taking ownership of the piece and finishing it absolutely spectacularly. it really was the crowning glory of the exhibition, bringing together our vision, which started with this video by thievery corporation. we loved the uncanny feeling of it - the way it was repulsive, yet attractive and fascinating. we wanted our bird woman to be the same, tho' she ended up not at all repulsive, but strong and assured, eclipsing our birdman, who was painted flatly on one of the sheets of plastic. she was the star of the show and although she is beautiful, she is also rather uncanny.

i found a dress for her in a second-hand shop - it had flowers that matched our payne's grey, with a kind of white slip underneath. once we had the headpiece on, the dress was the wrong pattern and took away from the beautiful headpiece, so we stripped her down to the slip and it was absolutely perfect.

at the opening, people could walk in among the works, looking closely at the details on the pages. people noticed things we hadn't even noticed ourselves. like wings on pages that spoke of angels and breasts on a page that talked about the lord's heaven. we had many wonderful discussions with people - about the creative process, about the biblical pages, about the payne's grey, about sewing on paper. it was such a pleasure to share the work and to see how it was received and to once again be reminded that ideas are always better when they are in dialogue with other people's ideas. our work became richer and deeper, even to us, when we shared it with others.

this little boat was another thing that's been in my head for some time and which just had to come out during this creative process. the paper is some very thin but strong chinese paper that we used to make  seaweed prints on the beach during that weekend on samsø back in october. i fashioned the small boat out of fine wire and just glued the paper in place. The boats are light and airy and looked just gorgeous in the window against the blue sky when i took the pictures today.

i'm really proud of this work and this collaboration. we had a few prints done up of some of the best of the small paintings we did on the book pages and there are a few leftover from the opening. i put them in my big cartel shop here, if you're interested in having a look. they're signed and numbered and will only be available in a limited edition of ten of each.

payne's grey is my spirit animal (or something)

i love payne's grey tusch and the main thing i like to sketch is naturey stuff. i watered down the ink and painted with a feather i found on the beach. bliss.

another successful drink & draw weekend

i had a little weekend getaway with a few friends. one of them has moved over to fyn (the island between us here on the "mainland" and the big island where they keep copenhagen) to an idyllic little village and opened a gallery and B&B. so charming! and she's got a beautiful studio, where she showed us how to do the monoprint technique she's been working with of late. we used "china paper" - a thin, but surprisingly strong paper that can take a lot of layers of paint and texture.

so much fun. we each chose a color palette and after a walk, to gather bits and bobs from nature, we settled in to work. we used a variety of techniques - painting with acrylics, using gel pens, printing with feathers and plants, slowly building up texture on our pieces.

i found myself working with mustard yellow, teal, payne's grey (it looks quite black in these photos) and a peachy color that i mixed, plus the odd metallic gold accent. it was interesting how we were each drawn to a specific palette that i'm not sure any of us consciously knew we had in our heads.

some of my pieces worked and some didn't. some worked for awhile and then stopped working. it was an interesting process and one which i thoroughly enjoyed, but never really felt i had control over.

through it all, we laughed and drank some wine and enjoyed some good vegetarian chili, told stories, shared and laughed some more. we had moments of silence, deeply concentrating on our work, and then more laughter and sharing. it was that kind of powerful feminine medicine that you just need once in awhile.

i was surprised by the direction some of my pieces took - these two got rather dark after i became inspired to use a bit of dusty grey pastels on them, giving them a very different look than my other, bright pieces (underneath, the palette is the same). and some of my old favorite helleristning motifs came out from somewhere in my subconscious. it felt right, like moments of flow always do.

here's the end result of one of the others - i think you can tell that she's actually educated as an artist.

this friend did two rounds of the small sheets of chinese paper, with very different color palettes. she felt the second round went much better than the first. but sometimes it does take warming up when you're learning a new technique.

and our hostess, who had been working with the technique for some time, made some beautifully textured, multi-layered pieces. beautiful to see the individual ways our creativity manifested itself, expressing something utterly unique, using similar materials. magical. we definitely need to do this more often.

2021 :: a second plague year, in pictures

january

it started off ok. a quiet new year's with friends, some baking - homemade sausage rolls, cardamon buns, quite a lot of working from home. we were able to hold a couple of croquis sundays before everything shut down in earnest. we bought a greenhouse on the blå avis and spent a saturday dismantling it and carting it home. and our child turned 20 halfway across the world! so we gave her valentino sneakers in neon pink. as one does.

february

working from home meant my coworkers were mostly lounging around on the bed or staring out the windows. i was jealous of them. we had actual snow and enough cold temperatures so that the lake actually froze and though we oddly didn't skate, we spent a whole weekend down there, enjoying being on the ice, grilling sausages and loving that there was some actual winter. a week later, temperatures were mild, so we dug the foundation for the new greenhouse. i started a 100 days of payne's grey project, but quickly fell behind and abandoned it in a kind of malaise brought on by the monotony of working from home with shitty internet.

march

i bought a bright pink sweater and some ceramics from a local artist to cheer myself up. there were signs of spring. working from home continued and it was nice to live in the countryside to alleviate feeling so confined. making good food and baking were definitely things i chose to do to cope. we finally put the windows in upstairs on the front of the house. i bought an unusual color palette in linen for making a quilt. and check out how badly husband needed a haircut - we fervently hoped for the hairdressers to open again soon!

april

a white papa kitty, who was surprisingly friendly, showed up, signaling the advent of spring in earnest. we found a second greenhouse for only 500kr and moved it home on a trailer via the back roads, rather than totally taking it apart. a lot of april went to working on the greenhouses. i'm not sure i ever got dressed in proper clothes - i may have spent the entire month in sweatpants and a hoodie.

may

things tentatively began to open up and we were able to go back to the office a couple of days a week. i realized that i preferred working at home because the coffee here is much better than the swill that passes for coffee at work. the greenhouses were completed and we planted a few things. weaving at the museum started up again as well, which was very welcome. i attended an embroidery course at the museum in kolding. we hung our spring exhibition, but didn't hold an opening, as larger gatherings still weren't allowed. billy, the prodigal cat, made his annual return (he definitely has another family somewhere) for the summer. the swans built a nest at our end of the lake, but alas, i don't think they ever hatched out any babies. 

june

summer days came - we had a department outing on a colleague's boat, which was on the most perfect sunny day. flowers bloomed, the garden took off and we had our annual sankt hans bonfire. husband ran a 4:18:4 mini triathlon and seems to have been bit by the triathlon bug. i prepared the warp for my crazy striped tea towels and husband worked on the siding on the west side of the house. 

july

i finished the rainbow quilt i had made in early 2020, just in time to give it as a gift to friend's daughter who was graduating. we enjoyed the garden bounty that was the reward of all that hard work on the greenhouses in the spring. i made a second quilt, using the funky linen color palette - planning it as a picnic quilt for my work in the exhibition. we spent all the time we could enjoying the garden. i only took a week off, saving my holiday for a hoped-for november trip to the us.

august

life was essentially back to normal. we were in the office again full time, though we all took days working from home here and there because we had grown accustomed to it. the garden continued to give generously, both veggies and flowers. husband decided to extend the house a couple more meters since he had a new plan for where the stairs should be. an old bloggy friend came to town and explored copenhagen in the rain. husband's eldest ran the copenhagen ironman, which was an absolutely amazing feat of which i am still in awe. i finished the quilt and at our exhibition opening (which was really the closing), i set up a picnic, complete with snacks and cocktails that everyone attending could sample. it was a good month and didn't at all seem like it was in the midst of a plague year.

september

i resolved to grab all the chances i could for creativity, starting with a lovely weekend down in højer with my creative group. it was absolute bliss and i even got a pair of green sandgren sandals in a little shop run by a lovely woman who i believe made up prices for each customer individually. i made an artwork of a focaccia with all kinds of goodness from the garden to take along for sharing and we made quite a lot of linoleum prints while we were there. then, a few days later, i went to fanø for a very enjoyable day with my weaving group. then, our team had a much-needed trip to copenhagen together and went a long ways towards repairing the damage wrought by too many months of working from home and a boss who had gone down with stress. the coffee continued to be much better at home and the garden generously provided flowers for all the vases in the house.

october

i attended a gourmet knitting day where i met some lovely and talented knitters and thoroughly enjoyed the company of women. we saw the latest james bond in a posh theatre with reclining seats - the first film we'd seen in the theatre in several years. a hard frost came and stopped my dahlias in their tracks. i brought the mango plant inside, along with all the avocados that i'd been growing as well. my first sweet potato crop was a bit tiny, but it was fun to try growing them. i'm not sure our climate is warm enough for them. i finished four tea of my crazy striped linen tea towels, in time to take them as gifts to the us. just before we left, i found two kittens i didn't know about in the greenhouse. they were absolutely adorable and we quickly found a new home for them.

november

finally, that longed-for vacation came and we headed for arizona and some sunshine and warmer temperatures. it was a great trip! we went to a sorority gala, the asu-usc football game, we climbed south mountain and we saw the grand canyon and visited sedona. it was so much fun seeing husband see the grand canyon for the first time. back at home, we went to husband's aunt's 90th birthday and i played with shibori in the dye pot twice! once with real indigo. i decided to take a new job in the new year and we put in the windows on the other end of the house. it was yuzu time and i got all that i could and made loads of delicious things with their fragrant goodness.

december

december started with the discovery of a charming little gin bar at halmtorvet and two visits to jah izakaya with colleagues. i find the food there so inspiring and delicious! we did a small belated thanksgiving gathering. husband made me a christmas calendar, giving me a new holey stone every day - he had collected them last summer as he spread stones from a big bag we had ordered in front of the house. when he was doing it, i asked him if he had found any with holes and he laughed at me. but he was secretly saving them to do the christmas calendar. he's a keeper. mid-month, the child came home and that was wonderful. we've been making her favorite foods and taking care of all the things she needed to do - like going to the doctor and getting a pfizer booster to go with her johnson & johnson vaccination. we had a wonderful white christmas with snow on the ground and the most sparkling, beautiful frosty walk. we should have celebrated husband's eldest's 30th birthday on new year's eve, but she got covid and we all had to isolate until we could test negative (we have all tested negative multiple times now). it wasn't the end to the year we expected, but maybe it was fitting anyway. 

* * *

i wasn't going to do a full month-by-month mosaic post, but i found myself perusing the ones from previous years and decided that it's nice to have them to look back upon. so, as always, this one's for me. and what's nice is that as i looked back over the photos and wrote the words here, i realized it may have been a second plague year, but it wasn't really all that bad. 

printmaking and the fog of living in a global pandemic

i learned a new sort of printmaking this weekend - collography. we used cardboard, rather than copper. i loved the elusive nature of it, though it felt like it took a couple of prints before i got my head around it and obviously i still have much to learn. it's different than linoprints. i also loved that each one only makes one or two prints. there's something appealing about it being a monoprint. i feel intrigued by the fact that there's only one chance.

i have cacti on the brain, so i made two. and i ended up feeling that what i really need is a scalpel that i can draw with. curves are a bit difficult. i also came away feeling that i need a press. you definitely need one that rolls the print through to do these, as just pressing down, like you can get away with on a linoprint, is not possible. there's always more art supplies that you can acquire.

i've been seeing people on instagram that are doing collography using packaging as the base. i took the packaging from my burrata and i really love the result.

having linocut experience, i hollowed out the small spots to make them, forgetting that they'd fill with ink and actually end up black. the instructor said i could cut out small bits of paper and make them be white. i like how that turned out. 

i did a quick last print, just before the end of the day, drawing a small bowl and decorating it with a couple of leaves. i actually made two of this print. i kept it simple, thinking that i'd maybe do some stitching on it or add a bit of my old favorite payne's grey. 

* * *

january seemed so long. like it was the longest january ever. but i made it to today, the last day. it was also the last day of my current job. i reluctantly leave behind my very good colleagues, but i am looking forward to starting something new tomorrow, something that's perhaps a bit more up my alley. i love starting something new and i'm very much looking forward to jumping in with both feet.

* * *

and speaking of never-ending, i've been thinking a lot lately and talking to people about this whole pandemic thing and what it's done to us. i don't think we even know. i just wrote a completely ragey letter to the church where sophia, the twin we lost, is buried. we renew the grave once a year and i somehow missed the first letter about it. so they send a reminder that horribly threatens to dig her up and throw her away. not quite in those words, but not that far from it. and even after 21 years, it upsets me greatly. i feel like i missed that first letter in the fog that has settled upon us with the monotony of the pandemic. tomorrow, all the restrictions are lifted here in denmark and i don't really know what i think about that. three colleagues today announced that they have tested positive and one more was sick as well, though i never heard a test result. i had a negative test yesterday, which i got on a whim because i saw that there was no line at the test center and i was there anyway. so, i've escaped the virus so far, but not the fog that has settled over all of us.

an old friend has been pondering the pandemic as well. read her take here.

the view from sunday night

i doodled this with a feather and payne's grey ink while watching goldfinger with my family. we're making our way through all of the james bond films, from the very beginning. i'm struck by that sean connery wasn't actually that cute when he was younger and he's kind of a terrible actor. the fight scenes are the worst and there are hilarious low budget moments in the film. it doesn't hold up well and yet it's still somehow iconic. i was happy that i was drawing during it tho', i think it might have been wasted time if i hadn't been.

* * *

it was a good weekend - spent mostly in the company of kittens, who are at peak playful. i opened a photo exhibition (more about that below). the afternoon was sunny on saturday, so i mowed the lawn, which makes me surprisingly happy. i only stopped when it started to rain and would have liked to have kept mowing. we have a big lawn and to do all of it takes over an hour, but i'm always a little bit sad when it's done. i made homemade sweet & sour chicken for saturday dinner, which is easier than i thought it would be, even making the sauce from scratch. we had homemade black currant ice cream with hot fudge sauce for dessert. i saw not one, but two tiny baby hedgehogs in the garden. i picked blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and pears in the garden and made them into a beautiful crostata (just another name for a rustic, lazy person's pie). i did all of the laundry, which gives me satisfaction as well, less than the lawn mowing, but satisfying nonetheless. i picked elderberries and made juice. they're small and tho' i picked a kettleful, it only made one bottle, so i'll have to go in search of more, because just one bottle won't do. there's nothing better than a warm elderberry beverage on a winter day.

* * *

i hung some of my photos as an exhibition in our gallery space at our local library. i was a bit disappointed in the quality of the prints i ordered online (photobox, i'm looking at you), but now i know not to order there. it is still nice to see them printed, framed and hung all together - in this digital world, we don't do this enough. i thought i was choosing photos on the theme of "in the wild," with a focus on nature, but they all seem to be rather still and quiet and not wild at all. it's interesting, actually. it must be something i instinctively sought - moments of peaceful stillness.

* * *

i'm really sick of the punditry dissing hillary for writing a book about her experience as the first woman presidential candidate of a major party. of course she should write a book and of course she should analyze what happened and what went wrong. she has every right to do so. she may not have sufficient distance to come to the ultimate conclusion (i don't know yet, as my copy hasn't arrived), but she has every right to write it. she lived it and it must have hurt like a motherfucker to lose to that buffoon. so shut the fuck up already and let her have her say. i can't help but think that if she were a man, there wouldn't be the same snide comments about the book.

* * *

the venerated TLS published a cover story by a nicholas gibbs, who claimed to have deciphered the voinych manuscript. the atlantic (and others) say, not so much. and this guy claims, on twitter, that nicholas gibbs doesn't even exist, and the whole thing is a pale fire-style stunt. whatever it is, that infernal manuscript continues to fascinate.

* * *

they say that postmodernism is dead. but aren't we still living it? what were we thinking, questioning reality and whether anything could be real? what a mess that's gotten us into now, with a post-truth spray-tanned president spewing his daily lies on twitter. could it get any more postmodern than that?

* * *

what happened to leftovers?

on drinking and drawing and laughing and talking and nurturing one's soul

i didn't know what i was going to actually draw at drink & draw - i put way more thought into the food i'd make than to the actual drawing part. but when one of the guests, who is a librarian, took out a book of poetry, a library book, no less (tho' it's one the library was getting rid of), to draw in, i knew i had to draw in a book as well. it's one i bought ages ago in some or other flea market - purchased because it had a gorgeous art deco cover (it's in the background of this photo). i hadn't even noticed the name of it, which is talsimanen (the talismen), which seemed extra fitting. i got out the inks (still in love with payne's grey) and got stuck in. it was odd, because initially i felt very restless and unable to settle in and draw, but something about the others drawing diligently away, using pastels and pens and pencils, settled me down and i got into a groove.

there was something magical about the evening. eating good food, drinking some wine and then taking out art supplies opened us all up in a way that the food and wine alone wouldn't have done. we don't know one another that well, but we were soon telling stories of past loves and past husbands and feeling we were in a setting where it was completely safe to share.

it's funny how kim's casual mention on facebook of a drink & draw evening she had attended, morphed into something very meaningful right here in my own home. an evening of laughter and sharing with women who inspire and comfort and challenge (in a good way). it definitely won't be the last time we do this. it's interesting, as i grow older, my need for spending time with women friends seems to on the rise. the evening gave me both that and fulfilled my need to throw ideas out there into the world and see what becomes of them.  it became so much more than i had imagined. and it was precisely what my soul needed.

finishing my torso (for now)

we're going to show our torsos this thursday with a big opening splash! so i've been frantically working on finishing mine. it's been sitting there on the sideboard, covered in words, painted blue, but unfinished.  i know i want to somehow incorporate some feathers, but i don't know yet how - perhaps this little feather bouquet i found on the beach contains an answer to that.

otherwise, i've been sketching and painting some small drawings of places i love and places which have been influential in my life to decorate the torso. this is the church of sv. jovan kaneo (john the baptist, if i remember correctly) at lake ohrid. influential since i met husband in macedonia, tho' not in ohrid.

st. basil's to signify my russian soul. i sketched or printed old sketches onto some pages from an old encyclopedia - that way the pictures still incorporate words, as words are important to my conception of my torso (and thus myself).

i couldn't resist using the colorful houses of nyhavn in copenhagen to represent denmark, which has, you may imagine, become an enormous influence upon me, having lived here for 15 years now. i loved those colorful houses along the canal when i first visited and seeing them still makes me smile.

and chicago, a sort of composite of places and buildings and that chicago pizza. it's the place from which i jumped off to my life in europe, so it had to be there.

and i couldn't resist a few helleristninger (nordic petroglyphs). they just speak to my soul. i drew them with that fabulous payne's grey ink.

i love this circle of life helleristning. it's long been a favorite. and symbolizes a feeling of community that spans the world (and which centers on this blog in many ways). it is essential to include on my torso.

these were some new helleristning that i came across that i'd never seen before. i love how the one figure appears to be floating away on a balloon. that felt symbolic and important as well. and in general i love that circle with the cross inside - it's the nordic sun symbol. light is so important in this part of the world, that it had to be included.

it is once again evident to me that i am a person in need of a deadline. i'd been procrastinating working on this and tho' i've thought about it pretty much endlessly, nothing was happening on it. but now, when the exhibition looms, ideas are coming together. i came across a package of little bitty people that i found in an antique store in the US last summer and i thought that since i've not used any photos of husband and sabin, that i'd use some little bitty figures to signify them. i included sabin's lost twin as well, because she's also part of who i am.

funny how once you start working, you get in a state of flow and ideas come and things just begin to happen. a garland on which i've written a bucket list to decorate the hanger. in that flow, i hit upon a way to incorporate a few feathers, which i seem to collect wherever i go.

i don't think i will be able to declare my torso officially finished on thursday when it goes to the exhibition, but it will be finished enough to show. i suspect that i will continue adding to it and it will change and grow evolve. just like me.