Art Diary. A weekly wrap-up of art activities. For earlier posts, search under the category Art Diary.

Saturday, March 10 – I viewed another student art show – my husband and I went over to Arcadia University’s gallery to check out work of local high school students for the area’s Pennsylvania State Education Association juried show.

Local pride – a Cheltenham HS student won best of show for her 3D work – CHS is our local HS and I live across the street from it. I was entranced at the level of detail in this work – remember, every single thing in this work was made by the artist to fit it.

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I took photos of other pieces I liked. I am happy to have seen two art shows featuring work of young people just starting out, with such good work on display.

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I worked on paintings a bit in the evening. I’m tired of these now, and maybe they are tired of me. We will rest a bit and meet again some other time.

I retreated to my sofa and put finishing touches on postcards and ATC’s while watching TV.

Sunday, March 11 – This next week is going to be one of doing things in bits and pieces. The colleges where I write poetry are on spring vacation, so library hours are amended; I might be spending several partial days writing rather than a bigger block of time, which means…art will be fitting itself into the spaces in this week. Wonder what will end up happening?

We attended a play this afternoon. In the evening I decided to clean up my studio from recent projects and get my head clearer, too, as to what I might do this week.

I refreshed my work tables my turning the cover paper around/over. I had used a strip of grocery bag as additional cover and I liked the random paint patterns. I folded it in half, glued it, and made accordion folds. The makings of a future art book, maybe.

I sorted my paints…

papers and scraps of semi-ideas for projects…

arranged inks and photos that might make for nice drawings.

I sorted out my brushes. Some have died in service. I have the idea that maybe I could do something with the handles. I corraled them with a rubber band for the future.

I set up a portable collage kit. I read somewhere about a person who does plein air “sketches” using collage. I’ve done plein air collage myself, and I am very at home in collage work after years of doing it, so I thought…hmmm, maybe I could try that?

All right. Enough ordering for today.

Monday, March 12 – I think that this week is taking a shape in my mind. No big projects will get started or finished. I’ll be just doing a little thing here and a little thing there. OK, that’s good, I’m all set.

I spent some time organizing my markers – I bought some new ones last week and it pleased me to figure out the color groups. So calming.

After lunch, I decided to work with pen and ink. I did a page in my current Large Artist Sketchbook – it’s of College Hall at Montco from a photo I took this last week. It’s India ink with the tiny red figure the only collaged item.

As a note, the idea of this book is that I fill up a sketchbook with random art in any media, any theme, any anything. When it is finished, I write poems to go with each page. I’ve done one Large book in 2017 and am closing in on the text for a Small one right now – I write something for it in each Poetry Marathon session. Each of these books took about 18 months to fill with art.

Eventually I’ll get to posting these books. For now you will just hear about the current one, now and then.

Then I worked on a couple of postcards from the paper stock I bought a while back.

And a couple of other mail art postcards, collage and ink together. I also created a whole pile of odds and ends to use in later cards that I didn’t get to today.

After considering, I cut the zig-zag accordion paper and along with another set of painted card, I stapled them to make books. I decided I just did not feel zig-zag-ish.

Tuesday, March 13 – Another day out and about. Not much art time. I spent about an hour painting more of those folded ad card brochures for some future purpose:

and I also did some paint on ATC’s and postcards (recycled cardboard from cereal boxes and the like), also for some future time.

Wednesday, March 14 – Pen/brush and ink time.

I did a trio of postcards on that purchased watercolor paper seen earlier this week…

…and here is a page in my ongoing Large Artist Sketchbook – I drew two mannequins from photo references and then I put them in my laundry room. Well, it’s all about clothing, right? Look out for that ironing board scuttling along.

I took the random-painted grocery-bag paper stapled book (I need to think of a shorter term for this project) and did outlining of shapes with the Chinese brush and India ink. This book is evolving and no one knows where it will end up or what it will be…

Friday, March 16 – Well, it’s Friday, and so I decided to devote myself to finishing, since the week is finishing itself. I gathered up all the little drawings and half-done postcards and ATC’s and said: You are all going to be finished when this afternoon is over.

Well, not quite. I realized a better idea was to either finish the piece, or have it in such a position that I could complete it sitting on the sofa watching TV. In other words, it’s time to clean things up and get ready for something new next week (what, I don’t know…)

Here is my work table in the middle of the frenzy:

Oh dear. What a mess. Well, I ended up with a lot of postcards and ATC’s – if the individual piece is not done, I know what I’ll do to complete it.

I glued several larger small drawings (yes, I know I said that) into my Large Artist Sketchbook and fanned out the pages to dry. I will figure out a plan for these one at a time.

I have skeletons of small artist books for when inspiration strikes. I think the brown paper one looks very Miro – I might leave it alone and write text for it as it is. I like it.

I had a pile of paint cards. I drew a house on one of them, cut it out, and glued it to a postcard. I liked doing it; the surface of these cards has an oddly toothy texture and my pen liked it. I did another house, same thing, and I set the pile aside to work on each one in this way. Serendipity.

And so Friday ended a week that saw a lot of items pass through my hands. Very satisfying art time for me.

Thank you for reading! See you next week!