Posts Tagged ‘arts and crafts’
Cindy on March 25th, 2010
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” ~Georgia O’Keeffe
Until recently, I was a bit shy about entering my altered art pieces in contests and competitions. More complex than my writing, my artwork is intensely personal — a messier way of making sense of my fantasies, doubts, fears, and dreams.
Writing is work. When people ask me what I “do,” or if they insist on labeling me by career or profession, I usually tell them I’m a writer or a journalist. While I dearly love to write, I also admit that it’s incredibly hard work. The business savvy required to get published and paid for it — pitching new material, marketing, promoting, building a platform, facing rejection, and starting over again — is enough to make me seriously doubt my sanity for choosing a writing career after college.
But making art is pure pleasure, my recreational sport. Of course, there’s a huge difference between a viable profession and a crazy good hobby. And I know that if I ever opt to sell my artwork or get it published, I’d have to add yet another layer of complexity to the whole collage. So, what I’m really trying to say is this: I’m incredibly stingy with my artwork.
My artist-husband, whose paintings have been accepted in many top competitions, is my biggest cheerleader. He pushes me out of my comfort zone. At his urging, this year I entered the 28th annual Michigan Fine Arts Competition at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center — and two of my pieces were accepted. When this sort of thing happens, I’m always honored and surprised.
“Becoming,” one of the pieces in the show, was inspired by May Sarton’s poem, “Now I Become Myself.” If you’ve been following my poetry series, you know what an uplifting and validating poem it is.
“Becoming” originally served as a greeting card box. I altered the interior and exterior of the box with layers of acrylic paint, prints, tissue paper, and “found objects” from my flea market raids. I added a copy of May Sarton’s poem to the back of the piece.
Using more found objects — junk jewelry, sea shells, old buttons, a religious medal, and my old Girl Scout pin — I created a 3-D collage inside the box. Botticelli’s “Venus” was clipped from a magazine print to represent the self reborn. Just as we’re all the sum of our life experiences, Venus rises from a pile of junk and treasure and becomes herself. Life, like art, is all about working with what you’ve got, and sometimes mining gold from the broken parts.
The other piece in the show, “Renaissance Woman” (top and bottom photos) is an altered children’s board book collaged with vintage dress patterns, sewing notions, 
broken costume jewelry, feathers, and old prints. I’m thrilled that both of these pieces were chosen for the show, as together they work as a tribute to all creative women.
The BBAC exhibit runs from April 2 through May 7 and is open to the public. For exhibit hours and directions to the BBAC, please visit the Web site.
– Cindy La Ferle
–For a larger view of these art pieces, please click on each image. Photos and artwork are copyrighted (2010) by Cindy La Ferle. –
Cindy on February 15th, 2010
Enjoy a tiny adventurous moment close to home. It changes your perspective, reminding you that the world is deep and rich and full of color and miracles.” –SARK
A lot of us are stumbling over creative blocks lately. Those who live in the wintry Midwest and Northeast blame it on lack of sunshine. Or cabin fever. Even if things are going reasonably well in other areas of our lives, we might gaze out our windows at the icy moonscape that once bloomed with roses or black-eyed Susans and feel twinges of ennui, or even despair.
Whatever the cause, it’s hard to get inspired when you’re sluggish and blue.
Last month I tripped over a huge creative block and hit a wall. For starters, what began as a satisfying home renovation project was abruptly stalled by a carpet order gone wrong, thanks to the evil Home Depot. (As a result, our master bedroom stayed torn apart for weeks.) Meanwhile, my elderly mom’s dementia-related health problems took a turn for the worse, requiring several trips to her doctor — and the hospital — for tests. As her sole caregiver, I felt helpless and exhausted.
Worst of all, I couldn’t seem to write or talk my way out of any of it. It was time to work from another side of my brain. Time to shift creative gears and to make something tangible and fun.
Bead therapy
Just in time, I received a clothing catalog featuring one of the coolest fetish necklaces I’d ever seen. Strung with African trading beads, brass trinkets, and a wild collection of charms, it evoked long walks on Caribbean beaches and cabana cocktails under the stars. A summer-fantasy vacation on a string!
I was tempted to pull out my credit card and purchase the fetish necklace online or over the phone. Instead, I decided to treat myself to the pure fun of making it myself.
Things were slow at the local craft store when I arrived on a gray Wednesday afternoon with the catalog photo in hand. The salesclerk working in the bead section was just as intrigued by the necklace, and eager to help with the project. Taking my time, I chose a few imported beads that had special meaning to me: a wooden bead with a butterfly motif (symbolizing transformation); another with a Celtic spiral; others that simply caught my eye.
At home I played with the beads until they became a necklace, stringing them together one by one and finding myself in a sunnier frame of mind. Of course, our master bedroom was still in chaos, beyond my control. And my mother’s dementia-related “episodes” were still unresolved. Regardless, I’d made something cheerful and new. The necklace wasn’t exactly like the one in the catalog — but I’d made it my own.
I often tell my workshop students that writing an essay or a chapter is a bit like stringing beads to form a beautiful necklace. Like the right bead, each word or sentence must do its share of the work to bring meaning or sparkle to the whole piece. You need to take your time, choose carefully, and take pleasure in the process.
That said, no matter what you’re working on, you could find yourself getting tangled up in “the process” at some point. When that happens, it helps to take a break. Or try making yourself a real necklace. – Cindy La Ferle
– Fetish necklace in photos by Cindy La Ferle –
Cindy on January 28th, 2010
Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table.” — Jane Hirshfield, “The Poet”
The place in which we work — an art studio, a home office, a spare bedroom, or the corner booth at the local diner — is essential to our creative lives.
I often hear would-be writers and artists complain that they can’t practice their craft because they don’t have a studio or a home office. But if we really want to write or paint, sculpt or sew, we’ll find a way to make a space for it. My friend Debbie, for instance, makes no apologies for keeping her sewing machine set up in the living room while she’s working on her projects. And nobody thinks she’s messing up the place. Her visitors are inspired by the cool things she’s creating.
An evocative portrait of an unknown poet’s writing room, this sweet poem, below, always tugs at my heart. It’s a universal image — the writing desk with a single lamp — but Jane Hirshfield makes it intensely personal. She also reminds us that the support of family and loved ones is just as essential as having a room of one’s own. -- CL
The Poet
By Jane Hirshfield
She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb’s
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not, she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair –
Let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.
—Reprinted from The Lives of the Heart, by Jane Hirshfield; HarperPerennial; 1997
This post is part of a new weekly series of poetry appreciation. To read more, please click on “Poems to inspire” in the CATEGORIES column at right. As always, I welcome your recommendations, too.
–Top photo “My Desk Chair” (copyrighted) by Cindy La Ferle–
Cindy on October 21st, 2009
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Like the perfect pumpkin waiting for a master carver, Halloween never fails to stir the imagination. Not surprisingly, it’s a favorite holiday among the creative souls in my family. Early in October, Doug and I start raiding attics and local thrift shops for the most outlandish outfits we can jumble together. And every year in September, we start work on a project or two to enter in the Anton Art Center’s annual Halloween art exhibition.
Running now through November 7, this year’s juried group exhibition is aptly titled MASKED. Both of us have two pieces in this show. Mine play on the theme of Victorian autumn carnivals — a theme that has haunted me ever since I first read Ray Bradbury’s atmospheric novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Since I’ve worked as a writer for more than 25 years, it’s probably no surprise that books and writing-related themes have a hand in my artwork. Here’s a preview of my pieces in MASKED:
“Damn everything but the circus!” was inspired by an e.e. cummings poem of the same title. I’ve always loved the circus — yet find it a little scary, too. This altered children’s board book is embellished with antique circus ephemera, vintage costume jewelry, carnival tickets, stars, scraps, and feathers. While working on this piece, I recalled the time I interviewed a lion tamer from a traveling circus act — one of my first and favorite stories for a local newspaper.
“Victoria Fortune’s Magic Box” (top photo) is a mixed media assemblage crafted entirely of found objects, starting with a large jewelry box from a local thrift shop. I painted the box and trimmed it with old lace and trims, then added the odds and ends I’d been collecting for several months. The idea for this project was sparked by an old (non-copyrighted) photo of a sinister-looking group of Victorian sisters. I was intrigued by the mysterious ambiance of the photo, and imagined that the women were part of an autumn carnival act called “The Sisters of Fortune.” I created a story — and the box — around them. The woman wearing the black leather gloves in the center, Victoria Fortune, was a medium with a gift for prophesy. Her box contains items used for her magic acts and tarot readings at the carnival.
For a look at some of my other art pieces, you can link to my Facebook gallery: Altered Art: Found Objects and Curious Things. – CL
Cindy on May 4th, 2009
“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” — Henry Ward Beecher
With Mother’s Day approaching, I’ve been thinking about how my mother shaped my views on career, homemaking, and motherhood.
Like most children in the 1950s and ’60s, I took for granted that Mom would be waiting at home each afternoon when I returned from school. In those days, day-care providers were called baby-sitters, and their employment was limited to occasional Saturday evenings. The “average housewife” role, now a remnant of that mythical past, was as indigenous to middle-class suburbia as The Donna Reed Show.
Combining what she often dubbed âthe best of both worlds,â my mother earned a respectable paycheck while working at home. She didn’t realize it at the time, but she paved the way for the free-lance writing career I would begin years later after my son was born.
Trained as a commercial artist, Mom applied transparent oil tints to photographic portraits of brides and high school graduates. (This was long before portraiture was changed by the introduction of direct-color film and, ultimately, digital photography.) I remember coming home from school to find Mom working in her portable “studio,” which was a table pulled next to a window overlooking our backyard. Perched next to her in a small chair, I watched as she squeezed oil paints onto a glass palette and applied delicate washes of color to each sepia-toned portrait.
I chattered while she painted, occasionally cleaning her brushes in spirits of turpentine. With an ear tilted toward our conversation, Mom would follow my rambling grade-school chitchat — a daily litany of kids who had misbehaved on the playground, or the impossible words I’d misspelled on a test. During these intimate girl talks, problems were solved, opinions formed, hurts consoled.
I was always proud of her — proud to say, “My mom is an artist.” But until I started my own family, I never fully realized how hard she worked, or how much sleep she lost in order to meet her deadlines while keeping a home. Around the clock she painted her portraits and delivered them in bright yellow Kodak boxes to local photography studios, made meals for my father and me, decorated our home, volunteered at my school, and even found time to help lead a Girl Scout troop.
Somehow — from my childish perspective — she created the illusion that her time stretched infinitely and that she was always accessible. Like a good portrait, my relationship with her was never rushed, but rendered lovingly over time, layer upon layer.
Watching my mother today, I’ve learned that the art of living well has a lot to do with improvisation. You must continually find new ways to use the materials and circumstances at hand — and the process is rarely simple.
Shortly after my father’s sudden death 17 years ago, Mom had to sell our family home and move to a smaller place. Adjusting to her new identity as a widow was difficult, and I know she missed the home she and my dad had built together. Everyone we knew grieved the changes in our small family.
But surprisingly, even to me, Mom began transforming the new, blank walls of her condominium into a welcoming place of warmth and beauty. Once again, I saw the artist filling her rooms with silk flowers, family antiques, and photographs of favorite people. Working alone, she reinvented “home” for herself. Art critic John Ruskin once wrote, “When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.” Reading this maxim, I always think of my mother. — Cindy La Ferle
– A slightly different version of this piece originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor; it is reprinted in my essay collection, Writing Home. Both paintings are by Mary Cassatt –
Writing Home is currently featured in Urbane Life’s “10 Last-minute Gifts for Mother’s Day.” Click here to read the full review and article on Urbane Life.
Until recently, I was a bit shy about entering my altered art pieces in contests and competitions. More complex than my writing, my artwork is intensely personal — a messier way of making sense of my fantasies, doubts, fears, and dreams.
“Becoming,” one of the pieces in the show, was inspired by May Sarton’s poem, “Now I Become Myself.” If you’ve been following my poetry series, you know what an uplifting and validating poem it is.
“Becoming” originally served as a greeting card box. I altered the interior and exterior of the box with layers of acrylic paint, prints, tissue paper, and “found objects” from my flea market raids. I added a copy of May Sarton’s poem to the back of the piece.
broken costume jewelry, feathers, and old prints. I’m thrilled that both of these pieces were chosen for the show, as together they work as a tribute to all creative women.
