phase 2 redux - observe the law of equivalent exchange

This week, in addition to making the owl animation (about which I was so excited, it got a post of its very own on Friday :)), I kept working on Spes (Hope.)

It's a good first piece of a new year. New Year's is always kind of sad to me because I think of all the things I didn't do. I don't usually dwell on the past much, (if I try to ask myself, "what if" I very quickly hit a mental wall of "but that's not what happened (?confused?)" - I'm like a unicorn in this respect.) On New Year's though, I always feel a sense of a loss, as if the present is somehow shrinking. 

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world
 but then I thought there are so many people in the world,
 there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed
in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine
that she must be out there thinking of me too.
Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this
and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.” 
― Frida Kahlo

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is, but always to be blessed:

The soul, uneasy and confined from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

– Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

I kept working on the wings

I find the feet poking out of the non-existent drapery funny

more sewing to make the flowers
(pink and gold pattern wild roses)

after looking at the photographs, I decided the yellow and green plant was wrong...

Now I think it needs more plants and creatures (put a bird in it ;))

Life imitating Art imitating Life?
These are the flowers I picked out
for New Years - pink and sparkly

I've joked before about how my clothes always
seem to match my art. I really don't do it on purpose,
and yet...I must subconsciously be thinking about
my work when I get dressed in the morning
 (or maybe I make work to match what's in my closet?)
Or maybe it's a little of both?

I remembered that this was the cover
of maybe my first "real" sketchbook
as a kid. When I looked it up, I was surprised
to learn that it's a 1947 collage by Matisse, "Icarus."
 My question - But where are the wings?!

a detail of the floor in the Siena cathedral The openness of the line drawing in the dress was inspired by the Mantegna tarot deck I was studying last week and also by the  in the floor of the Siena cathedral

one of my pictures of Olana

.

Odilon Redon, "Ophelia," 1904
more research - another favorite

This week included a visit from my lovely and smart friends Tammy and David. We made a visit to Olana, the artist Frederic Edwin Church's house. Even though it's in Hudson, (shamefully) I had never been. There was so much patterning, I got the "nauseous/ borderline-hyperventilating" feeling that I sometimes get when I'm very "art-happy" - Fun times!

Mini "helping" me organize receipts

A friend helped me try out a new recipe
-polka dot chocolate chip cookies

new year - new haircolor