A favorite place

Peebles Island, Cohoes NY. Early mornings with Mike and the dogs are the best time, but Max can be a handful so I don't usually take my camera. But last week my very first best friend from childhood visited, and I left Max behind so that we could take in the sights and capture some of them in pictures. It was a gray day, but no less amazing for lack of bright sun. A bald eagle flew across our path and over the water during our walk, but neither of us could move fast enough to get a photo, so we just stood in awe of it's beauty and wing span and all it represents.

Under the snow...

While cleaning sticks and debris from my lawn this week (which has finally revealed itself after this long, long, winter), I found this lace-y piece of decayed paper trash, and I thought it was quite beautiful. I am going to make it the focal point of an art piece. It reminds me of handmade paper with inclusions. Mother nature, a total bitch for sure, but also the most inspiring artist...

Fall fotoshop fun

Charlotte, before photoshop...


Charlotte, after photoshop...

A fall weekend...

These were taken on a recent visit to my sister's house Massachusetts. Max and I got out for a leisurely stroll at a nearby state park.

A regal visitor...

I posted a similar photo last year sometime, I think, but these beautiful creatures never cease to amaze me, so I may tell the same story twice. This hawk perched on my deck railing for a good fifteen minutes yesterday morning. There are bird feeders to his left and right, so I suspect that he had either just feasted on one of my little visitors, or attempted to and was just re-grouping before heading off. I know it's sad, but that's the way nature works. And he has to eat too.

Aries, art, artists, friends...

These images are of an owl named Aries, hooooo I may very well meet this weekend... I first learned about him in this blog post by my friend Marilyn, who is having an art exhibit which begins tomorrow at the Five Rivers Nature Preserve, where Aries resides.
When Marilyn first wrote about Aries, she offered a blog challenge to create an altered art image of him. At the time, I was busy with other projects, but I decided to create one today in anticipation of meeting him and seeing Marilyn's exhibit. Clearly, I can't improve on the art of Mother Nature. He's a beautiful and majestic creature.

After the exhibit, I will hit the road with my faithful sidekick Max, and head out to my friend Debbie's, for an overnight of art, food, friends and fun on the farm.

I hope to have pictures of art & adventures to share with you on Monday.
Enjoy the weekend, my friends!

An Argument for Naturism

A recent study has shown that exposure to nature is beneficial to your brain.

The subjects were then run through a battery of psychological tests. People who had walked through the city were in a worse mood and scored significantly lower on a test of attention and working memory, which involved repeating a series of numbers backwards. In fact, just glancing at a photograph of urban scenes led to measurable impairments, at least when compared with pictures of nature.

"We see the picture of the busy street, and we automatically imagine what it's like to be there," says Berman. "And that's when your ability to pay attention starts to suffer."

This also helps explain why, according to several studies, children with attention-deficit disorder have fewer symptoms in natural settings. When surrounded by trees and animals, they are less likely to have behavioral problems and are better able to focus on a particular task.

Even a small patch of nature can help the mind better handle challenges, become easier to focus, strengthen self-control, achieve emotional stability, and to even to help the body maintain a healthier diet. If The Naturist Society and AANR are looking for a strong selling point for nudism and naturism, this is it.

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked

Leaf Wars

It's that time of year again.

I live in a neighborhood of mostly retired couples who have little more to do than putter around their yards.

Some are completely obsessive, mowing their lawns every 4 or 5 days whether it's needed or not.

Now come the leaf wars.

What did the leaf ever do to deserve such disrespect? After nurturing a tree for an entire season, and providing shade for anyone passing underneath, the leaf begins to die, and offers one of nature's most spectacular color displays.

But the problem in my neighborhood is when the leaves begin to fall on those neatly manicured lawns.

Nobody owns a rake anymore. No, the evil leaf needs to be banished with the most obnoxious machine ever devised by man - the leaf blower.

What demonic force possesses someone to do the gardening using gear with an engine big enough to run the electricity grid of a small African country?...The sustained boom in high-powered gardening equipment has sparked a disease in the psyche of suburbs where the grass is always greener on the other side, and jealousy and one-upmanship turn normal men into obsessive-compulsive idiots.

My wife and I were watching TV after dinner and suddenly it sounded like a 747 was landing in out back yard. I rushed outside to find my neighbor with a jet engine strapped to her back, attached to a long snout that was blasting her leaves towards the street, and she was wearing ear protectors! I respectfully reminded her that she was in clear violation of our local noise ordinance, and while I was not going to complain, it was inevitable that one of the local retirees would pick up the phone and call the police. She grumbled a little, but I think she knew how incredibly rude her screaming machine really was.

You have to understand my neighbors. If there is a stray dog running around, it's not long before a police car arrives to arrest the offending canine. One elderly gentleman sits on his front porch all day, any time of year, just watching anything and everything. This is absolutely 100% the truth - you can see him clearly on Google street view nailed to his lawn chair.

But back to the leaves.

Another neighbor uses her leaf blower every two days in the autumn. Even if there are only 12 1/2 leaves on her lawn, they are clearly not welcome and must be blown away. The leaves are rounded up and placed into neat little piles in the street gutter, where city sucking machines come around weekly and slurp them up.

Whatever happened to mulching?

OK, I have to do something with my leaves, too. You can't live in this neighborhood with a blanket of leaves on your lawn. People will think you are crazy, or perhaps dead.

So I pick up that old rake and do it the old fashioned way. It doesn't really take any longer than using a leaf blower, and I get some good exercise.

When I was a kid we would rake the leaves into huge piles and spend the afternoon jumping into them. Then we would call the local fire department for a verbal permit, and would set the leaves on fire. It was a glorious smell filling the air. People would burn their lawns, too, as a means to remove thatch and leaves, and stimulate new growth. For obvious reasons in crowded suburbia, burning of leaves and lawns has been long since outlawed.

So hopefully the day will come soon when leaf blowers are assigned to the ash heap of history. Something tells me that people will not look back fondly on their blower memories.

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked

Winter haiku...

Footprints in the snow
chilly march across my deck
for a peck of seed

I looked up

from beneath the tree in my yard, through to the blue sky above, on another beautiful autumn day.

This tree (which came with my house, and therefore I do not know its species)is a visual delight in every season. When it loses it's leaves in the fall, these wonderful yellow berries appear. In winter, they turn red, then brown, and even when it is bare, it's a perfect silhouette of snow and ice. In spring, it flowers in white, but if you look closely at the petals, they are rose-colored in the center. In summer, the white petals blanket the ground and green leaves greet me again.

In spite of the fact that I am essentially allergic to the fall (mold, leaves, hives, itch, horrendous, two weeks, end of story!), this has been one of the most beautiful seasons I can remember. We've had perfectly mild weather in the day, chilly and crisp for sleeping at night.

Art stuff...
I organized one of my many journals last night =-- my IDEA journal -- and it was a good exercise to remind me of all the sketches I made and ideas I have for holiday projects and also for techniques I want to try. As this year rapidly comes to a close, I am looking back at the year to see what I've accomplished, and making my list of intentions for 2008. Those who know me or have followed my blog for awhile know that I used to dread (and avoid) making resolutions or intentions, because my logic was that if I didn't do them I would feel badly, whereas, if I never admitted to having them, I could not fail...

Of course, this was very skewed logic. I certainly wasn't fooling myself. I still felt awful when a year would go by with nothing to show for it. With the help of a wonderful creative coach, I was able to see this flaw in my logic. So now I declare my plans and intentions -- often quite publicly in this forum -- and just such a simple declaration makes them real, and is the first step to realizing them.

Autumn with Abigail

...the Argiope Aurantia

In spite of her frightening appearance, this femme fetale is harmless to humans (though I did not sit her on my shoulder to see). Abigail has taken up residence on my front porch, where she wove this stunning web between an arborvitae and a boxwood. She is often referred to as a garden spider, for her tendency to set up house in gardens, and though harmless to us, you do not want to fly in her midst if you happen to be a bug or butterfly (and I would not want to find her cozying up to me on the sofa!). I'm hoping she hangs around until Halloween. She's such an authentic decoration, don't you think?

If you've noticed an absence of art on my blog lately (as well as an absence of blogging generally), it's because it is my crazy season at work, which will end blissfully at about 10 am tomorrow morning, when my colleagues drive off in a rented minivan for our annual convention in Atlantic City. As the graphic artist, I spend the month of September designing and overseeing RUSH printing jobs for books, fliers, brochures, buttons, stickers, giveaways, cds, and display units. The RUSH part happens because everyone enjoys the last warm, lazy days of summer until Labor Day, and then they panic when September arrives and they've not given a thought to their convention projects. I've become accustomed to this panic, which sets in immediately on Tuesday morning after labor day, when the rested and suntanned return from vacations at the Shore and on the Cape. My voicemail and email boxes are full of exclamations and exclamation points stressing how urgent their projects are, even though they were not given a thought just a day earlier.

So after 10 am tomorrow, I will take a deep breath, a sip of my diet Pepsi, and hopefully get back to a regular pace at work, which allows my mind to wander in creative ways so that when I return home, I can blog and make art again.

I've moved!!!

I didn't relocate under a toad stool as this photo might suggest, although my husband wouldn't have minded moving all of my art supplies there. I just saw this singular 'shroom in the middle of our lawn and wanted to snap a picture. I will post with a picture of the room once I take one!!!

I've moved - Nope! not my blog, and not my house, but my art room!!! I moved one room to the right, to the brightest room in the house. I have been wanting to do this almost since we bought the house. When we moved in, I chose the smallest room for my studio, not realizing it was also the darkest, and really, way too small for all of my stuff.

I had to swap what was in my new room (mostly my husband's tools and ebay hobby), with my room -- which was a monumental task. I wanted to do it right, i.e., empty a room, spackle, paint, install new shelving and furniture, etc., but I am nowhere near ready for that, and I just got tired of waiting.

My husband and I have lost a number of friends and an elderly family member this summer, which always forces one to reevaluate one's life and goals. In my case, one of my reactions was to say - do it now!! You never know if there will be a tomorrow!!! Another great motivator was the fact that this is my last long weekend for awhile. So while my husband (for whom moving creates great anxiety) was at work on Friday, I summoned Herculean strength to swap two enormous oak armoires and all of our "stuff" from room to room. Max is utterly perplexed, and followed me back and forth about 200 times on Friday, not resting at all and not helping at all, I should add, but he's slowly getting used to it. The room is a bit bigger, and very bright, which will be particularly welcoming in the fall and winter.

Spring...my new favorite season...

I have always been an autumn girl. I love crisp cool weather, new fall sweaters, ochre, red, brown... but this year, I am really appreciating the miracle of springtime, when nature shows its resiliency and incredible beauty. Plants that you think could not possibly survive winter in the northeast bud and bloom and restore my faith. I breathe deeply the smell of fresh-cut grass, flowers, wet earth, and warm sun.-- Yes, I smell the warm sun. Okay, maybe I feel it, but part of the magic of spring for me is the mingling of the senses.
Birds...
another miracle of spring in upstate New York.
I have a nest of baby robins outside my kitchen window. From behind the sheers in my kitchen, I watched as they built the nest in my arborvitae, twig, by twig... and I watched the day they defended the eggs from a common grackle. I saw what it really means to "get ones feathers up" as the robin plumped up to appear larger and more threatening and successfully defended the nest. And now I watch as mother robin brings them worms, seemingly all day long. She has at least four hungry mouths to feed, from what I can see when I dare to intrude by using my own deck, and I am in awe of the devotion and duty of motherhood.