Circles

Most days I hang out in the big round tent of making things, playing like I'm a real artist. Gel printing, watercoloring, gluing, sanding, collaging, and cutting circles--that's the air in the mental balloon that keeps me happy most days in spite of everything. 

Using the same techniques I used on my armoire and circle paintings, I covered a little cardboard suitcase with circles. It is, if I do say so myself, pretty cute.

(When I sent Mike a picture of the armoire, he dubbed me "the goddess of eye candy," a moniker I love.)

Then I made little pools of watercolors--colorful circles in my watercolor journal--and you'd have thought I'd made a masterpiece based on my happiness quotient!  I never knew you could bump two wet circles of paint together and one would dance into the other. Or that dropping a few drops of metallic watercolor into regular watercolor would create little watery sparklers on the page.  So much to learn, so little time!

My love of circles started decades ago with a tomato.  I sliced the tomato and photographed it in a square format.  Then, after doing many tomato slices, and arranging them in a grid pattern, I moved on to peppers, onions, and Mexican pastries. 

One day, Will came home from school with a friend and saw bagels on the counter. "Hey, Mom, are these bagels to eat or take pictures of?"

To play with circles every day is the new part.  I'm obsessed, "following my bliss," as Joseph Campbell called it.

At the end of a play day, it's almost as much fun to put all my babies to bed for the night, the paint markers in one basket, the watercolors in another, and the brushes and pencils in their jars.

The only upside to veritable hermitage is that there's plenty of time to follow some of the blisses we never found enough time for before. 

I

This is now hanging in Day's
dining room. 
When I snapped this shot, it
was hanging on my turquoise wall. 

Pools of watercolors