Post Square 12.06.13 ~ Rolihlahla, the “troublemaker”

Post Square 12.06.13 ~ Rolihlahla, the “troublemaker”

Today he’s gone home, and we’ve lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us; he belongs to the ages.

President Barack Obama

Post Square 12.05.13 ~ The Uninspired

Post Square 12.05.13 ~ The Uninspired

Wal-Mart does not pay its employees well.

But it pays them something.

And something is better than nothing for a lot of people.

Besides, you can buy a starfruit there for 50 cents.

And now the residents of D.C. don’t have to drive to Maryland or Virginia to buy a starfruit.

They have two newly opened Wal-Marts of their very own where they can get one.

Sorry, not inspired

by Wal-Mart. Don’t even have

a decent haiku.

And, as you can see, I’ve reverted back to finding a design in a square inch of the photo when just yesterday I said I wasn’t doing that anymore. The image is the Wal-Mart logo star thing.

I even went for the randomly chosen pencils to color it in. The first one I chose was the black for the background. When I saw it I said, “whoa, okay, a black background it is.” Yesterday’s background was black, too, but that was on purpose. Then I picked the flesh tone and the brown and the slate gray, and had this earthy thing going, but I just knew in the back of my mind things were going to get weird like some sort of horrid green and bingo! It was even more downhill from there, that yellow and orange (a dangerous color) and, good grief, another bad green, and a bright red to go with it, no less, how Christmassy! At this point I’m thinking I’m going to go over the whole thing with white and blur it together. Then, I finished covering the last of the white with those blue and taupe stripes and it was done. It was what it was. I propped it up in front of me and those flesh ovals said, “FACES!”, so I drew those on. They could represent the oppressed masses at Wal-Mart.

I have to tell you one last thing about today’s article. There is the most wonderful quote. It was something said by D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange, who is running for mayor. He was talking about how the debate whether to let Wal-Mart into the city or not led to the vote supporting a citywide minimum wage of $11.50 by 2016. He said, “You have to go through stuff to get to stuff.”

You have to go through stuff to get to stuff. Don’t you love it? My new mantra.

Post Square 12.04.13 ~ Nativity Procession

Post Square 12.04.13 ~ Nativity Procession

I was relieved to see that the cover of the Post had a gentle photograph today, taken by Bill O’Leary. The subject is a Nativity procession, an annual event sponsored by the evangelical nonprofit group Faith and Action.

In the photo a camel donning an elegant red blanket and matching halter waits patiently with a donkey, a sheep and their handlers dressed in draping robes. They look odd stopped in front of the marbled-columned Supreme Court building.

Today’s haiku ~

Camels in D.C.

Nativity procession

marble columns watch

To get an idea of what to draw I moved my inch square around the photo to find an intriguing area to use for a design. There were quite a few possibilities, but while I was looking this idea of the animal pyramid came to mind and felt more fun. I seem to be getting away from my original idea of using the random square to make an abstract design…for now anyway.

In a wonderful, thick Natural History book published by Smithsonian I found pictures of the camel, the donkey and the sheep to use for reference. I wanted to find animals that would be authentic to the geography of the Nativity. Pictured here is the Bactrian camel, not the Dromedary. On the donkey’s back is a Jacob Sheep, which, according to the book, is said to have “originated in Palestine”.

I added the wreath and jingle bell anklets and the donkey’s blanket and tail bow.

The drawing, which measures 4”X6”, was done in pencil first, then painted with watercolor. It’s on Bristol board.

I think I could have my Christmas card for this year.

Why I Do What I Do

Noah Scalin, author of 365, A Creativity Journal, Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life, has a cool blog where he posts the projects of creative people all over the world. You can find it here ~

http://makesomething365.blogspot.com

If you want your project to be considered for a post he asks you to answer two questions. This is what I sent him...

Rebecca Grace Jones

Shepherdstown, West Virginia USA
PROJECT NAME  ~ (My) Artplay at 60 ~ Using the Daily News as Inspiration

URL ~ www.wordkeepers.blogspot.com
A BRIEF PROJECT DESCRIPTION ~ Using the cover photo and story of the Washington Post newspaper for inspiration to create a piece of artwork, in image and word, every day in the month of December 2013 and present the results as a show in January 2014

Why did I decide to do this project and how has doing a daily project affected my life?

As an artist I have two needs ~ 1) the challenge of creating something and

2) someone to show it to.

This means that in the sixty years I’ve been walking around on this earth I’ve not evolved much from the child who would bound out of bed in the morning eager to see what I could scribble together with my crayons and then run to show it to my mother.

As a small child I was able to come up with my own inspiration for crayon scribbles. When I started attending school I learned that it was possible to make things from the suggestions of others. It was also quite satisfying, because then they would acknowledge my accomplishment in the form of a rating system called a “grade”.  This was different from my mother’s reaction in that it might not always be favorable, but the recognition fed me nonetheless.

The challenge of creating something from a presented idea became a puzzle to solve, an activity upon which I thrived. This made me a good art student through graduate school and a decent free-lance illustrator early in my career.

The audience has changed over the years from mother, to teacher, to art director, and now to you, the public. It’s been necessary to evolve, at least to a degree, in order to accept the levels of acknowledgement I receive and continue to produce my art regardless. As a child it’s possible that, if my mother hadn’t gushed over everything I showed her, I might not have pursued the life of an artist. Now, I find I’m able to, well, actually, I need to create things whether you, my audience, like them or not, though, of course, it’s nice when you do. I don’t think I could continue if what I created was being completely ignored, but I am able to find the motivation I need to keep working in even a limited amount of attention.

Having spent 2012 completing the 365 projects from Noah Scalin’s book, Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life, where I was given ideas, I find now, that in order to keep up the daily practice of creating, I am in a position of having to make up my own assignments. That’s where this latest project comes in ~ Using the cover photo and story from the Washington Post for inspiration, I find something to draw or collage and write about, either as a synopsis of the story or a poem in haiku form. I enjoy writing, particularly constructing the haiku in its 5-7-5 syllable structure, because of the puzzle-solving element involved.

This project, the working title of which is (My) Artplay at 60 ~ Using the Daily News as Inspiration, gives me the structure of being there every day and presenting me with a challenge of finding something inspiring enough to be creative. When I post the artwork (or artplay) and word-thing on my blog, www.wordkeepers.blogspot.com, I get to see if it has any effect on anyone.

The incentive for this project was an invitation to have a show at the Fire House Gallery in Charles Town, WV for the month of January 2014, during which I will turn 60. It made me want to do something fresh and interesting.

How has this changed my life? It is the difference between getting up in the morning and being presented with a blur of things to do, and bounding out of bed to get the newspaper to see what today’s assignment is, and then to my computer to see if you got, or didn’t get, what I did yesterday. It’s what I need to do.

Post Square 12.03.13 ~ What Was Left of Her

Post Square 12.03.13 ~ What Was Left of Her

What was left of her

shadow on the coffin floor

bit of lace, a ring

When I saw the front cover of the Post today I made an audible sound that was something like “yeck”.

A picture of an archaeologist reaching his blue-gloved hand into a shallow grave where the only recognizably human thing is the gaping maw of a blackened skull.

Geez, I thought, what are these Post people doing to me? They keep giving me these depressing subjects that I’m supposed to find inspiring.

The article proved to be interesting as well as thought-provoking.

The story is about a small graveyard near Manassas, Virginia. The rough fieldstones that marked the graves under the dense overgrowth bore dates in the late 1800s. They were discovered by a survey crew in 2008. For some reason, this was not brought to the attention of the folks from the high school who want to build their football field there until most of the occupants had been exhumed and by then it was, as they put it, “too late”.

The occupants, come to find out, may be the ancestors of a woman, who happens to be a genealogist living in Manassas and she’s not at all happy about the removal of the graveyard’s contents. She feels that this family, who lived and worked on the land all their lives, expected to rest peacefully there for eternity.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to happen to my body after I die. Both of my parents were cremated and I’d thought that was my preferred option until it was brought to my attention what a dreadful waste of energy that is. Better to have yourself planted and let nature take its course.

But where? Why does it matter? I don’t think I want to end up in the land fill, I’m not sure why not, but I wouldn’t want any of my animals there, either. We buried Leo on a grassy hilltop where he loved to graze. The man who carried him up there in the bucket of his tractor told us that he placed Leo facing toward us, the barn and his stable mates. Why is that so sweet? I find comfort in knowing that my parents’ ashes are in the ground together behind a beautiful little country church where my father was a minister before I was born.

It is for the living. We have a need to treat respectfully the thing we understand best about our loved ones ~ their physical beings.

My only real concern about what happens to my body after I die is that I want it to be taken to my horses’ pasture so that it can lie there just long enough that they can sniff, nudge and paw at it until they understand where I went and that I didn’t abandon them. After that, I guess, it really isn’t going to matter.

The drawing is ink and colored pencil. The 11 little coffins (representing the 11 found and exhumed) are cut from heavier painted paper and glued into place. The haiku reflects a description of one of the coffin’s contents.

Post Square 12.02.13 ~ Metro-North Haiku

Post Square 12.02.13 ~ Metro-North Haiku

When I opened the paper to find my subject for inspiration today I experienced a disappointing emotional punch. I was hoping, before the train accident, that we might be celebrating the naming of Bao Bao. The precious treasure made it to the front page, but under the story of the tragedy in the Bronx.

I had been writing a haiku for yesterday’s story in my head as I walked down the lane to get the paper this morning. (I’ve added the haiku to the end of yesterday’s post). So, when I saw the line of type over the cover photo, with its seven syllables, I thought of making this piece a simple haiku made from the type in the story, over the photo.

The section of Mark Lennihan’s photo I cut out has been reduced to black and white and the colors inverted. Then the pieces of type were applied and it was rescanned. It went through quite a few more effects until the look was satisfying ~ harsh and sensitive.

Post Square 12.01.13 ~ The Green Lizard

The first day of my project ~ a drawing (or maybe collage) a day for the month of December, collected into an exhibit at the Fire Hall Gallery in Charles Town, WV, opening January 5^th, 2014.

I’m taking my inspiration for each piece from the daily cover photo and story of the Washington Post. And I’ll (do my best to) write a brief synopsis of the story.

Today I had a clear and preconceived idea of how I wanted to start, based on the “warm-up exercises” I’d been doing these past few days…then I saw the cover photo ~ a man lying on the ground in front of a store in Puerto Rico. Instead of a collage, I went back to how I started these “Post Square” pieces ~ the 1” detail turned into a composition.

I was moving my 1” square cut out over the surface of the photo to find what part of it I wanted to use when I discovered the object under the sleeping man’s arm. What looked, at first, like a bottle in a green bag was actually a lizard, not quite ¾” tall in the picture.

I left the elbow and part of the shirt and jeans of the man black and white and the top section a strong compliment so that the green lizard could stand out. I was going for bold and graphic.

The story that goes with this image is complicated. It’s about Puerto Rico’s faltering economy.

A very brief and limited synopsis…

Puerto Rico is suffering from a staggering list of problems ~ huge debt, high unemployment, many people on food stamps and disability, a homicide rate nearly six times higher than the U.S. average, a housing bust, bank failures and, understandably, a fleeing population.

A large percentage of the municipal bond mutual funds on the mainland hold Puerto Rican bonds because of their high, tax-free yield. These bonds are what the Puerto Rican government now needs to borrow from to pay for the costs of daily operations like utilities and highway maintenance. This isn’t good.

The problems in Puerto Rico are not just Puerto Rico’s problems.

A haiku …

Night on the island

green lizard watches over

man without a home