New Year, Resolutions, and a New Project!

In honor of the New Year, I decided to create a new project for myself to keep me productive throughout the year. I had considered joining one of the groups on Flickr or Facebook along the lines of "52 Weeks of ..." but I couldn't find a project that I really wanted to do. So I started my own group! I sent out invitations to all of the artist friends I have, and now there's a group of about 45 of us. The idea is that each of us commits to ourselves to start and finish one piece along our chosen theme each week. The theme and medium is up to each participant, as we have photographers, painters, jewelers, a bit of everything, and we all seem to be inspired by different ideas. I couldn't decide, so I chose two, 52 Weeks of Creatures and 52 Weeks of Vocabulary Words. We also have 52 Weeks of: Squares, insects, monsters, journaling, spirituality and "undeclared" (I think there's a bunch of those--don't judge! It's enough for most artists just to commit to this kind of schedule in the first place!).

You can find the group here: 52 Weeks of Creations!

Here are my entries for this week. The first one is for 52 Weeks of Vocabulary Words, and this week's word is "Miasmata":

miasmata. n. plural of miasma.

1. noxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous effluvia or germs polluting the atmosphere.

2. a dangerous, foreboding, or deathlike influence or atmosphere.

While the singular, "miasma", is pretty cool, I thought the plural of this word was even better. In the olden days (before the germ theory of disease transmission) it was thought that illness and disease were emitted from dead and decaying materials and that they carried through the air like a spirit.

Entry #1 for the 52 Weeks of Creatures is my "Devil Child Waiting for the Bus":

She requires far less explanation. She is simply a little girl waiting for her bus. She just happens to have horns and a tail, for which her Mommy has lovingly crafted her a matching set of hat and, umm, tail-mitten?

She reminds me of the two adorable girls (twins) who lived behind us. They were the cutest little blue-eyed blonde girls, who would spend their spare time verbally torturing our dogs over the wall and trying to knock birds' nests out of trees with sticks. I used to call them the Evil Twins.

Just because something's cute doesn't mean it won't try to eat your face off.

Neither piece is listed for sale in my shop just yet, still trying to decide if I should do so. Stay tuned.

New Christmas Card and Cleaning My Desk...

Not sure what the one thing has to do with the other, but they were the two subjects I took pictures of today. For years now I've thought that my electron micrograph (that's a photograph of something taken under an electron microscope) of crystallized stain reminds me of branches and the little globs in some places looked like berries, so I finally turned it into a Christmas card! Here's the original image: The original photograph was created on real film, creating this odd sized negative (something like 4" x 5") which wandered around the country with me for years and years before I finally got around to and found a place that could scan it and produce it in digital form. From the digital image, I was able to use The Gimp to colorize it a nice Christmas-y green, then I picked out some of the little clumps of dark areas and turned them into red berries. After printing it onto high quality photo paper, I mounted the photo onto a 5" x 7" card:

I have listed this item for sale in my Etsy Shop.

I have also been working on several other things today, even though it has been a relatively quiet day. I took a snapshot of my desk, because it was looking decidedly picturesque:

The picture shows the bunch of fall leaves that my friend sent me from Ohio, my Day Planner from an Artful Agenda, my buttercream scented, handmade soy candle in a hand-thrown pot from Mad Hatter Pottery, the return address labels I just got from Animal Humane of New Mexico (They spelled my last name right! I think I'll send them money!), my yummy, warm cup of coffee with sugar-free hazelnut creamer in it, and the drawing I've been working on, entitled "Miasmata." (For anyone too lazy to go to dictionary.com to look it up, miasmata is the plural of miasma, meaning the noxious exhalations from putrescent organic material, or a dangerous, foreboding or deathlike atmosphere.) I thought this photo made a nice little snapshot of my day, plus, I cleaned my studio the other day, so you can actually see the surface of my desk in places, which impressed the hell out of me, if no one else.

Oh yes, I took pictures of one more thing today, the adorable pile of mammals on the bed this morning--Mimi, Cassie and Sean: