Soup for the soul.

And it's good for colds and flu, too.

I'm an artist, not a chef.  But, I do love cooking and find it creative, calming and fulfilling.  It's good for the body and mind especially this week with a cold/flu going through the house.  Nothing soothes a stuffy head better than soup.  This week, I came up with two new ones that I thought I'd share.   The big bonus: both soups are quick and easy using a combination of fresh ingredients, leftovers from other dinners and store bought helpers.

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​Creamy Alfredo Pesto Chicken Soup

1 jar Trader Joe's Alfredo Sauce

1 box Trader Joe's Organic Chicken Broth

2 cups dry Orecchiette pasta

1 cup chopped cooked carrots

1-2 cups chopped cooked chicken 

1/4 cup homemade pesto sauce

2-3 cloves garlic chopped 

2 Tbsp olive oil

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​Cook and drain the pasta.  Heat the olive oil in cast iron soup pot and saute garlic 2-3 minutes.  Add Alfredo Sauce, chicken broth, pesto and stir until blended.  Add carrots, chicken, pasta and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve.

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Pot Roast Soup 

2-3 cups left over pot roast, carrots and potatoes or beef stew

1 box Trader Joe's beef broth

2-3 cloves garlic chopped

2 Tbsp olive oil

Optional additions - barley, corn, peas

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Saute garlic in olive oil in soup pot.  Add broth.  Add left over pot roast or stew ingredients.  

Simmer on medium heat for 30 minutes.  Serve.

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I was surprised how well both of these soups cleared my stuffed up head.  But best of all, they made me feel warm and cozy.  That's healing for body, mind and soul.

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As The Wheel Turns: Over Flow.

Six weeks ago, my studio shelves were overflowing with unfinished work. I was having a hard time getting into the flow.  Finished work needed to be finished.  New work needed to start.  

Starting with endings is never my favorite thing to do, but I know myself.  I know I need to finish to feel a sense of completion before I can start anything new.  Plus, my studio shelves were so full of unfinished work, there was no room for new work.  

I loaded the kiln and prayed because I never know if the work will come out as I hope or if all my hard work will be lost to cracks, bloat or a bad glaze.  I was blessed by the kiln goddess.  Almost everything came out looking good.  I didn't have to smash or trash anything this time.  Only 6 pieces out of over 30 had problems and luckily, most of them were fixable.  Shelves filled on one side and emptied on the other.  

Then, came the excitement of creating new work.  Followed quickly by the pressure of perfection that can overwhelmed me and, of course, stop my flow.  My cure for this is to keep my head down and keep it simple.  Get on the wheel.  Throw one piece of clay.  Put it aside.  Throw another.  Rest and repeat.

Now, I stand here, amazed.  A dozen bowls, a few mugs, 4 new masks overflow the shelves all need underglazing, some need sgraffito work and all have to be bisque fired.  Add to that 3 masks that need final finishing.  A figurative sculpture,  a sculptural vase and bowl need color and glaze.  Add in 2 bowls that didn'nt fit in the last glaze load. 

My shelves are overflowing with unfinished work. Again.  

As I circled around my studio last month, wondering where to end and begin.  Struggling with fear of failure, I hated finishing my old work and worried about beginning the new. I thought I was stuck once again in my creative whirlpool.  

Now, I see it clearly.  The  creative river carried me once again, down and around from ebb to flow.  

Well, to over flowing. But that's ok, my creative river has high banks just for this kind of situation.  Because that's how the abundance of nature and creativity, well, flows.

A disconnected day.

The internet was not connected today.  I don't know why and all attempts to reboot the system failed.  Not a big deal, right?  A year or two ago, I'd agree but now I don't.  I'm frustrated.

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If you ask me how much I'm on the internet, I'd say not much.  Maybe once a day. Today, I found out that would be a big lie.  Because I don't consider myself an internet junkie. I'm not online all the time.  As for being a social media maven, I'd say I'm not.  Guess what I found out today? I'm hooked to my wireless network like a patient needing an IV.  

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I think I just crossed the line from frustration and inconvenience to fear.

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Yup.  After 4 hours with no internet service, no way to check my email, google a question, read the news or listen to pandora, I felt scared.  I felt the same survival fear that happens when the power goes out during a big storm and i'm out of batteries for the flashlights. 

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Then, I shook my head in disbelief.  Really! I am totally ok.  My animals didn't notice anything wrong, as I paced between my computer and the *&%%%% internet router.

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What did I do?  

​Exactly what I had planned to do.  Take a bath.  Get dressed.  Put in a load of laundry.  Go to my studio.  Check if my bowls are ready for trimming.  They were not ready, so I re-covered them and took out another bag of clay for handbuilding.  Eat lunch.  Start and work on two new masks.  Let the dogs out and in.  Switch laundry loads.  Write this blog.  Feed the dogs and cat.  Make dinner.  Fold the laundry.  Relax for the evening.

​What didn't I do?

​Google moringa to find out what it is...because it was in my new shower gel.  Click to My Yahoo news.  Read the comics online.  Check my email again.  Like a few facebook posts.  Answer email.  Play online solitaire.  Play WordFeud.  Listen to Pandora.  Check the TV guide app to see what's on tonight that I don't want to watch.  Check the Accuweather app to see if it's going to snow.

​Did I really need the internet today?  No. 

​The shower gel worked well and smelled nice without googling it.  I heard the news this morning on the TV and later on the radio.  I didn't miss the comics, solitaire, WordFeud or Facebook.  I checked email this morning.  I put my Ipod in the dock and listened to my playlist.  I can turn on the TV to see what's on and all I have to do to find out if it was snowing is look out my window!

​I was disconnected today from the internet but I was still connected to all the things in my life that really mattered.  So no internet for the day is not the  end of the world,  but I did miss listening to Pandora.

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Hold the Bacon and give me a Freud instead.

​The Francis Bacon triptych arrived at my local art museum with much fanfare.   What a big name piece!  See the triptych together for the first time in decades.   See a portrait of a portrait painter, LucianFreud!  The press blitz alone was something to see.

The painting?  Not so much.

I am not a big Francis Bacon fan.  I find his paintings melodramatic in tone with a focus on anger and frustration.  Yes, his screaming popes are intense and riveting especially with the fact that he was Irish Catholic and homosexual.  I understand he is a notable artist of our time.  That doesn't mean I have to love his art.

The work hanging in the museum is "Portrait of Lucian Freud".  I see some gorgeous color, expressive brushstrokes, tightly rendered framing, an unrecognizable figure with twisted limbs and a section of a bedframe.  Each of the three panels repeats the colors and elements from a slightly different angle.  The face is so distorted that without the title, it would be hard for anyone to know it was a portrait of Lucian Freud. 

The real and well known portrait painter here is, Lucian Freud.  I am a huge fan of his work.

The grandson of Sigmund Freud, Lucian is also a well known artist.  His portraits and nudes are wonderful explorations into the depth of colors in skintones and the character of the subject.  His layering of color and and the richness is lovely even if his subjects, usually, are not.  I feel a searching for understanding in his portraits evoking a mixture of sadness and love.  As an art student, I chose to do a pastel rendering of a section of one of his portraits, trying to learn how to layer all those colors into such deep, rich skin tones.

I'd much rather see a portrait by Lucian Freud than Francis Bacon's portrait of him.  If the museum put a Lucian Freud on view, that would be great news and worth the fanfare!

Drawing digital: A surprising new art tool.

 

I've had my Ipad for 4 months.  I love it.  I didn't think it would be anything but a toy, an accessory with which to access email and the web when I was away from my laptop.  

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Wrong.

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​This small little device has crept into my life and taken it over.  I start the day with my Ipad in my lap, sipping coffee while checking my email and playing WordFeud. I end my day reading a book on it using my nook app in bed.  In between, it travels with me from office to studio to kitchen and now, even to meetings where it has, on occasion, replaced my beloved pen and paper.  

I have always loved paper, pens, pencils, paints, pastels...ok, anything that makes marks on paper.  I have journals and notebooks and paper collections, too.  I love to write and draw.  

"Where is the world headed?" squeeks the old granny critic in my brain.  The world is in a new era and it's sitting in my lap, now, as I write this blog.  

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Now,  my IPad has become my latest sketchpad. 

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Thanks to the experiments and help from fellow artist, Terry Grant, on her blog, And Sew It Goes. Here's the link to her blog.  http://andsewitgoes.blogspot.com/2014/01/digital-drawing-day.html   I've discovered two drawing apps and drawing 'pens' specifically for Ipads that are amazing and fun.  One app, Artrage, is dense and multi-layered. I think of it more like a combo of painting and photoshop.  I like painting better than photoshop, so I'll see how this shakes out.  Another app, Sketchclub, is easier and much more fun for me.  

Sketchclub felt like having all the paper, paints, pens, markers and crayons I'd ever wanted all in one place.  There's no set up.  No clean up.  Just doodling to my hearts content.  I can save it or trash it with the touch of a button.  

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Here's a sketch I did while my husband and I watched the Seahawks game on last Sunday.  It was a challenge to get the shading by using the color slider tool instead of my hand or eraser.  

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The one at the beginning of the blog, I did playing with one of my favorite landscape formats.  I loved the discovery of blending colors using the layers provided which I've never used before.

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I used a stylus as a drawing pencil rather than my fingers on the screen.  It gave me much more control and felt more like drawing with paper and pen.  It's a New Trent Arcadia stylus.  My favorite tool from the program is the sketchy pen.  I love the quality of the  line and the movement of it. My challenge is learning to find the colors in my mind's eye from the selections on the color wheel program rather than being able to use a pastel pencil or mix a color up in paint.  

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I thought my iPad would be a toy, but I'm finding out it's a great new tool. And, although, I still love the feel of pen on paper, I have to admit digital drawing is a great for on the go especially when my iPad is already in my lap.

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Firing and yoga.

I loaded the kiln this week.  It's a full glaze load.  This is always wonderful and scary.  

It's wonderful that I have a kiln filled with colorful new work.  Big purple bowls.  Ruffled black and white mugs, bowls and plates.   Two new porcelain masks done in black under glaze.  Several bigger bowls with experiments in sgraffito and under glazes.  And a lovely jar with a lid that fits which started out as a mistake and turned into a success.

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Oops, that's the scary part.  (Yoga pose:  Downward facing dog...Breathe in and out)

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Because when the pieces come out of the bisque stage, they are colorful and whole.  Yes, a few had small hairline cracks which I repaired but all in all, they looked wonderful.  They have the look of the finished piece shimmering in them.  They are hope. Or what I hope they will look like when they are finished.  But, they are not finished, yet.

 

I had to glaze each piece.   Then load each one into the kiln and fire them again at a much higher setting.  Turn the kiln from low to medium to high.  Inside, the clay and heat and glaze must do their work.  The glaze has to melt right into a smooth clear finish.  The clay has to move all its molecules together to form the solid porcelain piece.

All I can do is wait.  (Yoga pose:  Shavasana...I lie awake with hands and feet and body at rest...breathing in and out.)

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I won't know for two days if the pieces reached completion because I have to let the inside temperature of the kiln lower from 2,260 degrees farenheit to the outside temperature of my garage 36 degrees.  Opening any sooner could cause the pieces to crack and be ruined.

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Patience and confidence.  (Yoga pose:  Dancer's pose...breathing in and out)  

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Firing is a lot like yoga.    Strength, stretching, tension and release are all necessary.  But especially balance.  Balance in loading the kiln shelves, positioning the pieces, timing the temperature changes and, most of  all, in myself.

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Balance is essential in body, mind, spirit, fire and clay.  

(Yoga pose:  Salute to the sun...hands to heart center...namaste)

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As the wheel turns: Throwing or glazing?

(Freshly bisqued pieces just unloaded from the kiln.  All pretty and no cracks.)

After a month off, it's time to get back into the studio.  Flow is my word for the year, and I want that in my studio as well as my life.  But I'm feeling eager and overwhelmed all at once.  I want to get going and throwing and creating(flowing) but there's a lot of work sitting there waiting to be finished.  

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I don't know about you, but I can keep myself very busy without getting a whole lot done.  It's tricky and sometimes, I don't always catch myself at it.  

It goes something like this:  enter the studio and examine all new pieces, put aside the few with cracks to be fixed, check thrown pieces to see if they're ready for trimming, decide to wait on trimming till all are ready, leave studio for office,  answer email on ipad, go to my laptop to file emails in folders, make copies of specific, important emails, file those in color coded files, delete non-essential emails from laptop, make a list of all duties from various committees that need doing, avoid doing them while I let the dogs out and eat lunch, eat lunch while surfing the web, order a pair of shoes, print out the order, clean the kitchen, do revisions needed on committe document, write email for upcoming class, file those emails, go past the studio and feel the guilt of not working in there.  Make a cup of tea hoping the caffiene will cure my feeling of tiredness.

Busyness and futzing equal frustration. This is not flow.  This is fear of completion and failure.  The longer the pieces sit there in their colorful, bisque-fired beauty, I don't have to face the glaze that went wrong or the crack that appears out of nowhere. This is me being the rock in my own stream.  Flow is really where I want to be.  Desperately.  Honest. 

I sigh and see and accept the rocks are part of my river.  They cannot be avoided.  They are there for a reason, I'm sure.  I'm  just not sure today, what that reason is.  I do see one thing though that those stones in the form of emails and dishes and the web allow me to avoid crashing into my rock of endings all at once.  Instead, I flow around that big mound of work to be finished, look at it in passing and getting up more flow that's needed to make it over the top.  

So, maybe these tasks are stepping stones leading me into the flow after all.  Ah ha...time to put my tootsies into the river, after all and get glazing.  

(Freshly glazed pieces...pretty color covered with clear glaze.)

I have to admit, once I got going, it all just flowed ...just fine.

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​(A close up of clear over black under glaze...the clear dries making these cool webbed lines which will disappear when the glaze melts in the kiln...kiln gods willing.)

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