Kate Has Done It Again!

Remember the challenge I had earlier? I posted some images of the works of Richard Shilling as a challenge and Kate Clawson of Organic Odessy was the winner. Read about it {HERE}

This is the image that inspired Kate. It is called Mayday.

And this is Kate's entry . . . don't you just love it?

Well, when I told Kate she was the winner, she said she wanted to do something special for me. I had no idea . . .

Earlier this week I got a package in the mail. I knew right away it was from Kate because I know she makes her own mailing packages from calendar pages and magazine covers.

Look what I found inside! Miniature Mayday Earrings.

They are just a bit large for my style, but I will hang them in my studio area as a reminder of my creative friends.

If you were to collaborate, what would you do and who would you want to work with? Do Tell!

And the Winner of the Bracelet Challenge is. . .

Kate Clawson of Ongoing Explorations of an Organic Artist.

Here is her entry! Check out her blog {HERE} to read about her inspiration and process. Thank you, Kate, for your beautiful submission.

And thank you to Richard Shilling for allowing me to use his beautiful Land Art for the challenge.
(Psst, Kate! Send me your address to artymezia{!at}yahoo{dot}com and I will send you your pound of beads!)

LandArt Bracelet Challenge

As you all know, I am a big fan of the self-taught Land Artist, Richard Shilling. He lives in the Lancashire region (Northwest) of England and makes his art in the forest, meadows, and beaches near where he lives.

I have posted several of his works on this blog and many of you have found his work to be as inspirational as I have. I have corresponded with Richard and he has agreed to allow us to use some of his beautiful photographs of his ephemeral works for this challenge. If this challenge is successful and well received by you, dear reader, I will host another challenge at a later date.

Now, for this challenge. The images:

Here are the individual photographs:


Ice and Snow Sandwich Towers


Constriction Balance


Middlewood Trust Project


Icicle Sunset


Mayday Colour Totem

Here are the details of the challenge! {With Thanks to Kelly Morgan of the Silver Parrot for the text I modified for this post! No reason to re-invent the wheel!}

Select one of these photos and create a bracelet whose color scheme is inspired by the photo. Post it on your blog with a bit of explanation as to why you chose that particular photo and how you incorporated the color scheme into your bracelet. Come back here to the comments and leave a link to your blog post.

Please post a link to Richard’s site in your blog, so that he benefits from this challenge as well (http://jrlandart.blogspot.com )

Prize: Some Beady Goodness (one pound of assorted beads and things) and a surprise! More about that in a later post.

Rules:

1. You can create and post as much as you like, but you will only get one contest entry.

2. For anyone who publicizes the challenge (and links back here) on their blog, Facebook or Twitter, I will put in a second entry – MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE ME A COMMENT SO I KNOW YOU DID THIS.

3. I have to limit this contest to people with shipping addresses in the U.S. unless you’re willing to pay the shipping on your prize. If you are outside the U.S. but are willing to pay shipping, make sure to note that in your comment so I know about it.

4. Deadline to post your entries and comments is midnight May 31st.

5. Winner will be randomly drawn from all the entries on June 1st.

That should cover everything, but feel free to contact me with questions.

YeeeHaaa, 5,000 visitors! Thank You!

It seems like yesterday that I started to blog. I am not a daily blogger, though I would like to be, I just do not seem to have an interesting topic to share every day. However, with the help of you, and you and yes, you too, I have amassed over 5,000 (five-thousand!) visitors to my blog.

I never thought it would happen, but it did. THANK YOU!

Later today I will posting a design challenge using images from my friend and artist Richard Shilling, so please return to find out all the details.

Ah, Spring!

One of my favorite artists, Richard Shilling was interviewed on Esty, the UK edition, this weekend, {read it HERE}. He makes beautiful land art using objects found in nature. One of my most favorite of his pieces is called River Squares (above) and I use it as my computer’s wallpaper. It is so serene and subtle, bold and beautiful all at the same time. Check out his Flickr account too {HERE}.

I have been a bit under the weather the last few days with horrid allergies. I take out the dogs in the morning and I sneeze my head off for about the next an hour, then things calm down to where I can actually see straight. Then the doggie darlings want to go out -- again! (Imagine that!) More sneezing and sputtering, calming, and then – you guessed it – they want to go out AGAIN!

Whew!

Wears me out.

As you know, this is post #98. Two more and I will be drawing for the Bindweed Bracelet (in the banner) for my 100th post. So, go {HERE}to comment and Pass-It-On.

Inspired

This weekend has been amazing. Friday I spent with my quilting friends, taking in the Dallas Quilt Celebration -- beautiful quilts and wonderful vendors. And of course, I spent too much money. Saturday, I was back in Dallas with three of my "art school" friends (that's not to say my quilting gals aren't artist, they truly are). Saturday I visited my alma mater to see the Etruscan Exhibit at SMU's Meadows Museum. Dallas is the only venue for this exquisite collection. There were objects from as far back as 900 BCE. The craftsman(women?)-ship in all of the piece, without exception, was breathtaking.

Speaking of breath-taking: that is exactly what happened as I approached the ancient gold-leaf diadem, above, in the glass case where is it displayed. You might have seen the laurel leaf crowns on ancient statues and frescoes. Well, I was looking at the real McCoy. The gold was so fine and thin, it looked as though it could blow way if a strong draft were to enter the vitrine. What a thrill it must have cause for the archeologist who unearthed it. There were a number of stunning gold pieces -- fibulae ("safety pins"), and many, many bronze pieces too. There was a whole room filled with terracotta pieces and stone statuarey as well. All in all, there are about 400 pieces on loan from four museums in Italy. The exhibit closes May 17th. One of my friends said it was, by far, the better exhibit when compared with the Tut exhibit also in town.

Not much is known about the Etruscans (people who lived in Tuscany between 900-100 BCE) except that they may have been immigrants from Turkey and that they were very religious people who believed in equality of the sexes, much to the horror of their Greek and Italian neighbors. Almost everything known about them comes from temple and tomb excavations.

In other news:

Richard Shilling, the English Land Artist I have mentioned before, has had a few very fortunate turns of event. Check out his blog to read the news and to see his new work. We have discussed some sort of collaboration for one section of the textbook I am writing for my college class. How exciting!

This is Spring Break in my neck of the woods and I hope to get a lot of writing done without interruption (Ha!).

Our May vacation in Amsterdam is taunting me and whispering to me to spend some time online checking out all the places to go and things to see (but I have to write, darn-it!).

By the way, my little counter says I've had just over 300 views of my blog -- I think a few of those are me checking in, but I'm glad to see the traffic. Thank you, especially, to my faithful "followers". Sorry I can't seem to post more often.

Questions for your comments:

Do you find inspiration alone or in collaboration. Do you find that being with others inspires you to create? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so comment below.

I have not posted in a while. I look over at my blog list and read the posts of those whose blogs I follow and discover that there is something keeping quite a few of us from posting daily. Maybe it is the cold weather or the allergens in the air -- that certainly has kept me under the weather -- or it could be the winter doldrums. I don't know.

I am just not a "daily" gal. I'll probably never post on a daily basis, but I am thinking, and I am writing-- just not here.

I have been working on my e-textbook this week, especially the introduction to the Earth Art section. This past summer my husband and I visited Orkney, a series of islands off the far north of Scotland. (Click on photos for larger view.)We experienced the Neolithic village of Skara Brae and also the associated standing stones of the Maeshowe complex. That experience has found its way into the writing I have done in the past two days. The stone circles we visited three years at Kilmartin Glen and at Castlerigg have also shown up in this section of my textbook.

My first encounter with the work of Andy Goldsworthy in the National Museum of Scotland is also inspiring my writing muse. I have been a fan of his Earth Art almost from that instant. Andy Goldsworthy creates the most evocative, intuitive, whimsical, temporal works of art from natural elements such as stones, leaves, icicles, or sand. There are three or four permanent works by him in the museum, most of them act as a backdrop to the displays in the most ancient part of the collection. However, I was most dazzled by his sphere created from all the bones of a pilot whale that washed ashore. No wires or pegs are used nor any kind of glue to hold it together. It is amazing!

Each semester I introduce my students to Goldsworthy's art and ask them to create a work inspired by it. I am constantly pleased. Today I stumbled upon an artist who is also inspired by Goldsworthy, Richard Shilling. In truth, his earliest post and photographs are his attempts to "emulate" some of Goldsworthy's pieces, but as he continues to work and make art, he finds his own voice.

So, that is what I have been up to. What about you? Or am I just talking to myself here?