I recently acquired some school pictures of my very handsome dad when he was little, I wish my freckles were more prominent like his! He’s so adorable. We are the only two in our family of redheads with blue eyes.

I’ve been reading Iconoclast (a person who does something that others say can’t be done) and have found it to be really intriguing, especially since it’s written by a neuroscientist.  Three natural roadblocks that hamper the innovative thinking:

1. Flawed Perception. (Chihuly didn’t begin truly having groundbreaking works until he lost vision in his eye, forcing his brain to literally see differently.)
2. Fear: Fear of failure/public ridicule. (Henry Ford realized how to deconstruct and reappraise fear, as warning sign, not a guide for action.)
3. Inability to influence others. (Be a Picasso, not a Van Gogh.)

It’s kind of fun to understand that the brain is a lazy muscle that tries to preserve efficiency by constantly taking the shortcuts, simplifying and categorizing.  Once we have that realization, then we can be on the alert… continuously exposing ourselves to different environments, people, and novel experiences that will jog the perceptual system out of familiar categories.  Trying to see things as they might be, and not as they are, is the challenge that will bring imagination out of perception.

Education consists mainy in what we have unlearned. – Mark Twain

I’m not the best at updating it often, but here is a little catalog of all the other books I’ve been looking at lately.

“ella” watercolor print

“milagros” embroidery portrait print, detail (limited edition run of 30)

collage notecards (bundle packs of 3)

These are a series of photographs I took with an inexpensive, disposable camera I kept in my bag for a few weeks one summer, so that I could have snapshots of my neighborhood in Buenos Aires.  Something about the throw away aspect of the camera, the way the colors were processed and the borders  I intentionally keep on the pictures reminded me of postcards… I juxtaposed them onto the background of torn out pages from a 1960s book about the neighborhoods of BsAs and colorized some of them for a soft, continuous effect.  I wanted to show how little the city seems to have changed since then (in architecture, the elegant way some men and women still dress, the gracious trees) and how remarkable some of the similarities are between then and now. You can spot my boys in a few of the shots, and I did sneak in a polaroid for the first spread…

I’m checking them off if I’ve seen them and I’ll be updating this list as I go… Am I leaving any out, do you have any suggestions?

☆ star rating for my personal favorites.

Pollock
Goya’s Ghosts ✓ Man, that Spanish inquisition was creepy!
Lust For Life I started this once, but I don’t remember finishing it…
Camille Claudel
Girl With a Pearl Earring ✓ Chevalier’s other novels were far more captivating compared to this bestseller, which bored me just like the movie. Had it’s “pretty” moments though…
The Da Vinci Code ✓
The Mystery of Picasso
Sketches of Frank Gehry ✓
The Horse’s Mouth
Incognito
Miss Potter ✓ Heartwarming, adorable, sweet. Loved it!
I Shot Andy Warhol
Klimt
Basquiat
Downtown 81 ✓
Vincent and Theo
Art School Confidential
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Surviving Picasso
Wolf at the Door
David Hockney: Double Portrait ✓
How to Steal a Million ✓☆ I cannot tell you how many times I’ve actually seen this, it’s one of my favorites!
Modigliani
Artemisia
F is for Fake ✓
Frida
Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? ✓ Feisty Teri cracks me up, really had me think about provenance and the so called experts.
My Kid Could Paint That ✓ Inspiration or manipulation? A great documentary, a not so great parent pushing the “artist.”
Crumb
In the Realms of the Unreal
How To Draw a Bunny
Great Expectations ✓
Joan Miro – Theatre Of Dreams
Great Women Artists: Georgia O’Keeffe ✓
Richard Tuttle: Never Not an Artist
Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light
Robert Rauschenberg: Inventive Genius
Painters Painting
Valentino: the Last Emperor ✓
The Way Things Go
The Cool School
Who Gets to Call it Art?
Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye
Henri Cartier-Bresson
William Eggleston in the Real World
The Rape of Europa✓ ☆
Max Ernst
Contacts volumes 1, volume 2, and volume 3
Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye
The Way Things Go
Chilhuly: Gardens and Glass ✓
I.M. Pei
My Architect: A Son’s Journey ✓
What About Style?: Alex Katz
Paul Klee: The Silence of the Angel
Rothko’s Rooms
Matisse/Picasso: Twin Giants of Modern Art
Art City: Making it in Manhattan
Art City: Simplicity
Art City: A Ruling Passion
Inspirations
Hockney at the Tate
The Impressionists
The Impressionists: The Other French Revolution
Robert Rauschenberg: Man at Work
Richard Tuttle: Never Not an Artist
The Face: Jesus in Art
Jackson Pollock: Love & Death on Long Island
Norman Rockwell: An American Portrait
Sister Wendy (the complete collection)
Juan Miro: Constellations
D.I.Y. or Die
Mona Lisa Smile ✓
American Splendor
The Thomas Crown Affair 1968, 1999 ✓
At Close Range with National Geographic ✓
Alice Neel
Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story
Andy Goldworthy’s Rivers and Tides
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision
Beautiful Losers ✓
Art:21
American Experience: Ansel Adams
Helvetica ✓
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens ✓
What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann
Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh
Georgia O’Keefe
Strand: Under the Dark Cloth
Fur
Art of the Steal
Picasso: The Man and His Work
Séraphine
Art Safari
Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
Art & Copy: Inside Advertising’s Creative Revolution

While organizing my studio space, I found a few journals I had made while living in South America.  This one was dedicated to limited materials: found papers and scraps paired with little watercolors. While on my daily walks through our neighborhood I would pick up various candy wrappers, bus tickets, flyers, newspaper ads, or anything interesting that I could work with (my favorite was a tarot card found in the stone street of La Boca.) It was a good exercise in being resourceful, making something out of nothing, arranging from the ugly and discarded. Here are a few pages…

New cube paintings…

It’s been a terrific day, I’ve been extremely productive lately in the studio and with researching.  Researching is what I like to call all that stuff that falls in between producing that feels like it might not have anything directly to do with my work, but always seems to come creeping into it, in some fashion or another, through my own filter.

I’ve really felt drawn to Native American art lately, particularly the work from women who made intricate woven patterns, like these nobility blankets made with organic dyes and wool by the Northwest Coast Salish people…

And this pattern! Recently I fell hard for a rug (and ended up getting it on eBay) that had zigzags in it.  It makes my day every time I walk across it.  This one I found in a book I was browsing tickles me because it looks a bit like my handbag I was carrying the same day… serendipity.

Earlier this year at the SAM I saw some incredible work by Salish Coast artists, I really wish that non-flash photography was allowed in more museums so I could share some with you.  I came across the work of Susan Pavel while looking for more examples… aren’t these weavings by her so elegant?

So… here’s  something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, create a little venue where the art works that amass from my projects are available just for you to cherish.   Visit the about page to learn a little more about the name and meaning for what is motivating HER studio.  Right now I have the following:

some 8 x 10 prints…

polaroid mugs…

and magnets, created from my vintage camera snapshots…

I’ll be setting up a mailing list soon, go ahead and leave a comment if you would like to be on it! (This post really is a little sneak peek for you, until I add more paintings and projects.) Also give me a hint if there is something in particular you have wanted to see from me, especially with photograhy prints and sizes.

After almost a year of taking in other projects, devoting time to my personal journal, living and keeping on, and never once giving blogging a second thought… truthfully, I felt completely comfortable with the idea of not knowing if I would ever consider myself a blogger again.  So yesterday, the most unexpected occurrence: I woke up and suddenly knew that my time away from blogging was up. It’s almost spring here in Seattle, I am full of renewal, a turning, readiness.

It was nice to turn things off for a while, truly.  Working without an audience that I was so familiar with was a great decompression.  To only have myself to answer to (record keeping and painting and working) with only the effort to prove things to that girl in the mirror, well, that’s probably the stubborn nature that an artist naturally has, a desire to turn in the other direction and run at full speed when it feels like everyone is going the same way.  When you find your way, and you are content in it, you share it.

Halo by Kate Havnevik

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