Showing posts with label orange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label orange. Show all posts

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Pink Air

It's happening. 
The air is starting to change.  
Fresh paint this week 
of how it seems to me.



A bit from Mary Oliver-
It was what I was born
for-
to look and listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world-
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

My Friend Janice Floats

Janice Kelly, a friend who combines wit, taste and charm like no one I've ever met, has just launched a wonderful business that will make you smile. She designs and installs giggley giant balloon sculptures. Dale Chihuly with a really big smirk. To see more of her designs and to contact her go here.






























Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Slice of Baby Boo, Wee-Be-Little, or Red Warty Pie

Paul and I got to produce and shoot a video recently for an ad agency in Providence, Duffy and Shanley. The asked us to create a fall feast in a 100 year old structure, Smith Barn in Peabody, MA. 50 paper lanterns hung above a thirty foot long table. For me it was one long blank canvas and I had a ball. Pumpkin and ghord shopping was at the top of my list. I visited my friends at Walker Farm stand in Tiverton and Andrew Orr in Westport. The colors, warts, grooves, bumps, and roly poly bums of these funny veggies made me grin. Here are a few examples of the beauties I brought home.
Thank you Haunted Bay for the great pumpkin and ghord education.
From the top left- Jarrahdale, We Be Little, Howden, Long Island Cheese,
Baby Boo, Cinderella, Cross-Polinated, One Too Many, Pump Ke Mon
Zucca Rotondo, Red Hubbard, and Grey Hubbard.









































Tuesday, August 17, 2010

8.17.10 Tuesday's Color Swatch

P M S  N o. 1225
little sigh 
of summer yellow
you ease your soft head
onto our laps 
as we sit at the picnic
tables of august.
the monarchs on the
joe pie weed
have our eye so
we don't notice you
reaching your peek,
until your soft voice
clears it's throat
and trumpets orange
-Alyn Carlson
Photo by Sylvie Van Hulle 
found here on flickr



Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Chalkboard Paints That Aren't Old School

My art installation for the restaurant, Trafford is taking a turn. A florescent turn. I discovered Hudson Paint Company's line of wonderful chalkboard paints and haven't been able to stop. Using chalk board paint and scraps of wood I've been collecting from a local factory that makes large plywood cable spools, the cost of materials has been very little. Here are the first look at some of the elements I'm working with and piling up. The palette I found around the docks- oranges, blues, reds combined with some greens I love, the project is starting to take shape. I've been combing some vintage books about sea creatures, paying attention to fish tanks and what's usually below the water surface around here. Not sure where it will end up. Won't be another seafood restaurant in white and navy.



Monday, April 19, 2010

Poem for Monday




I Take Master Card
(Charge Your Love to Me)
-Nikki Giovanni
I've heard the stories
'bout how you don't deserve me
'cause I'm so strong and beautiful and wonderful and you could
never live up to what you know I should have but I just want to let you know:

I take Master Card

You can love me as much as your heart can stand
then put the rest on
account and pay the interest
each month until we get this thing settled

You see we modern women do comprehend

that we deserve a whole lot more
than what is normally being offered but we are trying
to get aligned with the modern world

So baby you can love me all

you like 'cause you're pre-approved
and you don't have to sign on
the bottom line

Charge it up

'til we just can't take no more
it's the modern way

I take Master Card

to see your Visa
and I deal with a Discovery but I don't want any American
Express 'cause like the Pointer Sisters say:  I need a slow hand.
Nikki Giovanni

Thursday, April 15, 2010

The Grownup Side of the Rainbow

The site colourlovers is a fun resource for looking at palettes in a fresh way. Great place to go for.. I never thought of that. They ask readers to interpret and submit versions of color combos. Here are samples of the rainbows colourlovers came up with. I have to admit I'm loving the ones that titles give you as much of a smile as the hues. Mature Clown? To see them all go here.













Friday, April 9, 2010

A Little Sun for Fun Friday

Yes, yes, yes, really happy the last week and a half is coming to a close. I feel like I may have a true weekend coming up. By Sunday we should be done with the bulk of the flood clean up and I can get back to the usual craziness. Some pretties for you with that yellow I've needed all week.













































Top found on etsy here. Middle you can find here. And bottom piece here.














Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Felted Sunshine

Some flickr finds. Chicks sitting around making things with felt. Need yellow this week.
The artnetshop ring you can find here. Fun camera by sheishine here and a lovely Elista necklace here.


Monday, April 5, 2010

Poem for Monday




So Much Happiness 
 
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. 
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records….
Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.

Painting by Yangyan Pan

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Josef Frank's Use of Pink

Josf Frank, Austrian/Swedish architect and uber designer, created over 200 fabric patterns between 1909 and 1950. He moved easily in many directions of design- furniture, lighting, textiles. His designs offered a contrast to the linear, grid-like restrictions of his contemporaries. "Every human needs a certain degree of sentimentality to feel free," Frank said... "Away with the universal styles, away with the equalization of industry and art....The home does not have to be planned out in detail, just put together by pieces its inhabitants love." Tuesday, March 16, 2010, I love how he knows how to use just enough pink.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Hello Friday!

Image No.1 If you're going with warm Grey 4, I'm loving these together.
No. 3 Is from 13 Threads. Be sure to stop by her etsy shop.
Image No.4 That wonderful Elisita in one of those "I want it Bad" outfits

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The castle project in process. Slotting, folding, curling and stapling. Oh and lots of thread and tape help. We use left over printing proofs but cereal boxes, oatmeal containers and paper towels tubes will get you there too.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Imperfect Present


I gave myself a nice gift this holiday. I got to sit and make pomanders any time I wanted with no guilt. Poking dried cloves into plump oranges was heaven. Then when I gave them to friends it was a gift all over again. Such a simple thing to connect me to my senses and bring joy to my peeps. These are so easy I just winged which is why the lovely imperfection of mold appears on one of mine. I'm going to make some with Levi this weekend, my 6 year old grandson. If you don't want the mold click here for real directions. Your fingertips will smell so nice for hours.

Saturday, September 26, 2009



“World peace through better color”
-Alyn Carlson
That’s one of the things I put on my business cards and most people seem to get it. I’ve watched so many of my clients and friends walk into my studio or home and break out in a grin. They lovingly run their fingertips over colored pencils, hold a paint tube in an achy palm, and with their eyes caress swatches of color aid paper. They usually give me a happy glazed look and say something like “You must be so happy working with all this color.” Actually I am.

It was a rumble in my stomach for years. I took a 20 year break from making personal work and craved color so much it just started bubbling up in all my design. I found when I started a project the first thing I did was open the pantone swatch book and listen for direction. When the damm broke and I started making personal work again about 8 years ago, I floated around with an expression on my face similar to the Dalai Lama’s. So why do we walk around starving ourselves? Pick the softest palest taupe and avoid the sexy tomatoe bisque? Afraid? Of what?

One of my favorite rants on that subject is by David Batchelor in his slim little hot pink book, Chromophobia. The more western our thinking is, the more urban we get, the farther away from intense color we find ourselves. Is color vulgar, dirty, primitive? Why should we bother to even consider this right now with all this economic malaise? Shouldn’t we lay low and keep our heads down, no changes, stay as beige as possible, and make ourselves as quiet and small as we can?

Because color = joy. What I love and am moved by every day, abstract expressionist Charles Seliger’s Ways of Nature, my little spring green Roseberry Winn vase, and even my carved bakelite bangles, feed me. I know responsible austerity is wise right now but so is smiling every day.

Hey my demi god, Milton Glaser puts it so well “If you like Mozart and I like Mozart we really have something in common. So the likelihood of us killing each other has been diminished.”

Don’t you just love the color yellow?


Friday, September 25, 2009


As an actor, I find it helpful to do a little color study of the character I'm working on to help articulate who they are. My dear friend, director, and mentor, Pat Hegnauer got me started on this practice 10 years ago. We've collaborated often with these images, paired with her poetry. Here are a few I've created through the years- Stephanie from Tom Kepinski's Duet for One, Flora from Tennessee Williams 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Lady Ninjo from Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, Dull Gret from Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, Mrs. Malaprop from Sheridan's The Rivals, Pope Joan from Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, Constance from Shakespeare's King John, Sister Angelita from Ethan Phillips' Penguin Blues, and the fabulous Molly Bloom from James Joyce and Sheila Walshes' Molly and James.