Happy Summertime to you!

Ta-da! Summer's here again! Time for thunderstorms, sandals, and peaches. Time for soaking life in through the roots.

Maui: Ana's Art

On our last day of Maui, we met Ana Faiva, an artist in downtown Lahaina. She had a breezy roadside tent set up to sell her work. We almost walked right by, but she welcomed us in warmly (despite our wary Bostonian ways) and told us stories of her art. I was entranced : she uses kukui nuts to make the dye on her tapa (bark cloth), and red dirt for the middle value, the way the women in her family had done for generations.
After talking to her about our honeymoon, she turned around and began to make an original tapa for us right there! She even paused as if thinking over her work for a second, until she said "Aren't you going to take my picture!?" Of course!
She found out I was an artist and gave me a big hug. She was very careful to date and sign everything and tell us the value of each piece...It was beautiful work. Ana was one of those souls you'll always remember, very full of stories, warm and in love with life. After her hugs and little gifts she'd given us and the tapas we bought from her, we smiled all the way back to the car. She wanted us to take this picture to remember:
I can't get the "leis" as she called them, the vertical vine motif, out of my mind. So here is a painting I made : a girl, reading with a (cinnamon) rabbit on her head, in the middle of a little tapas jungle. "Leer" means "to read" in Spanish.

Mahalo, Ana ♥

Stretch 1: Lady Line

Sometimes, RIGHT in the middle of drawing a piece of art for a job, and I'm plugged into some good music, I see something completely different and unrelated that I need to draw before it disappears. That's when art making is so so crazy. You feel vulnerable and like a "channel". Ideas are freely flowing through you without much input from your brain. It's the best place to be, and it's the place where I learn my lessons, which eventually make their way to client work.
I want to try to start a series of blog posts called "Stretches". It's a little nerve-wracking to expose something unfinished that I am still learning from, but I think it will be a good exercise. Yikes!

It feels like a good stretch to make personal work ... stretching for something visually, and teetering on the edge of something and reaching far out. Making a new wrinkle in my art brain. Completely letting go, unhinging my mind for a second and speaking in color line and texture impulses. Letting things get weird. It's like a wild little race for a few minutes, chasing after the flash. Sometimes what you end up with is ugly but exciting. I think this gloved lady is about what line can do on its own when it is not told what it should be doing!
I want to hear from you, artists and writers and musicians...what is it like for you when you "stretch"?

Flash Flash Flash

We're back! We flew home last week from the Big Island and Maui and settling back in after the most whirlwind 3 weeks ever! Matt's back to work and it's catch-up-week for me as Mrs. Perlot (woah). Catching up with art directors, the inbox, getting terribly re-acquainted with FB again, reading blogs, and letting the loads of inspiration I unpacked with our clothes and flipflops SIMMER. Mind and heart are as full as they could be! I am in the "flashbulb" stage of things, watching it all.

Flash: a "dinosaur chicken" from the Garden of Eden on the Road to Hana, Maui:


Art and pictures to come! Love from our new ohana to you! ♥