found orange paper: make beads

orange tulips with flying goddess back ground 

golden earrings pierce both my ears

this weeks fresh tulips ORANGE! the Valentines day shortage of exotic colors ended

rolled black and orange/red paper triangles with a touch of glue creates a paper bead

Last night I went to Pyramid Atlantic Studios for a free members only workshop in paper bead making taught by one of this winter's interns, Melissa. The class was about 6 female members, another intern, Ann and me the only "guy" attending. In a little over two hours we all had an assortment of rolled paper beads ready to string up into dangle earrings or take home to make other jewelry. I received lots of apologies from Melissa because she said she was not thinking about something for a guy to make and use.  I was happy to have a set of earrings that I gifted to a friendly poetess down the road. But as I illustrated today I also have holes in my ears for earrings. Although they have not been used in many years they are still there.

Naturally when I saw a sheet of orange paper laying in the pile of studio samples I claimed a couple sheets to use for my beads... and I took along some old black Arches print paper from the scrap bin which was thick and fuzzy to roll. Others used various hand made papers from the stock Melissa prepared for the workshop. I was impressed with her very well organized preparations and all the attention to each individual in her class. Thanks Melissa! I had a great time and I came home educated and energized by the workshop and good company. These winter months being sick with a string of doctors and specialists to visit has been a kind of drag on my creative soul. Photographing beads first thing this morning wasn't very easy but I wanted to show you the results.

In 2006 I saw a installation exhibition by Asian artist Simryn Gill at the Arthur M. Sackler gallery. (Washington Post review) The only part I remembered all these years were enormous strings of tiny paper beads, she calls them pearls... hand rolled using the pages of books. She did not intent to show these private necklace books because they were works made for her personal friends. I guess the curator insisted they be included in the exhibition and borrowed the strings of pearls back to exhibit here in Washington DC. They told us Simryn Gill asked her best friends to chose their favorite books and she cut and rolled them into pearls making long strands until the entire book was a huge necklace then gave them back to these friends. What a treasure she created from their favorite real paper books. Those book bead strings caught my imagination on fire and that is why I decided to go try this Pyramid Atlantic workshop.  Today I found this blog post about Simryn Gill's Strings of Book Pearls with photo illustrations of a pair of sets she made for two guys which also has pictures of their books before they were re-purposed to become pearls.

beads on wire makes earrings

tulips in Virginia while Mubarak resigns!!!

The past few weeks have been so much brighter because of the uplifting colors of fresh cut tulips and the exciting events unfolding in Egypt. This morning the Egyptians are celebrating the departure of the 30 year dictator Hosni Mubarak and the dissolving of his national political party of about 60 years. NPR article here. I have been glued to the cable news TV watching all the exciting interviews and live shots of peaceful protests.
Over the last 30 years we have seen this sort of peaceful protest dissolve numerous oppressive governments. It started with the Berlin wall and today in Egypt the middle east and Arab countries have joined the peoples movement against tyranny. I am excited for them and I hope they find a way to get a real representative government quickly and open up for business soon as possible.

Meanwhile today we found an article about the great fresh cut tulips we have been buying and enjoying in the Washington Post. I thought I should share it with my friends. I have always enjoyed tulips as cut flowers because they continue to grow once they have been cut and open and show off their colors after they have been separated from their bulbs. One of the reasons these locally grown tulips do last so long and bloom out fully is that they get to us 5 days faster than the ones that come from overseas. It is also funny that they can grow a million cut tulips a day during the winter season on a farm of only 8 acres  which supplies stores from Boston to Miami. The bulbs are grown over seas but the plants  develop here in green houses. This article tells it all every thing you might like to know about forcing tulips to bloom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/09/AR2011020903831.html

new sketches-parrot tulips

1-31-2011

One bunch of tulips which came straight upright like soldiers went into a nice bumpy vase hand made by Keith some years ago. It was a nice fit and on the first day the challenge after I got the sketch drawn was to find colors that were close to the ones I saw in the flowers and the vase both very muted and subtle. As the days marched forward I enjoyed the challenge four times. Then I moved on to the next batch of tulips which were parrot tulips too but this time red. 

Here you see three versions of the red parrot tulips in a vase I found from a maker who dated it 1945. It has a white glaze that has little bubbles of dark brown scattered unevenly over the surfaces inside and out but mostly near the top. I have one more sketch in this series of red tulip drawings waiting to be scanned which shows the tulips opening wide to reveal even more colors inside. I really enjoy watching the changes cut tulips go through as they grow inevitably towards our compost pile. It is nice knowing that these tulips were grown on a farm just outside of Washington DC. Local flowers grown help the economy and the environment. 

red and white

Tulips and roses grace my book shelf this afternoon. I am just home from my stress test and echo cardiogram tests and everything seems to be OK, at least nothing exceptionally unusual was discovered. I spent hours waiting for my turn to be tested in a series of tests that make up the stress test which was rather frustrating on an empty stomach. It is good news to know that I don't have some major problem but I will not know the full story until near the end of the month when my doctor will have reviewed all the test results in detail and brief me on my condition. It is a relief to have this baseline testing done at last.

My good nurse was great help today, taking me first thing to the clinic for my tests and bringing lovely flowers for me to draw and photograph this week. After three days without coffee or any caffeine he made me a pot of fresh coffee and found a chocolate cup cake to enjoy when I came home. What a prince! During my long waits at the clinic I read about 6 chapters in my book on the two John Tradescants royal gardeners to James I and Charles I of England. Only a couple more chapters to read before I reach the end of their story. Besides rare and exotic plants they also collected a cabinet of curiosities which are still housed at Oxford University and include a mantle which is reported to have belonged to Powhatan the Chief of Chesapeake Indians and father of Pocahontas. It is still there for visitors to see and may have been collected by the younger John Tradescant when he went to Jamestown, VA in the 1630's to collect plants, shrubs, trees for gardens and curiosities for the Tradescant ark.

thawing flowering walking

This afternoon I took a little walk to the post office box. I was glad the walks were cleared and the sun was shinning. I wanted to test my stamina after this respiratory distress I have been experiencing to see if it was completely gone now. Answer is not quite gone all the way but maybe I was just run down from laying about the house for so long. I sure feel a lot better than I did. I enjoyed a short walk and took a few photos to make a memory of the thaw as it seems to be warm enough to melt the snow. 

alley melt water runs down the middle

tip toe over the flow

beautiful patterns in the pavement under melt water

some of our trees want to be shrubs in Turkey Thicket

To begin my walking I went out back with a bag of plastics to the recycling bins. While I was looking at the yard it was revealed the Hellebore is blooming, even under the snow. This is the first flower in our garden this year. It was kind of exciting to see those white flowers coming out to greet me. Next will be some green ones in the front yard I hope.

hellebore blooms in winter, in our garden these are the  first flowers of 2011

Inside we have these great parrot tulips that were grown in Virginia by some new local grower. Most tulips are imported from Holland and this time of year they make getting up a joy to see how much they have grown in their vase and how they will look when they open up if they do open, some don't. I am having a great time drawing and water coloring this batch.

parrot tulips opening

nice shades of lavender pink white and green 

I wonder if tulips will be a subject for a new etching.

better than last week

We had a nice first snow storm last week which caused a lot of people a lot of misery. I was stuck home with fevers and breathing problems but a couple of doctor visits went smoothly between snow falls. I sat home reading looking at TV and Internet for a full week without going out the door. Pretty snow falls, fresh flowers, lots of good food and support from Keith made it bearable. The snow in DC was about 5 inches in our neighborhood and we were fortunate to have our power continuously.

Now my fevers are gone and my breath seems to be normal and appetite has returned. The flowers remain and I have been photographing them and making my daily sketches as usual. We made a trip to the market together yesterday and I got to select a bunch of new tulips myself. I chose these pretty lavender pink parrot tulips grown by a local Virginia grower for this week.

red tulips grew out in wild directions like a bunch of serpents

the first pinks tulips going strong

orange Peruvian lilies came in one day

pink tulips

I received this bunch of tulips while the red-orange tulips were fading out the end of last week. I am sick and stuck in the house for the last 6 days during the coldest few days we have had this winter. My pink tulips have been standing there looking lovely and slowly changing from tight to open wide. Drawing them each morning has been fun. Looking at them in different ways and playing with the two colors green and pink a combination brings spring to mind. We only have to wait two more winter months until spring returns!  January is nearly over. Seems to me I am feeling better today than I have in a while because I decided to scan the newest drawings and edit them with the photos to share here. I had to miss my drawing group last night but I am trying to keep up by drawing the tulips.