collage

Finding Your Own Path

/ Jodi / 57 Comments

Finding Your Own Path.

Your life will…
find its own paths…

and that they may be good, rich, and wide
is what I wish for you,
more than I can say.

It seems to me
that everything has its proper emphasis…

keep growing,
silently and earnestly,
through your whole development;

you couldn’t disturb it any more violently
than by looking outside

and waiting for outside answers
to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour,
can perhaps answer.

-Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet

Stay true to your path.
Be confident in the deepest secrets of your soul
that make you… You.

Just like
mine
make me… Me.

Cheers & Hugs,
Jodi

My art of late has taken a different twist as I have been so greatly influenced by the on-line art class I recently took by Lendon Noe – Inspired by Lives and Letters.  Although the class is over, I am not ready to let go of the lessons it is teaching me – the lessons about myself and my feelings.  And this mixed media collage is a letter to my soul – written in the form of art.  It is a conversation between heart and soul.  I have no idea if it will mean anything to you, but this is for me, and I am so grateful for the venue to express it.

Products used for Mixed Media Collage:

Stonehedge Paper
Dr Ph Martin Ink
Ink-Dyed Tissue Paper
Photo on Velum Paper
Script Stamp
Stamp Seal Sealing Wax
Momento Ink Pad
Cheesecloth

Inspired by Lives and Letters

/ Jodi / 71 Comments

Inspired by Lives and Letters.

I am taking my second-ever online art class.  I was so blown away by the first one I took a few months ago, that when I learned the same artist, Lendon Noe was doing another, I had to join in again.

The class is hosted by another wonderfully-talented artist, Carla Sonheim, who hosts a variety of online art classes.

Lendon (I just love her name, by the way, and especially when she says it with her adorable southern accent) is a mixed media artist, and I have learned so many different techniques and ways to really stretch my artistic talent and creative brain from her.

This class is especially poignant, because it is not just about art for the sake of art, but it is about our art telling a story.

It is about creating art that “communicates.”

It is about  being inspired by the lives of those who are important to us and the letters they have written.

We’ve done some fun things with dying tissue paper and creating plaster pieces (which I’ve shared in some photos here) and then put them together in a way that creates a dialogue (at least to us in some personal way).

We then were tasked with searching for some letters that were important to us.  Lendon has some beautiful letters written by her father to his mother and brother while he was serving in World War II.

Though I don’t have anything that wonderfully poignant, I was able to dig deep into my cedar chest – the same cedar chest Hubby made for me when we were engaged – my “hope chest” that still sits in our bedroom almost 36 years later – and found the very first note he ever wrote to me (one he left on my car at work with a rose asking me out on a first date before he even knew how to spell my name) and another poem he wrote to me 10 days before our wedding.

It might not look like much to you, but I was so excited to give it to Hubby as a gift that I framed it and wrapped it and presented it to him one ordinary day last week.

If you are wondering what the Bingo references are all about, you can read about the beginning of our story here.

Thank you my sweet art and blogging friend Jill Kuhn at Jill’s Art Journal for nudging me into this class.  I am truly Inspired by Lives and Letters.

Cheers & Hugs,
Jodi

The eARTh without ART is just…. “eh”

/ Jodi / 46 Comments
Acrylic Abstract Painting 16x20 Jodi McKinney

Acrylic Abstract Painting 16×20 Jodi McKinney

On a recent evening out with friends, we passed a little ‘hole-in-the-wall’ diner in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh that had a sign above it saying, “The earth without art is just ‘eh’.”  It caught our attention, and it has been in my mind ever since.

This crazy acrylic painting evolved over the course of several days.  While far from fine art, it was a fun, creative experiment.

It started out being blue and brown and white to match a recent bedroom redo.

The next day it became an ocean and sky scene… then back to an abstract the following day with drips of gold.

Around the fourth day, I decided it needed some red.  The red was too bold, so I added white to tone it down and “pink” it up a bit.

And on and on it went until I splattered white and tar gel with a toothbrush on and decided it was time to quit.

It has all kinds of crazy things going on over many layers, but there is something about it in the end that I kinda like.

Maybe because it reminds me that….
the earth without art is just “eh!”

Cheers & Hugs,
Jodi