Tucson

Our Show Announcement for Tucson 2014

After a serious ear infection and the holidays I’m finally back in my studio trying to finish up last minute projects for the Tucson Shows at the end of the month. 

Plagued by anxiety over getting it all done on time, I had a massage and realized, what will get done will get done and there will always be more to do.  

A relaxation happened then and I felt I could wrap up, pack up, and get ready for the shows. After all, I’ve been doing this for over twenty years and it always works out just fine.    

If you are in the neighborhood of Tucson at the end of January and beginning of February, here are the details of where we will be:     

World on a String

Besides mammoth and jet we’ll be showing our new carvings in wood and hand painted carved bone.  I was a watercolorist long before a jewelry designer and I’ve been longing to return to color.  After a couple years of experimenting I’ve finally found the right combination to bring these painted pieces alive.

Please come and see our new designs as well as old favorites at both of our shows and visit our web site: www.susantereba.com.  

                                                                 

Arizona Pueblo Inn Gem Show

At Riverpark Inn

               350 S. Freeway, Tucson, AZ         

    Friday, January 31 - Feb.12, 2014

      10 am to 6 pm

      Pavilion Tent Space #71 (new spot!) 

    Gem and Jewelry Exchange Show

                              198 South Granada in downtown Tucson

 Tuesday, Feb 4 - Feb.9, 2014

                                            10 am to 6 pm

Booth number #334 

 

The Thread

 Kerry Pendergrast

We lost a unique multi-talented creative spirit in Ubud this week. Kerry Pendergrast, an artist, poet, singer, mother and wife left us and the planet unexpectedly. As I thought about Kerry today, I remembered that in the twenty or so years I’ve known her, I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone.

Her bawdy earthy powerful voice entertained us with song, while her delicate pastels layered with vibrant colors turned simple landscapes into sparkling gems. She also painted in oils, acrylics, watercolors and did lively line drawings. Our community is shaken by this loss, but her creativity lives on in the art work she produced. She will continue to inspire.

"Temple at Tengkulak" by Kerry Pendergrast

Creativity. It comes from beyond us and continues without us. It’s a thread that connects one artist to another one generation to those in front and behind it. To be radically connected is a gift without equal. And when one is flowing with it, being swept along in the current, something magical happens.  All time stops, all troubles disappear, and there is only This.

I feel such gratitude to be able to express what comes through me. It feeds on itself and gathers momentum the more I open to it. I have in front of me as I write a collection of our latest designs in wood, bone, mammoth tusk, lapis and opal. Some pieces are works in progress others are complete and waiting to be strung into necklaces, set into silver as pins, simply put on a cable or readied for stock for Tucson, coming up at the beginning of February.

Work in Progress

All this creativity in a heap on the table inspires me to push on and delve deeper into the well.  And I feel intense gratitude that I’ve been able to live the whole of my adult life doing this work in whatever medium inspires in the moment.

Kerry also had a creative life and lived her life creatively. Her legacy will live beyond her physical presence through her work and her two beautiful children, although I’ll miss her on the dance floor boogying by herself or with a partner, male or female. 

You can see more of Kerry's work here: http://www.age.jp/~pranoto/kerry/pastel/014.html

The Heart Smile

My Painting Table

Sometimes I’m sitting in my painting studio (as opposed to my beading studio) and my heart starts smiling. No really, I can feel it in my chest - a sort of expansion that goes beyond ribs and muscle and skin.  This deep down connection with creativity is like anticipation that something joyful is about to happen. This also happens in the beading studio but I share that with my assistant and am rarely there alone. This ‘heart smile’ comes with solitude.

I see artist’s studios as sacred spaces.  Like Merlin we conjure up the unknown and bring it into this world in whatever medium we work, whether it’s painting, drawing, sculpture, music, dance, writing, or other creative pursuits.  Time disappears, we step away, and magic happens through us.  

I used to need my studio to be neat. In fact that need could overtake the desire to create. It became an excuse to not face my fear of blank white paper.  It was a buffer between my desire to get my vision out through my hands with paints or pencils or pastels onto the art paper and the actual doing of it, which was often scary.  What if I can’t do it? What if I’ve lost the ability? What if I create crap? Or worse - What if I waste time?

Now with less hours available to be in either studio - the business of  selling jewelry takes up more time than the doing - the neat nick has stepped back. That is until my work table is just too crowded to use and I have to call her back.

Better Call In the Neat Nick!

Today the ‘heart smile’ came as I opened the door to my home/office after a two hour session in the painting studio.  I just felt happy!  I’d started mixing new colors - colors I have rarely used and it was thrilling. 

If you’ve been reading this blog you know my new medium is carved bone - carvings I design and have carved by my team of inspired and expert Balinese carvers. I then apply color to them.  It took over a year of research but I’ve finally found the type of paints to use to get the feeling I envision.

Today I mixed violet and gamboge yellow in various proportions to get colors that tickled me - made me joyous.  That joy now enhances a sea horse and I can even see the beads that will go with him!  Ah the ‘heart smile’ again or is that a grin?

Recycling Art

My husband, Bob, is in late stage Alzheimer’s. He’s cared for by four Balinese men in a cottage not far from my house.  He usually eats facing a wall instead of out into the garden because of the way his table is situated.  This had been bothering me for awhile. I wanted him to have something to look at when he eats since he’s now fed, having lost the ability to do it himself.

I have some serigraphs made long ago (these are original artist’s hand made prints) and had brought some here to Bali to cut in half for painting on the unused side.  Two survived the dissection and as of a week ago one now graces Bob’s dining wall. 

I wondered if he would even notice the print entitled, “The Mountains Admiring the Clouds”, with mountains shaped like faces looking at clouds shaped like animals and people. When I look at it now I shutter at my choice of colors for this piece created in 1980.  It’s too happy, too bright, too innocent, and not the way I would paint it today with a more sophisticated palette and a different vision.

When I stopped in to see Bob yesterday, the caregiver was feeding him. Bob was intently studying the new art work on the wall. He talked about it as though the characters were alive and he was surprised to hear that I had created it.  During the time I was with him he wouldn’t let me turn his wheelchair to face the garden. He was fascinated by the art piece.

"The Mountains Admiring the Clouds"

“Where’s the fish?” he asked. I honestly hadn’t really looked at the serigraph in years. After studying it I found a fish in the clouds, “There it is Bob. It’s an angel fish.”  “Who’s that woman?” he asked pointing to a female profile emerging from a unicorn’s tail. He asked lots of questions which mostly I didn’t understand. A lot of what Bob says makes little sense these days plus he speaks very softly. 

I left Bob’s house thrilled to know this discarded work of mine is doing some good, is brightening my husbands life, and giving him something to talk about. It’s peculiar as an artist, that often pieces I don’t like for one reason or another still speak to someone else. It’s as though they have a life of their own.  And this piece with it’s garish colors and simplistic theme is no exception. It speaks to Bob and its a way in, to connect with him again.

I have many prints left from this addition plus two other editions of other themes and all three share the qualities of innocence and simplicity.  I’ve wondered what to do with them since I’m not in the business of selling two dimensional art any longer.  Perhaps I can donate them to nursing homes, hospitals, and schools where they can be used to inspire youth and touch hearts fenced in by age and disease.  That’s all I ever wanted from my work - to touch people’s hearts.   

A Special Order

I’ve been away for almost a month having a real vacation in California with my sister- eating oysters and drinking Prosecco to my heart’s content.  I thought I’d continue to write my blogs but of course vacation mentality grabbed hold and I never seemed to find the inspiration. 

Marigold Buddha with Koi

Home now in lovely Bali, I’m surrounded by a luxurious garden and my rainbow of koi fish flashing about the pond. I arrived to flower petal hearts on the doormat and vases bulging with white roses, chrysanthemums and night jasmine placed around the house. The garden Buddha had been polished and festooned with marigolds for the occasion.  

My staff  has always taken good care of me but still after all these years it’s a surprise to be so welcomed. I love to go away and see new places or revisit old favorites and I love to come home - who wouldn’t with a welcome like this?

In California I’d had a few errands to run before vacation mentality got too strong. One was to mail a very special order. Seven months before I’d received this e-mail:

I hope you can help me! A year ago my husband bought me..as a wedding gift, a goddess necklace. It was a beautifully carved fossilized ivory goddess about 2 and a half inches long. It was a soft brownish color.The beads were lapis, ivory and gold (Id rather have silver). It came unclasped when I was wearing it and I LOST it...I cried for weeks as it was perfectly ME and such a loving gift. I just thought after a YEAR to try to find you! Duh.....I lost it a week after my mother died so I’m all tied up about this whole thing. Could you possibly make me another one?

-Sally

I love a challenge like this. And to do a special piece just for the person who'll wear it, gets my creativity thrashing, often leaving sleep out of reach.  Sally and I had many exchanges over the seven months it took to recreate her necklace.  I did several carvings trying to get the right color and feel.  I also did a few beading designs, emailing photos to her until we got just the perfect color and composition for the Goddess.

When Sally received her necklace she emailed immediately:

One Beading Idea

OH! I got the goddess this morning! SHE is gorgeous. I like the colors even better than the first one. This goddess is perfect. And you have improved the clasp. This one will NEVER fall off.

This arrived just in time for our Third Anniversary and it was a Wedding gift to me in the first place. Thank you SO MUCH>>>and keep me on your mailing list. please.

LOVE Sally

This is one of the reasons why I love my work. It feels like a gift and an honor to bring joy and beauty into someone’s life. These opportunities don’t come frequently but when they do and when they click, as this one did, I’m ultra-inspired to keep going, keep creating (as though I had a choice) and to be even more thankful for the life I lead. 

Thank you, Sally!

Treasures

I’m on vacation in northern California having quality time with my sister. We seem to be eating our way through the area, laughing, and having deep bonding.  We toast the memory of our mother and know she would love to be with us sharing in these good times.

I was here the same time last year for a wedding and to empty out and get rid of my storage. It was a painful process. (You can read about that at : http://susan-tereba.blogspot.com/2012/10/benediction.html). 

This year I’m going through the few things I salvaged and stored at my sister’s house. One of those is a set of ten large flat art drawers.  Last week I tackled the first five.  Today I started on the sixth. 

As I went through the drawings, preliminaries for watercolor paintings I’d done and sold over twenty-five years ago, a swirl of emotions over took me and soon tears were cascading down my checks. I sat back to sort out these emotions as colorful and varied as my paintings were.  These artworks were all done during my marriage, to John, an artist in his own right. The memoires of that life have grown thin leaving a vague otherworldly sensation.

But the drawings surprised me in their quality of execution – I wondered, “Who did these? They seemed to be from a distant me that I could hardly remember - a time of innocence and naiveté and youth of spirit.”

I wondered if I painted such happy paintings because I projected that as my life.  Of course in reality I dealt with fear, trepidation and self-consciousness – all aspects that have mellowed with maturity, aspects that don’t plague me as they did in my 20’s and 30’s. I was surprised at how much I liked these pieces and how they made me feel – happy as well as nostalgic.  And then something new stated to take wing.

I can see this as a pendent

If you’ve been reading this Blog you know I’ve been experimenting with coloring bone.  I see this as a coming back around to painting while still making jewelry. Looking through my old drawings I started to see possibilities for carvings that tell a story as my paintings did plus an excuse (as though I need one) to use color once again.

There were several images in these old drawings that could become pieces of jewelry. It’s strange to be inspired by my own inspiration. I usually look outside for that.

Tomorrow I’ll put music on, open the garage door for more light and pull out drawer number seven. I wonder what treasures it (and the other not yet opened drawers) hold for me.  What new inspirations might carry me off on new adventures.

Break Through!

I’ve finally found a product that works to color bone carvings as I’ve envisioned for over two years. It’s waterproof and lets the light of the bone shine through just like the paper's white does in my watercolor paintings.

I am basically a painter. When I was studying for my BA in Art - oh so many years ago - I ended up painting on my hand built ceramic sculptures.  I eventually chucked the ceramics and moved on to paper which thrilled me for years - and still does when I find time to use it. Painting on paper was more immediate than having to wait to fire the ceramics and hope with crossed fingers that it wouldn’t crack or the colors change dramatically.

Now I’m painting on bone. What a departure! And one I couldn’t have imagined without a crystal ball just a couple of years ago. However, I feel a bit hemmed in by the small assortment of colors I have after purchasing everything I could find in the local art store. I have no yellow or true red. So it’s on to Google Search for another source. 

It was such a thrill to have this click into place. I've been craving color in my mammoth jewelry which I’ve gotten using semi precious stone beads.  I still love the mammoth tusk and jet carvings but my muse is demanding something new. I knew abstractly what I wanted but didn’t have a concrete vision. That took time to come into focus and then ‘bang!’ it hit me that I wanted a watercolor look on the carvings.

The creative process is so exciting!  I love how stepping out of the way let’s the magic in - magic you couldn’t orchestrate on your own.  And often stepping out of the way is automatic - you don’t even realize you are doing it! 

Wings in Living Color!

 

I started posting about this process in July. At the time the colors I used sat opaquely the surface of the bone. Here's the entry I wrote and a photo of my early attempts:

http://susan-tereba.blogspot.com/2013/07/back-in-saddle.html