Erosion Bundles Art Project

I'm very excited about this new art project I'm participating in.

It's called The Erosion Bundle Project.

It's been organized by a very talented artist I'm proud to call my friend Kris Henderson.

This is a simple personal and creative challenge: to create a bundle made of my favorite media and hang the bundle outdoors.

Mother Nature is to be our collaborative partner, other participating artists will be our sounding boards, and our inspiration!

In my bundles I placed some old sheet music, large colored post-it notes, some cotton, coffee grounds, colored tissue paper dots, paper flowers, old keys, copper tags, old keyboard parts, printers heat foils, colored construction paper, colored printed papers, and cardboard tubes. I can't wait to see what nature and time does to them all!

The schedule for the project is as follows:

On January 1, 2010 - I placed my Erosion Bundles in nature.

In between = we will share thoughts and photos

On April 15, 2010 - I will retrieve my bundle from nature

By August 1, 2010 - I will finish an art piece using my eroded stuff!

http://erosionbundles.blogspot.com/ if you are curious to follow along...

I chose to do 3 identical bundles, to allow Mother Nature to tell me WHEN to use the treasures inside. I will take one down on April 15th, but I've tied all my bundles on with cotton string, so when they disintegrate and fall down, I will create with the other bundles. I think it will be interesting to see different time intervals of the disintegration.

Art-y Goal Goodness

Giggles, my new studio muse
I've always had "goals." They were the fairly anemic, typical things. Get married to a great guy, get a creative job, travel, make art, be a good person kind of thing. I never really customized them. I used to balk at the idea of setting specific goals for myself. I have to set them at work, and I just didn't want the extra pressure of having something to pin me down in my personal life. This, I came to realize was really based on a fear of failing, a fear of disappointing myself or worse yet, loved ones. Once I learned the secret of letting go, and setting attainable and realistic goals, I was able to enjoy them. They have helped me to focus, and concentrate on what is truly important in my life, in my art. They have given me a direction, and are helping me to shape a path, reducing the chaos that comes of of trying to make decisions in the heat of the moment. Most of all, they have eliminated a lot of wasted effort. The satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment I get when I reach a goal seems to work wonders for my self esteem and resolve to accomplish more.

One goal this year, is to complete at least one creative project every other week. They can be abandoned projects from earlier, or new projects. Sort of a side goal that goes along with that is to as much as possible, use the items I already have on hand, squirreled away in my studio.

I have other creativity and inspiration goals, I'll have more on those another day....

To jump whole-hearted into this goal for this year, I spent Saturday with Amy Flowers of Shrew'd Arts, enjoying her Magical Faerie Doll, and Clear Acrylic Book classes. It was a wonderful, relaxed day of creating, meeting new friends, and catching up with some I haven't seen for some time. Amy is an encouraging, giving and extremely talented instructor, and the other artists creativity and friendliness all added to the fun of the day. Amy can be found at http://www.shrewdarts.com/classes.html

In creating Giggles, I played with Lumiere acrylics & stamping. I added beads, and craft paint, and tulle. We also learned an easy wool felting technique allowing for a light and airy feel. ( I really enjoyed this method, as it was really quick!)