Ro Fo Sho Art

i have four followers that i know of on this blog...thank you dearest readers! i believe others may stop in from time to time...but without the occasional facebook comment...i'm not sure who actually may be reading or full fledged following. note: i enjoy alliteration...and assonance for that matter...as well as rhyming...just a little tid bit from today's random tree. moving on! the point of sharing all of this is that i want people to read this blog...i want my ideas and art read and seen by a mass audience. not for popularity. not for fame. both may seem stuck up...but i think my reason may be the most stuck up of all. so i'm not sure if i will share at this time...let's see where we are at the end of this entry!

sometime between when i was born and 6 years old, i wanted to be an artist. by middle school, i knew that being an artist was as realistic a dream as being a rock star...well let me clarify...being able to survive off of one's dream, one must make money...and sellin' art on the sidewalks and singin' in smoky bars might make payin' the bills a bit challenging...one must have a successful gallery exhibit or CD release...for example. so by the end of middle school, i discovered a love for photography...and i've written about this before so i don't want to write about it now but i'll copy and paste that after this entry for you to read...and then i'll edit this entry and provide the link when you click...here:) i'm sharing this little middle school realization because i figured i could be successful with photography and still be able to achieve that artist dream at the same time! and this photography road will be explained more as well when you click on that link i mentioned before. so go ahead and read that now if you haven't. in addition to that last sentence...i am an artist. the passion i expressed about photography has kind of evolved in to the art i've been working on most recently...but it all ties together...it's all coming to this place that i feel stuck up about mentioning right now...but maybe later.

i am creating "ro fo sho art." i don't want to call it a business...i'm not really sure what to call it...or even how to explain it. so...following these few sentences will be a couple of paragraphs...the first one being an objective of sorts and the second one being a third person narrative of me basically (which could evolve into something else later...i'll let you know).

i want to combine my love for visual, musical, and written art into one vision that brings them all together...not necessarily in a variety of joint forms...but rather in a place...like stepping inside my mind where it all comes together in a chaos of sounds, words, lines, and colors that somehow...in this random and disjointed world...look like pieces in a museum with strange unrecognizable notes falling on frames, pages, and senses.

she's trying to find that spot in her mind where the conscious and subconscious delicately combine. is it a tangible entity or another dimension beyond human perception? how do dreams form from seemingly no where...unrelated to experiences and even random thoughts...where are they from? and these drawings and paintings that evolve spontaneously as her hand meets brush, pencil, or pastel to whatever her canvas may be...how do they unravel from the mess of images in her mind? sometimes it all comes at once and it is so hard to untangle the knots...how can she put the abstract with the concrete? too many questions. but there is a purpose for all of this...there is a reason. she can feel it! there must be a way for her to share her art and her words in a way that appeals to everyone...even those who never pay any attention to art. she has to find this path as she fits the pieces together...combine the art with the memories with the mental place on life's timeline. so...the beginning...

yeah i'm still not going to share my idea just yet...but i don't think it's really stuck up. however, i think it will make more sense with more entries relevant to the vision:)

so! i'll get back to the creation of "ro fo sho art" throughout this blog. for right now...i will share the 3 most recent drawings that have kept me busy as i've been away from writing...


this one is called "energy spinning." i did it with graphite pencils one evening while watching tommy play video games. good times. oh yes! i would also like to mention that i had been watching shows about the universe leading up to this. so when i write about my art coming from a spontaneous place, i believe this one came from supernovas still "spinning" around in my head;)


this one is "stellar memories" created with prisma colors and chalk pastels. this one looked so childlike in the beginning actually...like a children's book on shapes. but the word inside my head when i put the first line down was, "trippy." so that is definitely what evolved. adding the chalk pastels in this one led directly to the following one...


this one is "hearts collide," which may seem to obvious but i don't care...it's how i feel about the love story of my husband and me. anywho! i hadn't used chalk pastels in years so when i added it to the previous drawing, i was really excited to immediately do another quick sketch. "stellar memories" took me days..."hearts collide" took me minutes! oh the joy of chalk pastels!

so this was a long one! and i probably rambled and didn't make sense through the whole thing. but that is why this has been so frustrating for me!!! "ro fo sho art" is such a mess in my head and i'm trying to make it make sense...gah! hopefully it will in the next few days. praying:)

Leaves

i believe that if you take an object that anyone can identify and photograph it and turn it around in post production cropping, that it should qualify as abstract...does it? or am i making my own rule...'cause i do that...and i don't feel bad about it. i like leaves. i've always liked leaves! 3 of my most vivid memories:

1) i use to draw landscapes and flowers and such when i was a kid. my trees were usually the broccoli type or the pine type...easy to draw and no trouble identifying what they were. then i went through a phase where i would draw every single leaf on a tree...yes...it took a long time...no...it was not very much fun.

2) i love the contrast of vivid, almost neon green trees against the steel gray of a sky warning of impending thunderstorms. especially when i would drive between school in iowa and home in oklahoma, coming through kansas city, and occasionally see the peppering of said trees through the cityscape. i believe i love kansas city for these memories:)

3) oh geez...i forgot what number 3 is...hold on a second. oh! i remember! i always loved the change between winter and spring (which is weird since fall is my favorite season and i love fall leaves...and i love the change...but the favorite actually goes to the other transition). anyway! i grew up in the country and our home was (and still is...parents still there) surrounded by trees and a little bit of woodlands...or forest...or...just country. when march came around, one of the first things i would do in the morning was look out the window to see how much green had sprouted. it always seemed like a little bit at a time...and then maybe there would be a weekend of rainy weather and come monday at the bus stop, it was like an explosion of green! i loved it:) and now that i'm thinkin' 'bout it...maybe my affection for this transition is because as a kid, to me, when the world started turning green, it meant that summer was almost there and summer break too! that makes sense.

so yeah...leaves! they're great! and of course, i loved climbing trees! i could spend hours in my favorite tree in my grandparents' yard...i had to throw a rope over a branch and climb up at kind of a slope. then i could gather the rope up and no one could come up unless they got a ladder to get them to the first step or if i lowered the rope. oh i loved that tree! it got hit by lightning. i cried:( oh no...i wasn't in the tree when that happened...don't worry.





and then my friend, amy, had a tree house that we would sometimes spend all day in! we would play barbies or draw or just talk for hours...sometimes we'd even take naps. that tree house was our utopia...life was bliss up there! it was surrounded with that camo stuff that hunters use...i'm sorry i don't know what it's called. but anywho and gumdrops! it was our little hideaway:) its deterioration aligned with our growing up...our heads weren't in the clouds as much as we got older...life was about part time jobs, college applications...boyfriends...blah! man i loved that tree house...how simple life was back then. i want a tree house in my yard someday...i'll even share it with my kids:)

i started taking pictures of me holding leaves or other bits of nature in my hands. i think i was inspired but other photographers doing this. i don't think it was my idea. that's okay...i'm not trying to take credit! i like showing myself being a part of the world around me...i guess like people taking pictures of their feet...i do this too. holding something in my hand says, "i see this. i can touch it. i find beauty in it. so i'm going to capture myself with it." leaves in the sunlight are always lovely...can't go wrong!




i'm happy my fingernails are clean. when i'm at the river in a few weeks, there will probably be shots of me holding my bits of nature with my dirty river hands and fingers...that's just nature though...it's dirty...in a good way:)

i really could go on and on about leaves. oh! i should tell you where these leaves came from! our upstairs neighbor has a patio full of plants that she tends to and throws the dead bits down below. so the front of our little patio is often sprinkled with petals and leaves...it's like confetti:) earlier today there was a little red petal that looked like a heart in the bright green grass...i didn't have my camera though and was tending to kakashi. anywho and gumdrops! i'm grateful for my upstairs neighbor with the green thumb.

something to look forward to my friends! i have gathered some leaves that i call "fairy wings" because that is what they look like to me. they are lovely little veiny whimsical fragile leaves! i'm not sure how i will photography them, but my goal is to capture the beauty i spotted in them sprinkled on the ground i walk over every day with kakashi.

hopefully, my love of leaves was at the very least entertaining to read. i think everyone should try to find some beauty in a bit of nature they see every day...or drive or walk through on the occasional weekend trips or yearly vacations. even a grain of sand or colorful weed can be a treat for the eyes and senses. so maybe i sound like a hippie...well i am a little and i'm okay with it. even my conservative husband can handle it...but i digress:) i love leaves.

p.s. my favorite tree is the weeping willow. not many down in oklahoma since they need a more moist environment. but lots up here in illinois!!! yay!

Windchill

the windchill was 41 degrees thursday...that's right...i said windchill...in may...windchill. back home in oklahoma, we would be talkin' 'bout the heat index. not here...nope...windchill. kakashi doesn't care about weather...he just wants to be outside. and since he's still a puppy being potty trained, every time he goes to the door, i have to take him out...he might legitimately need to...well ya know. so i had to bundle up in my winter coat...winter coat!!! dang! it's memorial weekend for cryin' out loud! should be warm and sunny with cookouts and fun outside! yesterday was better as far as temperature and we actually had some sunshine. today was the warmest but cloudy:( sad face.

anyway! that picture up there is of lake michigan. i'm just a short drive away from this great lake. i call it the ocean lake...it's seriously intense people. that's probably the best picture i have of it thus far. that particular day was my first warm day here and it was windy as all get out. as a photographer, it was a new experience freakin' out over sand potentially gettin' in the crevices of my camera...i'm pretty sure that as much as i tried to protect it, i failed a little bit. moving on. the weather here seems to be more dramatic than in oklahoma...it is seriously almost JUNE and i'm still wearing hoodies and sometimes the winter coat to take the dog outside...not cool. ha. actually it is cool...but not in the "cool" way. ha ha ha. *cough* sarcasm!

just a little bitter. all right now! let's not be so pessimistic this weekend! tommy got a 3 day weekend for memorial weekend so i've really enjoyed all the time together. i just wanted to write a little bit and exhibit some photography...since i'm technically a photographer...that's my legitimate nationally recognized profession...but my heart has been in the abstract and my photography leans more toward documentary. but now that i've written this...i'm challenging myself...time for some abstract photography. aren't you so happy to be part of this revelation? well my friends, let's see where this takes us!