Today I had the fortune of joining my friend Bethany as she took a group of her high school art students to the SOFA show at Navy Pier in Chicago. If you aren’t familiar with SOFA, it stands for Sculptured Objects Functional Art. I’ve probably been to SOFA around 6 or 7 times and it is always an amazing show. Several times today I was just overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. It filled my well, and now I just want to MAKE MAKE MAKE! Also, I want a gallery to represent me. Any galleries looking? :D :D :D
The above thumbnail photograph shows my favorite piece. The whole piece actually goes ceiling to floor. It is by Tanya Lyons & Mathieu Grodet and is called called Strands of Time. It is a collection of 25 strands of flamework glass & found objects. I’m such a sucker for “collections” and this piece had me swooning from the get go. I think my exact words were “My HEART!” when I first saw it. If only I had $11, 250 just burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to step inside it and wear it and wouldn’t ya know, they had necklaces in this same style! But for the more affordable price of $800.00. No problem, let me just get my billfold (if only). Each individual glass sphere held found ephemera, anything from thread to seeds, a rusty old bullet to egg shells, and antique paper to a dead bee. I would just love looking at this piece (in my home, cough) everyday.
This year I didn’t make the mistake of forgetting to purchase the catalog and I am very excited to go through it again and again and find out more about some of the artists I saw today.
One of my favorite things that happened today wasn’t even at the exhibit, but on the school bus as we rode to the show. One of the other chaperones is authoring a book on techniques that will help children learn to cope with anything from trauma to everyday emotions. It started a whole conversation about breathing techniques, meditation and rituals. It reminded me of many things I’ve learned in the past but then forgotten about. It got me really excited to try and use rituals to help my mind make the left to right brain switch and get into Flow when working on artwork. I’ve been really struggling lately with going into my studio and actually getting into “the zone”.
That being said…
It’s November 1st. In October I kept seeing mention of NaNoWriMo, which reminded me of NaBloPoMo. It’s been a loooooong time since I’ve posted daily for a month, and I’ve been wanting to get back into posting more so here it goes. As usual, no promises, no jinxes. Hopefully this helps get the creative juices flowing and I can share some of them here.
