Home,  5" x 7" watercolor on paper by Tammy Vitale.  Prints available double-matted and backed for $20.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Which turns out, as pointed out by Husband, to my my 22nd not my 21st anniversary (so I’m still in 2006).  One doesn’t count the days in heaven.

Spent the early morning hours browsing ceramic sculpture on line.  I have been Googling "clay sculpture" and not coming up with much.  Language, as it turns out, the specific word, is very important.  What I came across was a method for getting larger work that I sort of knew but not exactly.  Now I have it:  shaped chicken wire, sometimes over some type of form (styrofoam, cardboard, something like that), covered with plastercast tape and then mosaiced.  But of course I want to make tiles instead of mosaics.  So perhaps a bit of concrete over the plaster cast?  At least I now have a direction and am all excited about it.  I also collected a bunch of pictures to use as jumping off places for multi-media clay wall pieces since that seems to be the direction tugging really hard on me now (along with bigger, larger, huge).

I’ve just received and am prereading the opening of Finding Water:  The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron (the third of the Artist’s Way Trilogy).  This in preparation for joining in a group reading through Jessie and Leah’s Finding Water blogsite, which starts this weekend.  I think along with the upcoming retreat with Christine Kane in North Carolina should be just what I need to jumpstart "what’s next" art wise, although much is starting to bubble up (claywise) as I play with paints and collage (just a bit, but more to come, I’m sure).

The beginning of the book reviews morning pages (3 handwritten every morning first thing) and artist dates.  I was great at morning pages but I never managed artist dates back when I discovered this whole process.  Morning pages:  3.  Check!  Artists dates:  1.  Not enough time.  Well, that was about 12 years ago and I’ve come to understand the importance of taking my inner artist/child out for fun things.

Which got me to thinking about what I’ve given my inner child for Valentine’s Day (not much) which took me off playing on the internet where I found all those great sites and the process mentioned above.  Not a real artist date, but not bad for 7 am on a rainy morning in February.  So I’m off to check out some white wine (which I can supposedly drink) for me and red for Husband for later today.  We will do his business taxes – I finished all mine and the house’s yesterday – and, bonus! – I found the 7 months of spread on my art business I thought I had lost (tucked in the spread sheet pad behind the first page.  Of course).

Happy Valentine’s everyone!

thought for the day:  An Artist Date is an adventure. It does not have to be ‘cultural."  You may find yourself making a sortie to a new restaurant or stopping in at a hardware store or an art supply shop.  Your Artist Date doesn’t need to be big and threatening and expensive.  It merely needs to entice you.  A free flea market might be a better date for you than an evening at the theater.  What you are after is the play of ideas – with the emphasis on the word "play."  Julia Cameron  Finding Water:  The Art of Perseverance