Lost Coral Reef

Our Nature Gathered theme this month is the sea. I've always been captivated by the Institute for Figuring hyperbolic crocheted coral reef exhibits. Margaret Wertheim from Australia started the project to make others aware of how fast the earth is losing its coral reefs. When a coral reef dies, it loses all of its color. I crocheted one of these bleached coral reefs. The branched coral is machine felted with wool roving on Lutradur. Everything else is crocheted.
Here is a close up view from the side .

I keep a sketchbook with ideas and inspiration for projects and here is one of the pages I used to design the "Lost Coral Reef".

Sketchbook Experiment

I'm reading wonderful personal stories from artists about their sketchbooks in Danny Gregory's new book An Illustrated Life- what inspires them to keep a sketchbook, draw, paint and write. Pages show each artist's personality and personal preferences for subjects, choice of sketchbook and paper, pens and brushes and color media.
They inspired me to experiment and do something different in my sketchbook- use bold Pitt artist pen, play with color, work with composition and subject themes. Today, our sketch group went to Monticello Antique Marketplace and the chairs became my theme. I also had fun using my new 1/2 inch water brush for the water color washes.

Check out Ester Wilson's web site to see her incredible sketchbooks online.

PLAY Visual Journaling Retreat

We enjoyed Teesha's visual journaling PLAY retreat at Fort Worden In Port Townsend, WA. For more photos, check out Gwen's, Fran's and Liesel's blogs. Here is the recycled cardboard journal that I made out of an old album cover and various commercial boxes cut up and collaged onto the cover.

Here's the back cover.

The journal signatures are made of cut-up grocery store paper bags gessoed in white and black.

One day we walked on the beach and made designs on the sand and built things. We took photos and used these in our journals.

We also made box sleeves to hold mini-journals made with gift card or postcard covers.

I took a granola box and cut off the ends, used black duct tape to cover them.

On the back of the box I blacked out words to make my own statement.

The last journal, we made out of one 30x22 inch sheet of watercolor paper to make 16 pages. Tear the paper into thirds, each 10 inches high. The cover is folded in half with each end folded back to form narrow end pages. The other two sheets are folded every eight inches twice.

Here are two pages that contain the start of journaling- collage, lines, doodling, text, etc.
Hopefully, this inspires you to make a recycled journal or the 16 page one.

Cabinet of Curiosities- ex-tinc-tion

For my January Nature Gathered piece , I chose to highlight extinction in my cabinet of curiosities. The images are drawn and water colored. The theme reminds me of life cycles and what survives or not. Life can be very fragile. Climate change, global warming, over population and development make this more apparent. What wild life will become extinct in our lifetime?