Yikes!!! I've been tagged!!!!!!!!

Well, I've been tagged by Shibori Girl, so I'd better step up to the plate. Let's see if I can meet up to the standards! I need to follow these rules:
1) Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog
2) Share 7 facts about yourself, some random, some weird
3) Tag 7 more people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
4) Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs

1. I have always been involved in making art

...since a teeny tot. I must have been OK as a child, because one of my vivid traumatic memories pertained to a teacher who used my work as an example for other classes and then never returned my work to me! I am still scarred...

Here are 2 of the only remaining early works. These are from High School (and I won't tell you just how many decades ago that was, but here's a hint: if you are old enough to know what PSFS was, you are no spring chicken! HINT: Philadelphia Savings Fund Society).

This next piece is a self-portrait from High School. It is also dated, as the process is "linoleum block print". Anyone out there remember what linoleum was? The interesting thing about this piece is that my current hair length matches the one in the print for the first time in many decades (thought you had me!).

2. For about 6 years I have been in a cover rock band called "The Hip Replacements"

I have always sung with friends for a hoot, but when my good buddy told me she was in a band, the brain cells were jogged. We now have a band of 8: 4 married couples!! We get together to jam as much as possible, sometimes every week. I play harmonica and sing. This beats (yes, a pun) poker in my book.

That's me with shore hair in the middle

3. I am a grandmother!

Suka is a stray adopted by my daughter this year. We think he is around 2 and part German Shephard, part Besenji...that's Egyptian for "dog". What a good boy!!!!

4. I LOVE junk: particularly metal.

This is my workstation. No one would dare to call me neat when I work! Believe me, I know where everything is...

5. I love gnocchi.

I love to make them and I love to eat them. YUM!

6. I love Italy.

I just got back from a course in Italy with Michael DeMeng http://www.michaeldemeng.com/ along with Arcangelo Productions http://www.arcangeloproductions.com/. Here is a picture of Michael doing a demo. Check out the countryside behind him. That's the view from the window of our studio: Bella Tuscany. Ahhhhh... Not too shabby.

7. I am obsessed with making things using glass and mixed media.

This is the lastest work I completed. I began with a volume of an Italian encyclopedia, deconstructed it and created "MaMA" using all kinds of parts from household appliances. This piece was inspired by a cast-off doll I retrieved from the side of the road. "Mama" is the first word that children from all countries, backgrounds and eras can pronounce (ok, maybe "Dada" is the first...) and its universality struck me.

Here are the bloggers that I am tagging:

http://karencole.blogspot.com/

http://www.arcangeloproductions.com/

http://www.brackettfalion.blogspot.com/

http://janerosemont.com/

http://www.ipaintpictures.com/
http://www.snipsandsnailsandpuppydogtails-leslie.blogspot.com/
http://www.milliande.com/

Fashion-eee-stas BEWARE!

I am a woman with no shame when on a mission. I needed to don my turquoise-to-match-the-sea socks because I was in the British Virgin Islands with my dear buddies Karen and Bob, and I was going SCUBA diving with as few blisters as possible marking up my dainty (not!) tootsies. So I invented the biking/scuba sock and am presenting it to you today as featured in my original mixed media rendering drawn on our chartered 43 foot Beneteau (the four of us did all the navigating and grunt work...ok, Bob and Rich did the navigating...). I shall be taking orders...

My biking blogger (my blogging biker?)

My son works in a windowless computer lab. It's dark and the walls glow with the monitors' eerie light. This cannot be good for one's soul and I being a mother of some creative abilities decided to end this depressing maddness. What would a good momma do? Pick the trash! There was a stunning window being tossed to the landfill gods. I tossed it into my car and transformed it in my studio.

I wasn't sure what I was going to paint (and to be honest, it took me several years to get it all together) but a lovely outdoor scene in oils on the glass evolved complete with mountains, big sky, lake and hillsides. I even added a biker, standing poised as he was about to begin his adventure and ride as far away from computerland as the imagination would allow. The fact that my son is a biker (that's one of his 3 triathelete skills...sure doesn't take after his momma!) must have influenced my choice of image. As I began to paint the biker, I noticed that he looked suspiciously like my son...

The coup de grace was a window shade which I added to complete the illusion. The best part of this is that HE posted a photo of the painting on HIS blog. http://blog.mr-pc.org/2008/02/05/new-window-in-labrosa. We now have familial multi-generational blogging.

You spin, I spin, we ALL spin...

When I take a look at some of the themes in my work, one that seems to keep coming up (as in spin into view repeatedly) is that of motion. I never like myself in photos. Why? Because I am not moving. Juggling...Doing..Trying...Learning..Being: as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, artist, friend.

PROPELLER

(pastel,watercolor,graphite,charcoal on paper,

38"x 58")

Well, now I am spinning in yet another context: exercise! The bicylcle spinning class I take stresses posture and core strength rather than speed. It forces me to focus on my body mechanics, breathing and internal zone at the same time. (This is all very exciting after my big surgery 5 years back.) I like to do things that allow me to move. Are we back at that again? My body freezes up if I sit for too long. So does my brain.

truth IS stranger than fiction!

GARDEN OF EDEN (oil on canvas, 53" x 48")

Tonight I was told a true story that is incomprehensible:

There was a wedding. The grandfather of the groom, went up to the grandmother of the bride and said, "You are my wife". He rolled up his sleeve to reveal the tatoo inscibed on his arm by the Nazis. The grandmother of the young bride rolled up her sleeve to reveal her numerical tatoo which was one number away from his. They had each thought the other had died, integrated the nightmare into their reality, and gone on to a new life with a new spouse. Astonishing in its reality.

What goes round comes round

I went to visit an longstanding family friend who had just lost his Mom (yes, with a capital "M"). He lived with her and has to sell the house which is the only one he has known all his life. I left him and went to the Farmer's Market where I bumped into another longstanding friend, a realtor. You know how you hear people's stories when you first meet them and then it's 20 years later and you need a refresher course?

So I asked this realtor friend where he grew up. It was the same block of the same street of the house which needs to have a new owner. The realtor's parents sold every house on that street and in a five block radius as they began their business 40 years ago. And my friend would LOVE to go back to his family's beginnings and sell this familiar house on this familiar street. And by the way, I haven't seen him or his wife in a year. We also found out that we'll be attending the same concert tomorrow for a mutual friend Sharon Katz and the Peace Train who is raising monies for a sucessful music therapy program for children whose lives have been affected by AIDS in South Afica

It's really fun to continually bump into these coincidences.

INTERACTION

(watercolor crayon on mylar, 20.5" x 16.5")

Speaking of Grandmothers...

Mine was a top-notch seamstress for the International Ladies Garment Worker's Union for 50 (that's 5 decades!) years. With her "golden hands" she seamed the most detailed parts of ladie's shirts.: facings and collars. facings and collars. facings and collars. facings and collars. Over and over. For all those years. Sound a bit like drudgery? Think of how it was before the unions came into being. For fun, she used to make clothing for the family.

In those days real men had wives who didn't work. And that was what my grandfather believed. Only my grandmother thought they needed the extra cash in order to put food on the table so she went to work against his will. A big step for a woman from the shtetl in Russia.

TOWER OF INDUSTRY: GRANDMOTHER STITCHES

(flameworked glass, fabric, gold leaf, mixed media)

This sculpture has been juried into a Philadelphia Sculptors' exibition at West Chester University, PA. The images of my grandmother are from one of my oil paintings, the sewing machine and lace are glass that I flameworked, the bobbins and spool were my grandmother's. There is even a cloth replication of her ILGWU card which she proudly carried.