Wearable Art

I found a few of my necklaces.  For scale, the larger paintings are about an inch and the smaller ones about a half inch.  I just finished vacuuming the house and mopping the floors and don't feel like running errands yet.  So I dug around in my old jewelry box supplies.  I haven't made any in years.

This lone tree is painted in gouache and I can't remember what the beads were.  The prices depended on the frames, whether or not the materials were in gold or silver and the cost of the beads and pearls and/or semi-precious stones.  The larger the silver chain links, for instance, the more it costs, etc.  I do have one in jade that turned out pretty, but it must be at the farm.  

This still life of white hydrangeas is made with tiger eye beads, but this isn't in real gold.  I only did some earrings in 14k gold as they were pricey, even before the price of gold went up.

Some were even more detailed than these, so you can imagine how one stroke can change the entire painting.  I did enjoy it, but didn't have the right market to sell them.  That, and back then, it was very hard to find frames that weren't outrageous.  I wanted to make some wooden ones, like tiny framed oil paintings, then gild them, but they were much too intensive and the price would have gone up considerably. Today, there are tons of frames to choose from.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Caw Caw Cawing

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know how I love birds.  Crows in particular hold a fascination for me.  Don't know why.  Be that as it may, I've been feeding the crows lately and they are coming to eat.  There is a post in the field that I leave dog food and trinkets on.  Then, I go back home and call them, sounding like a mad lady, cawing loudly.  They come, though I wonder what they think of my poor imitation.  The above crow is carved from wood as a decoy.

Above is an oil painting I did called The Crow Picnic.

This young crow is made of paper mache and holds on to the bucking life-sized horse in my dining room.

The above is a wool wall hanging I purchased hung over a doorway.

Not matter what I did, I could not photograph this gouache I painted.  Guess it is the convex glass in the old frame.

Another old crow decoy.

A photo I took of a Parisian crow last trip to France.  Wonder if city crows are more sophisticated than my country crows?

Here is a crow feather.  Crows are supposed to be very intelligent, but this one wasn't.  He and a friend were fighting and teasing an owl in the trees out front.  Next morning, I found a dead crow on the ground where the fight took place.

Native Americans are very superstitious about crows and ravens.  The mean old woman down the lane shoots them and hangs them upside down in her trees, I guess as a way to scare crows away.

But, as I type this, a crow is cawing loudly out my backdoor, which has never happened.  Seems maybe, they are calling me.

Actius Luna

This is a gouache of a Luna moth I did some time ago. I painted it from an actual deceased moth I found outside.  What is really interesting is that when we built our house 29 years ago, we cleared out a thicket wreathed in oak trees.  That summer, and every year since then, in the side yard,  Luna moths return to the same exact place, fat white bodies full of eggs.  How in the world these future offspring/eggs know where to return each summer is simply unimaginable to me.