Six inches of rain here, no damage. A lovely May.

Our town is lush and glowing this Sunday morning. I love my tiny yard. I do not have an open space for veggies, so a group of big pots in my sunniest area  hold herbs and tomato plants.  NOTE added: After 6 inches on May 4th and 5th,  Three more inches on May 8th!  all in a very short ferocious storm.

When we lived in the country I had a garden!

I grew kitty cats.

And lots of pumpkins!

 See the pumpkins on the porch of this great red house we used to own on Schubert street.

 And I used them in the Red Cape of course.

 I miss my country garden, with black berries and eggplants and cucumbers and onions and tomatoes and so much more.  No way could I do the work of it now.  It is good to have done it at the right time.

The first two blooms have opened on the Little Gem Magnolia. High above my head but there are lots of buds lower.

The small atrium gives light and a view to the breakfast and dining areas. The outer wall is profusely  blooming Star Jasmine right now.

 St Frances watches over it.

Paintings usually sit out to dry on my breakfast table.  Some works in progress between painting sessions include Daphne a donkey at New Buffalo near Taos and some of the sheep Daphne usually protects.  As these paintings are in progress, I have received word that Daphne was in another pasture and coyotes struck and killed 4 lambs.

I am playing dolls as well.
The red haired doll with long curls was so much fun to paint.  This one is a sculpt by my friend Elaine and has been sent home now to join her doll family.

Below, my five completed at present from the series I am working on with Elaine, a few more to go. I like my red haired doll in blue, wish she had curls too! Each doll is different as they should be.

She is a doll, a painting and a textile.  This covers so many of my interests!  See this doll below finished and in an orchid dress.

Elaine found two of my paintings in an antique mall in Dallas. Here they are on a wall at Elaine's house, over a group of the  dolls.  Signature is 1977 before Jackie and I were married.   I had two one person shows in Dallas, large ones that to my amazement sold out! in 1973 and 1974.  Mary Emerling made that the look of the times.  My shows were sponsored byRalph Willard. 

I painted and sold over 250 of the primitive children, big ones like these, plus uncounted cats and lambs and lions and other small paintings and also a raft of fraktur in grained frames of Jack's making.   He is always so much in my heart, day by day.  e

Another week another doll made and another painting finished..

Still trying to put one together each week.    Three done, three more to go. These are the molded cloth heads that Elaine has made from my old sculpt plus plenty of her own magic as she worked with them. Elaine has two , and has given me the rest. The very small Steiff bear is just right for the little boy doll to hold.

  I love the little bonnets but hate to hide the doll's hair.  

It is hard to focus and divide my time between painting on canvas and making dolls.  I am using a few days each week for each pursuit...And it gets worse,  I am gathering supplies to make beaded leather medicine pouches with my daughter Cheryl when she  visits soon.  Here is my Road Runner, the state bird of New Mexico.     "Our Bird!"    Oil on Canvas  11 x 14 inches.   e

art fun

On Saturday March 2nd I sat for Bill Kalwick's demo at the
National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society
"Best of America" SMALL PAINTING National Exhibition Held at Hanna Gallery in Fredericksburg. That was the culmination of three great days of art. 

I enjoyed being with the great group of artists.

       Bob Rohm demo

 At home I am painting adobe, this one with permission for non commercial use from the collection of palace of Governors  Santa Fe. Photo is B and W.  Subject Taos Pueblo of course, date in the 1930's.

oil on panel, 14 by 11 

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Things I am doing inside these cold days.

 Besides books and movies and painting pictures on canvas,  I am making some cloth dolls with  my friend Elaine,   based on a sculpt I did in 1990.  Everything circles back around it seems.  
All those years ago, I sculpted a mold for a doll head.  I made only six doll by it and it has been under my bed in a box ever since.    Elaine has offered to make some molded cloth heads from that mold for us to share and I am to paint many of them.   Elaine will paint some also as she is a great doll maker.  
Here are the heads I am working with.

    Dolls 3 and 4 sitting in Elaine's green pitchers as their Gesso coat dries.

 Dolls 1 and 2 as I began them

 The red haired boy is doll 1.

 Dolls 1 and 2 drying in crocks in my kitchen

Some of these new dolls are a long way from done with arms and legs and more, but the personality is there.   

Doll 3 below drying in my kitchen.

 The bonnet on this doll, is an antique. It goes sweetly with the wonderful dress hand sewn by Rachael Kinnison.

 Number four is  another red haired boy.  The first one went to live with Elaine.

I am trying to get one of the big cloth dolls put together each week, here is the redhaired boy I kept, The other lives with Elaine. I want to make him some brown cotton velveteen britches, my inexhaustible garage will no doubt have velveteen in the huge shelves of craft storage, some of it has moved with me since before I met Jackie. The little boy's tunic is civil war age bought off Ruby Lane some months ago.

number 5 is a  dark eyed little girl with wispy hair.

   

 I also have plans to publish a pattern to offer for a different cloth doll I made  some years back. 

  Old Spoon was made, signed, and dated in June of 1983.  She was one of more than 75 cloth dolls I made in the early 1980’s.   Only three were  of this pattern, the rest had faces with a center seam making a nose. I love Spoon the best, as her features rely on paint alone for her features.   At Thirty inches tall and firmly stuffed, she is a substantial doll with an interesting three part head..

 This doll was sold to a local friend who wanted an old fashioned rag doll for her grandchildren to play with.  Spoon played enthusiastically with all the children and has many stories to share now if she could speak to me.  Around 2010, the grandchildren were all grown and scattered and Spoon came home to me, soiled and disheveled but undaunted. There is a tire track from someone’s tricycle across her throat and stains of unknown origin on her stockings and her once sweet antique real child’s frock was torn and needed replacing.  Her white unders were also unusable.  Rug hooking friend Barb Carroll loved Spoon on sight, and sent her a fine blue  checked dress from Pennsylvania, made of homespun fabric.  The doll enjoys clothing for small children of long ago and has several frocks but her favorite is the blue check from her Aunt Barbara.  Spoon has retired now from rough play and gives new meaning to “Hanging out with friends” as she hangs on a wall in my bedroom among other cloth dolls and old samplers and sewing rollups.  e