Burning Daylight

 

Now having said this I have to admit that we’re not like some of those people that are derisively called “early birds” that a lot of ads warn against. No, we’re not that intense. We know that garage sailing is like fishing, sometimes you catch something, sometimes you’ve just had a nice outing. In fact, we find that there seems to be an odd way that one week you’ll finds lots of good stuff and the next, just a few little things. That was yesterday. Just a few little things, a nice thermometer for the greenhouse for 25 cents. An amber glass globe that I’m hoping to use in the garden somehow as some part of a sculpture.

Plant sale
Plant sale

But we did all right on the plants. This sale is never really advertised and but somehow we manage to find it every year. There’s always a good selection of plants to choose from.

dummies
Potential garden art

We had a few misses. Things that we liked but were not in the budget. Like these clothing forms that Will had such great plans for. We never expected that they were such distinguished ones, from the 40’s, the seller said, and worth $35 and $45. They were almost going to become garden sculptures with very unique heads created for them. Ah well.

lampbase
A winsome smile

Then there was the little lamp base that had such a wonderful expression that I had to take a photo, but didn’t really want to own. The photo would suffice.

We always try to work in a park, an ocean fix or garden either for our coffee break or at the end of the morning. Today it was Finnerty Gardens at UVic. This garden is known for it’s collection of Rhododendrons, all apparently started from seed. This is Rhodo time and we almost missed it. Luckily there were still quite a few in all their glory.

Finnerty Gardens
A path lined with Rhodos
Rhodos in the sunlight
Rhodos in the sunlight
Monstera bloom
Monstera bloom
Dove tree blossoms
Dove tree blossoms
A stand of bamboo
A stand of bamboo
bamboo2
Yes, the bamboo really is this tall.

The garden has the most wonderful stand of bamboo. It’s huge, tall, and just gorgeous. I wish we could fit it in our garden.

All in all, the gardens were a lovely and serene wrap-up to our to our busy morning of garage sailing.

Will next weekend be the alternate weekend, the weekend when we find lots of good stuff? Who knows?

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Making Time

Our fridge is home to many artsy handmade collage magnets and also to many quotes that I’ve found assuring, inspiring or thought provoking. I found a rather thought provoking one about time the other day and slapped it up there.

You will never find time for anything. If you want the time you must make it. – Charles Buxton.

Well Charles sounds rather like an overbearing patriarch but I must admit he has a point. Finding Time seems a bit like wishing for it and Making Time seems so much more solid, like a commitment.

This last long weekend Will and I spent a lot of time in the garden. We had designated this weekend for gardening time for probably the last few weeks. Other weekends had been too busy with the craft show or other considerations. And of course there had been other weekends where time just seemed to slip by as we shopped for groceries or other items on our lists. I suppose you could say we made time for the garden this weekend.

Rock Rose and Fried Egg plants in the front garden
Rock Rose and Fried Egg plants in the front garden

We knew that we needed to spend some solid time in the garden. And this weekend we did manage quite a lot. The shade garden got weeded. The compost was assessed and deemed pretty good, not quite to the “black gold” stage but close enough to give some “fiber” to the soil. We readied part of the garden for squash plants and were planning to finish that up the next day. Then yesterday dawned grey and cool so we took advantage and weeded the front garden. Usually we only work in the front garden in the evening when it’s shaded. But a cool cloudy day had to be taken advantage of. At the end of each of our gardening days we weren’t good for much more than supper on the couch in front of a good movie. In fact, we were actually surprised that we could even move the next day! But we did, ok a little slowly at first, but pretty soon back to normal.

A gift from the birds
A gift from the birds

We found a couple of gifts planted by the birds in our garden. These varigated thistles are growing in the front garden, very antisocial with their pricking leaves but oh so unusual and beautiful. We decided to let them grow, weeds or not.

Scotland's national flower
Scotland’s national flower

On the other side of the driveway I’m also letting another big thistle keep it’s spot. Ok I know it’s a thistle but it gets some really wonderful flowers on it at the end of the summer when it’s reached gargantuan dimensions. Hey the Scots are keen on them, isn’t it their national flower? And as a weed we already know it’s tough so will fit in well with the xeriscape theme.

On a previous post I mentioned my intention to have fun everyday. And I realized yesterday as I was breaking up the soil and carefully extracting the weeds and their roots from the dirt and gleefully throwing them into my little green and yellow weed wagon, that I was actually having fun. Seeing the garden all tidied up and weed-free was pretty darn nice too. So in a way I suppose we made time for the garden and for fun at the same time.

Happy tulips in the freshly weeded garden
Happy tulips in the freshly weeded garden

Which brings me back to Charles Buxton of the Make Time philosophy. I am going to try to consciously think of things that are fun everyday as I get up and make time for them. Today, I’ll have a choice, either plant up the pots of flowers I’ve got waiting on the back deck or work on finishing my sculpture at last while listening to some good music. Which will I do, I wonder? Anyway, you have to admit it’s nice to have a choice.

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Bird Playgrounds

The lilac is in bloom in all its glory. The breezes carry the perfume and you have these little moments of pure joy as you lift up your face to catch that wonderful scent.

arbor sculpture
arbour sculpture

I just had to take a photo of one of Will’s found art sculptures with a background of lilac blooms to set it off.

We have a couple of arbours in our garden. One is to hold the clematis and the other in the far corner of the garden carries the grape vines. Each one of these was made with all found materials. As a finishing touch Will and I went beach combing, not exactly a hardship for us, to find the embellishments. These arbours are projects that never really finish. Will works on them as he finds time and inspiration. We have stacks of beautiful driftwood piled up ready at hand for him to create with.

A door knob on high
A door knob on high

I personally love the spirals he’s created with recycled,rusted barrel hoops. The one on the grape arbour has as it’s crowning glory an old glass doorknob. There is really something magical that happens when the sun hits that doorknob just right and it glows and sparks as the sunlight streams through.

We like to joke that these sculptures serve a much more distinctive and important purpose. They are not just art, or as I like to think of them, three dimensional drawings of curves and lines. No, these are bird playgrounds. Little sparrows and wrens love to play on them, ducking up and under and chasing each other and happily chirping. It’s a sight to see.

And I love to tell Will that he has real purpose as an artist, not just to create lovely bits of sculpture, but more importantly he has a definite role as a bird playground creator. What more could he want?

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Making Space in the Garden

Last night it rained, a lot. I could hear it drumming on the greenhouse roof as I fell asleep. So, as every gardener knows the best time for weeding is right after a good rain. Those weeds just come out a lot easier. Well, ok, some of them did. Quite a few of them required a bit more effort having established themselves quite well. And for once, I made myself come in after an hour or so. It’s always easy to forget that you are not in shape yet and overdo it. Gotta get those weeding muscles in tune yet.

But first, even before I got started, I had to get some photos of the goodies that have come up and are doing great. I love our garden and am always in awe of the way it all seems to just pop up in the spring. We’ve got poppies already full of heavy buds. And the Cardoon is just motoring and will be a giant soon.

Our Cardoon (May 18)
Our Cardoon (May 14)
Mystery Plant?
Mystery Plant
Hellebore (Peeking out from behind it, a Native Bleeding Heart)
Hellebore (Peeking out from behind it, a Native Bleeding Heart)
My fave Hosta, which later becomes a beautiful blue.
My fave Hosta, which later becomes a beautiful blue.
And suddenly, a Solomon's Seal
And suddenly, a Solomon’s Seal

The dirt here in Victoria is so wonderful. Such a change from our gardens in the past in Calgary. Dirt in Calgary is dryer and harder and requires a lot of work. Sometimes I felt,  when a tulip would struggle up in that hard dirt, like I should just stand back and cheer. Here you have to actually cut things back. Which reminds me that we’ll have to check on the compost we worked so hard on last fall. Hopefully, it’s at the stage we like to call “black gold”.

Besides weeding I was really looking over the garden to find spaces. I need spaces for all the things I have to plant. We went a little wild at the Seedy Saturday back in February and got some veggie seeds like beets, parsnips, chard  (the pretty rainbow variety of course, I am an artist after all) and dill. And to top it off, last weekend, out garage sailing, I brought home starters for Acorn and Butternut Squash and Zucchini. Now to find some spots for them. So having weeded out a few areas I’ve found a bit of space but I fear that this weekend there will have to be a lot of moving around going on.

my handy Weed Wagon

Knee saver weeding stool
Knee saver weeding stool

You may be wondering why I have included this photo of my little green wheelbarrow. Now we’ve got a lot of wheelbarrows, we find them everywhere at garage sales and as giveaways. But this one is special. I just love this little thing. It’s got a wonderful shape and colour to it, sort of bright and friendly. It’s my favourite for weeding. It’s light and just is so easy to drag around after me as I weed. I found it, where else, garage sailing and snapped it up. And then there is the little stool, a freebie at a garage sale last summer. I’m finding it’s just right for sitting on as I weed, a real savior for my poor knees. Doesn’t take much to make me happy.

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The Show at Hatley Castle

You would think that with a craft show looming on the horizon that we would be responsible and get everything ready on the couple of days beforehand but no, not us.

Instead we decided to have a little party at our house to celebrate our good friend Hart’s birthday on Friday night with our usual compliment of fun loving friends and two of our sons in attendance. It was a Mexican theme with everyone bringing food and goodies with a Tex Mex flavour and even the music I found was Mexican. I love having these get togethers on a weekend night, nothing beats good conversation, laughter and good food with friends.

Then Saturday, instead of staying home and designing a new hand out card in the morning, the lure of garage sailing was just too strong to resist. One of our three sons, Dave, in his call to wish me Happy Mom’s Day late Sunday night, said he was pretty sure we are addicted to garage sailing to which I replied that it was not an addiction but our way of having fun. And we did have a wonderful morning buying plants, finding good free stuff and taking our usual ocean side coffee break in the beautiful sunshine. Lucky for us, Eric was at home while we were out galavanting preparing the sculptures and packing them up for Sunday and doing other little odd jobs like repairing our show table.

Finally by late Saturday night we did get everything done. The new card had been designed and printed just in time before Office Depot closed. The car had been packed with all the mosaics and pots and boxes of supplies. All that remained was for Hart to come over with his truck in the morning so we could load it up with table, chairs and sculptures. With me running around telling everyone to hurry because we have to get there before the end of load in time at 9, we finally were on our way. That is, until we realized about 4 blocks away that we had forgotten the tent. Now you cannot screech to a halt when you have vehicles loaded with artwork so we coasted to a stop and turned around to get the tent. Well at least we were only a few blocks from home. You may say you should have a list of things to check off. Well we do. But we’ve done shows so many times that we sort of gave it cursory attention. Actually I think we did pretty well. The only other things I forgot were plants for the mosaic pots display and that was soon solved by buying some more plants for the garden at the show. Or was that just an unconsciously cunning way for me to justify buying more plants?

A view of the Castle from the front lawn
A view of the Castle from the front lawn

The show itself was great. Sunny, breezy and beautiful. Lots of people stopping and signing up for classes and taking a real interest in our sculptures. Our spot was on the front lawn of Hatley Castle overlooking the ocean. We all managed to take time off from our booth duties at different times to take in the rest of the show. I even managed a guided tour of the castle with our good friend and writer, Lia, who is also a tour guide at Hatley, giving lots of little known info about the history of this now popular place for shooting movies like XMen 2 and 3. Lia has written three wonderful stories about the feline friends in her life. Watch for a special segment in our blog on these literary gems and how to get them.

Of course, I’m always on the look out for other artists who make art from recycling and I was not disappointed. I just have to share a few of my finds. Unfortunately the first two don’t have web sites yet. I loved the jewelry made by Joyce Bezusko made from bits and pieces of old jewelry she finds in thrift shops and wherever.

Joyce with her creations
Joyce with her creations

Each one is different and unique and many are really playful. She has a bit of a following with some people collecting her one-of -a-kind pieces. She also sells in Hawaii, hence the name of her business Island Girl Originals. Or is that because she lives on our little island? Hmmm. You can reach her at 250-248-0637.

Bags reborn from scraps
Bags reborn from scraps

The next was a wonderfully talented seamstress, Renee Morris, from up island in Courtney, who makes these perfect bags with big shoulder straps from scraps of great materials. Her latest designs are made from recycled men’s tweed suit jackets! Amazing bags. Her little business is called Hobo’s and you can reach her at buyhobos@yahoo.com.

Amy's wonderful windows
Wonderful Windows

I loved Amy Houston’s booth with these awesome windows made with recycled glass and bottles and bits and pieces. She is part of a group called Two Glassy Ladies here in Victoria. I checked out their web site when we finally got home and it’s worth a visit for the blog and all the great glass beads they make.  The windows are created by Amy’s mom, Elizabeth.

The ladies of Wild Arc
The dedicated ladies at the Wild Arc booth

And I have to share with you the BC SPCA Wild Arc booth where they were selling baskets of flowers to raise money for Wild Arc. This is a great organization who takes care of wild animals injured or orphaned. You can find out more at www.wildarc.com.

Prospective students
Prospective students

So all in all it was a great day. I always get a kick out of the people who come into our booth and are smitten with mosaics. So many admit to saving broken dishes and wishing to make something with them. I just know I’ve met a future mosaic artist.

And now I really have to finish putting away all the stuff that we were too tired to do last night as we crashed with our supper in front of the TV and watched British murder mysteries. This week, I’m planning to do gardening and plant all the goodies I’ve been collecting that are waiting for a home in the garden. Where to grow it all? Ah well another little problem to get creative about.

My latest motto to live by is to have fun everyday. This last weekend, what with a birthday party, garage sailing and doing a craft show I think we managed it.

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The First Craft Fair of the Season

This weekend we’ll be participating the Mother’s Day Paint In at Hatley Castle. I’m looking outside right now and wondering is the weather going to cooperate? Today it’s raining, which is good, free water for the garden and all that. But on Sunday, I hope it’s one of those sunny warm days. Now we’ve done this show before and it did rain but only for a little bit in the morning as we were setting up our booth. Then it became a beautiful day smelling fresh from the rain and made the gardens glisten and sparkle.

Our Tent with the first of many visitors (after the rain)
Our Tent with the first of many visitors (after the rain)

These events are always a lot of fun for the exhibitors too. I’ll have Will and Hart there to help with the booth. We’ll be showing off our new garden sculptures and it’s always good to get feedback from the people browsing, about what they like.

Every summer I give classes in mosaics and creativity. These shows are my way to get the word out. It’s really something that I really enjoy doing.

hatley-show1
Signing up for a fun-filled class

We often get couples or friends signing up together and they have a blast buying used dishes at thrift shops during the first class and then learning to break dishes in the second class. I get some real mixed reactions about breaking dishes. Some people have a hard time overcoming that conditioning that says it’s very very bad to break things. Others are just so gung ho to take out their frustrations on a dish that you have to stop them from pounding the dish into dust! But in the end, everyone makes something that’s totally them, and from that point on never looks at a dish without wondering what it will look like broken. Now we use special cutters to break up the dish and don’t smash them with a hammer unless it’s one of those really really tough plates that just won’t succumb any other way.

The other reason I love these shows is that we all take turns sneaking off and looking at everyone else’s booth. We see people that we’ve seen at other shows and get a chance to catch up and often we see some things that really inspire us to whole other directions. At the end of the day when we’ve lugged all the booth contents back to the car and packed it all up for the day, we’re tired but happy. And ready for a pizza!

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Room to Create

The other day I looked into my studio and thought what a mess! I’ve been working on a couple of things that are taking some time. And with being busy with so many other things I’ve let it get just a little too messy.

stacksoplates
Stacks of plates

Now, I can live with messy but when it gets to “knee deep’, I know I need to do something. Just put a few things away, take out garbage, sweep up. Now I’ve got surfaces to work on again. Ah, bliss.

buddhas
Bountiful Buddhas

My studio is filled to the brim. I like to say it’s abundant. It’s full of ornaments, lots and lots of dishes usually organized by color or pattern, lots of houseplants. Best of all, I have music. All kinds of music from Music of World to jazz to old rock to opera. We have a huge collection of music what with the hundreds of old LP’s to the all the tapes and CD’s Will and I have found and collected from garage sales and thrifting. I tend to need music to work by. If I can’t understand the words, that’s ok too, it allows my thoughts to roam.

Recycled salad containers make great storage
Recycled salad containers make great storage

When I have mosaic students,I tell them there are no rules, but of course I have just a couple. You absolutely need a place to work. And you need music to work by. I’m lucky with a room in the house dedicated to being a studio. I can make a mess and then close the door. Of course our house is sort of a studio everywhere. Sometimes I might sculpt a small piece or string a new bracelet of found beads while watching TV or a movie on the living room couch. So of course the coffee table is covered with a bag of clay, a board with a sculpture on it and boxes of beads. We don’t designate a particular area. The dining room has our office and computer equipment in it as well as another desk for Will to work on collage pieces.

Bits and pieces
Bits and pieces

Our ultimate dream is to live in a huge studio. A great generous space to work in with a area for eating, sleeping and the necessities of living tucked into one area of the space. I am always shocked by home designs. Homes are designed it seems, to sit and do nothing. You see home plans with living rooms and family rooms. Builders and designers never seem to make room for creative pursuits. These days if you factor in the cost of square footage on your mortgage or rent as the case may be, it seems that you really should be looking at how well your home will work for you or allow you to work preferably on something creative.

It’s important to me to find a space somewhere to work in. I think too often it’s easy to say what you need is not important, but to me happiness is something that comes from being creative. If I’m happy so is everyone else, trust me. The same goes for Will and Eric. We all need to be creative to be happy. So we decided that happiness is more important than having a guest room or a dining room. And we tend to use pretty well every room in the place to create in.

Ornaments waiting to be placed in a mosaic
Ornaments waiting to be placed in a mosaic

Some of my students have gotten really creative making a space to work. One lived in a tiny basement suite, with two small dogs. She made her coffee table into her studio work table. To avoid bits of broken dishes littering the rugs creating a hazard for the pups, she broke all her dishes inside a box, so no shards could fly around the rug. Another, created a space in a garage, in front of a window and brought in a CD player. A good friend, who had wanted to write a book with the words floating around in her head for ages, got the idea to put her computer in a closet and create a writing space. The book was written in weeks!

It takes a bit of creativity to make a work space sometimes or just a rethinking of what you want your home to be. A place to sit or a place to get happy and creative in.

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Getting Hooked on Pique Assiette Mosaics

I think the whole recycling way of life probably led to us getting involved in mosaics. We always found some way to have what we wanted by finding it used or creating it ourselves.

Our very first pique assiette mosaic came about in 1988 or 89, when I decided that I must have birdbath, a really nice birdbath, not just any old birdbath from the garden shop. I’d seen some mosaic made with old dishes in a magazine and the idea clicked. We needed a mosaic birdbath! From that first stab at mosaic we ended up discovering the joys of pique assiette, which in rough translation, means stolen dishes. Well, of course, we didn’t steal dishes, but we found a lot of good material at my favourite store, Value Village. That and all the Sally Ann Thrift stores that abound everywhere.

The base of the birdbath was made by pouring cement into a sono tube found at the local building supply store. The top was built by lining a cardboard box with a black plastic bag and pouring in cement. We scooped out the middle to create a hollow in the centre which would become the bath area. By pulling up on the bag we made the sides rounded.

Now this was our very first attempt and we had no clue. We wouldn’t do the mosaic the same way now that we know so much more. As soon the cement was cured we just set up the base and the top on a picnic table in the back yard. We’d gone to Value Village and found as many dishes as we could in different colors and spread them out on a picnic table in the backyard. We’d put a dish in a plastic grocery bag and whack it with a hammer. The bag was to keep the pieces from flying around on the grass. Soon we were really good at it.

progress, Our first Pique Assiette birdbath, Helen and Will Bushell, summerhouseart.comThen we arranged the pieces in a loose pattern on a piece of newspaper. For each section we mixed up a small batch of cement, applied a small area of it on to the surface of the base about a half an inch thick and pushed the pieces of broken dishes into the mortar. As it began to set, we would scrape away the cement around the last section as closely as we could to the dish pieces and then mix up a new batch of cement and carry on with pushing the pieces in.

progress, Our first Pique Assiette birdbath, Helen and Will Bushell, summerhouseart.com

As you can imagine the sound of all these dishes breaking in our backyard soon brought out the neighbours who one by one made their way over to our back yard to find out what the heck we were up to.

All in all, the bird bath was quite successful. We left the bath area bare of mosaic for easier cleanup of it with a garden hose. We also tried to make quite sure that the pieces on the rim didn’t have any sharp points poking out, didn’t want our feathered friends to get cuts. The bird bath was also very very heavy, and when we moved to Victoria, we gave it to a close artist friend for her front yard where it weathered in beautifully.

Our first Pique Assiette birdbath, Helen and Will Bushell, summerhouseart.com

I like the look of that birdbath, sort of lumpy and rough. If we were to make the same thing today, we would apply mortar to each piece of dish, apply it to the cement base and when it was all set, we would apply grout. So much easier and better looking.

There is something about the surface of mosaic. Something about the way it glistens and sparks in the sunlight. I was hooked with that first mosaic. Even now when I get a piece done I rush outside with it to see it in the sunlight. All in all, the birdbath was the beginning of a wonderful journey.

Creating art with recycled materials is a triple thrill. You wake up a real sense of creativity, get to see dishes and ornaments in a whole new way and hey, you get to make art-without-guilt, as I love to tell my mosaic students. To see more of our mosaics and what can be done with old dishes, have a boo at our mosaic gallery pages.

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Abundance in a Recession

Every night the news is full of one word- recession. So many people getting laid off or downsized as they called it in the 90’s when Will got laid off from a very nice job as a Graphic Designer for a big Oil company in Calgary. We’d gotten used to living a comfy life with savings and holidays and money to buy things. It can be hard to make that transition to not having that nice paycheque with the perks thrown in. But luckily, we’d had practice. We were children of the 60’s and were well into being green and recycling even then.

When Will was still in Art College, we had to make a student loan last forever with little kids growing up and needing lots of stuff. I had a little sign on the kitchen wall then. It said “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”. Today I’m not so sure I’d say “do without”. I have found over the years that the world is a pretty abundant place – as long as you don’t mind second hand. We haven’t been in a mall for years. We rarely buy anything new. We find more than everything we need at garage sales and thrift shops. It’s not a hardship, it’s actually a pretty nice way of life. And did I mention really cheap?

The other day I was reading an article in the neighbourhood paper about a couple who had taken a pledge not to buy anything new for a year. I applauded their newfound enthusiasm for being green consumers, but I had to chuckle a bit since it’s something that has been such a part of our lifestyle for so long that it’s just not news to us. It’s just something we’ve done since the art college days.

We look forward to garage sailing season. We’re ready to go by at the latest 9 am Saturday, with our thermoses filled and muffins packed. Part of the fun is finding a great place for a coffee break, in a new park we’ve discovered or by the beach.

We’re very conscious of wasting gas in our little Subaru station wagon. And yup, it’s second hand too, what I like to call pre-dented, so we don’t have to worry about every scratch or mark as we would on a new car.

An Abundance of Vases
An Abundance of Vases

Last weekend we went to a flea market, one stop shopping. Our favourite is a street sale, when a whole street has a neighborhood garage sale, because it saves gas and we can visit a whole lot of front yards looking for the perfect bargain in one stop. Another way to save gas is to decide from the ads where the most sales are in town and mark out a route, so that we’re not crisscrossing all over. And of course, we always visit the ones that weren’t advertised on the way. You have to keep your eyes peeled for those. Speaking of which, why can’t people make signs with big letters so you can see them as you drive by.

Baskets Galore
Baskets Galore at the Flea Market

I have a real belief in abundance and that all you have to do is want or need something, and somehow the universe delivers. Call it flakey but it works. Odd things happen. A couple of years ago for instance I decided we needed one of those black barrel composters. A couple of days later, I’m out for a walk and not even a block away there is a black composter and a whole bunch of other good stuff on someone’s front lawn with a “FREE” sign on it. I, of course, wasted no time getting it home. Another time we needed a door for our studio, with a window, preferably steel and practically the first garage sale we went to had the exact thing for $10. We got them down to $5, hey, we’re cheap! The door had been cut down but even that was ok because it was exactly right for the space we had. And it came with the door frame. Perfect!

Don't you love the kischy reindeer? (no I didn't buy it)
Don’t you love the kitschy reindeer? (no I didn’t buy it)

If you want to get a sense of abundance, even in a recession, just start garage sailing or as some say, thrifting. The savings are fantastic, lots of good things that you can really use are even free and hey, everything is getting a second lease on life and not going into the landfill. What could be better? or greener?

Who knows what we’ll find tomorrow?

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