The Peabody Essex Museum

Happy Saturday everyone. It has cooled off here after a nice warm day yesterday, but the sky is blue and it is above freezing so all is good.

Yesterday I took a little drive down to Salem, Massachusetts to visit the Peabody Essex Museum. This is one of my favorite small art museums. It's main focus is on art that relates back to the history of this area. Most people think of Salem and the infamous witch trials of the early 1690's, but Salem went on to become a leading center of trade in the late 1700's and the early 1800's. It has a rich maritime history. On permanent exhibit are galleries with art and furniture from that period as well as some Asian pieces that were brought back to Salem on some of the vessels that sailed from the city. They also have this cool Chinese house and they have some travelling exhibits.

I thought about retouring the Chinese house, but the museum was SO crowded I decided I would wait to another visit. You do have to pay extra to view, but it is worth it, even if this photo of the outside isn't much.

It really isn't all that far from my house to the museum and I should make more of an effort to get there more frequently. I've been there several times in the past but not for the last 2-3 years.

One of the exhibits there now is one about  Georgia O'Keeffe. It  had a few of her paintings, lots of photos of her, many of her iconic clothing pieces and some jewelry as well as a couple of statues. It outlined her career starting when she was in NY in the 1920's up to the end of her life when she lived in New Mexico. It was a very rich exhibit that portrayed the whole artist, not just her paintings.

Here's a little taste to wet your whistle as the cliche goes.

The exhibit was VERY crowded and I spent my time slipping around people.

 About 25% of the exhibit was her paintings, but I did enjoy the exhibit. I did hope for a  little more painting, but I loved seeing other representations of her life.

I will do a whole post and show you more another day.

At the exit to this exhibit was the entrance to a Native American artist exhibit, T. C. Cannon. Most people went back down the stairs, but I went in. It was a new discovery for me and oh man, I LOVED this exhibit.

Cannon painted in the 1960's and 1970's. You can probably tell by his colors. Unfortunately he was killed at age 31 in an automobile accident in 1978. Too bad too because it would have been great to see what else he might have created.

He was also a poet and they had some of his poems on the walls also.

I'll show you more of his art another day too.

And I finally went into American Art gallery. I had never been in there and I wanted to see it.

It was a fun visit, other than the crowds, which were all checking out Georgia O'Keeffe, but the rest of the museum was a pleasure to walk through.

I think when I retire I am going to think about joining so I can visit more frequently.

Hope you enjoy this little taste and will stop back to see some more. :)

Happy weekend. (As well as Happy Easter and Passover to those of you who celebrate.)

PussyWillows

Before I head out I have one more spring page for Rosie's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This month it's been all about SPRING!!!!

I will share with you a branch of pussywillows. I made them by sketching first, and then painting in my Nature Journal.  The background is a watercolor crayon and I stamped this quote from Artistic Outpost several times.

Thanks Rosie for a really fun challenge. Seeing spring has eluded me until these last few days, I've enjoyed having it on paper rather than in real life. 

Raining today. We've been in the 50's (around 13 degrees C) the last few days and the piles of snow have really melted away. This is exciting for sure.

I also want to wish everyone a very Happy Easter if you celebrate. And I wish those of you who celebrate Passover a happy holiday also.

I'm off for a fun day out. Thanks for visiting my friends.

One Year Just About Complete

Happy Thursday. It might be Thursday on the calendar, but to me it is Friday, as I am taking tomorrow off from work. I have a personal day I can use to play hookey, which is what I plan on doing. I am going off to see a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit before it closes at the Peabody Essex Museum. I've been wanting to see this exhibit since before it opened in December, and I guess if it takes a day off from work for me to go see it, then I need to make the sacrifice.  (Hee-hee).

I haven't shown you my doodles and drawings in my drawing journal for a while. I feel like it is time to change up my format because after almost a year, I am starting to feel like I am doing the same thing over and over on most of my pages. 

I haven't quite decided what I will do. Maybe more object drawing in pencil.  Maybe watercolor paints instead of markers.  Maybe trying to be a little less of a recorder.  I think I will be trying things until I find what it is I want to do.

And yahoo.  This coming Sunday will be a year keeping this kind of journal, and I will have filled in a page a day over that period of time.

So here's a few from this month that I particularly like for assorted reasons.

Ignore my spelling mistakes please. I have never been able to spell very well (much to my mother's chagrin as she was an elementary school teacher and it bothered her that both of her children were not spellers.) 

Hope it's a great day!

Spring Ladies

Hi everyone.  The temperature is getting a little bit warmer here in my world, but we still have a lot of that white stuff on the ground. But it is melting. And today we should get some rain so that will help too.

So to put a little color in the world I made this page. I colored the dots on a  page in my calendar journal with some spring colors. Then I used one of these TH found relatives.  These 2 ladies look like they are ready for Prom or a wedding or another big spring event. I doodled the flowers on some printed paper and then cut them out and added them to the page.  I cut a quote and added that to the flowers and then finally added the little bird.

There's just  few days left to this month so I want to link up to Rosie's spring challenge Art Journal Journey. Making these spring inspired pages is a way to deal with our not so spring weather.

And I am also linking up to Try It on Tuesday.  The latest challenge is to make art from an inspiration piece which is this gorgeous spring mood board that Valerie over at Bastelmania made.

And for a little pop of color, here's a few more blooms from the Arboretum which I visited almost 2 weeks ago.

Happy Wednesday!

And thanks for visiting.

T Stands for Maple Weekend

Hi everyone. Tuesday has arrived and it is time to share your drink related post over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog for T Day.

My post today is all about Maple Weekend, which was a New Hampshire statewide event held last weekend to celebrate maple syrup. At this time of year sugar maple trees are being tapped for their sap, which then gets turned into maple syrup.

It's an historic tradition in this part of the world, and on Maple Weekend sugar shacks open their doors to the public. You can learn about the maple sugaring process and also buy some maple sugar products right from the producers.

(I will mention that many maple sugar shacks are open for business all season, but this weekend is one especially dedicated to education and promoting the maple sugar industry.)

Some of you may remember me showing you a photo or 2 of this sugar shack down the road from my house. It's an old building from the 1940's that was built and used as to make maple syrup for many years, and then it sat empty. The 2 guys who use it now have brought the old place back to life which is good.

 This is a cool vintage stove that runs on wood. The wood heats up the sap (which is in the metal pan on the top of it) and evaporates the water out of  the saap into the air, as you can see from the all steam in this next photo.

Once the water evaporates they drain the syrup into the silver jug on the left hand side.

And this is the tank where all the sap from the sugar maples is collected.

The blue hose is what drains the sap into the sugar shack. The liquid in the tank is their latest sap collection.

They had a table set up where you could buy their products.

And I thought I took a photo of the little cups of maple syrup so you could drink and taste their syrup. This is why I included this for T Day because I tasted a cup.  It was sweet but actually not as sweet as some syrups. They also had hot cocoa and also coffee sweetened with maple syrup, which I didn't try, but I did try some maple sweetened whipped cream which was delicious.

And since I didn't take a photo of any of that, you will have to take my word for it. 

Sorry about that. I guess I was on such a sugar high that I wasn't thinking clearly. (Hee-hee)

But hopefully you enjoyed the syrup making process.

And hopefully you also had a happy T day too. Thanks for visiting.

A Little Green Would Be Nice

Happy end of the weekend everyone. I woke up this morning to a little dusting of snow. We still have a lot of snow on the ground anyhow, and I am longing for some green . A saying we have (and maybe you do too) is that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I guess March might never be a lamb this year...or maybe it will in the later in the week. We shall see. here in my part of New Hampshire it certainly doesn't feel like April is only a week away.

Here's a page from my nature journal. It started out around St. Patrick's Day in mid-March and has since morphed into this spring page about green.

I began by attaching a complete die cut of clover to the middle of the page. Then I die cut the clover-colored and added it. The letters in the word spring began as a collaged piece of paper.

Now I have this sheet to cut out letters and shapes from. I cut out the spring letters from this and attached them to my page, and gave them a little rub with some light green glitter glue.

I stamped the quote several times, added a piece of printed acetate I had and added some flat metal screw bits  to the corners.

I think this journal page looks more like a card front, but it is a journal page.

And maybe a few more flowers to brighten your day as much as they do my day. Here's a few more photos from the bulb show.

Off to a wedding shower that's 2 hours away this morning.  Luckily the daughter said we could taker her car! That makes me smile.

Happy rest of your weekend.

Winding Down the Week

Hi everyone. Friday has arrived again. I am ready for the weekend. It was a choppy week for me.  I took a day off  to go to a funeral, and  another day we had testing  at school. With some  light morning snow the roads were terrible yesterday driving to work, and I had  a birthday dinner another evening.  No wonder why it felt like the week flew right by. This weekend I have a bridal shower to attend on Sunday and my daughter is coming home (since she is going to the shower with me), so this weekend will fly right by also I am sure. I guess all the events are good since there's no spring weather to enjoy yet and it's keeping me busy enough not to let the weather get under my skin too much. And all and all it wasn't such a bad week. All those events keep you on your toes for sure.

So thought I would share a couple of weeks of my calendar art. My calendar is also a coloring book (coloring calendar) and I have done a little art on the pages that are next to the calendar itself.

                             In this above piece, I didn't like coloring page so I covered it  with lots  of paper tape and added some stamped and colored figures (Dina Wakely stamps).   I do like the effect of covering the colored tape with some white tape in the middle. It diffuses a little of the bold color.

                                And on this page I colored most of the background and then I added this interesting bird image that I had on a piece of acetate.   I also added some paper tape and this

white die cut bird.                       

I'm enjoying the coloring aspect of this calendar and some days after work I just come home and color for a bit. :)
I hope everyone has a great weekend and that those of you in the cold get a little spring weather also.
Thanks for visiting.

More Blooms for You

Some more photos from my trip to the bulb show last Friday and a page from my nature journal. I am linking up to Rosie's SPRING challenge at Art Journal Journey.

Hope Thursday is a good day for you.

And as always, thanks for visiting my blog.