Miriam Badyrka is The Doodler

Looking at

It’s happened again, time to clean out my bookmarks.

Laurie Frick. Absolutely wonderful. She records and tracks data about herself, and then she uses that data to make incredible artwork.

I had bookmarked an image, but apparently, she has a blog as well. I haven’t explored it, but I intend to. It looks interesting.

(Quantify Me, Laurie Frick)

Jill Gallenstein. Symmetry, pattern, beauty.

(Silent Spring, detail, Jill Gallenstein)

Looking At (the OPA show)

The Oregon Potter's Association show & sale in April is such a big show that I was glad I went with friends who were teachers. We went systematically down every row and looked at every booth. Much better than my version of going where things catch my eye.

Either way, I end up completely visually exhausted when I am done.

Here are my favorites from the show in no particular order.

 (Loose Weave series, Our Town Potters)

Our Town Pottery. Love the dots. Love that they are dimensional. Love the colors.

 Heads + heads + heads, Kim Murton)

Kim Murton had a wall of heads like this at the show. How can you help but smile? Her sculptures are fun too.

Looking At

Tony Orrico, the human spirograph. How incredibly cool! (via swiss miss)

Absolutely stunning. There are not enough exclamation points in the universe to show how much I love these paintings by Sohan Quadri. The most beautiful things I have seen in ages. They speak directly to my soul. Via reckon which is always full of interesting stuff

Photographs of Ottoman architecture at but does it float.

 Clouds. It dawned on me one showery day that there was better cloud watching than star gazing here in soggy Portland. Clouds are beautiful and ever changing.No matter what great idea I come up with, somebody has always thought of it before me, and, they usually do it better! The Cloud Appreciation Society, fighting the banality of "blue sky thinking". I think I am going to join.

Ooooh ooooh oooh…. The transparent quilts of Jill Ault. My friend Lauren told me about these. I think I must make some myself.

 Blaise DeLong. Scrumptious colors!

The Whimsical World of Lindy Gruger Hanson

I would like to introduce you to Lindy Gruger Hanson, one of my favorite artists, and, heck, one of my favorite people period. Aside from being artist types, we both like hand written  letters, gardening, the world outdoors, and our silly dogs. She asked me if I would let her interview me.

Of course, I said yes, but I added the provision that she had to let me interview her.

It was fascinating to learn something new about my friend, and to be able to share her work with you.

Q: Does the time of day influence the work you do? Do you have a routine that you follow? What does your typical day in the studio look like? I am interested because I know you recently left your job to focus on your artwork full time. What has changed for you?

I try to have a routine to my day but it often changes depending on the day and my mood. I like to paint at night the most because I feel productive then but that doesn't really work with Greg's schedule since he works during the day. He works from home too. So I try to do my computer time (networking and marketing) in the morning and then after lunch go to the studio to paint. Sometimes we'll work until 7 at night before one of us will stop and say, shouldn't we fix dinner? Sometimes I go back and work after dinner for a few more hours. I definitely work more hours now then when I worked at my 8 to 5 job but the day goes by faster! Probably because I'm enjoying every minute of it!

Q: Your paintings always have an interesting surface, how do you achieve it?

I use a printing type technique that I've developed and that leaves some texture on the surface and then I also use string or embroidery thread dipped in paint to create random lines and squiggly marks. I'm also building up layers of paint. I put the painting under water and take some of the paint off in various areas and this creates an interesting surface as I build up the layers. I like to create a feeling of depth in my work. When I am completely done with a painting, I spray it with a gloss acrylic spray which brings out the color and gives it a luminous quality.
 

Embroidery #12

Here is the latest embroidery in my Books and Needles Project.

These embroideries are done completely free handed. They are slow motion doodles. By embroidering these doodles, as opposed to drawing them, time stretches out like it would in a dream.

It looks like something you would find if you were looking at a drop of pond water under a microscope. Did you ever do that in science class when you were a kid? It was such a thrill to see that a drop of water was actually teeming with unseen creatures and plant life.

I like this one, it seems joyful, exuberant and full to bursting with life.

Doodle of the Week

I really like this doodle because it is less static than my usual carpet doodles. There is a sense of motion. I think it is because of the boteh (or paisley) shapes. Associated the wave motif, they look like splashes.

I made banana bread today, and the strangest thing happened. My oven, which has always been funky, was not heating up properly. I had to bake the banana bread for 3 hours. I think that just might be a world record.

Then, the bottom stayed in the pan while the top came out. It is crumbly and pathetic looking, but it tastes good all the same.

I just noticed that this doodle maybe upside down. I don't really care, but it says Systematic Landscapes up in the corner. I love earthworks, and have posted about them several times, so it probably refers to the amazing Maya Lin. 

Embroidery #10

Here is another one of my Slow Doodles. The doodles are slow because I stitch these, rather than draw them. It slows things to a crawl. Rather like my brain this afternoon.

I call this one Horse Heaven.

But that errant hair in the image? That is canine not than equine. There is probably some feline hair in there too.

I need to get me one of those tapey things, aka  a lint roller, before I take a picture.

Actually, I have one. The thing I have to do is Remember To Use It!

You can see it (and buy it, please) and several other embroideries and even a couple of folded books at Art Over Macleay Park this weekend.

Books and Needles Project Update

This white on white is the first of the randomly stitched embroideries that I have been doing. I have been negligent about posting pictures of what I am now referring to as my Books and Needles Project, even though I have been totally absorbed in it since September. 

The embroideries are the opposite of the folded books. Unlike the books which are folded in silence, I embroider with distractions. I do not plan them, there are no sketches or diagrams that I am following. The embroideries are like and unlike doodles.

They are like doodles in that they are unplanned and done with a distraction. But the distraction is deliberate and purposeful. 

To start with, I used the radio or my music for a distraction. Music holds my attention and I tend to stop what I am doing to listen. This doesn't surprise me. I could never study with the music playing, and I find it difficult to do any painting beyond undercoats to music as well. 

This embroidery was done to NPR, because speaking doesn't hold my focus like music. I doodled through lectures so that I could pay attention to what was said. Doodles are a focusing mechanism for me. I have always thought it was weird when people accused me of not paying attention because of all the doodling.

Now I have switched to recorded books. I have two reasons for this. 

The first is that they are books, the same medium as the folded objects, and I like the symmetry of this. The other parallel is historical. Embroidery work was often done while someone else was reading aloud, with the stitcher listening as she worked. 

I will be showing more of this project this month. Maybe writing about it will help me explain why I am compelled to do this. I have never felt the urge to work on anything as forcibly as I do about this. It is as though some outside force is standing over me with a whip and a chair compelling me to work on this.   

More Folding

Here is another of the folded books. I like how you can see the double fold in this one.

Here is another. I cut this one down the center before folding it.

Summer Blogging Project, Part 1

The most common question that I am asked about my work is “How do you do that?” I am embarrassed to say that the honest answer is “I don’t know exactly. I have made art my whole life, and I can’t not do it.”

 People are rarely asking me how to draw or paint, what they really want to know about is the creative process. Where do you get your ideas? What do you do with them when you get them? Why do you make art?

 I am not analytical by nature so the answers don’t come naturally to me. I am interested in the mystery of the subconscious, I think so visually, words are an appendage that I tack on afterwards. I have pretty good creative habits, I am naturally self directed, and I am always working on something. 

 I realize that I have to become more verbal. As much as I wish it were otherwise, people don’t communicate by image, they use words. So, I have to improve on the way I articulate my process in order to draw people into my work.

 After several false starts, I have concluded that the way to do this is to break  it down and learn what I am doing, how I work, and to break down the steps. I think that if I can do that, I will answer those questions for myself and that the understanding I gain will make it easier to answer that question for others.

 I checked an interesting book out of the library last week, The Creative Habit by the choreographer  Twyla Tharp . It was recommended by Alyson Stanfield on her blog.

 I love how focused Tharp’s thinking is, and how she breaks things down.

 In many ways the advice and exercises are no different than any other book on creativity or success, but something about the way it is set up and Tharp’s voice that have captured me. 

 I am the first to admit that I am generally not good at following a plan, but I am going to try to follow this one. I hope that following the exercises will clarify my thinking. For the next several weeks, I have decided to follow the exercises in Tharp’s book and blog about it. Writing about the exercise, and posting about it, will be my way of holding myself accountable.