It's been a long time since I've worked on any serious artwork.  Last week was so warm and sunny that it drew me outside.  So strong was its influence, that I had no choice but to set up my studio outside under our pergola.  (I love that I have a yard with a pergola!)  I felt so inspired and so happy to be working outside that I thought I couldn't fail to produce a masterpiece (being an artist so affected by her environment).

Things started out well - I had managed to build up a surface that looked inviting and promising.  But then something crazy happened - I somehow managed to forget simple principles of design.  And I ended up with a mess of paper and paint which were fighting for center stage making the whole thing get lost in a mesh of colour.  Sigh.  Disappointing, but not without its moments of redemption - there's something going on in that background that I quite like and I think if I have another go, I'm sure I'll come away with something more attractive. 

On a more positive note, however, I managed to create a pattern for a crocheted hot water bottle cozy that I really like.  Although it's been my intention to make one for ages, it took a request from a friend to get me going.  It was a fun challenge because I'm not particularly great at following crocheting/knitting patterns which means that I have to make things up for myself as I go.  And because I find crocheting to be a bit more forgiving and flexible, I tend to work in crochet.  I really enjoy having the challenge of a design in mind and then it's often when I'm out walking the dog that I get that "A-ha!" moment and am able to work it out in my head how to approach the project.  The picture here is the result of my efforts.  And my friend absolutely loved it, which is always a nice outcome!

On my to-do list since I was about 16 years old has been to read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  It may seem silly, but I was avoiding it for ages just for the sheer thickness of the novel.  I say silly because this is the same person who's read The Fountainhead twice - the first time when I was 16.  For some reason I thought The Grapes of Wrath would be really dull and a laborious read.  But I've always been of the mindset that a book finds you when you're ready for it.   This must be why I've only just picked up the book.  And I have to say I was hooked from the first line (which was true for me of The Fountainhead also):
"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."

There are so many comments I would love to make and an in-depth conversation I would love to engage in, but what I want to focus on about this book is the role women played in the novel, the matriarch of the family in particular.  I'm obviously drawn to this discussion because of my body of work and its exploration into the role of women.  This novel seems to make the quiet case that circumstances of the time (the Dustbowl and mass migration to California) allowed women to rise to a position of power they'd not experienced before.  The role of the men was to find work and when they did find that work to earn as much as they could from the limited work there was.  There role was to earn the money to buy food and other necessary provisions.  I recognize that is a difficult job in itself - the pressures of finding work to feed your starving family must be overwhelming.  But it seems to me the men had the easier of jobs.  Time and again Ma was burdened with the task of trying to fill the bellies of her family, especially the men, so they'd have the energy to work; a simple task when you have the provisions to work with - not so easy when all you have is flour, water and a bit of grease.  She also had the job of trying to barter with shopkeepers to get any discount she could and was often up against a wall in trying to make a dollar stretch far enough to get what the family needed for sustenance.  They were the cooks, cleaners, general homemaker, peacemaker between children (and sometimes between the arguments of the men) and morale booster.  They were responsible for keeping the threads of the family from fraying and breaking apart during stress and strife.  

There's a passage in the book that summarizes for me very well this position women had and demonstrates the source of their strength - this is the same passage that marks the end of the 1940 film adaptation of the novel: 
" 'We got nothin', now,' Pa said. 'Comin' a long time - no work, no crops.  What we gonna do then?  How we gonna git stuff to eat? An' I tell you Rosasharn aint' so far from due.  Git so I hate to think.  Go digging back to a ol' time to keep from thinkin'.  Seems like our life's over an' done.'
'No, it ain't,' Ma smiled. 'It ain't, Pa.  An' that's one more thing a woman knows.  I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks - baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk - get a farm an' loses his farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on - changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on.'
'How can you tell?' Uncle John demanded. 'What's to keep ever'thing from stoppin'; all the folks from jus' gittin' tired an' lyin' down?'
Ma considered.  She rubbed the shiny back of one hand with the other, pushed the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left. 'Hard to say,' she said. 'Ever'thing we do - seems to me is aimed right at goin' on. Seems that way to me. Even gettin' hungry - even bein' sick; some die, but the rest is tougher. Jus' try to live the day, jus' the day.' "

Naturally, this novel re-ignited my interest in American folk music from the time.  And one song in particular came to me over and over again when reading The Grapes of Wrath: Do Re Mi, by Woody Guthrie.  This song can be heard as the anthem of the hundreds of thousands of families making the long, dangerous journey from the Dustbowl region to California to find a better life.  Their hopes kept them going during the most difficult of conditions  - conditions that we would find it hard to imagine today: riding in rickety cars, loaded down with all of the possessions they could carry, through unbearable heat - dirty, hungry, sometimes starving with no home where they're going and no home from where they came, all in hopes of making a better life in the land of promise and plenty.  Only to get there and to be turned away or to live in horrible migratory camps in conditions even worse than what they encountered on the road.  Guthrie's words capture the raw emotion of this epic journey and the musician Ani DiFranco's cover of the song brings out a different rawness that has a way of hitting you straight in the heart as if with a long, cold spike.  It gives me chills everytime.  I encourage my readers to listen to both versions.  The song is a window to a monumentous time in American history and to know this background is to better grasp the unbreakable, hardy and pioneering spirit of the American people.

Lyric of Do Re Mi:
Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin' home every  day,
Beatin' the hot old dusty way to the California line.
'Cross the  desert sands they roll, gettin' out of that old dust bowl,
They think  they're goin' to a sugar bowl, but here's what they find
Now, the police at  the port of entry say,
"You're number fourteen thousand for today."

Oh, if you ain't got the do re mi, folks, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot If you ain't got the do re mi. 

You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can't deal nobody harm,
Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea.
Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are,
Better take this little tip from me.
'Cause I look through the want ads every day

But the headlines on the papers always say: 

If you ain't got the do re mi, boys, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot If you ain't got the do re mi.

Hello my lovely readers.  I am so sorry I've been quiet (virtually non-existent) over the past several months; I've had a few big events happen recently in my life.  About 10 days before Christmas my husband and I moved into a new house, our first together!  And about a week later we made the wonderful discovery that we're going to be parents!  Then came Christmas.  And then morning sickness arrived!  The next couple of months were spent with me feeling absolutely dreadful and tired beyond all belief.  I am nearly at my halfway point in the pregnancy and am finally starting to feel better - I have more energy, don't feel sick anymore, and most importantly I have my appetite back!  Oh, and I forgot to mention that I had an exhibition in there somewhere which I scrambled to get ready for.  So as you can see - a lot of big changes and life-altering events have been going on in the Singleton household, which has translated into my blog taking a back seat.  But I'm hoping to change that and have a more regular presence here - so watch this space!  Anyway, besides all of that personal stuff, I thought I'd share what is filling my creative space these days.  Enjoy!

Since my exhibition, I've decided I need to take a little break to recharge my creativity and inspiration.  So instead of working on anything big, I've decided to do a little bit at a time and working in my altered books is a great way to achieve that goal.  I LOVE working with altered books because I find that I'm far more experimental working in this format.  Because I'm not so worried about the final outcome and I see altered books sort of like sketchbooks, I free myself up and don't feel constrained by making something pleasing to other people.  This image is my most recent addition to one of my books that I started years and years ago; that's another thing that's so great about altered books - it's so easy to keep adding to them (or taking away!) so it can be like a journal of of your artistic practice.

I recently re-read a John Irving book and, as often is the case, I was struck with a strong desire to follow it up by reading something by Kurt Vonnegut.  I went to my local library and decided on Slaughterhouse 5.  A brilliant novel, although I'm not sure it's my favorite by the author,  But the choices to hand were limited.  There is a passage in Slaughterhouse 5 that was so incredibly moving to me the first time I read it and the image it evoked has stayed with me ever since.  I was so delighted to read it again, in the context of the entire novel, and it filled me with the same tingly feeling I had when I first read it.  It goes like this: 

Fantastic food for thought.  And with that I leave you for today.  I'll be in touch soon with another post I promise!  

With two full hours to blab on my blog, I'm at a complete loss of where to  start.  See, this is what happens when I don't walk the dog.  That's where I get  some of the best ideas.  OK, so it's probably best for me to start with what I've been  working on in the studio, which I think is really exciting.  I've started making boxes to house assorted sets of greeting cards using my designs.  The box is made from reclaimed materials, which is really cool.  They come from my husband's work place; they start out as sleeves covers for these expensive binders that are used to hold client itineraries.  They just throw the sleeves away.  Well, they recycle them, but they might as well be thrown away for the energy it takes to transform them into some other functional item.  Not to
mention they're in perfect shape, so it seems a waste of energy to put them
through that process.  So, my husband rescues these helpless little sleeves from
this fate and tucks them soundly into my studio.  I then strategically measure,
score, and cut then bend and glue and voila!  I have a box.  I'm really proud of
the little monkeys!

I've also been a crocheting maniac as of late.  The O3 Gallery in Oxford asked me to supply them with some of my tea, mug, and caretiere cozies for their Christmas sale - how very exciting!  So I've been crocheting and sewing away, making cute little items that are just begging for a new home.  I am feeling optimistic for them - how could anyone turn away something so cute?  It's been good practice for me to be doing production-style work on these little cozies, because it's forcing me to write down my steps.  You see, I don't work from patterns.  I suppose I could if I wanted to, but I find it so easy to be confused, especially when I'm trying to visualize written instructions.  It might be different if I had my Aunt Marlyin next to me to show me how to do it.  But since I can't afford to fly her out here to be my private crochet tutor, I approach the craft like just about everything else in my life: I figure it out for myself.  This is where walking the dog comes in handy.  I will picture in my mind what I want my finished product to look like.  Then I will sort of crochet with my brain.  Until I figure it out.  And then I go to the studio and make it.  And I find this works really well for crochet.  Not so much for knitting, which is why I stick to the former.  And usually it works out great - I problem-solve as I go along.  The drawback, however, is that I never write my steps down as I go, so each time I sit down to make one I remain idle for a long time, just trying to work out the steps in my head.  Thankfully, this only happened once yesterday.  The mug cozies, no problem.  Got those committed to memory.  The cafetiere cozies, however, that's a bit more complicated.  I inspected one I'd crocheted months ago for about an hour, trying to figure out how I actually did it!  In the end I just had to make it, screw it up, unravel it, do it again, screw it up, unravel it, and then repeat about four more times before I got it, then wasn't sure if that was right, so unraveled it, re-did it the wrong way, unraveled it again, and then repeated the correct step which I'd previously thought was the wrong step and took it to the finish line.  That one took a little while.  But, I wrote down the steps!  So next time, it should be much less of a painful experience.

Besides working in the studio, I've been trying to enjoy the English landscape as much as possible.  My husband and I have gone on some beautiful walks over the last few weeks (we're in severe austere budget mode at present as we're in the process of buying house - walking seems a good alternative to spending money at the pub or movies) and for our a second anniversary we went to the Roman Villa in Chedworth.  It's the second largest standing Villa in England and it's in incredible condition.  It was discovered during the Victoria era by a farmer whose dog got stuck when digging for rabbits.  When the farmer went to dig the dog out, he discovered a complex network of catacombs that weren't the handy work of a rabbit!  They continued to dig until they revealed this several thousand year old structure.  Imagine finding something like that?  I can't fathom it.  Turns out when the Romans abandoned the Villa in 400AD to go back to Rome to protect their home shores, the place fell into disrepair, as you can imagine it would.  And being situated in something of a valley, it was easy for nature to move in.  Then more nature moved in, until finally the whole place was covered by soil and grass - so much so that it just looked like any other rolling hill in England.  I find this just completely amazing and intriguing.  It makes me wonder what other structures are hiding beneath the surface?  In another life I would have been an archaeologist. 

Anyway, back to the story - so these farmers dug out the place and found that some of the walls still stood and a good portion of the mosaic floors were
intact.  They had the foresight to protect the mosaics and built simple lean-to sheds to protect them from the weather.  They lacked the foresight, however, to leave some things alone and either built on top of existing walls or capped them off.  Ah well, their intentions where in the right place.  Now the place belongs to the National Trust and they've just built this wonderful, state-of-the-art, humidity and temperature-controlled building to protect what had served as the main bath house and dining hall of the Villa.  I'm sure in another hundred years our ancestors will be scoffing at our lack of foresight.  So it goes.

After what I would describe as something of an internal struggle, I have finally finished reading Americana by Don DeLillo.  I have to admit that before picking up his book at the library, I'd not heard of DeLillo.  Not sure if I should have taken this as a good or bad sign; many good artists often go by the wayside and if I'd only ever appreciated works by known artists and authors I would have failed to recognize one of my favourite artists of all time - Ray Johnson.  I have to admit with a hint of shame, that it was the image on the dustcover the first drew me in.  But isn't that always the case, despite the "don't judge a book by its cover" thing, that we are drawn to almost everything by its cover or label?  I do the same thing with wine.  I can't help it.  Imagery is powerful.  Advertising knows this, which is why they're so brilliant at keeping our economy bobbing along, despite the supposed recession. 

But I digress.  Don LeLillo.  Yes, drawn in by the dustcover and hooked with the mini summary outlined on the back.  Yes, I shall give this a shot, I said to myself.  And at first, I thought it was a brilliant piece of literature.  And I think it's still too early in my digestion of its content to say otherwise.  None the less, this novel was a difficult one to get through.  It was kind of like biting into a tough steak - tasty, but full of tightly bound fibers that leave you chewing for ages; so much so, that in the end you swallow the chunk of it, more or less whole, just to be done with it.  And then taking another bite, because you are going with the optimism that maybe, just maybe, the next piece will be better and you keep going this way until your plate is empty.  Leaving you with a big ball of half-chewed gristle in your stomach. 

This is what it felt like to read this novel.  Not that there weren't some brilliant passages.  Like this one: "Then I smiled at her foolishly and she answered with the unembellished look of a feeble nun who has begged successfully for money and found no hand quite willing to touch her own."  A fantastically rendered description - I can actually feel what he's saying there.  And then near the end of the book he offered up this fantastically tasty and easy to chew morsel: "When I came out of it, I was not even amazed at the ease with which I could put aside the previous night.  It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams."  How true.  And DeLillo has this way of referencing pieces of literature of which I'm a huge fan; and I'm not sure if I love that about him or hate it.  I can't decide whether it's a pretentious cop-out and that's where I get stuck on decided whether he's brilliant or just cheap shit.  Because he does it so effortlessly; yet his descriptions are so consistently rich that they almost risk becoming an ongoing string of cliches, which is completely irritating.  But at the same time, I can't decide if the references are vague enough to be a mark of genius, which just makes me angry with myself for being so wishy-washy about declaring a definitive opinion on the matter.  Damn  you, Don DeLillo!  This is what I'm talking about here: "From this window I can see the ocean, far out, rocking in that blank angry sheen which foul weather sets upon all waters.  Later I'll walk on the beach for an hour or so.  If the weather has cleared by then I'll be able to see the coast of Africa, the great brown curve of that equatorial loin.  But right now it is a pleasure to anticipate slipping once again (a paragraph hence) into a much more filmworthy period in my life.  There will be no more fireworks when the century turns.  There will be no agonies in the garden.  Now that night beckons, the first lamp to be lit will belong to that man who leaps from a cliff and learns to fly, who soars to the tropics of the sun and uncurls his hand from his breast to spoon out fire.  The sound of the ocean seems lost in its own exploding passion.  I am wearing white flannel trousers."   He is Prufrock, wondering whether he should part his hair from behind or eat a peach.  And he is also Thompson noting the high water mark left by the 60s, looking into the horizon full of the wretched digression from love and daisies to war and napalm. 

Certainly he encapsulates the feeling of borderline insanity in a fantastically believeable way - enough that it often left me feeling as if I was suffering from a bout of mild vertigo during certain passages.  And like Hunter S. Thompson, he cleverly captured the appalling underbelly of America - the dirty truth beneath the flashy tinsel and tempting plastic that you want so desperately to believe in; that you almost have to believe in, just so you can survive knowing that, despite all the good things about the country, you belong to a country that puts on the face of happy persona to cover up the truth that it is entered into some sort of race, base and human, full of lust to succumb to the most primitive and carnal of desires.   

The day was already shaping up to be a good one.  It was my day off.  I went to yoga for the first time in over a year and had prepared myself for what was likely going to be a crap class, as it was being offered on a Monday morning and in all likelihood would be taught to the gentle level of the pensioners who would undoubtedly be the only attendees, which experience tells me would result in an easy and boring class.  Sometimes I like being proved wrong.  The class was great and it felt so good to be back on the mat in all of those familiar and comforting positions, with the warm smell of incense sliding around the room, dancing around my aura.  The poses were challenging.  The meditation rejuvenating.

Then I came home.  As I opened the door a letter on the floor was evidence that the postman and dropped off our mail.  I picked it up.  Entered the house.  Studied the writing, turning it over a few times.  I didn't recognize the handwriting and I was trying to place who it could be from.  It was from the States.  I was intrigued.  As I pulled it from its cocoon I opened it slowly, with deliberation.  This had to be something good.  Or mildly interesting in the least.

I was so unprepared for what I would find.  I letter from - gasp! - JOHN IRVING!  What?!  Eeekkk and hoorays and smiles bigger than Texas!!  And eeeek again!  Wow.  How does a day get much better than this?  I had written to Mr. Irving (or shall I call him John?  We're probably on a first-name basis by now.) a couple of months ago upon my return from Malta, where my husband and I took a vacation.  During the trip I was reading one of John's more recent novels "Last Night on Twisted River."  In the book is a character named Injun Jane who never fails to wear this Cleveland Indians baseball cap.  This crazy grinning chief is something like a talisman to Injun Jane.  As my husband and I rode through the skinny, winding streets of Malta I saw in the distance a conglomeration of what abandoned buildings - totally devoid of colour and would, in fact, blend in with their surroundings almost perfectly it if weren't for one thing: the big grinning face of the Cleveland Indians mascot.  Now what on earth was that grinning chief doing on the side of a building in Malta, of all places?

 I took this as a sign of course.  See, I've been tossing around the idea for a while now of writing more seriously.  Maybe I'll write a book.  I don't know.  I don't want to proclaim it from the rooftops or anything because I have a lot of ideas that I ponder on obsessively for varying periods of time that I never act upon.  So this could be one of those. I mean I hope it's not one of those things - I don't want it to be.  But no matter what, it's not something I'll be doing anytime soon, but it's a thought.  An idea.  Back the story - so I love coincidences and took this sighting as a sign.  I watched that Indian in the distance with its crooked grin and felt like it was smiling directly at me...like somehow this decently rendered bit of graffiti was able to stare into my soul and say "go on kid, do it!"  At that moment I was filled with such great inspiration and excitement that I wanted to phone my old friend John up and say, "you'll never believe this buddy, but guess what I just saw in Malta?"

I finished his book while I was on vacation.  And as always, the punch was in the ending.  And it left me feeling like I had to wait awhile before I could start readhing anything else.  And in fact, I've been having a difficult time engaging in another book since then.   It was great to be filled with such inspiration on such an amazing trip.  When I got home I just knew I had to write to John.  I felt like the biggest geek in all  of the world - searching for the "official John Irving website" online and trying to find his address.  Found one and thought, "yea, as if this will go anyway.  But shit, man, you never know."  So I wrote him a letter.  Sent it to his PO Box in Vermont.  Admitted in the letter that I felt like an idiot for writing a fan letter.  I mean I'm a 35 year old woman for Christ's sake!  But I did it anyway.  And BOOM!  Got a response.  Yea, it's typed.  And the signature might be from an assistant.  And he probably didn't even type it himself.  But he had to get those words to whoever did type it.  And his response makes me very aware he read my letter.  And that just puts me over the moon.  And further validates my inkling to do a bit of writing.  

Now I am filled with an urge of incredibly intensity to write back and become his best-bud pen pal.  But that would just be crazy.  Just crazy.  But not creepy, right?

So I've got this great little exhibition on at the moment.  I have the opportunity to sit gallery hours for the duration of the show, which is great because it makes me feel like I'm running my own little shop.  Which in essence I am - but it's temporary and not my own space.  But none the less I'm loving every minute.  What really rocks is that I am able to set up a make-shift studio when I'm there.  And I've been busy as a bee creating new works and making new prints.  Here's what I've been up to!

Sometimes an idea comes right out of the sky and hits you on the head like a big, black, iron frying pan.  And that very thing happened to me one day when I was walking the dog.  I was just walking along, enjoying the incredible view from the top of Folly Hill where - on a clear day - you can see the Uffington White Horse.  Anyway, I was just walking along, minding my own business when a vision struck me with amazing clarity - a vision of colourful grenades!  I made my first one at home in the studio just before I opened my show.  I cut the shape of the grenade out of half inch thick MDF board and painted it up.  I think it looks great if I do say so myself. 

As an series addict, I couldn't resist making more miniature grenades in various colours.  They're about the third of the size of the original and only a quarter of an inch thick but they're soooo cute!

After all of the fun of grenade painting, I decided it would be a good idea to make vintage-styled wall hangings from the War Girls series, of which I'd created a square format set.  This came out of my desire to make greeting cards of the series and realizing that working with a rectangular format was going to be a lot of work (not to mention a heck of a lot more expensive) to make than square ones, I improvised.  And I think they turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself!  Today's job: printing the images onto wood.  Yowza!

Tomorrow brings another pretty full day at the gallery and I haven't lined myself up with a project.  I guess that means I'll work on boring stuff - like paperwork and organizing.  Yuck!  So if you're reading this and wondering what you might do with your hump day Wednesday, maybe you should come and visit me to distract me from my un-fun jobs!  (I'll be there from 12-4.30 just in case you decide to come!)

Jan Lee of The Oxford Times wrote a lovely article about my current exhibition at the library in Bampton.  She described me as "a perceptive artist" and my work "thought-provoking."  I'm honoured! 

I've set up a temporary studio in the gallery at Bampton library so I can do a bit of a work whilst sitting gallery hours.  Here's a snapshot of my workspace - for the last several days I've been hand-painting grenades.  They're really cute and a lot of fun.  

In my limited spare time, I've been reading when I can. This usually means I have to read whilst eating my breakfast or dinner and when time is of the essence, I tend to return to The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume Two.  It's a huge book full of excerpts from novels, short stories, and poems.  During one of my breakfast reads, I stumbled upon the Creek Indian poet Joy Harjo.  I was gripped by the first stanza from her poem The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window.  Full of rich description and emotion, I was immediately compelled to create a sketch for what will become a collage and found object filled assemblage.  I look forward to getting back into my normal studio so I can get started.  

I couldn't possibly sign off without sharing an excerpt of this poem with you.  Enjoy!

She is the woman hanging from the 13rd floor