Inernet connection

 I received a special email this morning from someone whom I would have never met without the Internet. This woman found me through some of my YouTube videos. She realized that only did we share a love for encaustic painting, she loved the music on most of my videos. (I used some Kai Winding's recordings - he was my late husband.) She is a singer that has recorded some of the jazz classics that my husband recorded. If that wasn't enough of a connection, she spent 9 winters here in San Miguel de Allende preforming. I checked out her websites and was impressed not only with her recordings, her art is wonderful.

I love the Internet. Below are some of my videos. There are many more.

http://youtu.be/nvUinNihSXs?list=UUCPHC8Fq1OYjUmCumXBEjgw

http://youtu.be/FbtcgM2wNFk

http://youtu.be/EBPzAX_EWmQ 

 http://youtu.be/47EXuxNhHlw

Christmas Eve (day) at the garbage dumps

Weeks of supplies have been sorted and boxed or bagged, ready to load into our vehicles

This has been a memorable day.  My daughter, Cynthia Hamilton and I volunteered to donate items and, today, drive to 2 garbage dumps to distribute  food, toys, soap, toothpaste, brushes, hot chicken plates, diapers, toilet paper and much , much, more. The people pictured actually live at the dumps. At the first dump is Dolores Hidalgo, where people do not have any running water and live off what they can salvage from the mountains of garbage, appeared as if a surrealistic vision, as soon as they knew that our caravan of 12 vehicles had pulled in. They appeared over the top of the hill and poured down to where we were unloading the cars. This is the fourth year this has been done and they knew that we were bringing precious things.The empty vista soon was filled with lines of well mannered, patient people. After an hour or more at the first dump, we drove back to San Miguel de Allende's garbage dump. There the squatters at least have some access to water and have a couple of showers and what looks like a school.

Another view of the donations

The back of my car with the first layer of things to share

Every vehicle was filled to overflowing

The line up of cars. Everything was carefully organized

This is where the people live

We've arrived and getting ready to unpack

The locals now  have bags filled to overflowing

Unloading the cars on the tarps, for the next stop.

more gifts

This was at the San Miguel dump. The people had been been lined up and waiting for us. It was well organized and here the children could come first and choose their toys.

It was a great experience for all of us and I hope to participate next years.

Felix Navidad!

Cynthia trying to get a smile from a teenager

More from Guadalajara

These masks or others like it are used in a yearly event every year in Tonalá

Ceramic Museum in Tonalá - very different and beautiful

This courtyard reminded me of Andalusia. Where we lived in Spain

Tree of Life, dedicated to the making of Metzcal

detail

hand painting the ceramics

A tiny fraction of the biggest market I have ever seen. It was amazingly clean

And they had WePads. Perhaps a more inclusive tablet than an iPad.

Looking for art in Guadalajara

My daughter Cynthia and I took a 3 day trip to Guadalajara hoping to explore the art scene there. We went on a Lion's Club tour, but planned on doing our own exploring. I had been to Guadalajara before and I had been impressed with the public art and had a list of galleries and museums to visit. As it turned out, the galleries were not in the center and spread out over this big city. Next time we will have to hire a driver and get to the galleries and vegetarian restaurants that I had looked up on the Internet.

Until then, we explored Guadalajara:

I'll post more tomorrow.

bronze bench outside of a museum

and a chair

we tired to find the most outrageous dress. This came close.

ceiling mural

late afternoon

The city was full of gowns. These shown from a second story

morning on one of the pedestrian streets

on my morning walk

more encaustic over oil with trasfers

Here is the base painting

With encasutic and transfers

same pose, different painting

Transfers on encasutic over oil

My daughter and I are getting ready for our gallery show the 2nd of January and I decided I would make some paintings that I could sell for lower prices than my big, new works.

I chose some face paintings on wood that I made as demos for my online classes of painting and drawing faces and covered them with clear encaustic and transfers using parchment paper - my favorite way of transferring onto encaustic. Here are a couple results.

I don't have a name for this one - any suggestions?

Grandma's Recipes

The Power of Color

 Here is a book that I wrote several years ago. It is is available in digital form.
http://tinyurl.com/o5qltsy.

http://tinyurl.com/o5qltsy.

This book will show you how your color choices influence your health and emotions. Learn how color touches you even if you don’t notice it or understand its force. The specific vibrations of each color triggers your personal energy field. It affects your moods, health and general well being. 60% of a person’s reaction to any situation is said to be based on color.
You can learn healing tips, personality insights, color breathing, and color meditations. For instance, what does it mean if red is your favorite color? Or what kind of personality are you if you dislike red? Read about all the colors. Once you know a person's color preferences, you will be able to understand her better.
I used this information in my color seminars when I worked for 3 Ethan Allen stores. At first, I asked participants to write their name tags in their favorite color, but had to stop that practice, when they realized how much their color choices told others about their personalities.

---

Another re-worked painting

This one has so much wax on it that getting quite heavy. I had decided to destroy the original painting a few months ago and started heating and scraping, then discovered all the collage and interesting stuff that was coming to the surface. I left it for a while and now I added some more turquoise and I am calling it finished.

Back to encaustic abstracts

I am getting ready for a gallery show in January and although I have lots of new figurative paintings to show, I wanted to make a few new abstracts. I have piles of older paintings that I am not satisfied with and started painting over a few. Here are the results:

This was the under painting

after a few days work it turned into this

Similar feel, but smaller and no shot of the under painting

I had started to scrape off all the encasutic paint and I discovered that the board had a beautiful stain. I left the side painting and worked on the middle part for a couple of days, filling in the lower scraped part with clear encaustic and working on top of that.

Give Art and art classes as gifts for the holidays

 

These online classes are a gift that keeps on giving. Once downloaded, they can be watched over and over.

Think about gifting online classes in either advanced encaustic techniques:

 https://vimeo.com/ondemand/4167

And/ or Drawing and Painting Faces for beginner and intermediate artists. Easy step by step classes :https://vimeo.com/ondemand/21068

Also I have sale paintings on my blog and would make wonderful gifts

.http://www.ezshwan.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html

Kids, traning and furniture, continued

The response to my last posting with the tables created by Cynthia Hamilton and her crew of kids from the neighborhood was positive and it seems that those tables will soon have new homes. I have been asked to post some other treasures remaining in Cynthia's studio, so here are a couple more.

 38" h x 30"w x 16" d.
 $ 1600 pesos

yellow/green table with vintage hardware, $1600 pesos

Wood chest

14.5 h x 21" w x 13 d

$650 pesos

Wood chest

14.5 h x 21" w x 13 d

$650 pesos

Wood chest

14.5 h x 21" w x 13 d

$650 pesos

38" h x 30"w x 16" d.
 $ 1600 pesos