Hello to The Paint Escape!

A big old happy, "Welcome to the Beans blog!" to:

The Paint Escape -- on wonderful Whidbey Island -- is one of Bean Up The Nose Art's very-happiest-places. We don't sell our art there. We visit our friends and make all kinds of other art. Really, really, really fun stuff.

Just like the sign says, The Paint Escape is a paint-your-own-pottery and glass-fusing studio.

But it's way, way more than that.

Here are Tina (on the left) and Susan (on the right), who own and run this magical place in Freeland, Washington. (On Whidbey Island. I really can't say that enough. Because it is one of my favorite places on Earth. As we know.)

Tina bought the business a few years ago, from my awesome friends Steph and Ruth. Who became my awesome friends because when I first visited Whidbey in 2005, I spent hours and hours painting pottery at The Paint Escape (which then was in the shop space right next door to where all the goodness lives now . . . .)

From where it started with Steph and Ruth to where it's grown with Tina and Susan, The Paint Escape has been a warm happy vortex in which creativity collects. And grows. Exponentially.

It was through the process of painting and painting and painting pottery that I began to think that the way I wanted to spend my days was more on art than on being a lawyer.

It was through the process of working for Steph and Ruth that Tina grew into its owner.

It was through the place's spirit of art, creativity and growth that Tina expanded the square footage and cultivated new customers and products, and business partner Susan.

The place is happily packed with ceramics and paint and tables and tools for you to go wild. Tina and Susan are terrific artists themselves who will help you learn techniques and create just about anything you want.

As an example . . . a sampling of the dinnerware that I made. (Eight place settings . . . that took a while.)

And a fruit bowl.

The ever-creative minds in control there had the cool idea a couple of years ago to add glass fusing to the mix. So, in addition to painting any kind of pottery you can imagine, you can let yourself go even more wild and play with all the ways to fuse glass.

You play with all those strips and chunks and bits at these tables . . . .

to create gems like these:

Tina and Susan offer Ladies' Nights and Family Nights and camps and classes galore. They are constantly learning new ways to work with the glass and ceramic, to come up with new techniques and looks. For instance, when I visited earlier this month, I went wild for the look on this mug.

Want to know how it was done?!?!? Awesomely cool resist techniques. The snowflake in the photo below was left white (the base ceramic itself) when a contact-paper snowflake was stuck to the mug and painted on-top of. First, with the light blue paint . . . onto which was stuck "hairy" yarn -- with lots of fiber coming off of it . . . . and then painted over again with a layer of the darker blue -- out of which the yarn was pulled while still damp, leaving the light-blue, covered-up layer below.

See? Told you they were some smart and creative cookies :)

Hoping that when you are on Whidbey Island you'll check out this gem of a place, where you can spend hour after hour in comfort and fun and community, painting and "glassing" and designing and having all manner of fun. Many, many props to Steph and Ruth for getting the ball started and rolling, and to Tina and Susan for stewarding its growth. This is a true community resource for art, encouragement, creativity and kindness. We salute you, because YOU ROCK!!

November 5 Class: Giving Thanks

Soon after giving Halloween her full due, it'll be time to start thinking of the next great holiday: Thanksgiving.

What more fun way to prep than to come play at Bean Up The Nose Art's "Giving Thanks" collage class?!?!?

We'll work in black and white (with tons of images supplied by yours truly . . . easy peasy!), with an eye toward copying the artwork onto colored card-stock . . . which turns our collage into black images and words onto whatever color you chose to have as background. For instance, turning this:

into this:
Easy. Dramatic. Lovely. Yes!!

Bean Up The Nose Art will copy your art onto the stock . . . and within days after the class, you will receive in your real, snail mail box a set of 20 postcards that are ready for you to use. Personalize with your own messages and addresses, and send them on out to your loved ones for the season.

We'll be having this class at Lisa Sonora Beam's fabulous "2 FLO" art space in San Anselmo, CA. Saturday, November 5, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Cost is $45.00 per person, which includes all supplies -- and the 20 postcards! SUCH A DEAL!!!

Want to come play? Post tamara@beanupthenoseart.com. Pre-registration is required.

Harvest Time

Fall is when we harvest our bees' honey.

Here are the gals in the spring and summer time. Busy, busy, busy. As bees, of course. Out gathering pollen and nectar, which they will bring back to the hive and turn into honey, and store in cells of beeswax that they built on frames inside. Which they will use for their food supplies -- especially over the winter, when they will not be outside gathering more. Because it will be too cold, and they need to stay inside, to keep the queen and her eggs warm.

Here is Clarke, bee-keeper of our family, starting the fall's honey harvest. Which we refer to as gathering "taxes" or "rent" from the bees.

Out of those smaller boxes on the top, Clarke pulls out the frames on which the bees have stored lots of honey. (There are more frames in the deeper boxes. But he leaves all of those for the bees to use for their winter food. We are not slum lords around here.)

Then he takes a big old serated knife to the frames, and cuts the "caps" off of the honeycomb, to let the honey start pouring out.

Here is our little baby hand-crank extractor. We are a small scale operation :) One frame slides into each of the two spaces inside. Then you close the lid and turn the crank to spin the whole thing. A lot.

Voila! You remove the frames -- and find honey on the bottom, which the spinnings' centrifugal has spewed out into the bucket.

After all the honey is in the bottom of the bucket, you pour it through a series of mesh strainers and jar it up. And another voila! Honey for the next year.

* * * * * * * * * *

The rhythmic efficiency of honey bees' lives is astounding. Their little bee DNA has developed an incredible system for the ways they spend their time on the planet -- usually, about 6 weeks worth. For "worker bees" -- the vast majority of those in the hive (all female), along with a queen and the very few drones (the male bees, whose purpose is to mate with queens -- no other tasks, and ironically, no stingers) -- the days of their lives are prescribed by activity. First days of life: cleaning the cell from which you emerged. From then on, specific tasks based on time of life . . . such as feeding the queen, tending to larva, being an undertaker to the sister bees who've passed on . . . until the final three weeks of the six are spent out in the field, flying and gathering, coming home and depositing, going out again. (The bees who live in the hive during the winter, keeping it warm and keeping the queen and eggs alive, have slightly different time and tasks span.)

I love bees for so many reasons. Honey alone would be enough. But really, it is their time-management that resonates most.

I think about time the way most people think about money.

In my brain and spirit, time registers more for me than money ever has. When I've had no money or when I've had lots, it never felt any different. Time, on the other hand, is always ripe with feeling, preciousness, a pregnant tension. As in, IT MATTERS. And just like the verbs we use about money, time can be wasted. And spent. And saved.

My mom passed away when she was in her early 40s. She was a terrific artist. Right after she passed, I found several of her sketchbooks -- and was bowled over by the realization that in the instant she died, it became impossible for any more of those sketches to be fully-manifested by her. BOOM. Just like that, I received a gift that I do not think many people have received: a visceral sense that, in fact, our time is limited . . . and therefore, what we do with each minute counts.

Which is likely why I have developed my "off days" strategy of time-management. My own time has become bee-like -- because I, like them, have figured out what is a pretty darned efficient and effective way of getting stuff done. (Which, apparently, matters to me.)

It is why, for example, I do not go on Twitter on Tuesdays, and I am completely off of all computers and mobile devices on Saturdays. Because it works better to be all the way on something, or all the way off. When you are out being a forager bee, you are not also inside being one who takes care of the queen. Because that would be completely ineffective. Bees know that when you are doing something hard, it works best when you are really doing that thing. Not trying to do several different hard tasks at once. Nope. "Do the thing that you're on," say the bee girls.

And I say, "You are right."

And thank you for the honey.

Of Cemeteries, Apps, and Photo Contests

This week, I'm up on Whidbey Island. (You can read my love letter here, to see what's so dang special about this place.)

And this fabulous, golden-autumned Sunday afternoon, I hung out in one of my favorite haunts for wandering and pondering. And photographing.

That's right: a cemetery. Today, Sunnyside Cemetery in Coupeville.

Especially in the fall, the pull of cemeteries is strong. Halloween. The Day of the Dead. The art of old graveyards calls out. All of those headstones, askew on the earth, with fading names and dates intended to memorialize lives that faded away even longer ago. Tall trees meant to stand guard and give quiet solace instead uproot the flat earth. Marble and granite dissolve away, while leaves and roots grow on. Growth and decay, side by side, always together.

IPhone in hand, I clicked photo after photo in the honey-colored afternoon light. And as has become my habit, I posted them on Twitter . . . where, to my astonishment, I immediately received back a resounding chorus of tweets from many souls who proclaimed their own fondness for cemeteries. Who knew?!?!?!

This fall, I've become more and more enamored of photographing daily life on my iPhone and sending it out on Twitter. There are a bunch of us there doing the same. It is a gift of technology to be able to connect with each other in this way: to witness each other's artistic and creative sides . . . instantaneously, and often frequently throughout a day.

Along with this connection comes the sharing of cool creativity apps. One of which I'm going to pass along right here now, because IT IS FABULOUS!!!!

It's called "Art Camera." Where, with a tiny touch of your finger to the pad, your photo of this (here, the lovely LoveJoy Inn, where I love to stay in Coupeville):

becomes this:

or any one of another cool photos by virtue of other cool effects. Like what it would look like as a pen-and-ink drawing. Or if Edgar Degas had painted it. I'm telling you -- INSTANTANEOUSLY. With a touch to the pad. And you can click on and off as you like, and still preserve your original photo. FOR FREE.

It's this kind of thing that makes me positively giddy with the excitement of artistic possibility.

Want to know another very cool possibility?!?!?! If you like to take photos and are in the SF Bay Area Oct. 21-23, consider participating in the Mill Valley Click Off -- where you have a weekend to click photos in different categories, and a chance to win the contest. Download the application and read all about it here.

Snap your photos! Share them with us :) Thanks for playing.

Do You Need A Writing Group?

Is there an e-book that is dying to climb out of your brain?

Have you been wanting to start -- or keep up with -- that blog idea you have?

Are the characters in your novel waking you up at 3:00 a.m. each morning, uttering sentences they are bugging you to write down on their behalves?

Do you keep saying to yourself, "I gotta write. I gotta make the time and do it?"

Well. Then my advice is, "Try a writing group."

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm lucky enough to belong to a fabulous group that meets once a week. For two hours. With a rotating group of attendees. And our goal is to park your butt in the chair AND WRITE.

Administrated by the fabulous networking/do-gooding/supportive/all-round-awesome group A Band of Wives, the group is facilitated by smart, flexible, interesting and steadfast author and editor Carol Pott. (Find her business editorialgirl here. And check out her books here.)

I am grateful for the time I spend at this group. Finishing up my own e-book (about beginning to market your own art, which I plan to have up as a Kindle selection later this fall). Writing blog posts. Writing pieces for Eric Maisel's World Salon. Writing. Writing. Writing whatever needs and wants to be written at that time, without the distractions of life when we're sitting somewhere else . . . often, trying to avoid writing :)

And I'm grateful for the pastries.

And chocolates.

And coffee.

Support of smart friends. (Like @alembic . . . .) Uninterrupted time. Pastries, chocolate. Coffee. Recipe for writing success.

Have heard so often lately from folks that they want and need to write. Sometimes the public commitment to sitting one's butt on the chair and doing it will launch you right forth into the project. Go for it!!!!

Kate Barrengos: Architectural Play

Meet Marin County artist Kate Barrengos.

This photo is from Kate's website, which gives you all the deets on her background, including the galleries and shows she's been in around the San Francisco Bay Area for the past couple of years. We here at Beans have admired her work as a fellow member of the Marin Arts Council, and sincerely feel like if we could paint, we wish it would be like Kate paints. Check out pieces in earlier MAC show here.

Kate's newest show is "Architectural Play." Fifteen acrylic-on-linen paintings of childhood block interpretations of architectural icons . . . like here, Stonehenge.

Quite fittingly, the show is in the Mill Valley building that houses Thompson/Dorfman Urban Residential Development.

Kate's paintings, and the curation of them here, are stunning. The dust-to-umber-to-sienna color palette, the clean rectangles of the pieces, the geometry of the blocks within them all look just right in the building's foyer . . . .

. . . and up the stair well

. . . and into the offices themselves.

Kate's written statement about her art includes a sentence we love particularly: "I paint in order to understand." Which reminds us a lot of Flannery O'Connor's explanation of why she wrote: "I write to discover what I know."

We love Kate's work. We love the precision, creativity, architecture, vision and exploration in it. We love how she paints in order to understand, and that she engages in that process, and brings forth these images into the world.

We hope you'll check them out yourself through October at this show, and visit her website to see more: http://www.katebarrengos.com/

Thanks for your artistic self, Kate! YOU ROCK!!!!

Holy Crap! It's the Fourth Quarter!

Yes, folks. It's the first week in October. Which means we've entered the Fourth Quarter of 2011.

Let us not fret about the passage of time. About where the other three quarters of this year went. About how we all could swear it was JUST New Year's Eve about two weeks ago. About how we quake in our boots when we realize that -- gasp! -- the "holiday season" is nearly upon us. (Again.)

Instead, let us take a deep breath.

Yes!!!

Do it.

Do it again.

Feel better? GOOD!!!!

Now, instead of freaking out, let's get positive. And proactive.

Grab yourself a warm beverage . . . .

. . . grab a pencil . . . .

. . . wield that little sucker like a javelin in your fingers . . . AND MAKE A LIST!!!!

Because when it comes right down to it, there's hardly anything that can get your butt in gear better than brainstorming what you want and need to do, and getting it down on paper . . . where you can see it, and be proud of it, and where it is no longer rattling around in your brain to wake you up at 3:00 a.m.

Moreover, sharing that list with someone else gives you added visualization and accountability motivation. When you communicate to someone else what you intend to do, it means something more to you, and is far more positive than when you simply recite in your head, "I ought to get around to that. Damn. I still haven't. I suck."

So . . . here's my own list of what I want to accomplish in the Bean Up The Nose Art part of life in the Fourth Quarter. (The order is irrelevant to each's importance.)

1. Create new products (journals! phone covers! water bottles! travel mugs! for example!) and load those little puppies up for sale on a website like Cafe Press.

2. Finish, and publish on Kindle, my e-book: about how to begin marketing YOUR art!

3. Create 7-10 new greeting card images.

4. Get way far into website renovations.

5. Research licensing.

6. Research and apply for 2012 fairs.

That's the plan, folks. I've committed to it, by sharing it with you and the world :)

Now . . . what do YOU want to accomplish in this Fourth Quarter?!?!?!?

Let folks know! Log on below with a comment. Make your own blog post about it. Tell us on Twitter. Post it on your Facebook page.

The point: figure out where you want to be by Dec. 31. Write it down. Tell someone. And work to make it happen :) And we will all be cheering each other on.

Best of luck!!! You rock for trying!!!!