butterfly bag

here is the latest coffee sack design that i found earlier this week. i have a few finishing touches and then i will take a few better pictures, once the sun is up, and post it on my etsy shop. my daughter, fair, will love the butterfly.

burlap goodness

i would say that this is one of the neatest coffee sacks that i have found so far... and i have one more sack like it to turn into some burlap goodness. a new design came out from the "cafe do brasil" folks and it is sweet...plus i snagged at least fifteen of them. i'm finishing one up tonight and should be posting it soon...

until then.

james honzik

my portland friend, james honzik, has been working with some experimental photography portraits and they are amazing. he layers photos of organic objects (like rust, alegae, stream beds) with portraits. here is a video montage of some of his work. you can see more of his art at his blog: jamzik.blogspot.com

the franklin house

so it is official, we are now the "franklin house" and so far it's been amazing. to get an overview of what we are building visit our blog: thefranklinhouse.blogspot.com . i will be posting the metamorphasis of our back yard, with the creation of our community garden and the result of having a group of briming artists living together with lots of paint lying around. we are having our third house show this thursday. CJ Boyd Sexxxtet will be here, following a vegetarian potluck. those of you that may not be able or ready for the music and such, should at least stop by and enjoy the food.




the first salad from our garden, with some extra goodness

sean and virginia spruced up the kids play set

the end and the begining

fair ophelia

whitman

i'm finally back... after finishing school and a crazy slew of franklin family events. we are going to start a franklin house blog and when it's up i will link you to all the pictures. so far, we had the haymarket affair remembrance, another franklin house show with a reggae band, the jah kings, and planted our community garden. we have welcomed two new house mates, sean and james. they are co-existing among the spiders and dust of our basement, but they are young and resilient. things have slowed in the last few days and it's nice to start focusing on sewing and fair ophelia designs... something i have been slacking on a lot lately. so i will be more attentive from now on and more productive!

spring has sprung

The back yard has become our sanctuary. The weather isn't hot enough for mosquitoes yet and the kids are loving the freedom. despite a few ant and spider scares the kids are pretty nature-loving. our whole yard is covered in little purple flowers (fair's photographic genius above)... i know they are weeds, but they're beautiful. fair refused to let me cut the yard because of them, but whitman has been instigating sibling fights by stomping on them. it amazing how the young ones know what buttons to push...

We found some abandoned tree stumps and claimed them for our firepit seating. The kids then continued to transform them into an outside dining area. gourmet veggie corndogs a la ketchup.

whitman has found a new love. this is one of the few real solid foods he approves of.

momma, shy whitman and pirate fair.

i'm so glad that the warmth is here and we have big plan for our back yard. we are starting a community garden, which involves transplanting the play set to the other side of the yard. we are having our garden kick-off party in a few weeks.

this saturday is our remembrance of the Haymarket Affair and the grand opening of sticks and stones books, our portable bookstore, with music from them, him, him, and michael's new band Holy, Holy, Holy!!! at picasso's coffeehouse. starts at noon and goes all day. ending with the showing of the film "Sacco and Vanzetti."(synopsis: In 1920, the anarchist Italian immigrants Niccola Sacco (Riccardo Cucciolla) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Gian Maria Volonté) are sentenced to death, falsely accused of a robbery and murder. Indeed they are condemned due to their political beliefs, in one of the most shameful and hypocrite judgments of the human history. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ) Here's the flyer for the whole day:

Empire or Humanity?

zinn takes complicated issues and states them so simply. What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me about the American Empire by Howard Zinn Narrated by Viggo Mortensen Art by Mike Konopacki Video editing by Eric Wold

here are some of my recent art pieces from my fibers/printmaking class and a few others...

my first attempt at monoprints (additive)
**from a photo from my friend sarah**

monoprint (additive)

caligraph

"july and her ghost" dyptic, monoprint and ghost print (subtractive)

batik in progress

"the crowd" conte drawing in progress 36x28

"serenade" acrylic and charcoal on cardboard

franklin family folk festival

last night we celebrated the first ever franklin family food folk festival. the sky cleared for us right before dinner and we shared the company of our many st. charles friends, but a whole slew of those from st. louis. more and more people arrived throughout the night and enjoyed our backyard, with poetry, music and fire. we hosted David Rovics for the night , while he is on a short mid-west tour and he closed the evening with his furious guitar pickin' and sweetly piercing songs. it was his 41st b-day and michael suprised him with a homemade cake. michael's nifty like that... he used so much red food coloring that everyone's mouths were turning red. it was a really great night and i didn't pick up a single dish! i'm really against disposable plates, even at huge potlucks. we went through four sets of dishes, over forty people ate and we ended the night with two full recycling bins (one went missing at the end of the night...) and less than half a bag of trash. i always get upset when i see three huge full trash cans whenever i go to other potlucks or events. i hope more people start mucking through the dishes and give up the convenience of throw away plates and the like. i had many volunteer washers... sean, james and the other mystery washers get many points. thank you! and thanks to all who came and shared an amazing evening and to those who gave their support to david. all of the boys ( michael, david, jason and sean) left this afternoon to drive david to KY and then on to Tennessee. I'm sure they will have many adventures, make lots of good music and hopefully remain out from behind bars (the orange jump suit kind).


david rovics and his revolutionary b-day cake


fairs, tigers and whitmans, oh my

a sliver of jen with james and sean

i think lady bug is enjoying the poetry.

michael, my hubby and of the garage

sean arnold, casino town poet

ian fisher

david rovics

the fire

the beautiful glow...
of not only my lovely cousin carrey and her belly-floating baby boy ( please name him Ettienne), but of the fire.

off to play with the kiddos!

thanks! angela

chicago and the sickness

i had a fabulous time in chicago last weekend (henry darger, pale blue dot and a skinny-ass bar called the matchbox...just to give you a taste) and i'm dedicating a whole future post on the trip... sadly i came back and by the end of the next day i was laid out with a flu bug and have been moving at a snail's pace for the last four days. whitman caught it as well and we were in the ER wed. night to get him re hydrated. things are calming down now but i still have the rumblies in my tummblie. i was feeling a bit better on thurs., but i didn't want to chance getting sick during classes, so i spent the day at home sewing these:

and whitman's conquering dino... on the Vera linen bag. This is actually the first bag that i ever made, using a tea towel. it just took me until a few days ago to figure out an interior fabric that would work to go with it and not take away from it's vintage feel.

more to come...

back in the day

my husband's old poetry group, brokenPOETspoken, during a protest about five years ago. Michael is the first on the left. i love these pictures, it makes me miss the boys and their rowdy poetriness.

CAMP

Last Thursday, we participated in C.A.M.P.'s (Community Arts and Media Project) soon-to-be-monthly fundraiser. Local artists donated art for a silent auction and michael and i were asked to contribute. my best friendola Na-Do provided music with her latest project, NaDo's Delight. The lighting was perfect and I captured some amazing silhouette shots. (notice her little admirer? whitman was fascinated but kept putting his hand in the tip jar.)

Michael and the kids making use of CAMP's art area.

"The Community Arts and Media Project (CAMP) is a local independent effort to bring free and sustainable resources to its neighborhood and to the city of St. Louis. Through the means of art, media, open forums, open doors, event space and collaborative projects, CAMP will provide a new center for creative interaction, welcoming people of all ways of life. Thriving inside of the historic Randall Building at the corner of Cherokee Street and Minnesota Avenue, CAMP considers its location in crucial juxtaposition with its mission. The crossroads of CAMP span out into an extremely diverse range of incomes, races, cultures and ideas. We want to be agents to foster cultural fusion and positive ideas. We believe that art and open spaces provide that agency.

The Community Arts and Media Project takes form not only as a space for the public but also as an umbrella for several groups who rent affordable office space inside the building and contribute to the vision of CAMP. These groups include the Confluence newspaper, Gateway Green Alliance , St. Louis Independent Media. CAMP has also given birth to new educational projects such as the South Side Workshop Exploring Appropriate Technologies (SWEAT), which not only focuses on human-powered technologies, but also provides a bicycle workshop for the neighborhood youth and broader St. Louis bike riders; South Side University, a local “free school” that offers classes which are taught and attended by anyone who wants to share, learn, and participate; the Bread and Roses Library, which features hundreds of handmade books, also known as “zines” a public access computer lab which is set up with wireless internet and useful software; and an ongoing indoor murals project."

CAMP is basically what michael and i have always dreamt of doing...and probaly will end up doing later on in our life. so it's exciting to see how these guys are doing it and learn as much as we can.

i found a bird-lovely beautiful tea towel at a local antique store and turned it into this:

spring break 2008!!

phase two

tonight i sat for almost four hours getting the second installment of my tattoo. the tattoo artist, lauren b., and i agreed to have a third session on down the road to do the whites and finishing touches. i'll post a better picture once it's healed. i'm really happy with it so far. i almost broke during the last half an hour, but held strong. why do we put ourselves through this?...oh yeah...because it's awesome.
tomorrow is another breakfast at black bear bakery, the worker-owned collective that michael is part of now. all you can eat buckwheat pancakes and buttermilk corncakes!!! so for those of you that live in the st. louis area, come down 9am-1pm.

first sew

after waiting through many cold days and nights, i finally starting sewing in the new studio. i pulled the space heater out of michael's studio, in the garage, and finished a few bags that are quite tardy. thank you everyone for your patience. i love how the studio is all windows, but the cold air leaks into the room so easily, due to the 100+ year old house. ( notice my adorable black apple postcard in the back ground? emily gives extra goodies with all her orders.)

my little sewing mascot.

and voila, the large pleated canvas bag. a lady requested that i remake this bag for her and i happened to have just enough fabric left to accomplish the feat.

my cutie #2 ( not in rank, just in years...) we went down to the railroad tracks again. the train cabooses on display are now james and persy... because one is green and one red and whitman is obsessed with trains. the scarf is another chirstmas present from lovely amy. it's actually daddy's, but i stole it for whitman.

fair had a nice stroll along the water with her friend shade. shade is only a few weeks younger than fair and the only boy friend she has that isn't years older. they are so cute. everything is brown here and the wind is chilling, but the leafless tree skyline is still amazing. i'm really hoping the weather gets warmer soon so our outings can be extended.
it's been a great couple of days. i got an A on my folklore and fables midterm and my first few prints of my linoleum block weren't completely horrible. i'll post some of my prints that i've made soon.

studio rebirth and sunday mornings

I finally moved the sewing studio back into our mud room. here is the half that is organized... the half behind the camera is a four foot high pile of stuff that will be dealt with later on. i put up a shelf to make my bag-making fabrics more accessible and added a card table for cutting and drawing out patterns. this set up is definatly more functional than before.

here's a bag i just finished for a friend of mine. she didn't want anything floral or paisley, so this was our compromise. not too paisley, but more of a classy indian feeling.


for the last month or two we have been having brunch at picasso's on sundays. two omelets for michael and i and a huge belgian waffle for the kids to share. going out to breakfast is something we always did in portland and it is good to have a cozy place to hang out at that we feel some what comfortable with the kids.




the weather has been eratic lately( 80 degrees last weekend only to snow 8 inches the following day), but today is the second sunday of taking the short walk down to main st and we walked along the railroad tracks at the waterfront... the kids insist on stumbling over the rickety tressels the whole length of the park (don't worry the tracks have been out of commissions for over a decade).



our good friends, scott and kelly, came over later in the day with their little ones faron and miranda. the girls dressed up as princesses. miranda loves the pillowcase dress i made and fair had to wear the frida crown.from her halloween costume. the girls danced around and the boys banged their trucks into any and everything... god, how gendered our kids are, but we really didn't push them either way. whitman took to trains and cars, while fair insisted on being a princess. but at least they both love making art and fair did ask to be frida this last halloween... so her priorities are somewhat straight.




the hubbies just swept them all off to chuckie cheese's to give momma some sewing time. so i best be getting off this thing and get some work done.