Lisa Call

The History

I’ve taken several art workshops with Nancy Crow so I’ve known about her South African arts and crafts tours for years and have always wanted to go on one. I love the colors of the African landscape (at least in photos) and I love arts and crafts, so this is pretty much the dream tour.

In the fall of 2005 I was at a workshop with Nancy and I told her I wasn’t going to do anymore workshops with her and instead I was going to save up and attend her next African adventure. I had no idea where the money was going to come from but I knew I wanted to do this.

She only does the tours every 3-5 years so I figured I had some time to save up, so I did a bit of calculating and realized that putting back money each month for the trip wouldn’t get me there anytime soon. I still dreamed about going on this trip but saved no money for it.

When I took yet another artist workshop with Nancy in 2007 (never say never) I told her again that I was going to go on the next South African tour and to let me know as soon as she started taking sign ups as the trip sells out in a week.

At that time I had $0 saved up for the vacation with no idea where the money might come from but I didn’t let that bother me, instead I just thought about how awesome it would be to go on the trip.

Making it a Reality

So along comes June of 2008 and I got an email that the sign up page for the African tour had just gone live and did I still want to go? My answer was a resounding positive YES! And, not surprisingly, because I always seem to manifest what I want, I actually had the money to go.

That same week I sold my house and as long time readers might recall, I sold my house for more than I had asked for, a lot more. More than enough to cover a month long trip to Africa. So here I am – just 2 days away from being on a plane to Africa.

Speaking of planes, I hadn’t thought much about the expense of the plane ticket and it turns out I had enough frequent flyer miles to get there for free. Pretty convenient as it turns out tickets to Africa aren’t on the cheap side.

[The story of my amazing house selling experience here: Achieving Success - it's another way cool story about things working out exactly like I wanted them to.]

My Plans

I’ve never been on a group tour before. When I went to New Zealand in 2000 it was with my family and we rented a car and did whatever we wanted on our own schedule, so this will be a new experience for me.

I had originally intended to do a bunch of planning and figure out what I could see and do in the areas where we were going and be “in the know”. I then did a huge home remodel and those plans went out the window.

I’m now on the “don’t worry about it” plan.

I only read the itinerary a few weeks ago and only because I was sitting with the nurse trying to figure out where I was going and what shots I would need. She thought that was pretty funny. I figure the right stuff will happen as it needs to.

I’m flying out a few days before the trip starts and a quilter I met online has offered for me to stay with her family, which is just about as awesome as it could be. The internet is a fabulous place.

I have bought a Dell Netbook so I will be able to send updates and stay in touch (don’t tell the folks at the day job this). I’m not sure how much internet access there will be so I’m not going to try to make plans as to how much blogging I’ll be doing. We’ll just have to wait and see.

My Art

I have no doubt this trip will have a wonderful influence on my artwork. I have a new moelskine sketch book and intend on using it and my camera often to record my adventures.

Most of my planning has been on the art project that will ensue after I return home.

I’ve outlined a new South African art project, which I unveiled in my studio newsletter earlier today. It’s a chance to prepurchase artwork from this project at a fairly significant discount by paying 1/2 up front.

An ACEO is $14 now and $14 in October(ish) when the work is complete. Several folks have already reserved their South African Impressions artwork.

You can read about the details here: South African Impressions

The Photos

I’ve been including photos in my blog post, newsletter and art project page that my dad took in 2006 in Botswana and Zambia. This trip was his final big adventure as he was diagnosed with cancer a few months after his return and passed away the following year.

I love the connection to my dad that I feel in making this journey.

One of the Most Beautiful Spots on Earth

These photos were taken on the road up to Los Alamos, New Mexico on Sunday. Beautiful. I am still so thankful to have grown up in such an enchanted location.

Studio Update

With my upcoming trip to Africa (I leave next wednesday), things are all about packing and preparing at my house these days. I’m getting more excited by the hour – it’s going to be fabulous!

I’m also working on getting my July studio newsletter out the door so look for that in your inbox in the next few days if you are a subscriber. If you aren’t, subscribe here.

I’m also fitting in a bit of time to work on my website after the quarantine of last week. I’ve put most of the functionality back into the sidebar, although the archives are now on a separate page, which you can find in the new sidebar.

I have a ton of stuff to prepare at the day job to be gone for a month so I’ve been putting in long hours there this week also.

I have no idea how long the flight is to Africa, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know, but I’m pretty sure sleep is the activity I have in mind for most that event to recover from all this prep work needed before I go.

Studio Sale Update

News from artfulhome.com – they have decided to put an end to the year round studio sale so at the end of July (July 27th for me) all studio sale work will be coming down.

If there is something you have your eye on in my studio sale page you need to act fast. The next studio sale won’t come around again until december/january.

Chile Rellenos, Pinon nut turtles, Sopapillas. Yum. Taking a break with a weekend in Santa Fe. Headed up to Los Alamos today then home this afternoon.

Ritual

For the last month I’ve done yoga first thing in the morning for 30 minutes. I used to rush through this task only a few times a week and didn’t put much thought into it. Now I have somewhat of a ritual.

A part of this ritual is to open my blackout shades. In the past I didn’t do this to save energy and my bedroom stayed dark year round. It wasn’t a big deal since I’m never there but now I love letting in the light every morning.

I recently signed up for wind power so my home electricity usage is carbon neutral so I feel less guilty about the few dollars it costs each month because the shades are open. I love how open and light the room feels now. Tossing a lot of junk that was in there probably helped also.

Sunrise

This morning when I opened the shades it was very gray and my initial thought was it was going to be a pretty drab day. But turns out it was earlier than I thought and the sun wasn’t up yet. A few minutes into the yoga I saw a hint of pink and next thing I knew the entire sky was incredible.

Near the end I hunted down the camera and took a few pictures.

Although don’t let the pictures fool you – like all suburbanites my neighbors are not far away – I just pointed the camera up and cropped a bit. The uncropped photos are on smugmug (hurray – I processed the photos right away as I intended for this year!).

A Mess of Images

In early 2005 I bought my first ever digital camera, an SLR Nikon D-70. I love the camera and it takes amazing photos. Over the past 3 years those photos keep multiplying and they have become rather unruly and unorganized.

I’m currently in the process of decluttering my house and life and cleaning up these images is on the list of jobs to tackle. It’s a big job.

First step was to figure out what to do with them. I want to share them, I want to print them, I want to organize them. And most of all – I don’t want them to be a hassle. [note - I'm not talking about the images I have of my artwork - that's a whole other mess - but photos of everything else].

An Effortless Solution

Instead of researching and hunting around for the perfect solution I decided to take advantage of someone else’s research (my dad’s) and I’m putting my photos on SmugMug. It’s not free but it’s only $40 a year, a small price to pay for storage of all of my images. And because there is a fee there are no ads. It’s a really nicely designed site and so far I’m quite pleased with it.

I’m doing a weekly upload to smugmug and by the end of the year I will have everything organized and sorted out. Along the way I am sharing the pictures with the folks I promised I’d share them with (sometimes years ago). Yay! As I take new photos I am uploading them in a timely manner.

After putting the images on the website I am deleting the images from my computer. SmugMug keeps 4 backup copies of the files in 3 different states. I can’t come close to that kind of redundancy without a lot of effort. I get unlimited storage/bandwidth and I can print the images from the site (as can the people I share them with).

Definitely hassle free.

I love the idea of deleting them from my computer. I’m throwing away all my negatives from my print pictures also. It’s so freeing to get rid of this stuff I will never do anything with.

I’m going to be printing some of them, family ones for albums, inspiration ones to put on my wall and be inspired by. I’ve rarely (as in maybe once) printed my digital images in the last 3 years so this is a new exciting thing for me. Okay – I admit – learning technology sometimes prevents me from doing things – printing digital pictures was hurting my head – but no more! Yes I’m a software engineer and hand code the html for my website but I don’t know how to text message on my cell phone.

SmugMug Details

You can check out my smugmug site. I’ve got some public galleries in the inspiration category (some photos from Arizona and from North Carolina) and a few images from a show out in Arizona last year.

If you want the marketing stuff about SmugMug it is here. If you want to sign up you get a $5 discount if you have a coupon from a referral – you can put in my email address or use this code ZnhmaNpn2n1mk . Not required but $5 is nice. I get $10 off on my next renewal if someone does this so that’s also nice.

Above Image

The photo at the top is a close up section of one of the pictures I have on smugmug – it’s an aloe plant damaged by frost.

I’m so happy!

 
The road to the Bend of Ivy Lodge, where I attended the Great Big Dreams Retreat last weekend, makes a slight curve to go around this old barn. I love these old barns and had to stop and take pictures on my way home. What lines and shapes! Incredible.
 
 

 
This is the front side of the same barn. What a beautiful design.
 
 

 
This barn was on the same road but I couldn’t find a safe (close) place to park my car so took pictures from the road. I suppose this could be a self portrait in the sideview mirror.
 
 

 
My apologies to those of you reading my blog posts from feedblitz. I know the images no longer show up for some people after I turned on hotlink protection. I am able to see the images fine from feedblitz using thunderbird.

Could those of you that can’t see the images leave a comment or send me email with the name of the email program you are using? Could be the web based email readers are the problem and if so I can probably do something to fix that.

 
I’ve mentioned a few times that my structures series was inspired by a picture of my dad’s fence taken back in 2000. This it that image – I was hunting through my pictures recently looking for something else and came across it.

The motif in the Structures series is an E shape based on the top prongs of this fence. The fence is about boundaries – both physical but also emotional. Fences keep us safe. They keep others out. They define us and hide us. I doubt I’ll ever get tired of exploring both their physical properties and their emotional impact.

 
I took the above pictures in Ohio in May at sunrise.

I love this barn. Lines, shapes, history, colors.

 
I’m happy to report I got my work photographed, images processed and my entry form for the juried show ready to mail as I set for my goal for today. Now I’m off to my studio for an hour. It’s been a productive but relaxed day. Very nice.

Chairs #16: Canyon Layers – Tonto Platform
©2003    6.5" x 6.5"
Private Collection

Chairs #17: Canyon Layers – Red Wall
©2003    6.5" x 6.5"
Private Collection

 
The last 2 evenings have been a bit frustrating for me as I’ve worked long hours trying to write my first studio newsletter. I can sit down and write out a blog post in just a few minutes but for some reason the text for the newsletter isn’t flowing as easily. I’ve clearly psyched myself out thinking it needs to be different or perfect.

Instead of writing the text I’ve been tweaking the formatting. Email applications like outlook, eudora and thunderbird aren’t browsers but they have to act as one when an html formated email arrives. Then there are the browser based email applications such as gmail and yahoo. They strip out all of the header information in such emails. All styles have to be inline and css positioning doesn’t work well, so lots of nested tables and repeated style tags making the source file hard to read.

Basically it’s a bit of a pain to get things to look good in an email and one can spend hours and hours perfecting the layout so it works in all browsers, email programs, etc. Normal people would use a template or software program and not worry about this, being a software engineer I hand code all of my html and css, which clearly at times is a very big liability.

While that was maybe a bit technical the point is I’m wasting my time and getting sidetracked by technology (something I find very easy) instead of concentrating on the content of my newsletter.

Solution – tonight I’m going to just work in my studio and forget the newsletter. After a day or 2 break I’m hoping I’ll find the right focus again.

 
I realized when I posted the series of Grand Canyon quilts last month I forgot the 2 small studies that I made during that period. The two pieces above could easily be in my Structures series but back in 2003 they ended up falling into my Chairs series, which I will post more about someday.

Chairs #16 is in a private collection, traded for a wonderful piece by another textile artist, but Chairs #17: Canyon Layers – Red Wall is available for purchase for $75.00. is sold.

These two pieces were some of my very first pieces working with thin lines. The start of something I still haven’t tired of 4 years later.

Structures #23    © 2003    34″ x 28″

 
This is the last of the five Structures quilts in my Grand Canyon grouping. More of my brick shapes from this period in the Grand Canyon colors I dyed. This time outlined in black for the lowest layer of the canyon, the vishnu complex made of schist, gneiss, and granite.

The last morning in the canyon I woke up very early and hiked out to an overlook on the tonto platform to watch the sunset. The weather didn’t cooperate so I didn’t get to watch the colors return to the canyon in a glorious blaze. In fact as I recall it was amazingly window and a bit unpleasant, but in my mind this quilt reminds me of that morning. I’m not really sure why.