Wild & Gaudy

7:58 pm By
Mixed media monoprint

“Wild & Gaudy”, 15“x14”, Mixed media mono­print, © 2012 Belinda Chlouber

 

I wanted a bit of inspi­ra­tion so I took a work­shop with Kala press in Berke­ley a cou­ple of weeks ago. I wanted to work with Inez Storer as she’s one of my favorite artists. She’s spunky and can be a bit prickly some­times, but I like that, it adds “zest” to the expe­ri­ence! I have a etch­ing press so look for­ward to see­ing more prints in the future!

I did this piece after the work­shop by tak­ing a print I didn’t feel quite worked but liked parts of and re-worked it into a new mixed media piece. The piece is in a show at The Main Gallery in Red­wood City right now in a show “New Year, New Work”. My grand­fa­ther Sweet’s poem inspired the work and the title! There was no title for the poem, but here it is;

You are like the beauty

of a quiet day in spring,

Like the clear sweet tunes

That nature’s song­sters sing.

 

Not the wild and gaudy brilliance

of the toss­ing prairie flowers,

But beauty of the violet

Hid­den in the shady bower.

by Arthur Sweet 1934

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog, home gallery

Sound and Images

4:41 pm By
Mixed media acrylic with Embroidery painting

“Read my Lips”

Mixed media acrylic painting

“Sign­ing”

These two paint­ings, “Read my Lips” and “Sign­ing” exam­ine the world of sight and sound. They are part of a series I did sev­eral years ago.

Sound.  It’s largely some­thing we take for granted on a day to day bases–it just is–it just is there for us. Over the last sev­eral years I have come to a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of sound and it’s place in our world. Thir­teen years ago I begin to notice the sounds were leav­ing. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog

Growing up on a Reservation

10:03 pm By
doll

My par­ents bought this Navaho weav­ing doll in Ari­zona when I was a child. My dad let me keep if for awhile.

When I was a lit­tle girl, six months old, my par­ents moved to Ari­zona where we lived on the Hopi and Navaho reser­va­tion until I was in the 3rd grade. We moved about what seemed to me every cou­ple of years so my mem­ory for time and place is blurred. What I was left with is a feel­ing for how things can be so different—and be okay. The Nava­hos and [Read more…]

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog

The Poetry of Art

4:04 pm By

“Life draw­ing I”, 8.5“x11”, Pen­cil on paper, © 2012 Belinda Chlouber

When I was vis­it­ing my father I found some of my art school sketch books and was reminded how much l loved life draw­ing. I can’t help but think “Wow, I did that when I was 20!” So I thought it was inter­est­ing when I found this arti­cle about David Hock­ney and Damien Hirst on Artinfo.com., “Hock­ney on Art; Poetry Vs. Craft.…..”.  The poetry in the art and craft of the art are, for me, everything!

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog

My Bizarre Christmas tree

4:10 am By
2011 Christmas Tree

2011 Christ­mas Tree

Every year I come up with some kind of solu­tion for the “Christ­mas tree dilemma”. This year I was inspired by a site I found about “artis­tic” Christ­mas trees. We have a fairly small liv­ing room so this com­pletely worked in the space. I did, though, have a moment of hor­ri­fi­ca­tion and regret when the gen­tle­man cut the bot­tom branches for me. I plan on sav­ing the tree for Christ­mas next year and doing some­thing fancy to the top, maybe cir­cu­lar rings or some such thing!

The play­ing cards are from Czecho­slo­va­kia, P E A C E.  We must remem­ber, “There’s always peace some­where and there’s a lot of peace everywhere!”—I said that! Happy Hol­i­days Everyone!

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog Tagged With: , ,

Sunday Evening—-April 14, 1991

8:46 pm By
"Sunday Evening"

“Sun­day Evening”

I fin­ished it! This piece is inspired by my moth­ers poem, “Sun­day Evening—April 14, 1991″. My mom was a paci­fist and strug­gled to under­stand her place and com­plic­ity in war. I don’t think she appre­ci­ated it being glo­ri­fied. It was not long after she wrote this that the “war” on ter­ror did effect many peo­ple through 9/11. Had they declared the “war” won when she wrote this? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog, Paintings and Poems Tagged With: , , , ,

Floating cows

6:18 pm By
Photograph of cows

“Float­ing cows”, © 2011 Belinda Chlou­ber, photograph

Early in the morn­ing I looked out my father’s win­dow to see cows float­ing on the hori­zon. All in a straight line mov­ing silently and effort­lessly, appear­ing to float. I imag­ine every morn­ing at the same time they do this as I  think they are going to have a drink of water. My mother wrote a poem about cows seem­ing to float and the bulls turned to look at me just as she describes  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog, Paintings and Poems Tagged With: , ,

Music of the Spheres

7:21 pm By
Mixed Media Painting

“Music of the Spheres”, Mixed Media Paint­ing, 18“x24”, © 2012 Belinda Chlouber

This is one of the harder pieces for me to do. For a num­ber of rea­sons. Last year I lost my mother, Carla Chlou­ber, after a brief but long ill­ness she suf­fered from. She had writ­ten this poem years ago about her mother and father, Henry and Alyne Sweet, and how they had heard “The music of the spheres” the day before he passed away.  I think of it like being called “home”. I do really wish I knew if she heard “The music of the spheres” before she passed away.

I wanted to make the paint­ing “feel” like sound. I don’t know if I accom­plished it or not. I think so, to me it does any­way. Here’s the poem; [Read more…]

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog, Paintings and Poems Tagged With: ,

“Lips”

7:04 pm By
Mixed Media Painting

“Lips”, Mixed Media Paint­ing, 15“x13”, © 2011 Belinda Chlouber

I reworked this piece! Well the text in the gut­ter of the frame any­way. At first I was going to just replace the text with new text because it bub­bled (it didn’t stick to well to the frame when I adhered it–I hated that) but then when I scraped and sanded I real­ized I liked the rugged look. Espe­cially because the short story, by Carla Chlou­ber, it is inspired from is titled “Woman not Born Beau­ti­ful”. So the “image” of the text is not really beau­ti­ful but I feel I forced it to be beau­ti­ful. Which is what the short story is about. I plan on mak­ing a small book of the story–which I will post when it is done.

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog

Lips

9:50 pm By
Mixed media collage with writing

“Lips”, Mixed media col­lage with excerpts of Carla Chlouber’s short “Woman who were not Born Beau­ti­ful”, 15″ x 13″, 2011

While at Whole House Build­ing Sup­ply in San Mateo is stum­bled upon this frame which I fell in love with. It is per­fect for insert­ing excerpts of my mother’s short story “Woman who were not born beau­ti­ful”. I’m play­ing with using this open lace that I’ve col­lected. It feels very effem­i­nate to me and sensual—I thought per­fect with the lips! I also used a medium to make it look glossy. I like the com­bi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent tex­tures and that it has a soft yet strong feel.

Filed Under: Belinda's Blog
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