Optimism Aceo

I took this picture in a house at the beach...There was always something I liked about the picture but when I printed it on a clear acrylic sheet it took on something that I loved very much. There was something special about the see through image of the stair way... going up to a sunny window.

The image became all about optimism and reaching for the positive. And always goings towards ....and up.... to something better. How getting to a better place may be hard but the view is so beautiful and oh, so worth the climb.

The card was done in many steps. The base of the card is mat board cut into aceo format with a collage of many papers. The main image is printed on a clear sheet and that is what made all the difference ... it became a beautiful and ethereal statement about joy and hope.

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Filling the empty spaces...

The soup looked beautiful so I got my camera. I took a picture of the Udon soup but something nagged at me... How do you get full if your stomach isn't the thing that's empty?

Windswept

This is a photograph I took several years ago. I've used the image for an aceo and a larger piece.

There is something compelling about it - it's nakedness against the backdrop of fuller trees.

It's a study in discomfort and exposure.

Regret is a waste of time and energy...

I hemmed and hawed about buying this $50 Coach key chain a few years ago.

I loved it but $50 for a key chain? For some perspective... there are weeks I don't spend that much on food.

So. What's up with the little leather sandal?

I don't have a good answer... It made me happy when I saw it and there was just something about it... Something that said, "Buy me...You won't regret it. I'll make you happy every time you look at me...."

So I did and the funny thing is I am happy every time I look at it.

Sometimes you just have to listen to your inner voice and .....



LEAP!

Sushi Porn....

Yum... That's pretty much it....except I'm full.

Birdbaths in a Line, Along with Delaware River

Walking across the road from Nancy's house there was a line of bird baths. And it struck me so odd.

I took the photo and have worked with it over time. I've made enlargements and an aceo but it never did well - it never sold. I never understood why.

To me the image is very compelling and draws me in. To each his own, I suppose.

Mommy Aceo

I did this Aceo a while back and it never sold... I think I made the discription too personal.

How the card was about seeing Mommy as such a big person and me so little - but not in a good way.

It wasn't about being safe; it was about being less than...

Snow shot photograph

Photograph

Snow 2007 Backyard

Considering myself...

I spend way too much time considering my problems... My pain.. My. Self.

Aceo set

Mania and Depression in Aceo

Attack of cuteness...

Some days the simplest things make me feel good - a pink pen... A new cell phone charm... a post card... Some day it takes a whole tsunami of cute to work out life's kinks.

On days like that I'm glad 'cute' is so reasonably priced.

If only all the world's ills could be cured by some glitter...

Melancholy Tree Aceo

Something in this tree was sad and mournful.. That is was pale and twisted... reaching. And not quite balanced on the ground that it was planted in -Living over-shadowed by a darker, stronger tree... It seemed sad, almost resigned. Depressed and deep in a foggy haze. Almost human.
I've been doing a new series of photographs based on trees. It's about the normal things I see everyday... that when taken out of context - defined in a small photograph - become odd, different...somehow larger than... much different than they appear at first glance.

Trees are silent watchers around me all the time. As part of my day they are just blurs but when looked at closely I can see how much like people they are... how they've spent years growing towards warmth and light, twisting and arching to get what they need, sometimes becoming bent and misshapen in the process. I can see the nicks, bumps and scars that happened along the way...and the healing.

People grow the same way - seeking warmth and sun, growing around barriers...eventually showing their scars... some looking gnarled and stooped in the end. There is a beauty in the trees that speaks of survival and it echos the beauty of surviving a hard life. Of having made it through... Of having lived another day... Of beating the odds.

Surviving is a complicated thing that doesn't always come easy... and it's success is sometimes measured in scars.

The photos really dont do this card justice....This card was done in many steps. The base is mat board cut into aceo format (2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches) covered with different art papers to make the background collage. They were attached, like all my collages with two different types of acrylic mediums. The main image was printed on clear vinyl to compliment the hazy image. You can even seem some of the background collage through the image but I kept the background muted as it suited the mood.

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Joy!

Look for your joy in the glass being half full... Its the simple things in life that you can count on to always be there.

The fun things are all over to be found... The things that only cost a few dollars... the things that your 'too old' for... Find the joy in life like a child would - with sparkle and abandon.

Dr. Freud is in my Head Aceo

I've never made a card like this before and I'm not even sure why it came about - I only know when the idea 'hit' me and as I was making it I knew it was right. Very very right.

So... Tell me....who decides who is sick and who is well? And are the well ones only well because they keep whats inside them, inside?

And if you let Sigmund Freud in there...and he finds out who you are...can you get him out again? Once he's in there can you ever be thought of as 'well'... Normal?... Or are you forever stuck with Sigmund in there, looking out from your vantage point....judging... clucking his tongue...Writing on his pad.... Shaking his head.

For some reason the bipolar's been kicking me something fierce lately. I'm still doing artwork because it's something that helps me think...but I feel the discriptions I'm giving are not as good as usual... I'm sorry - I wish I could string my words together much better. Express my thoughts in a way that will make sense to you...but I don't have sparkling prose in me, it seems.

This was a complicated card. There is a mat board base cut into ACEO format... and a background collage with several art papers. The main image is actually two images printed on clear vinyl and 'stacked' to look like one image. There are also several other papers and 'webby' fiberous 'papers' on and around the main image and the back collage. The photo doesnt look as good as the card.

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Dreams Aceo

When people look at you all they see is the outside - a shell - not you. Not your thoughts, not experiences, your gifts, your hopes...no dreams. If you look into a mirror and are unhappy with what you see, your looking for yourself in the wrong place.

It's your dreams that tell the whole story. The story of where you have been and where you are going... Of your deepest, most hidden thoughts and how beautiful you are underneath the scars. Dreams tell the stories of your fears and accomplishments and, for me, solutions too. If I don't know what to do sometimes I'll go to sleep... knowing when I wake I'll know what to do. Solutions come to me as little dream bubbles that float in on a mysterious tide and burst - Each one bringing a new possibility that I never conceived of while constrained with the boundries of wakefulness.

I've thought alot about sleeping...and than dreaming this week. I started this card because I was unable to sleep and it started with a text that I couldnt read - like dreams and problems. I added an uneaven piece of gold on top of that because it sparkles and promises.. but never quite covers the under layer of questions. And petals because they are pure and sweet and are the promise of life... The final layer was beads and things that shine - different yet similar from eachother...These are the dream bubbles, waiting to burst.

This card took a long time and had layers and layers of sealer between each different part. I never knew if I was done, until I looked at it and it said 'done' to me. The final top coat was a triple-thick clear coat of spray sealer that makes it look like everything is floating.
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Rooming House Aceo

This card uses one of the photographs I took in Cape May, NJ in 2006. It looked like an old rooming house to me - where there would be a central living room, separate bedrooms and community bathrooms. It reminded me of a place I stayed for a while when I was 19. Someone I knew moved to a (much seedier) rooming house. We would sit in his room at night in the summer - sweating because there was no air conditioning - listening to the people next door having an agruement over who washed the whites with the reds and turned the underwear pink, a sad dog barking constantly, the toilet next door flushing every few minutes, couples laughing when they walked down the hall and sometimes trying our door by accident - slurring "sorry".

He hated it. I loved it. I hated being alone. Especially hated being alone at night and the sounds of other lives around me at night was comforting. It made me feel like I was part of something and not so isolated. The sound of the toilet flushing set his teeth on edge - for me it just meant a person was nearby. It meant that other lives were happening just outside my door - maybe storybook happy ones.

The place in the card brought back all those thoughts to me. About the hot summer I was 19 and shared the lives of a bunch of strangers through some green peeling walls. The card is more something that tweaks my memory and how something can feel when your young and how that spark comes back in a flash through an image.

The base of the card is cream mat board. Over the matboard there is a creamy paper with flecked inclusions. The artwork was printed on a natural fairly heavy weight paper embedded petals. On top of the image is another tissue weight paper with what looks like fly away wisps and gold metallic threads.

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Eerie Pumpkins Aceo

How much of life is in your perception of it?
This is a card made of a brand new photograph. This week-end I was out picking pumpkins for halloween. I like to carve them but not until Thanksgiving because I like having the bright faceless orange heads around as long as possible (which is probably a bit odd in itself). So I went to a pick-your-own farm.

There were a ton of kids running around like crazy...grabbing little ones and stumbling over huge ones. Yelling, "How 'bout this one?" And parents taking pictures of babies in strollers under piles of pumpkins - a very odd thing to see.
To me it seemed odd. Even though the vibe was happy and the weather was cool, the sky was unnaturally blue and the wind was crisp the whole scene had a weird vibe to me. I took the pictures and when I got home I played around with them and made them look like the scene looked from behind my eyes.

I did see beauty in the bright pumpkins against the dark, dead foliage cut down so the patrons could walk among the pumpkins but it was still dead and strewn looking to me. And the two lonely trees in the background seemed to be watching sadly. The sky is no longer unnaturally blue...but more the way it looked to me. It had the eerie glow that I felt even though I didn't see it.
Life is really in how you see it. I am pretty sure that no one else saw this field the way I saw it that day. Yet, I think there is beauty in what I saw... Spring is about rebirth and autumn is about the crumbling and dying of things... the peeling back and dissovling into dust of living things to make room for new things... And there is beauty in that too. Those things are part of the cycle of life and should be celebrated as well.

The base of the card is mat board cut into aceo format with a collage of many papers. The main image is printed on a thick bumpy natural paper with inclusions... I think it suited the image well. I printed this image several times on thinner more translucent papers but the strong thick paper was the one that said the most.

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Light and Darkness Aceo

I love making ACEO's. I love the unexpected things that happen when I make them... This card is a good example of how, even in this tiny format, great things can show up.
The image is a hallway at Drexel University I took in 2006. I've always liked the image a lot but it never came out 'right' when I tried to turn it into a card. I kept trying though... This ACEO card showed more than what I saw that day. It reminds me of how dark things can seem just a few feet away from a lamp or window and it got me thinking about how sometimes I stay in one place - or put off decisions - because I can't see clearly...
Like in this card, the glow from the lamps and window fade into darkness almost immediately. I could see myself standing in the light and not moving...even though the next lit area is just a few feet away.... because I was afraid of what was in the dark. When I look at the card, from this perspective, standing still seems silly but when your there and fearful sometimes going into the dark - even for a second - is paralyzing.

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American Express wants me... or so they say. I got this 'credit card' in the mail the other day with a letter that says .... "You are pre-approved to apply." And where my name would go on a real card is says "Your name here"
I have to wonder what being pre-approved to apply means? Is it meant to make me think I'm already approved...for the card? Or am I so low on the credit card totem pole that there are some cards that I'm not supposed to even apply for?

And why send me a fake card? To be sure I open it? And not toss the envelope? Do they know I'm so desparate for money that just the 'feel' of a credit card will make me tear open the envelope in lustful anticipation? And just how do they know that anyway? And how should all this make me feel anyway?

Why do credit card companies send offers to people who can't pay... and than when the poor (and I mean poor) take them up on it and get the cards and, can't pay... Why in the world is the credit card company surprised and indignant, even.

All this was bothering me very much when I opened the envelope to see the Am Ex card in Your Name Here's name.
This card was done on a mat board base cut into aceo format with collaged background paper that compliment the faux-dit card very well I think. I used the actual card for the main image - its not a photo.

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Beautiful strawberries

Some food is too pretty to eat.


I had never seen berries this pretty before... It was a good day.

Cinnabon...

'nuff said...."

I was thinking about beauty and how subjective it is... Why is a peacock is seen as lovely but an otter is plain at best? It's easy to make value judgements about beauty... About who is...who isn't...

A peacocks beauty is no more than a peacock being a peacock... I wish people would redefine beauty as people just embracing who they are... So that the more honestly put your true self out there ...the more beautiful you are to others.... The more you celebrate your own uniqueness the more others see you as you do...

This card is done on mat board cut unto aceo format with a background of several glittery metallic papers... I think it really suited the main image of a peacock feather... I added extra sparkle with a row of golden crystals along the bottom and three auorora borialis crystals up the side. Hopefully looking at the card will make people remember that a peacock only has to be a peacock to be lovely...and so do you.

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Facing Therapy Aceo

This ACEO is based on my own photograph . Being disabled , especially with a mental illness can be difficult. People can have their minds made up about you before you say a word. It was after a difficult set of experiences where I was written off simply for being honest about the nature of my disability. I did a series of photographs featuring locks, walls and reflections This ACEO is the third in a series where I used empty hall ways. I took this picture when I entered the building of my therapist - I was dreading going that day and wanted to work out the feelings later with the image. Ultimately it became this ACEO.

This card is about walking into therapy and leaving your life open. It's about what goes on behind the walls of a therapist's office and it's about trying to take what you learn there, back out with you... And how hard that can be... and how high a wall that is to scale.

We all want to be ' better' when we go back out into our lives. To leave the office changed...improved...clear. Sometimes I wonder if that's even possible...and sometimes I don't even care.

Sometimes it's enough to know that for that hour someone in this world is helping... caring...focused on me... and if that's all I can take out with me...sometime's that's enough.

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Colors Aceo

How much of life is in your perception of it?
I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1997 and with that diagnosis, I've changed. Something happened although I'm not quite sure what. Maybe when you have your first mania and you are so close to the edge of the universe, you're changed forever.
I've read about other people who have had life changing experiences - the astronauts when they see the Earth from orbit the first time, people who survive something so awful it would boggle most people's minds, people who come back from near death... People who have been to the edge of life or the universe and come back changed forever because.... Well, I'm not really sure why although I've thought a lot about it.

I think perhaps once a mind has expanded it can not be shut down again... and once you've seen life from a larger perspective the 'small stuff' really does become small.

I wonder where my perspective comes from and is the way I see, my perception of the world and beauty just the result of some random over-firing of neurons and brain chemicals....on an unremarkable Wednesday...all the way back in 1997? I don't know. I do know that frequently I will see beauty in the mundane...or the 'possibility' in a plain scene...something that someone else would pass by.

I took this picture recently in Cape May, NJ. It was really unremarkable...It's really just the corner of a larger picture of an outdoor pool, marked by lamp posts and surrounded by a chain link fence. But I knew someone in there was my bipolar vision of it... The thing that flashed in my mind when I clicked the camera... The thing I knew I could bring out of the corner in an unremarkable shot. I added the color and intensity of a 'bipolar sky' and I had it... This is what drove me to take the shot... This is what I saw.

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Sushi Dinner photos

Photographs of Negimaki, sushi and green tea mochi... More of my obsessive food photo'ing...

I didn't know if I was going to include the food in the blog but looks like I did afterall.

Poe Aceo

Edgar Allen Poe was a gifted and haunted man and it's easy to see in his writing. I try to do art that includes people from the past that had or were believed to have had troubles to remind people not to toss aside those of us who aren't 'perfect'.

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Never quite there...

These one panel cartoons are my own... They come from inside me... somewhere... If you want to use them, write me...I get cranky otherwise.

Help

Marker on paper by Tracy Reinhardt

Cape May, NJ Winter 2006

Photograph

Chairs on the balcony's of the Grand Hotel

Cape May, NJ Winter 2006

Photograph

Looking out a side door at the Grand Hotel Cape May, NJ

A friend

When I was lonely I knitted and felted myself a friend... I love him. He goes with me everywhere.

Kitty Litter Cake

Kitty Litter Cake... Yes, I tried it. In fact this picture is the one I made :)

Kitty Litter Cake

(It really does taste good!)

Ingredients:

1 (18 oz.) box spice or german chocolate cake mix

1 (18 oz.) box white cake mix

1 pkg. white sandwich cookies

1 large box vanilla instant pudding mix

12 small tootsie rolls

1 litter box (a NEW one!)

1 plastic pooper scoop (ditto on the NEW)

green food coloring

Preparation:Prepare cake mixes and bake according to directions (any size pans or in a pinch I've used premade cakes).

Prepare pudding mix (In a pinch I've used premade) and chill until ready to assemble.

Crumble white sandwich cookies in small batches in blender, they tend to stick, so scrape often. Set aside all but about 1/4 cup.

To the 1/4 cup cookie crumbs, add a few drops green food coloring and mix using a fork or shake in a jar.

When cakes are cooled to room temperature, crumble into a large bowl. Toss with half the remaining white cookie crumbs and the chilled pudding.

You probably won’t need all of the pudding, mix with the cake and “feel” it, you don’t want it soggy, just moist; gently combine.

Put mixture into clean litter box.

Put three unwrapped Tootsie rolls in a microwave safe dish and heat until soft and pliable. Shape ends so they are no longer blunt, curving slightly. Repeat with 3 more Tootsie rolls and bury in mixture. Sprinkle the other half of cookie crumbs over top. Scatter the green cookie crumbs lightly over the top, this is supposed to look like the chlorophyll in kitty litter. Heat remaining Tootsie Rolls, three at a time in the microwave until almost melted.

Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle with cookie crumbs. Place the box on a newspaper and sprinkle a few of the cookie crumbs around. Serve with a new pooper scooper.

Drexel U

Photograph

Drexel Sconce

Drexel U

Photograph

Looking out a window: Drexel U

Down the Drain Aceo

Some days start bad and just don't get better. And some days go from that bad to worse...
Some days I wake up and watch my life just break apart into little painful pieces and trying to latch onto those pieces is much like trying to catch little streams of water as they skittle across the bottom of the sink and down the drain.
I can see the clear little rivers ....and where they are going.... but I'm helpless to do anything except watch them go...
It's a bit like tears.

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Almighty Dollar Aceo

I've been hanging on to half of a dollar for years... not a half-dollar but half of a dollar. A dollar that ripped at some point and I only had one half. It always seemed stupid to keep it because years ago I gave up hoping to find the other half but every time I ran across it I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. Money. When you have little with dim prospects of living a different life money becomes something mythical. The ultimate panacea... The answer to why you don't have what you want, can't do what you want... aren't happy. Everything that rings wrong...

Honestly, the longer I live without money the less it takes to make me happy. I'm not chained to it as I once was...Or maybe not as chained... but sometimes I wonder about that. If I was as free from the lure of money as I thought why would I be hanging on to that old ripped half of a dollar?

People are supposed to be people, when we look into their eyes it isn't their bank balances we see. Or is it? When I go to the mall I can see who looks 'well-tended' and who doesn't...I can see that there are babies in strollers wearing clothes that cost more than mine do. (There are probably chihuahuas whose clothes cost more than mine...for that matter.) I can see that some people get their hair done every 4 weeks and eye-brows professionally done.. and that they are manicured, pedicured, and waxed to within an inch of their life.

I've decided to just let all of that go with the dollar...I mean half of the dollar... I'm going to look inside more and stop looking at other people's eyebrows.

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Morning face...

These one panel cartoons are my own... They come from inside me... somewhere... If you want to use them, write me...I get cranky otherwise.

Zen and the art of art...

There is art everywhere. I was shopping for new dishes and took this picture. This was one set I was considering.

Even though I didn't buy these, they will stick with me long after the set I did buy because these plates became art.

I've been doing alot of thinking about the past...the firsts... the good the bad the ugly . Some memories are fun...and good. You shouldnt forget those because focusing on the negative gets old and makes you old...and bitter.

Before cell phones...and long before computers I kept in contact with my friends with a phone. A land line...with a cord. When my parents allowed me to get my own (with their phone number, not even my own) I was thrilled. It was like I had arrived as a teen.

The phone guy came to the house and brought me my own phone one day and I found a picture of it... a princess phone... a blue - sort of aqua, really - link to the outside. I spent many many many.... way too many hours on it when I should (according to my parents) have been doing more 'constructive' things.

I did this card because it brought back all sorts of good memories of being a teen... of staying on my aqua princess phone long after I was supposed to. Of hiding under the covers and talking low...and giggling over nonsense with my friends... Of feeling like I had contact with the outside world and reality. It saved me, I think... When my reality was not so lovely in the house I could look at my beautiful phone ... pretty and colorful and pick it up and call someone and forget... for just a moment who I was... and pretend I was a 'Princess' like the name of my phone implied.

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There are many things to like about each season of the year...
Autumn is my favorite. The coolness is a relief from the suffocating heat and humidity of the summer... Crisp air blows the dust out of my thoughts and the bright colors of the leaves shock my eyes into seeing again.
I don't know if other people see autumn as a renewal like I do... I know many people mourn summer's passing but I find Fall refreshing and it never comes too soon for me. There is something very calming about the fall for me... zen like... meditative. When the first whisp of cool air hits me I feel like I can breathe again and the falling leaves are a blessing that leaves quiet spaces of nothing.
I look forward to those cool, quite spaces; restful to my eyes and my mind, where I can think ....where I can breathe.
We spend our lives with and concerned about the things in our lifes but its the spaces between the things that give the 'things' meaning....boundries... and the breathing room to enjoy the things. This card is a based on a photo I just took of autum leaves. Most of them have turned and half of them have fallen. Whats left is the cool quiet spaces that I find so quieting. I printed the image on a vinyl sheet so the colors glow...

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Eat your green veggies!

More food porn photography...but at least these pictures are foods that are good for you!