Creative Spirit Summer Art Camps

It has been another fun filled summer at Creative Spirit Art Studio.Next week will wrap up our summer art program for kids. It has been five weeks full of creativity and art making.Exploring materials and themes and watching the kids find so many ways to express themselves through their artwork.

I love seeing them engage in their creative process and having so much fun.

This year is our third summer camp program. My heart is full of gratitude that I get to work with these great kids to nurture their creativity. Once again my daughter, Katie, is the camp helper and I love having her at the studio by working side by side.

The camp schedule keeps me busy and I have been recharging by tending to by gardens at home. I have found time to work on my art here and there, but I am looking forward to having some days to devote entirely to my creativity.

Here is a sneak peek of the begining stages of my latest series, "Cherish Life"!

Cheers to life, Caryn

Taking some time to let it be

I finally take a deep breathe as I sit here and catch up with a few of my favorite blogs. One of my most favorites, is by a friend that I met at the Winter 2009 artnest retreat. Lorraine is offering a great giveaway to celebrate her 100 post. My summer art camps are in full swing. I have been blessed that all my sessions have filled and I been busy creating new artwork. The few moments that I have free, I am enjoying tending to my flower gardens and being outside in nature. I will find my way back slowly to some longer posts again, but for now I just need to be where my soul can rejuvenate with life.

Birdsongs and a Story

One of my most favorite sounds is the the songs of the birds early in the morning. As the days are growing longer and the chorus of birds that live in the meadows and gardens of our land wake me up bright and early, I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by the land that our home is nestled in.It provides so much inspiration for me to incorporate in my artwork. Lately I have been working on a series of birds taking flight from their cages. The inspiration from this series is a story from my childhood. As most little girls do, I loved kittens and puppies, but I also had a fascination with birds and spiders. This is a story about how I wanted a pair of sweet finches to have as my pets. My mother would tell me that birds should be free to fly, but after a lot of pleading, my father gifted me my wish on my birthday (just around the corner June 20th) and I was so happy. Then a few weeks later I woke up and found one of my sweeties not doing so well and it died. A few months passed and so did the other. It was heartbreaking and I felt incredibly guilty.
This Spring I have been working on a series "Set Them Free" as a tribute to the caged birds. I suppose for some people they can be good pets, but for me I enjoy them in their natural habitats or as in my artwork outside their cages discovering their wings.

Start with what you Love

This Spring has been just bursting with beautiful weather here on the Coast of New Hampshire. We have had so many sun filled days with bright blue skies and crisp spring greens from all the new plant growth. For those of you who know me and my studio it is easy to guess that blues and greens are definitely favorites in my color palette. However I like to incorporate lots of color in my artwork. This past weekend I just finished up a new series, Blossoming Beauty, I feel it captures the soft gentle feel of Springtime. It also incorporates some of my favorite daily visitors of Spring that visit me at my home, the gentle butterflies from my gardens and our blue birds that have returned to our land (every morning I see them and it just fills my heart with love.) So I want you to know that I have been working on these for well over a month now and thought I would share the photos that I have taken along my process.

Here is where I started. It is my foundation of what I love, colorful paper with patterns that swirl. I knew that I wanted to create a series so I gathered my canvases and laid them out together then mounted the paper with my acrylic medium.

Now for the layering of paint.

Picking and choosing what to keep and what to cover up. Adding white back in and some extra details and defining it with some black.

After adding some fine details and swirls of my own it was time to play with words. I stamped out some sayings that I liked on paper first so that I could play with composition to see what I was drawn to. In the end I decided to collage some sayings, but also stamp directly onto the canvas for a few. I ended up with a series of four painting that work wonderfully together, but at the same time look beautiful on there own. I'll have one week to enjoy them in the studio. Two are headed off to Lucy's Art Emporium in Dover, NH and two are going to Art and Soul in Ogunquit, ME. Hopefully they will find homes where they will bring the blossoming beauty to life!

Back from LA

Today is the first day after arriving home from a long weekend away to LA, CA two weekends ago, that I feel like I am finally catching up here at home. I loved going on this quick vacation, but it was really hard readjusting time zones, how do people do it who have to travel all the time? Anyways, I went out there to visit my friend, Megan, she is out there for a few months of auditions for her daughter. We are longtime friends from high school and she live here on the East Coast about 25 minutes from me. So I have really been missing her since she moved to the West Coast the last couple of months. Thankfully our other best friend, Priscilla suggested that we do a girls trip to visit. Our daughters are all friends, so we took them too.

Of course, Katie promptly told me that when she is 18 she'll be living in CA. No big surprise to me, she doesn't like the cold New England winters.

Megan's daughter, Lexy (the aspiring star), and Katie have been lifetime friends. So they were so happy to be together.

I loved spending time with Megan, Priscilla and our girls.

We had fun filled days with laughter and good times.

Here is our whole group except for Priscilla who was taking this photo. We could have never arranged for a time back home for lunches like this with all our different schedules.

I was taking some photos of a cute little birdie taking a bath when along came this adorable little Avery bird, Megan's youngest.

I feel so lucky to have these ladies as my friends. Love ya both!

Spring in Full Swing

This week was so glorious, a perfect blend of studio time, family time and moments enjoying the beautiful Spring weather. Yesterday I received my copy of Cloth Paper Scissors Studios magazine.

The five page featured studio article looks fabulous. It feels so good to be working hard and living my dream.

As much as I love my studio space, I had to soak in some of the beautiful weather at home. So the other morning, I grabbed a chair and table on our porch and created a little work space. I don't use my sewing machine very often for its traditional use. Right now I am working on a large order of my pockets of inspiration (sewn paper pockets with lovely inspirational messages tucked inside.)

Here's my work view from our wrap around porch. Everything is so green and full of life.

Cooking is another passion of mine. We eat a vegan diet, and grilled veggies are so delicious eaten outside on our back deck.

I love capturing our times together. Katie is getting to that age where she is spending most of her time with friends.

But she loves our tire swing, so Brian taught her how to make the knot to reconnect it to the rope

Spring is in full swing!

Studios, Summer 2010 - Interweave

Studios, Summer 2010 - Interweave