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Luck and good timing are a part of this story about collected journals of historic stories of saves and survival that I rediscovered yesterday on New Year’s Eve in the form of a Christmas gift I received 8 years ago. The gift was a collection of vintage Sports Illustrated magazines that my brother gave to me along with a colorful presentation about them at my Christmas Day 50th Birthday Party back on Christmas Day 2016. At Christmastime back when 2016 was transitioning into 2017, we had just finished building a new home and the times were extra busy with my growing family and, of course, I was also keeping busy filling much of my time and new walls with artwork that I was involved with both as a means of catharsis and as a business. As it went, like lots of my artwork, the gifted collection of historic Sports Illustrated artifacts were put on a shelf at the time awaiting another day’s wall hanging project. Now, 8 years later, that birthday gift that was put on a shelf brought more than my full one-hundred-percent attention when yesterday, December 31, 2024, upon my return home from our festive 10 day Christmas vacation, a sound pulled me downstairs to a back room of our basement to discover a waterfall exploding on the walls of one of our storage rooms. As I walked into the room it became more than evident that a pipe had burst as a river from it was filling the room fast. It was just gushing! In the end, though the storage room got thoroughly drenched, luckily the timing of my discovery prevented the whole basement of our house from turning into a swimming pool. It must have blown just around the same time I got home alone. Thankfully, fortunately, and luckily, due to the synchronization of the timing of my return home and the timing of the pipe busting, no damage was done beyond that storage room which got completely soaked along with just about most every item that was in there. Again, with thankfulness, good-fortunate, and luck I guess, beyond being extremely stressful, we are having success getting it all cleaned-up and the flooding didn’t turn out to be too bad because most of the stuff in that storage room we could easily replace if we even wanted to like dated exercise equipment and hardly used big outdoor yard games like “Cornhole” and a thoroughly wet wooden jumbo sized “Jenga” tower puzzle. But the point of this story coming after 8 years in our “new house” isn’t about the lost dated exercise equipment or destroyed yard games. It is about my amazement that though basically everything in that room got soaked to ruins, my collection of historic Sports Illustrated magazines which were not in a box but just literally stacked on a shelf just in front of the pipe that burst and just alongside the splattering river of water erupting from it, somehow managed to survive the flood and remain in perfect shape. Unlike everything else in that storage room, though they were closest to the pipe that happened to blow, the paper periodicals remained fully unaffected by the wide spray of water bursting from the pipe’s pouring stream. - - It was wild. I guess I am going to just tally-up the save in this situation to something called "luck". Given that the powers that be somehow aligned for the preservation of the periodicals, I am reviewing them once again and can keep my plans to add to my sports artwork on the walls in our basement bar and billiards room and hang some of these magazine artifacts too. I decided to share a few covers of this gifted collection of historic Sports Illustrated magazines here as well with credits going to my brother, Patrick T. Breslin. Pat, as he goes by, grew-up the second youngest in my big family and just one year ahead of me. His saved stacks of some of the vintage Sports Illustrated magazines that he managed to gather from our parents' house many years ago are mostly from the 1970’s, the 1980’s, and the 1990’s. The collection was presented to me at my Christmas Day birthday party in 2016 by him in his typical lively fashion of eloquent anecdotes, family memories, and humor for all at the party to enjoy as he showed the magazines that survived through the many decades in his and mine and all our siblings’ childhood home. As my 50th birthday gift, he curated a selection of them being that they coincide with the first 5 decades of my life. I will also make note that with his vintage SI magazine collection gift, Pat threw in a Life magazine collector’s edition with Elvis and a Rolling Stones magazine with a Beatle on the cover because we both have rocked ‘n rolled since we could walk which was easy to do as our brothers and sisters brought us ahead of our time being older than us. The Beatles have been a favorite since the days we both were very young and their albums were being newly released. ( …Not to mention Paul McCartney's individual career and the band The Wings that he formed with his wife after the Beatles broke-up and all the other music Paul continues to create. ) For Pat, to this day, his appreciation and knowledge of each of the Beatles still goes above and beyond. It’s been cool to finally get a break from the overwhelming stress of the flood and take a closer look through this collection of historic artifacts 8 years after they were lovingly and thoughtfully gifted to me then stored away. In the past 8 years, I have added to my sports artwork including historic Reds baseball with players like Pete Rose that is linked below. I also still find all the music of the Beatles members interesting, and beautiful, and inspiring like I find a good deal of the figures in this illustrated collection with their stories of masterful skill, endurance, perseverance, survival, and enduring achievement against all odds or fomented opposition against them as the game is often known to go. The Beatles are known for their famous lyrics saying, “All You Need Is Love”, but maybe sometimes and in the case of the lasting power of this gifted collection of paper periodicals from the past perched parallel to the profuse pouring from the broken plumbing of a blown-out pipe, a little old-fashioned Irish Luck from the powers that be may help too. “The Irish Wake The Echos”  “The Irish Ran Wild”  Pat’s pride in his alma mater, Boston College, appears more than once in his curated collection. I have another older brother that went to Norte Dame. Nevertheless, no matter the discipline, team, or craft, appreciation for the Irish is inherent in all my family members I grew-up with and lives in our DNA. { I have noted our Irish ancestry in “Another American Dreamer with Irish Roots” which has links to more of my artwork and shines a little light on the life of our Irish family tree. }  …Speaking of American Dreamers: If you were alive in 1980, you may well know how the ecstatic excitement that united the US with perpetual pride in those days was inescapable then when the dream of the USA Men’s Hockey Team to become the victors of one of history’s most intense rivalries and beat the Russians became a reality in the 1980 Winter Olympics. “The U.S. Epic Hockey Team” on Sports Illustrated cover from December 1980:  The sportsmanship of sports was something that my parents and family members loved to follow when I was growing-up. My parents’ love of horses was also something that made them regular followers of horse racing as they often made the short trip across the river from Cincinnati into Kentucky where horse racing rules. They even invested in their own race horse at one point. I remember my Dad and Mom taking just me ( I guess all my brothers and sisters were busy with other activities at the time ) to see that horse being born.   The red-hot season of the 1990 Cincinnati Reds marked a winning year in my life as my first official date with my husband of 33 years this coming Valentine’s Day was to their first game in the spring of that first year of the 1990’s. I wrote some about that Wire-to-Wire World Series Winning Season and created some artwork of those 1990 Baseball Champs found in the blog linked below: "My Wire-to-Wire Summer with Twelve Stars and A Piece of American History"  An SI cover with a slice of the career of Pete Rose who sadly passed away in late September of “last year” I will say as of now since I am writing this on New Year’s Day 2025. I did some artwork and a video and a blog about him. I call all those creations of mine: “The Timeless Charlie Hustle and The Geometry of a Rose.” I created the artwork in March of 2017: "The Timeless Charlie Hustle and The Geometry of a Rose" I see Rose has a Phillies uniform on in this cover which isn’t a team I know much about, but some of my family members at that birthday party presentation that have resided on the East Coast for decades are Red Sox fans.  “The Magnificent Masters” …Golf ! I was pretty good at golf when I was younger. I’m not much into the scene these days where I prefer to spend my free time shuffling around my paintbrushes rather than my clubs.  Props to the females… They are Champions as a matter of course! With the first cover of the next 3, I remember my brother making mention of how legendary tennis champion “Chrissy” Evert and I share the same nickname. ...I will also add the color commentary that I really like the original red ribboned hat that Chrissy is sporting as well as Tracy’s and Nadia’s rainbow stripes.    The next 2 magazines share notes about our love of music which I wrote about above. The 1995 Life magazine gift includes an appreciation for Elvis, for the celebration of birthdays, and for the beauty of it all colored in Christmas red.  This Rolling Stone magazine that Pat included in his 2016 birthday gift was published in March of 2012 and says, “Paul’s Fresh Start”. ~ Today is New Year’s Day and I too am ready for a Fresh Start. Here's to all the wishes that we discover The New Year of 2025 to be wonderful and awesome, successful and peaceful, and most of all full of love as we all live our days, as Paul McCartney and his band The Wings sing, “With A Little Luck”. 
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This Thanksgiving Week of 2024 is bringing much love & joy filled with endlessly interesting and wonderful attractions for all my family to enjoy together in New York City where one of my sons lives. A trip to MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, was one highlight for me this visit where I experienced some of the world’s most famous pieces of art and captured a collection of photos:                     This time of year is a favorite for me as I look forward to the ongoing celebrations of the holiday season. A visit to NYC at Christmastime a few years back also brought a wonderful trip to another of the world’s great art museums: The Metropolitan Museum of Art where my Great-Grandfather’s artwork is exhibited. Some shared highlights from: The MET at Christmastime  This blog for August 2024 profiles and reflects on some new art that I just made along with a review of a collection of other pieces from this blog space that I started 8 years ago as 2016 began. An image of the new artwork is pictured above with more images and some process thoughts about the new piece and others found by scrolling below. The new piece of artwork sampled above incorporates the extravagant yet common and true-to-life Suffrage Era { the 1800’s and early 1900’s } extremely oversized hat styles that were worn to match the excessive clothing required for females in my Great-Grandmother’s day that I fashioned and added to my illustration of a current clothes model wearing a simple ocean wave printed tank-top that I just happened to order online. I spontaneously imagined, sketched, then painted this cross-era fashion figure with gratefulness for all the ancestors that came before us that won the long and hard-fought fight for a women’s right to vote and for the universal realization of the vital importance of weighing the female experience and valuing the viewpoint of women in every respect. I often think of how I’ve been told that my paternal great-grandmother was involved in The Suffrage Movement. I also often think of the only grandparent I knew, my paternal grandmother, who was widowed before her fourth son was born and managed to raise my Dad and his three younger brothers as a single parent. Born in 1902 and widowed at a young age, life demanded that my grandma navigate survival through the era of The Great Depression. The extreme challenges of her times and life’s circumstances necessitated that my grandma become a self-sufficient women in all ways including working full-time to financially support her four sons without neglecting fulling each and every other parental role by herself as the strong, intelligent, graceful, and loving person she was. As a part of my life from childhood into adulthood, the grandness of my grandma has always been apparent, and her ability to balance her nurturing, loving heart with the firm instillment of discipline, a hard work ethic, and the knowledge of the importance of committing to one’s studies remained obvious in her and in her sons. It has never been lost on me as my Dad often reminded me and my six older brothers & sisters that, in countless ways, it is due to my widowed grandmother’s masterful management of raising four young boys alone, with patient endurance through the great hardships of her time, into the successful professional men that they became that I, in my time, have been able to reap the good fortune and many privileges that I have known in my life. Needless to say, I am eternally grateful for my grandmother and the appreciation of her as I understand the foundational importance of valuing the reality of the essential power of women. It is with thoughts of my grandmothers and all those who have come before me that in my painting I colored the underside of the mostly red, white, and blue wide-brimmed hat with the blues gradating into aqua and then into a highlighted touch of the color green for growth, for nature, for health, for the heart chakra, for children and the hope for a non-toxic, clean and green nourishing planet for them to inherit, and of course for my ancestors who were Irish and immigrated to the U.S. across the seas from their motherland on the Emerald Isle. For the Irish, like other nationalities and U.S. immigrants in the past and today and not unlike the female sex in general, facing critical struggles and injustices became part of the journey to survive and in time to thrive in America. This ability to survive and then to rise above the status of being part of a discriminated or belittled population of people in both the old world and the new is one that I will always, in my heart and soul, celebrate and recognize in others as well as in myself. For me, seeing the importance of elevating and supporting the value of all humanity as well as recognizing the strength and wisdom of survivors is vital for all. The perspectives of survivors with the ability to persevere through life's challenges and dark places in time with the strength of spirit to imagine and seek a place to grow and create a better world is what America is made of. Some illustrations from an old fashion catalog in the era of "The Suffragette"   Like America’s original revolutionaries, the liberties that included the right to vote were part of a long and hard-fought fight for the Suffragettes. Women fighting for the right to vote had to promote their cause against men and against other women of their time that did not recognize the importance of a female voice or see the accounting of a female’s vote as having value. Fortunately in 1920, a mere 104 years ago, things changed thanks to the progress made by those who fought the status quo which, among many societal injustices, had legally suppressed women’s rights including the right for a women to exercise her voice at the ballot box. Below is an image I found online of a woman fashioned in her suffrage era attire dawning her extra large suffrage era hat which notes the important dates in time and the important 100th anniversary in 2020.   Following is a random canvas I filled out back in January of 2017 that I’ve had floating around my studio space. ~ The painted canvas was just a quick playing of forms that happened to capture my attention while I was sketching this suffrage era hat wearing female fashion figure. What drew my attention specifically was my quick, fine brushstrokes of swirling, scrolling cloud shapes that I saw reappearing on the sketch I was currently working on.  In my own way, the swirling cloud shapes I noticed on my old painted canvas for some reason made me think of the features of ancient architectural columns. In my mind, the swirling, scrolling, wavelike shape of the clouds brought to mind ancient Greek and Roman architecture. More specifically, it brought to mind the Ionic Order of Ancient Greek architectural columns known for their "volutes” which are the spiral, scrolling styled forms that distinguish Ionic columns. Knowing that columns of this style can be found throughout our nation as recreations of this ancient order and most profoundly all throughout The Nation’s Capitol ( for example, The U.S. Capitol Building, The Supreme Court Building, and The U.S. Treasury Building are all structured with Ionic Columns ), I decided to include subtle forms suggesting features that define Ionic columns on the boarder of my illustration. Here are a couple articles reviewing the orders of ancient architectural columns which describe how the Ionic Order columns from ancient times to present day U.S.A. are seen to have characteristics understood as distinctly and foundationally feminine in structure and design: Ionic Order    { *In addition to the swirling, scrolling, wavelike cloud shapes on the canvas above that brought to mind lonic Columns, I'll add an additional note that the quickly painted rising rose forms loosely played with also bring to mind a painting I did in the summer of 2016 inspired by a great-grandparent on my beautiful Mom's side of my family. My art reflections on my great-grandfather and his artwork in The Metropolitan Museum of Art can be found in the blog: "Sentimental Reminder" ~ "Seeds of Suns". } Following are some pictures of sketching out and then painting the catalog model wearing the new tank-top t-shirt I just ordered. In my sketch of the Summer 2024 catalog model, I added an imagined Suffrage Era hat design that I made-up in tune with the extravagant styles in the fashion catalogs from the days of The Suffragettes. Taking a cue from the times of the women’s suffrage movement, I fabricated on the female figure by drawing a big hat styled to the extreme which I then painted red, white and blue. I then created a background and boarder design with hints of the forms of Ionic Columns to frame the piece:   Little changes I notice in a few captured pictures during the process of painting can be found progressing or gradually changing through the series of the following pictures. From the beginning pictures through to the final few, some of the created border at the base corners change in form and the boarder at the top gradually expands in size and changes colors to revolve a tide-like form overhead that graduates through shades of greens and blues into darker or deeper shades of blue that then brings an under current of the range of purples that bleed into the centered spirals on top to become red in color.          “Hats On for Our Grandmothers, for Our Suffrage Era Ancestors, and for Ancient Columns of the Ionic Order”  Linked below are a couple other blogs with mention of my Dad’s Mom whose foundational, intelligent, strong, loving, and graceful presence before and during my time on this planet is to be credited with helping make many American lives beyond great: “Another American Dreamer with Irish Roots” “Spirits of Irish Immigrants”  More Thoughts on Ionic Columns and The Scrolling Shape of Spirals The review of Ionic columns and the distinction of their "volutes" or scrolling, spiral shapes made me think of another blog I did in March of 2017 that studies the shape of a spiral ( The Fibonacci Sequence, Phi, The Golden Ratio ) in my artwork and blog titled: “The Timeless Charlie Hustle and The Geometry of a Rose”. ( See the creative process in a Music Video link @ Cincinnati Reds & Bengals Art )     While creating this suffrage era hat illustration, I was reminded of another art piece that includes a big hat when my posted photo memories from my old “Tides of Eternity Art” page on facebook popped-up a 'time-hop' picture from 10 summers ago… An image of a sketchbook drawing from 2014:    After being reminded of the 10 year old sketchbook photo memory from 2014, I thought of some other artwork that I noted during the past 8 years of having this blog which I started using in the spring of 2016. Below are some of the paintings that came to mind because they also happen to include a large hat. ~ Here are a few of those pictured and titled with links to the dated blogs about them:          “Thoreau, Two Eternities, and the Autumnal Equinox” As I was finishing gathering this collection of pieces from the last eight years, I thought of another painting where the composition also has something along the lines of an archway like the new suffrage era hat artwork I just completed. This older painting pictured below from a 2017 blog is one that includes along the side a quote from Henry David Thoreau… “The meeting of two eternities, the past and future, is precisely the present moment." ~ Henry David Thoreau  We love watching the sunset slowly sweep across the wide spans of landscape from the view out our windows in our house on top of a hill overlooking the hills of Kentucky, the Ohio River, the city of Cincinnati alongside it, and all the bridges over and between them. From our view, in the wintertime around Christmas, the sun sets far left of the city into the boundless, beautiful horizon of the rolling hilltops of Kentucky and then incrementally makes its daily set slowly sweeping across the entire landscape and then the whole cityscape until it reaches into the hills of Mount Adams to the northeast of the downtown Cincinnati skyline. It is at that point setting over-top Mt. Adams where it reaches its farthest extension in the right corners of our window frames before it turns around and starts heading back to set over the whole length of the city and then into the hills of Kentucky again. Today, this June 20th, marks that furthermost Summer Solstice sunset over charming Mount Adams on the edge of the city that will cast a beautiful setting before slowly making its way back over all the hills to the other side of the broad landscape frame. It is still pretty amazing to me that throughout the year and all within our view, from the pivotal point of the Winter Solstice to the pivotal point of the Summer Solstice, we can literally see the world turn on its tilted axis, day by day and season by season, by watching the sun not only rise and fall but also by watching the wings of its sunsets move from side to side through our wide window panes and across the earthly landscape as well as across the ever-changing skies. Keeping an eye on the sky is my kind of entertainment and observing the wonderful, colorful sunset is my choice of a screen-free daily evening show. At its midpoint, during the Spring and Fall Equinoxes, from our view looking directly west, we find the sun setting with its rainbow of light in alignment with the Cincinnati Bengals’ stadium as it descends and sets just behind that city landmark on the west side of the cityscape around St. Patrick’s Day in March and then again around the Bengals’ home opener in September as it returns in that direction dressed in the fiery orange tones that the fall season brings. Below are a series of process pictures of an extra large ( 6' x 5’ ) painting inspired by the view out the windows of our home now that I did eight summers ago in the tighter quarters of our old home's makeshift studio space while in the process of packing-up our old house while our hill-top house we live in now was just finishing being built and just before we moved in. Now, after eight years and despite the fact that no painting or repeated snapping of photos can truly capture the sights or sunsets, I can certainly say that my anticipation then of the daily views and evening light show in the sky continues to shine above and beyond my expectations. Year after year, along with the clarity of observing the celestial cycle, another parallel reality that I consistently find pretty awesome is how green and expansive all the continually rolling hills are and how close they come-up just to the edge of the city. From our sights it appears as an infinite horizon of just layers and layers of green hill after green hill with the cityscape, like the fictitious Emerald City, sitting in a little pocket between them all. Happy Summer and Happy Solstice!!                 And finally a bittersweet memory I just came across from 8 years ago of our old dog, Moxie, who was always by my side in all the various processes of my creations and paintings and just about everything else I did in our old house who now looks down on us from The Rainbow Bridge.  ...and here's another warm memory incorporating the scene in one of my Christmas Card paintings for a holiday season a few years back when our hill-top house was brand new.  Read more about my following the sun artwork on my “About” page:
www.ChrissyBreslinSchroeder.com/About Below is painting I made on a large 2’ x 3’ canvas for my son’s and his girlfriend’s apartment. The creative process of the improvisational free-form approach to painting the composition at times had me thinking of the late, popular artist Bob Ross being that it is a landscape I simply made-up in my imagination as I went along creating with thoughts along the lines of, “A bright, happy cloud there, A touch of sparkle on the water here… ” while keeping in mind the sentiment of impressions and memories of our family’s Rocky Mountain vacation home where we continue to spend seasons vacationing together ever since the days when my son was very young. As a pop culture icon, Bob Ross is known for his thinking out loud insights and commentary as he works. Much of the time he expresses painting thoughts like mine about making a cloud or adding a reflective sparkle on the water ( …often adding the adjective “happy” before the name of an element. ) Sometimes his thoughts are expansive as he creatively expresses the recognition of the universal nature of things or of the heartfelt importance of relationships; other times his thoughts are pointed in a more self-reflective way often with a fun-loving sense of humor. Here are a few of the many true-to-life quotes I picked-out of an article titled “Happy Little Quotes” which lists a collection of Bob Ross comments noted from various episodes of his old television show “The Joy of Painting” where he is as much admired for his words of wisdom and his peaceful and playful optimism expressed in his distinctively calm voice during the process of creating as he is for his demonstrated profound skills at painting landscapes: "I guess I’m a little weird. I like to talk to trees and animals. That’s okay though; I have more fun than most people.” ~ Bob Ross "Talk to the tree, make friends with it.” ~ Bob Ross "Look around. Look at what we have. Beauty is everywhere—you only have to look to see it." ~ Bob Ross "It’s hard to see things when you are too close. Take a step back and look.” ~ Bob Ross "In nature, dead trees are just as normal as live trees.” ~ Bob Ross "Let's build a happy little cloud." ~ Bob Ross "It’s so important to do something every day that will make you happy.” ~ Bob Ross "Don’t forget to tell these special people in your life just how special they are to you.” ~ Bob Ross …. And along with my own thoughts of “bright happy clouds” and “sparkling waters” in the tone of Bob Ross, I will add to my collection of quotes and to my artwork itself my personal wishes which this painting brings for Love, Peace, and Happiness in all the places that we may go. ~ With Love Always from Mom.  The mountains have continued to bring inspiration to me through the years like in this painting I made for our Christmas cards many years ago when our sons were in grade school.  In addition to the continued inspiration found in mountain landscapes, my thoughts are also bringing to mind other posts I have made about Bob Ross that also touches on the previous blog posted here about the subject of bobbleheads. See: “Pieces in the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum” Here is a screenshot of a post from years ago recalling such Bob Ross and bobblehead inspirations that I remember sharing on my Cincinnati Reds & Bengals Art Facebook page of Bob Ross posed as a Cincinnati Reds bobblehead:  While in the process of writing this particular blog and recalling the Reds Bob Ross bobblehead, my son happened to share a photo that coincidentally continued to tie my stream of themes together. The photo is a capture he shared while on one of his Rocky Mountain trips this winter that displays his ever growing life-long love for the mountains just before painting a fresh layer of snow on the slopes with his skis while sporting a T-shirt with some old-school Reds love (Larkin #11) just like Bob Ross is sporting in the baseball collector’s piece pictured above.  Here are a couple more paintings of some snowy mountain love on top of the love of trees and animals that Bob Ross mentions in the quotes I listed which includes my son’s Bernedoodle, Gigi, who has a good amount of Bernese Mountain Dog in her blood and is as sweet as can be. The painting of Gigi is a gift I made for Christmas 2020 and the picture is from “The Joys Found in 2020” which has some of my dog paintings with pictures of both of my sons’ dogs that they each got that year.   Process Pictures A few pictures of my relaxed process of finding my way through the springtime landscape painting. ( This large canvas sat in my studio for months where I pulled it out every now and then. Now as I put together a camera roll of pictures, I see how each approach brought added colors and perspectives, currents and forms. )                                Years ago I was contacted by the founders of The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin about their interest in my bobblehead painting of “The Big Red Machine”, and I supplied a piece of my artwork for their collection. This past week I was asked by the Director of The Bobblehead Museum if I could answer a few questions about my piece for a profile they have interest in doing about the artwork in the museum. I felt that they were good questions that were posed that were worth taking time to reflect upon. Below are the inquiries and some of my thoughts: Questions: I wonder if you can tell me why you chose to depict these players as bobbleheads? Do you have any special memories or attachment to bobbleheads? My Answers & Reflections: The idea to paint “The Big Red Machine” as an interpretive piece of artwork to look like an imagined mosaic and the idea to represent the players in the picture as bobbleheads came almost simultaneously. Why depict these historic ball players as bobbleheads? That is a good question which I know I could answer in many different ways, but I think that essentially it was the concept of piecing things together that influenced my inspiration to imagine a painting of bobbleheads. The concept of piecing things together and the consideration of the way a mosaic is created by taking distinctive characteristics of various different objects and assembling them to be integrated together to create the wholeness of a new object is partly what lead to my inspiration to choose to use a collection of bobbleheads of a team of my childhood baseball heroes and make a complete picture of what is famously known as “The Great Eight” or with Sparky Anderson added, “The Big Red Machine”. In this integrative study of mine, by representing this team of ball players as bobbleheads, to a good degree I was recognizing that conceptually I was objectifying the individuals as figures to be broken down into parts and pieces so that I could do the work of imagined mosaic creating by arranging the pieces of each form to create the form of another bigger piece. With this understanding that a mosaic is made by putting together varying objects, it seemed fitting to me then that in the process of completing my painting, my objectification of the figure pieces be done in a spirited way of creating by playing with the animated athletes as a collection of dolls. Aside from the playful fun of creating with a collection of bobblehead dolls, the more inspirational part of these imaginings of a mosaic formed from the images of baseball player bobbleheads can be found in the colorfulness expressed in these figures. To me the colorfulness found in using bobbleheads to paint a picture allowed me to not only express the bright energy of these Major League legends, but it is also allowed me to depict the meaningfulness that the mosaic found artistic completeness through the distinct form and ethnically diverse full range of color found through each individual bobblehead image that when put together collectively in one united piece represents a vibrant picture of what American World Champions look like. I expressed more of these reflections on American ideals, diversity, and championship baseball here in my blog “Colorful Success” where I also listed some more of my projects and artistic studies through the subject of baseball and some of its best and most highlighted players that I knew from growing up and watching them play for my hometown. “Colorful Success” On this MLK Holiday Weekend in 2017, I will share one of my baseball art prints that I created four Januarys ago. It is a piece of art that I list in my Etsy shop as “Cincinnati Reds Big Red Machine Painted Bobblehead Mosaic” and it has grown to be my best selling print that sends me to the post office regularly for deliveries of continued incoming orders. My husband will clearly reason that part of the great sales success with my “Big Red Machine” art is because, as he says, “They never lose.” ; but, for me, the attraction and colorful beauty of this art subject has more historical meaning. As a child growing up in my hometown of Cincinnati in the 1970’s, this team of spirted ballplayers helped provide for me not only an understanding of an organization that my country clearly valued, but it also provided an example of what my country looks and acts like. It was through this team that I came to recognize and see what I was being taught in school at the time - - That the United States is a colorful “Melting Pot” comprised of people coming from diverse heritages and various nations around the world; and that, like “The Big Red Machine”, it is a collection of unique people finding common ground to gather for the sake of exercising their individual talents and visions as part of a unified whole. For this group of baseball players, it was through such obvious diversity and, of course, recognition that everybody plays a part and that the perspective of each position is needed, that this team was able to show itself as having the strength to become a legend worth celebrating. For me, as a ball playing eight-year-old in 1975, this collection of World Series champs of “America’s Pastime” represented a symbolic picture of my colorful country, The United States. This January, more than ever, I have grown to not take these idealistic views formed in my childhood for granted. I still admire "The Big Red Machine" and will forever celebrate the colorfulness of its success. On this day now in the middle of November in 2023, when reviewing this picture to think about the questions asked, I once again see how I was identifying my connection to it by recognizing that to some degree we all want to be like winners who can rise above loss, or elimination, or conflict, or struggle. Or maybe it could be that at times any one of us looks to envision a good team to be a part of or to be there to help shine light on and support for his or her cause, or spirit, or life even; but the reality often known is that conditions do not always reflect the glossy shininess of encapsulated spirit and vitality in the concrete way that this collection of triumphant “Big Red Machine” bobblehead collector’s pieces can. I’m sure that on another level this hopeful fun and pretend glorification that bobbleheads can bring was always another force behind my creation of this picture of repeated sole survivors of back-to-back Major League Baseball seasons so many years ago. In the same way that a child may play with a gathering of dolls or toys to project and create an image of a dreamed-up ideal, or maybe have them to represent a collective symbol of victors who were able to overcome and conquer adversity, or simply just take them to create a scene of figures in a mission accomplished, I similarly used bobblehead pieces of these solid World Series Champs to put together an enduring picture of imagined heroism.                                  Find the “Colorful Success” blog with links to many more baseball pieces and reflections here: “Colorful Success” …And find additional links to baseball artwork including more bobblehead teams in these blogs: “My Wire-to-Wire Summer with Twelve Stars and A Piece of American History” See another Reds bobblehead for the famous painter Bob Ross in the next blog: “A Bright Happy Cloud There, A Touch Of Sparkle On The Water Here” I also more recently did another piece about toy figurines found in the blog: “Canvas #12: Six Elements Plus Six Green Figurines” During this season I often hear comments about how Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier every year even starting as early as Halloween time. I guess that is why the word “Hallothanksmas” was created and continues to grow more and more popular. The expression “Happy Hallothanksmas” of course suggests that the Christmas season and its theming and marketing is now wrapped in with all the end of the year holidays starting in the early fall making Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas one big *Hallo-Thanks-Mas* feast. In some certain ways, “Happy Hollothanksmas” may be a fitting expression for me this year because though it is just nearing All Hallow’s Eve, Christmas is where my mind is. …And before I start seeing and hearing exclamations like “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” as the holiday season rolls in fast with accumulating *To Do* lists, parties and travel plans, I’m finding a little patch of space & time now to do one more piece in my art project that I explained here: Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox? ~ "TV Land", "Saturn", "December", and "Parrot Wallpaper". Of my ongoing collection of numbered canvases, this Canvas #15 is only the second one that I have done this year with the other one ( Canvas #14 ) painted back in the beginning of the year in January 2023. I note the timing of these canvas additions to this project because this piece is partly inspired by past reflections on 2023 and thoughts of a new year coming after the series of holidays on the horizon. In terms of calendars of all kinds and considering the holiday season that will mark the transition from the days growing in darkness to the pivotal point where the light of the day returns to be on the rise as the earth’s “new trip around the sun” begins again ( as well as my own personal “New Trip Around the Sun” that comes on my Christmas Day birthday ), it seemed fitting to make the animal in this picture a goat. A goat seemed fitting to me being that the goat is the symbol of the sun sign Capricorn that aligns with the celestial positioning where and when Christmas is celebrated along with other celebrations marking the season of light and the dawning of the birth of a new year. Reflections on this year 2023 so far and its history brought to mind many of the joyful memories I continue to collect as I am grateful that all years bring much for which to be thankful. On the less positive side, it also brought to mind various happenings in this world including far too many devastating events on this earth with the wildfires in Hawaii being one of them. It was with thoughts and memories of beautiful Hawaii that I proceeded with my fashion magazine project as I looked through my collection of them to see if I could find some styles of the tropics or maybe even a Hawaiian girl as a model. Though I did not have any luck finding a model figure looking or posing like I was imagining, it really didn’t matter to me because I had decided to make this canvas more of an abstract painting that I could mostly just create out of my head without referencing a fashion magazine. Nevertheless, I remained interested in coloring the figure with some distinct Hawaiian Island flair because I thought that style could fit with the hula hoop I was intent on giving the girl to represent a mineral element in this “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral ~ Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox” piece. As another mineral element for this themed *Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral* artwork, I thought that while the girl balances on a goat, the goat could be balancing on top of a floating ball - - so a big blue and green marbled ball serves as another mineral element for this composition. ( …As a unicycle rider in my youth, I have always loved balancing tricks. ) Finally, for the vegetable element, I figured the figure could naturally be suited-up in a bounty of botanicals including a ring of bright flowers the color of the sun around her head. Canvas #15: “Rings Around the Sun”  Below are some process pictures. - - Because I improvised on creating the figure and her posture from my imagination instead of referencing a picture of a fashion model from a fashion magazine, I sketched the subjects before painting and creating the rest of the piece. Sometimes I sketch a little before I paint and sometimes I do not do any preliminary sketching. The goat is also from my own imaginings - - a composite of various goat features. This time I did the composition on a large canvas board that I measured down to 8”x 10” to be consistent in size with the other canvases in this numbered series of paintings. ( I also do not usually sign my paintings before I paint, but that is how it went down this time as I was just creating and naming it all as I went. )   A little collection of old paintings from around the house that I am starting to gather as I begin to cycle out the canvases with summer season feels to bring in some paintings for the fall season…     Starting a little Jimmy Buffett tribute on the bar as I begin to get ready for our Labor Day party this year… Feeling sad about the news of his passing. Jimmy Buffett wrote so many beautiful songs along with all the renowned fun ones that have colored most all the years of my life. Thankful for all his poetic positivity that he left with us, always bringing feelings of relaxed reflection, happiness, and warmth. RIP my fellow Dec. 25th birthday twin. 💖 Pulled out a painting: “Parrot Wallpaper” with a Margarita Glass which today is making me think of him… #JimmyBuffet #Parrotheads #Margaritaville #TidesOfEternityArt  Notes from when I created this painting which is part of a series of canvases that I am working on over time: Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox? ~ "TV Land", "Saturn", "December", and "Parrot Wallpaper" |
AuthorI am a 'self-taught' artist who can hardly remember a day when I wasn't in the process of creating something... Thanks for visiting my site where I can share some of my work. Archives
January 2025
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