ART AT THE TABLE II AWARD

Four Honorees, Mary Franz, Stephen Shapiro, Ramona K. Davies and David Campos were given an award for their contribution to Bethany Center and Ruth's Table.  Ruth's Table was named so because of the artist, Ruth Asawa.  Her gift of her art table and her idea to meld art and creativity to bring the community of all ages together, gave the center its name.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to make the award.  It's main center is from Ruth Asawa's stainless steel sculpture at the Embarcadero in San Francisco, that I tried to replicate in Japanese Masa Rice Paper.  I was given a deep shadow box to place it in.  I added the Ruth's Table logo floating in the center of the origami fold and the title of each recipient below.  The titles were placed on beveled mat board with an additional mat board and 3 more pieces of acid free papers...each within the one below.

One of the finished awards.

Preliminary pieces before the final folds on Masa paper. I had to make a few in different sizes to see the amount of space it needed to fit into the shadow box.  The one on the left has 10 main points and the one on the right has 13.  I finally made it with 12 points to be honest with the original.

Fascination with Fascinators

On June 14th, Ruth's Table with the Bethany Center had ART AT THE TABLE II event at the Foreign Cinema Restaurant.  A silent auction for wonderful art pieces, to benefit the organizations, was had, as well as awards to four honorees for their contribution to Bethany Center and Ruth's Table.  Aiko Kuneo, daughter of Ruth Asawa made all the table center pieces with her wonderful Fascintator creations.  Above we are all posing - Megumi, Me, Aiko,  top - the Executive Director of Bethany Center, Jerry Brown, Margie Ramirez and Monica - wore our own Fascinator creations to the event.

Aiko and one of my favorite Fascinators made with buttons...Aiko is planning another Fascinator workshop and then maybe a High Tea event with everyone wearing their Fascinators....won't that be fun?

Ala, black and white dots...

Silk flowers

Sticks and things....

Buttons....

Squash never looked so good!

Black feathers and red fabric flower....

A bird in the hands....one in the bush

Zippers galore....

Fancy netting.....

Ruth's Table Retrospective Show

On Friday, June 1, Ruth's Table gave a wonderful reception for a Retrospecitve show.  Aiko Cuneo, Monica Lee, Tomoko Lipp and I are featured.  All of us had something to do with the art program that Ruth's Table gives to the community with the leadership of Lola Fraknoi and her assistant Megan Coss.  We had so much fun with all the people who came to the event.  They participated in a communal art project that came together at the end of the evening.  These were flowers given to me by Lola, beautiful peonies and the tulips are from my thoughtful friend Megumi. 

This was the wall for Monica and me...

With a collection of recovered zippers, I made a collage of them in one frame and put finished zipper pieces that Monica and I  made in the other..I used a heavy zipper around the frames as a support....The center gold zipper flower is one we made for the VIP's who attended the reception of Ruth Asawa's film documentary of her life showed at DeYoung Museum.

Monica laid an old pattern paper as her base ground and added pieces of her recovered fabrics and added sewing implements to indicate what was used to make the totes, as supports, I surrounded the frames with the webbing we used for the handles of some of the tote bags. These totes are Monica's.

Tomoko, Lola, Aiko, me, Megan, Monica..we are standing in front of Tomoko's tree of newspaper flowers made by many friends of Ruth's Table lead by Tomoko.

Tomoko and I in front of the beginning of the other communal project.

Aiko's communal collage project completed.

I will add more photos after the other communal project is put together....

Maker's Faire

Lots of people and lots of stuff to exercise your creative juices.  This years Maker's Faire was huge!

Lots of cotton candy around too!

FabMo's booth of Make and Take

What to do with zippers?  How about a hat!

Finished the weekend at Ruth's Table at Monica Lee's workshop making zipper flowers  There are the ones made by the participants.....good job!.

Donna Seager...Art of the Book

Two of my girlfriends and I stole a few hours and took off to see two shows in Marin.  The Donna Seager Gallery in Mill Valley was one and the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art was the other.

Sometimes, you just have to do what you want to do and leave the small stuff behind.  We hit a wonderful sunny day in Marin and left the fog and cold in San Francisco.  It re-energized us.  We were happy to have gone.  Here is a snap of the show headline with a piece by Lisa Kokin made with sewn leaves on book pages twined with wire..  The other pieces in the gallery are fantastic too!

Marin Museum of Contemporary Art

 The museum has a show until the 26th of May called The Altered Book Show.  This is their third annual and it is great.  Each one of the pieces are being auctioned (silent) while on exhibit and the proceeds are to benefit the museum.  The show is exhibiting over 125 wonderful pieces.

by Bonnie Kuhr

by Sandra Taylor

Turkish book by Cindy Lee

A starbook made with pages from another book by Carrie Galbraith.

by Dolores Gray

by Kristi Stewart

Life Drawing

I think it has been almost 52 years ago when I had my last life drawing class.  I thought I would try my hand at it again.  Wow, it was really difficult.  These are my attempts...I hope I can get better.

First quick pencil sketches...

My attempt with a brush.