Author: Joy Murray

I'm a 60 year old artist in Memphis, Tennessee. I spend my life trying to catch stories, give them form, color and light, then send back out into the world.

Box Turtle

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Box Turtle

Shoo Rayner, the exuberant British illustrator, did a great lesson on staying inside the box — or getting the box in your head.   Draw hundreds of boxes!  Draw, draw, draw!  I took his advice.  I think taking time to draw has made me pace better and not get mover’s hysteria or extreme fatigue and arthritis flare ups.  I’ll see how it works moving day — the day after tomorrow!

It hasn’t been all packing and drawing, though. I finally finished Mr. Beardsley, a grandpa doll I’ve been working on for my friend Sara, a graphic & fabric designer at Saraink, and her son little Lincoln.  My husband was NOT the model — he just happens to have a beard.

My husband Jim checking Mr. Beardsley for huggability

Little Lincoln is only 17 months old and is already almost as tall as him mom.  Good thing Mr. Beardsley is rugged.

Sara & Lincoln & Mr. Beardsley

Now all the sewing supplies are packed (along with a few more unfinished projects).  Tomorrow the big journal and colored pencils go into a box and I’ll  have just the journal in my purse and the pens and pencils there — a mere half dozen.  I think I’ll survive.

 

 

Moving and drawing

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I’ve found drawing to be a nice sort of meditation during these days before I move.  I’m going to have a much smaller studio space but a much bigger heart and head space.  All my life I’ve doodled and talked about drawing. Now at 51, I need to start walking my talk.

Metallic ink & colored pencil

I have a bit of mixed feeling about my skills, so I figure one good thing about having a blog is that it can give me a deadline.  I can go ahead and show my work, and get over it, so I can move forward.  I’m posting these ink and pencil drawings because I had such fun doing them — the repetition of pencil strokes and pen lines are strangely (and wonderfully) soothing.  Tone and texture builds up and suddenly my scribbles actually describe something — for better or worse.

pencil interpretation of Claudia Nice's ink drawing

I’m heartened by all the art journals that are now posted on line.  When I get through moving, I think I’ll do some posts directly from my journal — bad handwriting and all.  There’s a certain magic homeliness to hand written script now that our lives are drenched with technology.  I’m not trying to make any big statements with my art right now, but I do believe that the arts — writing, music, stories, drawing, and painting — are democratic and an asset in every life.  It shouldn’t be left entirely to professionals.  We see a lot of beautiful and skilled work in our lives and it makes us feel we can’t possibly do it.  But by not learning to use the arts as amateurs, we deny our souls these avenues of communication.  Even if my art is scribbly and off-key, it provides me with a way of describing life and seeing it better.  And it’s fun.

ink tree

Let yourself have some fun today.

Visionary Art of Dan Rhema

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I posted a review of I Close My Eyes to Sleep, an artist’s ebook,  on my Chronically Inspired website, but wanted to share it here, too.  The art is wonderful/wonderous.

http://chronicallyinspired.com/2011/10/28/visionary-art-of-dan-rhema/

The Turtle Rider

Posted in Art Doll, cloth doll, disability art, doll, Fabric Art, Harper's Playground Art AuctionLeave a comment

Like magic, The Turtle Rider is ready.  I took her out into the backyard for some pictures.  She probably deserves a better pedestal but she seemed content.   The green and red boot on her leg is a turtle-shell patterned brace.  I think she’s heading to Harper’s Playground.

Thanks to my friend Lynne for the great fabric!

I signed it on the bottom, which I’ve painted in a mixture of brown and copper, so I wasn’t able to photograph it very well, but you get the idea:

The Turtle Rider will be auctioned off at the Harper’s Playground Art Auction on Friday, September 30th at Disjecta studio.  You can read more about it here on an earlier post.

Well, now that The Turtle Rider has appeared like magic, I wonder if the studio will clean itself up like magic?

My studio exploded!