inspiration

Figure Drawing Practice & Coming Home To Myself

| WildTomato

Earlier this year, I started attending a figure drawing session at Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica. For a couple of months I attended weekly, then took a break for the summer, and came back this fall again for weekly sessions.

I will be posting more selections from my work as I look back at these drawings (now sitting in a pile on the floor of my studio or in a large drawing pad), but here are five from yesterday’s session.

If you’ve been following my Instagram or Facebook posts, you’ll know that I had a weeklong period of rest during October, brought on by a serious respiratory virus that knocked me down completely. I found myself feeling extreme gratitude for even one breath. Everything slowed down. I could not “do” anything except focus on breathing for several days.

The gift was that I became aware of a deeper current running through my life and my work right now. I remembered the reason I make art. I felt my soul’s hunger for the food of nourishment provided by PLAY, which is the quality that led me to my visual art practice in the first place, back in 2013. Continue reading →

Announcing: My Gettysburg 2017 Residency

| WildTomato

Last September, I decided to create my own artist residency at Gettysburg National Park. I had been a finalist for a sponsored residency, and I told myself if I applied a second time and wasn’t accepted, I would do it anyway. So that’s what happened, and in so many ways, it has turned out to be exactly the kind of inspiring experience I – and my creative process – thrive on.

You can see and read more about the unfolding of this process here, but the reason I’m writing this is to announce that I am returning to Gettysburg this summer! What started as a mention, a pipe dream, is swiftly becoming reality. Here are the events confirmed so far:

First Friday Pop-Up Show & Artist Talk – Friday, August 4, 2017, 5pm to 8pm, Grant Building, 12 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg.

Light refreshments and Exhibition, 5pm to 8pm, Artist Talk 6:30pm to 7pm. Presenting illustrations created during a 30-day residency in Gettysburg in 2016: Battlefield & Beyond. Plus, a public interactive textile created during exhibition of this work in California.

Event made possible through generous support from Lynda Taylor, Monica E. Oss, and J. Jay Mackie of Gettysburg.

Youth Sketchbook Journaling Summer Camp at Adams County Arts Council – Observe and record the world.  This unique camp combines drawing and writing to create expressive journal pages with a visual story on every one. You will work with various media and venture outdoors to create Gettysburg sketches. Ages 10 to 13. Monday, July 31 through Friday, August 4, 9am to noon. Register here.

Hope for the Late-Blooming Creative: adult creativity workshop at Adams County Arts Council. Tuesday, August 1, 6:30pm to 9pm. Contact Adams County Arts Council to register.

Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to hear about other spontaneous events while I’m in Gettysburg. I’m looking forward to a collaboration with Destination Gettysburg, maybe doing some sketch crawls, creativity jumpstart sessions…who knows? I’ve learned to embrace all the pleasant surprises in the beautiful compost of life.

Before and After: Gettysburg-inspired Community Quilt in Half Moon Bay

| WildTomato

Today was finally “Uninstall Day” for my Gettysburg in 2016 installation at Half Moon Bay Library. It had been extended by two weeks, and I was excited to see how FULL the jar of fabric squares was today. Visitors were invited to write their responses to the excerpt from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address presented on a muslin painted panel above them.

And now, my work is to make these squares into a community quilt of our own words, in 2016, resonating with Lincoln’s ideas in the present moment. I have some sewing to do!

“The Unfinished Work” – words excerpted from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
Community Quilt prompts
Assorted responses to Community Quilt
Before…
…and after!

Thoughts on the power of our stories

| WildTomato

death-valley-sketchbook-1

If you’ve followed me on Instagram (@drlisachu), you’ve seen pages from my daily illustrated journal practice called “Before 10am”, which I’ve kept since July 2016…that’s over 150 consecutive days so far! I have kept a written journal for many years of my life, but only recently, in 2013, did I start playing with blank pages of a sketchbook, permitting not only words and sentences to appear on the page, but also colors, lines, shapes, scribbles, collage, and other experimental images. This liberating practice has led me and followed me through the daily routine of home life, to wilderness adventures in several national parks, and everything in between. This one new habit has changed my life by deepening my observations of the world around me, and slowing me down each day to reflect on what I have experienced. It has also given me an object to share with others, and a way of connecting with people around the world via social media.

I just returned from a road trip to Death Valley National Park, where I celebrated my birthday. While there, I learned that “Timbisha” is the Shoshone name for their home (which we call “Death Valley”). The word “Timbisha” refers to the sacred red color of the rocks in the area, and symbolizes the future, or the way forward. As Park Ranger Alexandra, a geographer who led a brief program in one of the colorful canyons in Death Valley, shared various theories on the formation of the canyons, she also said that many of the Shoshone stories of this place are stories she is not allowed to tell. Continue reading →

Yosemite Series: Day Eight

| WildTomato

Day 8: Geo-Mythology, Ranger Karen, and Lisa-Chu-rri Sauce

I am up before my 5:45am alarm again. Today’s breakfast menu is hash browns, scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and the leftover black bean and corn salad from last night’s dinner. I find out Mary Lou has never made hash browns from boxed or frozen potatoes…only by grating fresh ones.

“Trust me, it’ll work,” I say. We have picked up a carton of dehydrated shredded potatoes from Yosemite Lodge, and I am ready to go at them, testing my hash brown flipping skills on a larger scale than I’ve ever done before. The skillets we have are the size of backyard garbage can lids. The spatula is the size of a Kindle reader. Mary Lou is a skeptic all the way until the moment she tastes the cooked hash browns. Continue reading →

Illustrated Artist’s Way excerpt — The Virtue Trap

| WildTomato

Rainy day. This morning before I sat down to draw, I picked up my copy of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I received my paperback copy in 1993, as a high school graduation gift. She was an actress; he was a university chemistry professor and my dad’s PhD advisor. Both of them came to my graduation ceremony, as they were good friends of my parents and had no children of their own.

Continue reading →

Curiosity and the Importance of Images

| WildTomato

Well, I am in love.

I stumbled upon a description of a new batch of images released by the Wellcome Collection in the UK.

Engravings and colored illustrations from old books continue to fascinate me.

And today, taking a look at medical and botanical images from as early as the 14th century, I am reminded of the importance of our curiosity throughout human history.

Continue reading →