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Judith Monroe Posts

Finding a new path

There’s nothing like the thrill of adventure in your own backyard. I take regular easy hikes along the trails that run along Dry Creek near my house. And recently I discovered a new single track trail that someone forged and then carefully marked out with bits of yellow caution tape. 

Several weeks ago I began to see those bits of yellow tape tied to branches or sticks next to small trails branching off of the main official footpath. I went along a couple of those trails toward the creek, took a quick peek, and then went back to the main trail. Then I began to wonder if those little trails were actually connected to each other. I was pretty sure I had figured out where they started and decided to test out my theory on my next walk. The weather has been pretty rainy and I didn’t get a chance to go out to that area for a little while.

Then about a week ago, I finally had a chance to try out the new trail. I was kind of excited, and there were places where the trail wasn’t very clear and I had to look around for the next piece of yellow tape marking the trail. I didn’t have a lot of time that day, but I did manage to follow it all along it’s length, crossing and weaving along the main footpath.

I’ve had a couple more chances to walk that same new path this past week, taking photos and even enjoying some sunshine. I’m looking forward to more hikes watching the landscape evolve with the changing seasons.

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It’s Complicated

Skull with vines and rose

I have mixed emotions about Halloween. On the one hand, I have fond memories of being a child and dressing up as all kinds of things, getting scared at haunted houses and savoring candy for longer than most kids did. (I still take my time with whatever sweets I get!) When my kids were little, we did the same thing, taking them trick or treating, having fun with costumes, and being careful not to eat too much candy at once.

I’m not sure at what point certain aspects of the holiday began to bug me. I grew in my spiritual journey, and I began to experience some supernatural things, plenty of great things like being given images for artworks and learning about miraculous healings. But then I also bumped up against real evil and found myself contending for someone else against demonic oppression. It’s not my story to tell but I learned that seriously evil stuff exists, and some of the aspects of Halloween hit a bit too close to reality to make me entirely comfortable with images of witches and evil spirits now.

You might wonder what in the world am I talking about when I myself create imagery relating to death, using skulls and dead creatures to produce my artworks. Isn’t that a lot like the pot calling the kettle black? It’s true that I do not shy away from death in my artworks. But you might notice that there is also always something more in my works and that often the image is more about life and transformation than death. It’s funny to me that people have found some of my own artwork “creepy,” because I never think of it that way myself. So, I’m sure that I see other folks things through my own filtered views. At some point I might get past my discomfort with Halloween, or maybe I will just sit with the discomfort and be careful not to jump to any conclusions.

I know that most people are just having fun with Halloween, and I do sometimes, too. I certainly don’t judge anyone else for having fun with Halloween; it’s not really a big deal and I’ll just keep muddling through it each year. It’s just one of those complicated things, maybe you’ve got something like that in your life, too.

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Seasons Change

Mixed media artwork with cicada and orange flowers inside textured framework.

Probably one of the most interesting things about this piece is that it was originally part of another artwork. “Seasons Change” is 12″ wide and 16″ high but it came from a much larger piece that was 40″ x 40″. I have said goodbye to some of my older larger pieces (that are too big for traveling in my current car!) and I had them cut down to more manageable sizes. If you look at the background image in this artwork, you can see the ghost of a large dragonfly in the background. That dragonfly, the palm frond texture and some butterflies were all in that larger original artwork. This reminds me that in art as in life, sometimes we have to build on what came before.

Learn more about “Seasons Change.”

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Love Notes from Nature

These are my newest little artworks, perfect for showing your love of nature.

Whenever I step outside, there’s always some small piece of nature that catches my eye. Stepping out my front door, I have planted lots of succulents that just give me a warm fuzzy every time I see them. There are so many little things that we can find in nature that can provide that little thrill, and I’ve come to think of them as nature’s little love notes to us.

So how perfect that I’ve been able to capture some of those little natural gems in photographs and then pair them with a small heart shaped piece of wood? It started with wanting to send a few special little Valentines, and then if I’m going to make a couple, I might as well make more, right?

I’ve only made two dozen of these little hearts, some are already gone – and I’ll be sending a few as gifts myself – so there aren’t too many left, but if you message me I can email what is currently available so that you can give a little love note to someone special, or make it a gift for yourself! At only $25 each (plus tax & shipping as appropriate) they are sure to be gone fast.

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Me & YouTube

Did you know that I have a YouTube channel? Years ago it started out as just something that I tried out, to see if I could shoot and post videos – I know, funny – and now it’s developed into something more.

My husband and I have a friend who has a YouTube channel that had kind of blown up (in a good way) and the idea of seeing if I could build my own channel was floating around in my mind. Then in Spring 2020, I needed to put together demo videos for my suddenly online classes, and I was so glad that I had already played a bit with creating videos. So necessity and dreaming came together and all of the videos I made for my classes, I also published on my YouTube channel.

At this point, my channel is still tiny and I need your help so that I can build it into an income stream – I need YOU to SUBSCRIBE to my channel! Before I can begin to monetize, I need one thousand subscribers, and each one of you counts. Here’s a video that shows you what you can expect as a subscriber.

When I post videos, I’m posting all different aspects of my life, including tutorials on photography and mixed media art, as well as flights in our small plane as we travel, hiking, visiting art museums and galleries, and all the aspects of my life as an artist.

If you’ve got something you’d like to see a video about, let me know, and maybe I’ll post it!

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Still Standing

Hi there! I know, it’s been a little while. See, there was this thing that happened, and then another thing, and another, and well, here we are.

Some of you know that besides being a working artist, I am also a teacher. Since 2009, I have been an adjunct professor in the Photography Department at Sierra College in Rocklin, California. I primarily teach a beginning class, with more than half of the class taught in an actual darkroom. Sometimes I also get to teach an intermediate class which is only film and darkroom work, which I truly love.

In March of 2020, we were about halfway through the semester and I was teaching both classes, fully in the darkroom. And then we went to distance learning. Challenging is a bit of an understatement, but we all fumbled our way through the rest of that semester, switching to digital work, which is not the same.

Summer of 2020 I spent, along with so many of my colleagues, learning how to properly teach online, including figuring out how to teach the elementary class – which must include a darkroom element to meet student learning outcomes. Thankfully I work with an awesome group of photographers and we all came together as a team and created an online unit that instructs students on how to build a pinhole camera, a minimal home darkroom and alternate process chemistry called Caffenol to meet that darkroom requirement for the course.

A coffee colored close up image of a succulent plant.
One of my Caffenol prints, created with a pinhole camera, as a sample for my online photo students.

Fall of 2020 was my first semester of properly teaching online, which includes building a class in our school’s learning management system. Imagine taking sixteen weeks worth of instruction, typing parts of lectures in a readable format, curating videos and creating demo videos as well. I was creating the class, week by week, working a bit ahead of my students, while interacting with them as well. At one point in the semester, I was about three weeks ahead of my students, which was great.

And then we lost my mother-in-law. My three week lead vanished and the rest of the semester I felt good to finish by Friday what my students would need on Monday. We had other struggles in our home and needless to say, there was no time for art making for several months.

But after that semester, I had a six week break and from that point on, my course would only need updates and tweaks and I could teach two classes and breathe again. I even started making art again and had an exhibit at Sparrow Gallery in April 2021.

Next week I’ll be making a trip to Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale that was originally planned for April 2020, and I am so looking forward to it.

Thanks for sticking with me, I think things are going to get better again.

 

 

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Creative Compulsions

What the heck just happened to the past two weeks? Good thing I have a reminder set on my phone to do this or months would go by between posts. Oh, wait… well, I’ve turned over a leaf and it’s different now.

Life is getting back to normal here in Northern California again, at least as much as possible after disaster hits. It started raining, put out the fire and cleared out the smoke; flood warnings were issued and today has been mostly sunny. This will be my first Friday in a few that I don’t have an art reception, but that’s okay. The community college campus where I teach has been re-opened after almost two weeks of being closed for poor air quality and Thanksgiving break and subsequently the end of semester stress is thicker than usual, but next week is finals week and then we will all take a long winter’s break.

I have, however, picked up a new creative compulsion. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, most of us creative types truly need to create and often find multiple outlets. Ask my husband and he will tell you that if I’m not creating, I am simply not a nice person to live with. At any rate, one of the last little house I made for the “Home for the Holidays” show in Folsom had an underground portion that I made roots for out of wire. I was pretty happy with it but then I wondered if I could make a tree out of wire…

“Firmly Rooted” mixed media artwork by Judith Monroe

So I started playing with wire, making little trees and mounting them on polished rocks collected by my great-grandfather. (Don’t worry, there are really a lot of those rocks and Grandpa would love seeing art made with them.) I simply find these little trees so satisfying to create. They just come to life in my hands and I am having so much fun making them. Before I knew it I had a pretty good grove growing and now there are some available at Little Relics, my friend’s boutique in Midtown Sacramento. I also have some at the Ridley Gallery at Sierra College for their annual fund raiser, so you can stop by there if you’re on campus. I’m not sure how long I will keep this up, but if you’re interested in having a tiny tree, get in touch now!

Wire tree sculptures by Judith Monroe

Oh yeah, I’m also going to be painting live at Bridgeway Christian Church this weekend, and that’s a different kind of creative compulsion but maybe  I’ll save that to write about later.

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Whirlwind

It has been nearly two weeks since my last update and the whirlwind continues.

On Tuesday I delivered a whole bunch of little houses to the Gallery at 48 Natoma in Folsom, then went home to edit rough drafts for the one paper my Elementary Photo students have to write in the course of the semester. When I went to class, I administered a midterm but didn’t do the planned demo because I couldn’t really speak.

I have felt like I’ve been fighting off some virus thing for weeks now and it has finally caught up with me. I will be at the reception Friday night, regardless, but I’m just trying to rest as much as possible until then.

And then there’s the smoke. If you’re not in the Sacramento area you may not know, but the huge fire in Northern California right now is about an hour and a half north of us and weather patterns being what they are, we have been living under a thick blanket of smoke for about a week now. This doesn’t help the respiratory virus that I’m dealing with and I’m not entirely sure what symptoms are from which thing at the moment. At any rate, the air quality is so poor that classes were canceled at Sierra College where I teach yesterday and today, which means I can’t work sick, like I had planned. (It’s just so late in the semester I couldn’t deprive my students of the lab time!) But my smoke challenges are nothing compared to all that some have suffered from the fires in California right now.

If you’re the praying sort, prayers for rain here would be much appreciated.

mixed media house art by Judith Monroe
“Pollinating Dreams” is part of the “Home for the Holidays” show at the Gallery at 48 Natoma in Folsom, opening Friday Nov 16, 2018. (mixed media on wood 10″x11″ by Judith Monroe)

At the same time on the art front, I have been wonderfully overwhelmed by all the positive responses that I’ve been getting from folks when they see the photos of my new little house artworks! I had done some of these sculptural pieces several years ago but hadn’t pursued them much. About a year ago, I had randomly emailed the curator for the Gallery at 48 Natoma and she had instantly responded that my house works that she saw on my website would fit well into this show that she had titled “Home for the Holidays,” noting that it was really a home themed show at the holiday time of year. So I was given a reason to create new works in this vein, which I was happy to do.

For those of you in the area that have been eagerly awaiting seeing these new little artworks, I am eager to see you, too! I will be at the gallery this Friday night from 6 p.m. til 8 p.m. 

mixed media butterfly art by Judith Monroe
“The End of the World” will be on exhibit at the Unitarian Univeralist Society of Sacramento beginning Friday Nov 23, 2018 (mixed media on wood 30″x30″ by Judith Monroe)

Oh yeah, AND then there’s NEXT WEEK: on Tuesday I will be delivering another show to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento, with an artist’s talk and reception NEXT FRIDAY, from 5:30 p.m. until 7 p.m. and I would love for you to spend part of your Thanksgiving weekend with me!

Because some of us apparently don’t know how to look at calendars when agreeing to do exhibits.

But it’s all good because they are completely different bodies of work and I’m one of those artists who couldn’t stop creating if my life depended on it. Really. Some of you know that my life actually depends on me continually creating, but that’s a post for another day.

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Embracing Chaos

 

My worktable is devolving into chaos and I am simultaneously frightened and exhilarated. 

Sort of like my life.

I have been avoiding – consciously and unconsciously – writing and publishing updates. It requires a certain amount of effort to present a polished professional persona and I guess I just haven’t quite been up to the task for a while.

This morning my phone reminded me once again that I should publish an update and then, instead of ignoring it, I thought, “Yeah, okay, maybe I can do that, but different.”

I’m going to try to just post updates, not necessarily polished and professional, but honest and at least in touch with you all.

So here I am, fighting a cold, furiously creating under deadline and thinking I have no time to be sick. I’m leading a ten hour field trip tomorrow, including about six hours of hiking and photographing, so I’m hunkering down today, trying to rest and eating Zicams like candy, hoping I will have the energy to inspire students tomorrow. At least the weather looks like it should be pretty nice and not raining like it was last year.

I’m actually pretty excited about the show I’m working on. It’s one of two shows that I will have up at the same time because I’m not always good at looking at my own calendar and I just said, “Yeah, that would be great!” About a month ago, it hit me that the field trip class and both shows are all essentially happening at once and it just became do or die at that point. I wasn’t even sure I would get to go to one of my receptions until I got a sub for the final critique session for the field trip class. I’ve never been so tickled to be able to attend my own reception.

If you’d be tickled to be there, too, it’s at the Gallery at 48 Natoma in Folsom on Friday, November 16th, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

And now I have to get back to work, since I’m not done making art for that yet!

 

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Curiouser and Curiouser

I have to confess that I am a collector. I come from a long line of collectors and I really try to control my collecting, but there it is nonetheless. I was talking about collecting stuff to my brother one day and he expressed that he had always wanted a Cabinet of Curiosities to hold his own collection. I thought a bit and agreed, “Oh yes, that would be quite wonderful!” A special place for all my unique things would make the collection a positive thing rather than a habit to be confessed. Somehow naming things as curiosities and creating a space for them changes how they are perceived.

skull, moth, curiosity, collage
New Life, photo based mixed media on 14×14″ wood panel by Judith Monroe

Suddenly all the odd little things that I gather and bring home are bestowed with a higher status. They are labeled as curiosities and are organized and photographed and put together in ways that are pleasing and meaningful, giving them greater value. A nest that fell out of a tree is no longer just garden debris but is now a piece of natural history or a metaphor for a stage of life. Dead insects are invaluable jewels, butterflies become symbols of transformation, and fallen birds are reminders to make the most of our brief lives.

Cabinets of curiosities were first popular during the Renaissance; cabinets were not necessarily a piece of furniture, but could be a room or a whole building. This month, I am exhibiting a small portion of my collection of curiosities in the form of artworks, some presented as individual specimens, and others put together into dioramas of a sort, in the tradition of the collectors who first created cabinets of curiosities. Some of the specimens I present are more mundane and from my local explorations, others are more exotic and have traveled great distance to become part of my collection.

These kinds of collections have historically been brought together to spur the imagination and stir curiosity and wonder, and thereby learning. So you are invited to carefully inspect each artwork here, to reflect on the secrets that are revealed and to imagine where each thing came from and what it means. Perhaps you will even be inspired to start a collection of you own or simple add to one you’ve already started.

 

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