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Judith Monroe Posts

Artist Trading Cards

Once a month I get together with other visual artists at my church (if you’re a Sacramento area believing artist, contact me for an invite!) We’ve been doing visual meditations on scripture when we get together and I was inspired to suggest that we start making artist trading cards based on those meditations. So we gave ourselves the homework of creating artist trading cards and bringing them back to trade with each other this month. Tonight is the night we get back together again, so today I made my cards. (Note to my students – yes, I procrastinate, too!)

I am so happy with these cards that I didn’t really want to let them go, so I have scanned them at high resolution, allowing me to do other things with them later. I’m not exactly sure what that will be yet, but I’ve got ideas percolating and time will tell which ones really work out. At any rate, I’ll start with sharing them here, along with the scripture that inspired them below.

“Rush of Wings” Ezekiel 3:13, mixed media artist trading card by Judith Monroe

 

“Sweet as Honey” Ezekiel 3:3, mixed media artist trading card by Judith Monroe

 

“Whether They Listen or Not” Ezekiel 3:11, mixed media artist trading card by Judith Monroe

And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.

Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them. You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel— not to many peoples of obscure speech and strange language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate. But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.”

And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen.”

Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me a loud rumbling sound as the glory of the Lord rose from the place where it was standing. It was the sound of the wings of the living creatures brushing against each other and the sound of the wheels beside them, a loud rumbling sound. The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord on me. I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Aviv near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days—deeply distressed.

Ezekiel 3:1-15

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Seeing Visions

“High Hopes,” “Moving On,” and “Mobile Home,” by Judith Monroe (photo transfers, ephemera, color pencil, acrylics & wax pastel on 8×8″ wood panels)

Sometimes images just come to me, like visions given to a prophet. That is how these shoes with nests came to me, after seeing the call to artists for Inner Soul, a show with shoe themed art. Somehow the juxtaposition seemed fitting. In a way, some people have only their shoes for a home, if they even have that. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write about this but there are no easy words for the subject of homelessness. The very thought that some people have no home or place to belong simply makes my heart ache, so the least I can do is to donate three pieces of artwork to help promote awareness and support for those less fortunate than I am.

Next Saturday (after the July 4th holiday) is the silent art auction benefiting Joshua’s House, a facility providing hospice care for the homeless in Sacramento. I’m praying that you can join me in helping to provide comfort and dignity to those among us who are homeless and terminally ill. You can learn more about Joshua House and how it came to be here.
Inner Soul – Silent Art Auction – Saturday, July 8, 2017, 5 to 8 p.m.

Hosted by Uptown Studios, 2415 23rd Street, Sacramento CA (916) 446-1082

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Ready, Set, Show

I’ve been so preoccupied this month with creating artwork, that I have forgotten to keep all of you updated on it! I’ve been working on a new Specimina set for the 20/20 Show at Kennedy Gallery in Sacramento. It’s been an exciting thing, coaxing these little gems into existence, and I’ve been documenting it along the way, so you can watch for a video of the entire process soon. You can see most of the bits and pieces of the process by viewing my videos on my Facebook page.

 

I’ve just finished the varnish, and all that’s left is putting on the hanging hardware, signing and then scanning them all. I’ll be delivering them all next week and then I hope to see you at the opening reception on Thursday May 11, from 6 to 9 p.m. This will be your chance to get first pick, so you won’t want to miss out on that night! There will also be a reception on Second Saturday May 13, from 3 to 10 p.m. that is always lots of fun. The Kennedy Gallery is located at 1931 L Street, Sacramento, CA 95811 Phone: 916.400.4272

 

In this series, I’ve focused more on the little things than I think I have in the past. I am continually collecting natural treasures: the remnants of a bird’s egg, a dead moth caught on the car grill but not too damaged, a cedar cone. Things that probably most people would walk past without a second glance, but that I am utterly fascinated with. I see these things as tiny messages, meant to be reminders of something much bigger, so I photograph them, store them, and incorporate them into works of art that pay homage to the item itself and to the bigger things they point to. I call this ongoing series of artworks “Specimina” or “Specimens of Faith.” Hidden in these works are layers of mixed media, including ephemera, photo transfers, color pencils and acrylics, a careful viewer may also find layers of meanings that speak to both our physical and spiritual worlds. May you enjoy the voyage of discovery as much as I do.

 

Several of the Specimina pieces in various stages of completion. (There are twenty-five in all.)
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A Flurry of Activity

A few weeks ago I was asked to submit to a popular annual Sacramento show called the 20/20 Show. For this show, several artists are chosen to exhibit twenty small artworks all on the same theme. I was honored to be among this year’s chosen artists with my Specimina works. The exhibit is in May and each artist has to produce twenty five artworks to fill in spaces when pieces sell. I attended the reception for this show last year at the Kennedy Gallery and the excitement was palpable. I am truly looking forward to participating in this year’s exhibit.

 

As I have been working on my 20/20 series, I have been posting  videos of my progress in my studio on my Facebook page. As usual, I started with priming the panels with gesso, then adding acrylic texture to them.
The next step in the process is choosing all of the images for the series and printing them all out, then I decide what to collage as a background to each image and adhere it onto the panels. Once that is done, I coat the images and then transfer them onto the panels, which is the step I just finished yesterday.

 

The next part of the process will be to use color pencils to enhance the details of each image and start the coloring process. Then I will add acrylic paint in transparent layers, possibly more collage elements and wax pastels. I’m never entirely sure what exactly I will do until I get to that point in the creative process.

 

I’m pretty excited about this series, as I recently took a bunch of new photographs of some pretty cool and interesting creatures, some of which are included in this series. I am planning on putting a video together of the whole process when it’s done, so you’ll be able to see the entire project come to life. In the meantime, here’s the state of my work table at the moment.

 

My entire twenty-five panel series on my work table in my studio.

 

Mark your calendar for the Second Saturday Reception for the 20/20 Show on May 13, 2017, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Kennedy Gallery, 1931 L Street, Sacramento, CA 95811. I look forward to seeing you there!

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Tell Me Somthing

Okay, deadline met, artworks shipped. I’ve been healthy for a while again and I am grateful. I think it’s good to look around at what we take for granted and stop to thank God for those things. Yes, I know that it’s not Thanksgiving time and that the world seems to be in a bit of a mess, but there are still things to be thankful for. You all, for instance. Thanks for caring enough to read this. I sometimes take you all for granted but I really am grateful. I believe that art is not just about making stuff but about communication, which means I need an audience, which is you. So you are an integral part of my art-making and I appreciate you, especially when you purchase things and fund more art-making, but even when you just communicate back so I know that you’re actually there and interacting.

One of the things I’ve been photographing for upcoming work.

Since you’re there, I’d like to know what you think. What do you like about what I’m doing? What do you wish I did more of? What do you want to find out about when I write these updates? I really do love to get feedback and I really do want to have a conversation. What do you care about? Where do we connect, either physically or online or metaphysically? Truly, write me back, I want to hear from you.

After I finish a deadline, I usually need to take a little time to recuperate and re-set. After I got these last sets of artworks shipped off, I had another type of chore I had to attend to: prepping my tax stuff. Like most of you, this is not my favorite thing and it can be a few day’s worth of work, but I am proud to say that I got down to it, only procrastinated a little bit, and got it done. My tax guy (a.k.a. my husband) is happy with me, even though he wishes I had gotten to it about a month earlier. Ah well, he was well aware of my production deadline and forgives me.

And now I have another new project to work on. I was invited to submit work to an popular annual show here in Sacramento called the 20/20 Show, which will be on exhibit at the Kennedy Gallery during the month of May. Each artist has twenty 8×8″themed artworks on display, pieces fly off the wall in an art feeding frenzy and a good time is had by all. I am honored to have my Specimina series selected and now I am prepping to start on that new set of work. I actually need to produce twenty-five works so that the first few that sell can be replaced on the wall.

So here’s another chance to interact with me – tell me what you like best in my Specimina work, which can include my Butterflies, Memento Mori, Floral & Cabinet of Curiosities. I’m going to be creating new things but I’d like to know what you like, too. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

“Tete-a-Tete” will be part of the 20/20 Show in May.
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To Arizona with Love

First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who responded to my last update; I am overwhelmed by all of your love and support. Second of all, I just want to say that I am sick of being sick, three out of five weeks sucks and I think I’ve had quite enough of all that, thank you very much.

 

So after a season of slow production in the studio, I’m needing to crank it up a bit. Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale has been patiently waiting for new desert pieces and I have finally gotten that set of work finished, woo-hoo! Now I just need to photograph and ship them out, part of the not always glamorous life of an artist, right along with paying bills and working on taxes and prepping for classes. Sometimes it feels like there are not quite enough hours in a day, but I know I’m not alone in that.

 

Then last week I got a call from Lanning Gallery director Isabelle in Sedona, asking if I can’t get more pieces down there for next month when I’ll be one of their featured women artists? What can I say but okay? Now it’s time to really hustle and get this next set of pieces created and out in a couple weeks. I’m literally praying I can pull it off, and if you’re the praying type, I’d appreciate you putting a word in for me, too.

 

So this update is pretty brief, but I’ve got work to do. I’m sending all my art to Arizona right now, but I’m sending love to everyone today.

 

Art studio of Judith Monroe
Artworks in two stages but all headed to Arizona soon.
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Life and Stuff

I don’t know about you, but my life doesn’t always go according to plan. Take the last year or so, for example…

In November 2015, I found myself sitting next to a young lady in church for the second week in a row. This was notable because I attend a church of about three or four thousand people on any given weekend and I’ve never found myself randomly sitting next to the same person two weeks in a row, so it really got my attention. I felt a strong urging to talk to her, so I started a conversation and found out she was looking for a job and somewhere to live and was hoping to start going to college soon. Then I took her over to someone to ask about housing but our church doesn’t have an organized program for that, and I gave her my card and made her promise not to disappear on me. She contacted me that afternoon and I was so glad because I had found out they were hiring where my son worked and I wanted to get her that information.

The next week she was sitting in front of me. I don’t believe in coincidence but somehow I wasn’t surprised at this point. We were texting that same afternoon and I asked how the search for housing was going. She replied that she hoped to have a safe place to sleep soon and when I asked where she was sleeping, she said that mostly she wasn’t, but sometimes outside or in her car.

2016-10-29 12.25.22-3My heart broke and I couldn’t say a word. I took my phone to my husband and all I could do was show him the conversation. We just looked at each other and instantly agreed that she could stay in our daughter’s room, who was away at college at the time. And that’s how we took in another child. She had grown up in the worst of circumstances and desperately needed a new family. Over the next several months, she became like another daughter to us and in August 2016 we adopted her at 21 years of age. We had learned that adult adoption was remarkably easy and we decided to make our commitment to each other legal. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world but because of her past we are walking through recovery with her and none of it is easy.

My art-making has taken a bit of a back seat to being a mother once more, but it’s not a choice that I ever regretted, not when my biological children were small and not now when my youngest child needs me, either. But I’m trying to get back into the swing of things again, to return to a regular rhythm of communicating with my extended family and friends and supporters like you. Thanks for sticking around.

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Packing it out

I go for walks on a regular basis, as much as six days a week. I do it for my dogs and I do it for my physical, mental & spiritual health. Sometimes I walk around my neighborhood but I also walk a lot along trails through green space, usually in community parks along a local creek. I feel so blessed to be able to enjoy nature while living in a suburban area. Nature is my happy place, it’s where I can escape from worries and just relax, concentrating on my pushing myself physically, on the plants and animals around me or on nothing at all.

Usually, I have done what I think most of us in modern American society do, and that is ignore one thing while we’re out in nature if we possibly can. Maybe it’s just really one little thing, so our eyes can skip over it easily, focusing on something else instead. Sometimes it’s a bigger thing, and we might think to ourselves or say to each other, oh how can people be that horrible, but not actually do anything about it. I’m talking about litter, and up until recently, I was really good at ignoring it but recently I have found that I just can’t anymore.

water bottle litterI don’t even know how it really started, but maybe I was influenced by things I had seen on Instagram, where somehow I had come across images of litter that people had posted that they had picked up. Probably months later, these little things start standing out to me, and I just couldn’t ignore them any more. Then one day I took some other people on a walk, and there was some conversation about how sad it was that people would litter in such a pretty place, but none of us actually did anything besides talk. On subsequent solo walks, the conversation echoed in  my mind. As usual, I have bags with me when I walk my dogs, and usually some plastic grocery bags as back up, so it wasn’t a big stretch one day to just get really disgusted and think I should just pick up some of this stuff myself, because I keep seeing it over and over and obviously nobody else is cleaning it up.

Sometimes trail trash comes with it's own carry-out handle.
Sometimes trail trash comes with it’s own carry-out handle.
What is sad is how long it has taken me to start picking things up, but that’s what I’ve started doing. Not every day or for the whole trail, but usually at least a full bag full whenever I do, because there really is plenty around. It actually feels pretty good to do something about it and not just ignore it or talk about other people. If you’re thinking that this sounds sad or cool or inspiring, I would encourage you to join me. It’s not that hard. Usually there are garbage cans somewhere nearby so it’s easy to just fill a bag with trail trash and toss it in the garbage. The next time you’re on the trail it might seem a little cleaner, or not – just take a bag with you and do what seems best. Try not to judge others but just do what you can to make things better. If more of us just do little things to help everyone, maybe the idea will catch on…

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What I Did for my Summer Break

When I was a child and we came back to school in September, very often the teacher would ask us to write about what we did over the summer. I always thought this was a cool thing and I liked writing and being able to express myself. Even though I actually taught summer school this year and felt like I had no summer vacation at all, I still feel like I had a summer break of sorts.It just wasn’t the sort of break I thought I was going to have.

 

After the spring semester ended – funny how my life is again governed by school seasons –  I decided to deep clean and reorganize my art studio. It had been a really long time since I had done anything like that in this space and I had visions of what I wanted it to look like. There were piles upon piles on counters and table spaces, there were boxes and bags on the floor, there was just stuff everywhere. Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t stuff in here still, because I think that part of the function of an art studio is to hold stuff. But it was just way too much and I felt a little claustrophobic about it all. So I decided to just dig in and in maybe a week or two I would have the art studio of my dreams.

 

That was a little over three months ago. Needless to say, after a week or two I had just begun to scratch the surface but I was committed to sticking to it til it was all done. I started methodically, tackling one cupboard, shelf by shelf and I stopped to praise myself and show off to family each reclaimed space. I recycled bunches of things, threw away things, made donation trips to Goodwill. I was on a roll and feeling good. Then life happened. Nothing big, just regular life things, and I lost a little steam in the studio but somehow ended up cleaning out other spaces in the house and that felt good, too. Okay, I thought, let’s just go with the flow here and clean and sift and make my life a little lighter. I still got into the studio to clean but I found I was taking a bit of a break from art and business in general. I don’t know why, but I think it was just something that I needed. I have always worked in cycles and seasons and I have found that if I just go with it, things work themselves out in the end.

 

At one point, I wasn’t sure about what was going on. I was slowly but surely making progress in the studio, I even took a break and made a little art (okay, it was a big piece, but just one.) I wasn’t sure I was on the right path and I questioned a lot of things. What am I doing? Is it the right thing? Should I even make art at all? Well, yes, I can’t not make art… And then I got a little confirmation, a friend with a word of encouragement, some new requests for work, and I realized that this was just a little season and that it would pass and everything would be okay. Summer school ended and I got another little boost of energy to finish up the studio. I started to see my dream studio peek out from the chaos and I started feeling more inspired. It was such a huge job, though, and at one point I felt like it might never be done. Truthfully, I don’t think it ever will be completely done, but that’s okay, I can tackle the bits and pieces that are left hidden away at a later time.

 

So what did I do over my summer break? I cleaned my studio, painted two bedrooms in the house, helped one daughter clean our her space and make it new and another one move back in – which meant clearing the guest room out – and got rid of more stuff than I can quantify. And do I have the studio of my dreams? Well, not quite, but I’m pretty happy with it, and I need to start making art again, which I’ll share with you here. Soon, I hope.

 

art studio
Freshly re-organized, my studio is ready to start making art again! Of course, the dogs are always on hand to help.
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