I Was Soooo Wrong

Changing to a new website was a dumb idea. Myself and two others have put a lot of work into getting a new website up and running and it is essentially the same as this platform. The biggest hurdle to the new site's success is this blog. It has been running for about 8 or 10 years and all that energy behind it. Searching for "Laureen van Lierop" landed people here. So what was the point. The only changes I really wanted made was to add a gallery page for art work to sell and to bring my comic book Hot Flash Woman under the same platform. Not. Worth. It. To those who helped me, I hope you enjoy the knitting I exchanged with you for your services, but I'm sticking with the same old, same old.

Phew. What a lot of tension this created for me. Now I have to make a couple of changes to this blog and "Blog's your Uncle"

I did get the feedback to change the title of the blog, since none of you have any idea what Cloudmongers and Soup refers to. My husband uses this poem when he wants to be romantical and for a while it was the name of our design team. He went his design way, I went my design way, but I kept the name. (we are still very married) The poem goes:

Paris Spleen

XLIV

The Soup and the Clouds

            My Dear Little Mad Beloved was serving my dinner, and I was looking out of the open dining-room window contemplating those moving architectural marvels that God constructs out of mist, edifices of the impalpable. And as I looked I was saying to myself: "Al those phantasmagoria are almost as beautiful as my beloved's beautiful eyes, as the green eyes of my mad monstrous little beloved."
                                           All of a Sudden I felt a terrible blow of a fist on my back, and heard a husky and charming voice, an hysterical voice, a hoarse brandy voice, the voice of my dear little beloved, saying: "Aren't you ever going to eat your soup, you damned bastard of a cloud-monger?"
                                                                                                          Charles Baudelaire

I still laugh my head off whenever he reads this to me.

In the spirit of being a little mad, I will remain here, hoping the art gods discover my work and that fame is just a blog post away.

SAQA Atlantic retreat

I spent this weekend past in Debert Hospitality Centre with 12 other textile artists and had a brilliant time.

We talked about textile art in general, had a speaker give a presentation on how to write grants for money and residencies as well as getting one self organized for this kind of work.

I found it interesting that the several artists who are getting their work shown were pretty calm about the amount of computer related time it takes to present oneself. Those of us who struggle with it or ignore it altogether have a correspondingly low presence on gallery walls. Lesson learned.

My images are of the art work shown in the evenings, when we gathered with wine and goodies to talk about specific works.

I took images on the second night, so this is a limited amount of the work shown.

Both of the above images are work by Kristi Ferrier

I am not certain who made this, the person holding it up is not the artist, i think.

Shibori dying by Jeanine Gunn.

Section of a piece also by Jeanine.

In a few days there will be further images posted and you can see that (here)

I am looking forward to next year's retreat, which yours truly is organizing, since the topic will be how to receive and give critiques to others and to oneself.

While I was in Toronto, I began two small sketchbooks, developing one of these images,

and the other sketchbook is aa day by day reflection of my time there, starting with an organ concert.
This is the last post on this blog, come on over to the website to continue the conversation.