Remembering my creative Grandma Lois
10x100 Creative Reflections #The100DayProject
Hello again,
This is my second Substack post… if you’re wondering how I landed in your inbox, here’s my first post; A little bit newsletter, A little bit blog.
Upcoming events
Saturday, June 22nd: Summer Solstice Ceramics Fair
Hosted by Clay Room at Groundfloor, 455 Valencia St, San Francisco
11am - 5pm
I’ll be selling ceramic watercolor palettes and other explorations from the studio this past winter and spring.
Sunday, July 14: Workshop: Monoprint postcards and travel sketch souvenirs
I’m excited to teach a workshop at Arch Art Supplies about easy travel sketch and memory-keeping techniques. This will include creating ink and watercolor monoprints from photographs. (Tickets and more info coming in June.)
10x100 #100CreativeReflections
The end of my 2024 100 Day Project is about a week away. This year’s project is 100 Creative Reflections to mark my 10th 100 Day Project. Instagram is the main place over the years I’ve shared about projects. For ease, I’ve been reflecting and sharing there. As of this writing, I’ve posted 5 project reflections so far. Check them out in my 10x100 story highlight.
I’ll share a reflection on reflecting in my next post.
Remembering my creative Grandma
If I ever called my grandma, just “grandma”, I was reminded that her name is Grandma Lois. She died in February. She went to bed on the eve of her birthday but died before the sun came up on number 94. She didn’t want to celebrate any more birthdays. The sun’s cycle brought her the door to whatever is or isn’t next and she got her birthday wish.
Until the last few years tipping into her 90s, she’d been very interested in creativity however she could access it. She loved to read and at the end was reading every classic she had never read and re-reading old favorites. The book in the above vignette is one from her childhood with a note on the inside from her teacher. When I was struggling to read chapter books she gave it to me.
With my Grandma Lois I share silliness and creative exploration. The ceramic frog face in the photo is made by me. The day she died I went into the studio to make a memory from my mind of something she had made.
A small list of the mediums I can remember her playing with are; oil painting, photography, woodworking, chair caning, ceramics, macrame, knitting, embroidery, and making creatures from dried gourds. If she was inspired to make something she figured it out. Without the internet.
Her primary work was portrait photography. That’s a self-portrait with a borrowed boa. She was an animal lover, a long-time member of the Humane Society, and caretaker to countless dogs, cats, and a desert tortoise named Slow Jen that walked into her yard one day. Sometimes it seemed she preferred all these creatures to people. So a fur coat was never something she wore, but a live snake, sure!
That’s my Grandma Lois.