Letting it Happen

Can I really be 52 years old? It doesn't seem possible to me to be at an age that I considered as a child, even as a young adult, to be so old. I wince at the thought of how I projected my idea of someone as being old on others as recently as last year....I don't feel any different than I did at 32 , or 28. Now I know that even my mother and her sisters in their 70's and 80's feel that way too. Our bodies age but our spirits continue to renew and transform.

Has the counter-culture generation decided to age differently, to redefine aging? Probably so, it has redefined everything else. I am encouraged and excited to see alternatively minded communities forming for aging hippies, baby-boomers, particularly artists who haven't got much of a retirement plan in place....who, "if it felt good, did it"

The mother of invention is leading people to form back to the land, communal type, living arrangements. Shared land, studios, gardens, meals, yoga, exercise, swimming pools, pool halls. We are all so much better off as a community. We can do so much more when we put money, ideas, entertainment, information together. Stripped of convention, the baby boomers are going to figure it out.

I am trying out letting my hair go grey. It's a big step and I reconsider it often, but so far I'm liking it. My hair grows so quickly that I was having to recover the grey every 4 weeks. I can't afford the time or the money that it takes to go to the salon and have it done professionally and I hated how it turned out when I tried to do it myself. Unfortunately, you can't go get your hair died grey to make growing out the color easier and the other the other option to cut it all off and start over isn't much better. I'm just winging it, letting it grow out, multi-colored as it is. My inspiration are the beautiful women who I encounter everywhere I go with beautiful grey hair.

I'm inspired by Kiki Smith, top photo. Gorgeous, isn't she?......And also one of the most influential women artists in the world today. Her sculptures and prints present life, women, nature with all of it's grittiness, beauty, mess. She doesn't idealize it, she shows the truth.....the woman in her painting, sitting prettily in the garden has grass stains on her knees, mud on her elbows.

Another subject for her is art about the holy spirit, magic, spirituality, the big mystery that's so hard to pin down, yet so lovely to consider. She is known to be a big collaborator, loving to share studio/work space, working with people who know techniques that she utilizes to create her work
....and then there is this glowing, ethereal, lovely woman. This is a photograph of Betty Silverstein from the book, Wise Women: A Celebration of Their Insights, Courage, and Beauty, by the renowned photographer Joyce Tennyson. Betty is quoted in the book as saying, "People often stop me now and tell me I'm beautiful. I never had this happen when I was younger. So for me aging has, at least on the surface, made others more interested in me and who I am".
.....then there is this wild woman, an artist/designer who dies her hair yellow-orange. I can't promise that I won't go there too. I'll do whatever I feel like doing at the time. No rules of the hair color kind bind me. I have other rules: to be kind, do my best to do the right thing, keep growing, expanding, learning, creating and thinking outside of the box....big rules, no matter what color my hair is.

Pulling it Together

We have had one of those weeks where many outside tasks have demanded our attention and so today, at last, we have had one of those lovely days where we could devote our entire day to work...... which was going swimmingly until I broke a glass while I was washing dishes and badly cut my finger. It might need a stitch, but since we don't have health insurance we bandaged it up and on I went, not willing to spend another day away from working. Sitting in an emergency room is not my idea of how I want to spend a day, especially after spending half a day yesterday, waiting to renew our driver's licenses and then an afternoon of physicals at our doctor's office.
We have flowers, fish, cats, suns all in the works and so it was with a great deal of accomplishment that we were able to finish the two cats and sun today....completely.
This guy is going to Garden Argosy, the gallery in Sarasota that carries our work.
A green version, from the same litter, also heading to the same gallery in Sarasota.
....And a sun for my younger sister Mary, who was a mermaid in another life.

We are determined to completely finish more tomorrow. Nothing is planned. We are sequestering ourselves because suddenly we have a very full bulletin board of work and so it's time to get busy.

studies for a new painting and design work in progress

In the midst of making the design work going to galleries, I'm about to start another painting and have taken some preliminary photos to get started.....more original work here

I have been drawn to fruit bowls as a subject for a long time now. When I paint them, they symbolize to me, abundance, beauty, health, the whole idea that the most important things are simple, that we can be fulfilled without needing/having a lot of stuff....good friends, good food, books, a good garage sale, dance, art, learning, music, conversation, family-this is what we need more of, what we can't have enough of.

Have you noticed how hard it is for human beings to share fairly? We have so much on this earth, in this country, and yet so many people are starving, don't have what they need, even in my own town, right here in Ann Arbor. Then other individuals are so rich, with so much more than they need, and they crave more, can't have enough. The people who are really puzzling are those who, even though they have so much, don't want anyone else to have as much as them, or anything at all. Some human beings can be a little over-rated I think.

Still, I think I see more of an awareness growing and I hope that I am seeing an expanding consciousness. Certainly, we can't all truly be happy till everyone is taken care of. Giving up hope that human beings will evolve into a kinder species isn't worth the pain.

If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work. -Jacques Cousteau

"Wait'll next year" is the favorite cry of baseball fans, football fans, hockey fans, and gardeners.
-Robert Orben

mother's day

Happy Mother's Day to all! Back to work this morning, but we had a lovely weekend with puppies, parties, kids, food. Our front porch is ready for action- the more the merrier. Come on over!

this week's batch.....frogs, leslie suns and....

Frogs, suns, hummingbirds, butterflies ready to make the long trek to their respective galleries- Garden Argosy in Sarasota, Dennison-Moran Gallery in Naples and Island Style Galleries in Key West and on Sanibel.

Coming along slowly

This is the progression on the painting, "They Had The Feeling That They Were Surrounded". Along with the design work that we have been making for galleries I have been working on this painting, which is really a love letter to my mother Phyllis, and her two sisters, June and Margaret.

It really is true that artists dream in front of their work. I didn't set out to make this about my mother and my aunts. It just happened that the figures began to feel like them and I found myself thinking of them, which then compounded their existence in the painting.

My mother and her two sisters have always been very close and still are in a way that is impressive and profound. These sisters are drawing strength from one another, like my mother and her two sisters protect and enliven one another. The souls of their guardian angels, parents, relatives, friends hover around them.

Though I seem to most prominently feel my mother and my aunts in this painting, my sisters, my daughters, my grand-daughter are in this painting too. In each face I can see little bits of each of them. They take turns in my thoughts as the paintbrush continues to define the figures, fleshing them out. We are all so connected of course.

The youngest girl is my mother, but she is also my sister Lynne, my daughter Liz, and my grand-daughter June. The eldest daughter is my Aunt June, but she is also my cousin Carol and me. The middle sister is my Aunt Margie, but she is also my daughter Eva and my sister Mary. My grandmother and grandfather, guardian angels and others who love us, who have died, hover around us all, caressing, whispering and guiding.

purplebabydaddies studios- fall/winter 2007

Big contrast going from the Keys to Michigan. It has been a weird winter, 40's- high 50's and am I remembering 60's (?......pacific northwest weather). In any case, then it plunged into the subzero's.
Note the wild fluctuations in the weather. Very weird, and how very monumental and impressive, this earth's reaction is, to what is hurting it.
Winter has really put me into a reflective state. It is so cocoon-like. There is a real drawing in which I must say I have enjoyed, but oh the weather. It has been extreme.
I am here for a very good reason though and would rather be absolutely nowhere else...(for now, most likely a fairly long now).
In any case, Markel and I have continued to do our work for our galleries (listed below) and we are slowly storing up work for art fairs and a gallery showing at some point, we haven't even started looking for galleries yet. We're still reacquainting ourselves with stretching our wings. It's a balance that we're always striving to accomplish.

We actually notice feeling guilty when we take time out of the design work to do our originals. Frustrating when you can't take the time to really be creative, but the sculpture and paintings are a future sale, while the design work remains popular and instant money ( and here's where I have to say thank goodness, so fortunate that we have work that sells so well). In any case, I think we've been doing a lot better with our balancing act, slow and steady go the turtles.

I've added a lot so don't forget to scroll down.

We will be showing at the Ann Arbor Art Fairs in July. More information coming,

or call 1-734-883-5797

email: leslievictorialeland@hotmail.com

Fall-Winter (2006-2007) Work by Markel and Leslie

leslie's faces on metal

Leslie's suns- table size and for the wall

Mini flowers and wall pieces

We are well known for our standing sculptures, which we still make and sell, however we have added mini sculptures and wall pieces to our repertoire.

Having our store in Key West and serving a traveling clientele who we shipped to regularly, alerted us to the fact that pieces that easily fit in a suitcase like the mini's and smaller wall pieces do, were an attractive alternative for easier, more economic transport, .
Our customers also requested pieces for the wall and more affordable pieces, which is why we have developed the mini-size sculptures for a table-top. All of our work is available for sale without the stem and base, with a wire added for hanging indoor or outside on a patio, pool, or deck wall.

The top photo shows a collection of the mini flowers that we do, and a mini cat at far left.





Also shown, in middle photo above, a wall fish. They come in sizes from tiny, 9 inches to as big as a customer wants. The one shown is approximately 24 inches long.
Bottom photo- Wall sun by Markel. This one is large- about 30inches x 30 inches. We also do these much smaller and much larger.