Nursery Artsy Inspiration: Mindy's Bunnies

 Finkle Floats - Mixed Media Painting by Mindy Lacefield

This is not a baby blog.  That being said, I am about to have a baby and it's a big part of my head space right now.  So I thought while I am nesting and working on getting our home ready for a Birth Day, I could share with you a few of my favorite artsy inspirations that I am crushing on for baby boy's room.  First up today are the beautiful bunnies created by Mindy Lacefield of Tims Sally.  I adore Mindy's art, adore Mindy's Spirit, and just plain adore her.  She's a wonderful inspiration, and I have loved her bunny paintings for a long time.  They are whimsical, playful, and just make me happy to look at.  I have a print of this top one (Finkle) on my son's wall right now and hope to join it with others one day soon.  So here's a dose of bunny cutesy prettiness and inspiration Mindy style.

 Russell - Mixed Media Painting by Mindy Lacefield

 Fiddlewink - Mixed Media Painting by Mindy Lacefield

 Lucky - Mixed Media Painting by Mindy Lacefield

 Edgar - Mixed Media Painting by Mindy Lacefield

Love, love, love them all.  What artist are you crushing on to fill your home space right now? Share them with us in the comments!

XO, HARMONY

A Friendship Created through Art... Mail Art Exchange

I recently jumped in on Mindy Lacefield of Tim's Sally call for a mail art exchange that she put out on her blog.  I absolutely love the idea of exchanging art of all kinds with other creative people and didnt hesitate to whip up a fun 4X4" piece for her and send it out in a brightly painted envelope.  Yesterday, I received my reply from her! Isnt it adorable?  I have always loved Mindy's art, have been honored to get to know her a bit through the internet, and she has consistently been a huge inspiration for me to take risks and follow dreams in my art process.  Getting an envelope full of her artsy goodness this week made me feel more connected to her and more in general with artists like me trying to live out their dreams.

Then I started thinking, what if we just kept this thing going and many more artsy/crafty people needing connection in their creative process started exchanging mail art?  We could spread smiles and encouragement all over the world!  I know that I dont have many artistic friends here in my hometown working to make a living from their creative passions, and often I feel a bit isolated in my journey.  I am also in the phase of my life where I am growing a family, and my babies are little, so this Mommy is pretty tied down for a few years, no matter how badly I want to attend an art retreat or creative connection event somewhere across the country and find my creative tribe that way.  This is exactly why the internet connections and friends I've made through my blog have been so important to me, and help me feel a part of something greater than just me alone in my art room making things I think are pretty or important.  So here's me saying, let's connect!  Send me your art!  I'd be honored to send some of that magic back your way to encourage you as well.  Let's call this project MADE WITH LOVE because it will be exactly that!

I hope to post pics, of the art I receive, here on my blog and would be honored to include a bit of a story along with them.  If you feel brave and want to share a piece of your heart with me, send me some art and tell me a bit about you as well... why you created it or what your creative journey has been, or whatever your spirit desires.  It's all about connecting and creating an encouraging network of creative friendships.  This is will be an open on-going call, so at any time, this week/next month/next year, that you want to send me something you've created, I will receive it with a grateful heart and be overjoyed to send something back to you.

My Address:
Harmony Lenasbunt
2401 SE 12th Terrace
Gainesville, FL 32641

**FYI: If you are interested in joining Mindy's mail art call, (which you totally should, because she is amazing!), just visit HERE for the details.

XO, HARMONY

A Good Day Part 1 and 2

I am falling more and more in love with the process of layering, letting go, and working without expectations.  The more I do it the happier I am with my art making experiences.  I have been living vicariously through the blogs of some of the the very fabulous women who just returned from the art retreat "An Artful Journey" (specifically the ones who took Jesse Reno's class), like this one, this one, and this one.  I have had a long standing obsession with his art and style and would LOVE to take a class with him.  I had actually hoped to make it to the AAJ retreat this year for that very reason, but finances and this pesky internship got in the way.  He uses a unique style of painting, and its truly inspiring to watch his process of discovering a finished painting.

So here are two inspired paintings I did yesterday...

 "A Good Day Part 1" 
2011 5X7" 
on canvas panel 
by Harmony

 "A Good Day Part 2" 

2011 8X10" 
on Canvas 
by Harmony

I hope you like them.  I dont know how well it translates via internet, but there is lots of layers, textures, and mediums used in each of these.  They were so much fun to make and I hope some of that happiness got stuck in the paint.  What's inspiring you this week?

Inspired!

(Dont I have such old looking hands? They've always looked like this, worn and wrinkled.  

They used to embarrass me, but now they make me feel strong and experienced.)

I did it!  I let go of all the artsy buisness tasks that needed to be done, left all the boxes and bins stacked up in the living room, ignored the GINORMOUS mess that was once my lovely art room, and just created.  Such Magic!!  It has actually been so long since I just let myself take a few hours and play with paint, that I was a bit nervous.  I felt like I was new at this again, fearing I would screw up and make something ugly, awful, and it would turn out to be a waste of time.  That was before I remembered to tell those negative head voices to SHUT UP and go away.  It doesnt matter if what I make turns out bad, it just has to be fun to create or be meaningful to me.  Every exercise in art making that I take on is a growing moment, and I need to stop expecting myself to constantly fly high and straight.  There must be some practicing and bumping along for me to find a soaring moment. 

So I took a deep breath and bumped along all afternoon.  It was freeing.  It was fun.  It was exactly what I needed at the end of this very tiring week. (We are going through quite a stubborn toddler phase right now, and he has worn me out.  I have no more stamina left.  He could pretty much get away with anything today.  I'll take him back on tomorrow :) 

I have been secretly dying to try some of the techniques and palettes that a very talented and lovely artsy friend has been doing lately.  I LOVE when the people in my life (esp those of you that I connect with only via internet) help motivate and inspire me to expand my artistic comfort zone.  This friend does incredible work with using restricted and unusual color pallets and a spontaneous and gorgeously loose painting style.  I was super excited to try it and see what happened.  Well, let me tell you, its WAY harder than it looks to work like this.  I did 5 different paintings in this style, only really completed one that I was super happy with (on the right) and almost completed a second that I think will come around to something lovely with a bit more work (on the left).

 

I need to play around like this more.  Let myself expand a bit, try new things and stop being so scared of what will happen.  Here is the little angel girl that I did finish and am really proud of.  Its definitely a new style for me, but I really enjoyed the process of making her, trusting my instincts instead of always having a plan when I paint.

"Baby Angel...First Flight"...Original Acrylic Painting done by Harmony 2010...on wood box 5"X5"

Prints Available HERE

Try something new today.  Something that you've secretly wanted to try but were too scared that you might be bad at it.  You just might surprise yourself.

A little window into my year

Transition.  That is definitely the word for the year.  My husband, son, and I have been in a fluctuating state of transition, settling, change, transition, settling,...you get the picture, for almost a full year.  I am a person that CRAVES change but HATES transition.  What's the difference you wonder?  To me, change means adventure, newness, excitement, while transition is all the gritty annoying, tiresome details that get you from where you are now to where you want to change to - it's utterly exhausting!

  (us-in a Madison, WI park, pic by rejoyphotography)

Last August, my husband, son, and I left our home town of Gainesville, FL, rented out our home, put our dogs into foster care (they stayed with friends and family), packed up all our stuff into a tiny trailer, and drove 1200 miles to Madison, WI.  We did it because we had found ourselves without inspiration and falling into a rut at home.  Between work, school, church, raising our son, taking care of household things, and family and friend gatherings, we were too busy or too tired to push ourselves past the "wouldnt it be amazing if we did (blank)?!" or "I have always dreamed about doing (blank)!"  We were tired of talking about our dreams and wanted to start working towards them.  We quickly realized that we couldnt do this in our comfortable routined environment.  We needed to be UNCOMFORTABLE, unroutined, and pushed outside of our comfort zone and familiar spaces.  We would have no choice but to change then, to push ourselves, find our next adventure as a family.

Here are our sweet no longer foster-cared dogs.  Bella on the Left, catching bugs, Fish on the Right, doing what he does best (digging and sleeping).


To do this we hooked up with a sort of discipleship/leadership mentoring program with a group called 24/7 Prayer, and so moved to Madison, WI to live, work, and learn in an intentional Christian community house.  They call it a Boiler Room.  We called it the Winnie House (cuz it was on Winnebago St)/ Dream Incubator.  (please follow the links to understand more about what we did there and who the group is).  It was an intense journey from start to finish, but in the end we left stronger and with a larger circle of friends and family than we began with.

(pic of the back of our Winnie House, in Madison, where we shared a 3b/1ba/900sq foot flat with another family with a child, and had 8 other house mates on the other floors!)

So now, this week in fact, we are moving BACK IN to our old home in Gainesville, FL.  We are reclaiming familiar space as our own again, but with new motivation, new skills, new focus to put reason and logic in its place and let our dreams rule our present.  For me, that is reclaiming myself as an artist and getting my creative business going.  And so now, I find myself at the start of a very new and exciting venture, the ball has been started rolling, I have to hold on to my faith that my dream is a choice worth fighting for and investing in, and just make the leap and see where I land.

(pic of our florida home, in great need of some TLC - and hedge clippers!)

That being said, one very important step for me in this process of reclaiming old space as new is to turn the 3rd bedroom in our house, that a year ago was just office/school study space, into my own creative studio space.  I am so excited about all the possibilities and have found myself dreaming up all kinds of colorful, creative, and inspiring things to add to it, to make it my own, to make it pure creative energy in there.  Right now its horrifically cluttered with all the extra stuff that we havnt unpacked yet, but I have a vision for attacking that room in the NAME OF GREAT ART, and clearing out by the end of next week.

(Pic of my soon-to-be workspace. Can you feel the potential?!)

As I am gathering ideas for the room, (I even got lost for over an hour looking at studio space photo groups on flickr - HUGE time suck - but SO MUCH FUN!), I cant stop thinking about one of my most favorite studio spaces that I have ever seen.  Its the home workspace of Teesha Moore, Art Journaler extrodinaire.  You have to check out her photos from this renovated attic space in her Oregon home.  It makes me feel giddy and inspired and just want to create a million things with all the supplies, notions, bits, and colors she has in that room.  My space wont be like that, but if I can even have a little of that magic she created in there, I would be ecstatic!

One thing I do know for sure, is that I want to gather art (or at least prints - lets be honest here, money is short these days) from different artists that inspire me and make me push my limits.  I have made a great start on this, I think.  This amazing little girl now adorns the front wall of my soon to be workspace and is supervising the current chaos.  She was created by Mindy of Tims Sally (you will have to endure many endorsements from me of her work- as her art is currently a HUGE fav of mine).  I adore this wall child and was so excited that Mindy let me bring her my home.  Hopefully soon, she will be joined by many new, just-as-lovely, and just-as-inspiring, friends from many more artists that I admire.  

I would ADORE to hear about your creative spaces!  Artists, writers, scrapbookers, all creative people: what is the most inspiring environment for you to work in?  Tell me why it inspires you.  What is it, or what is in it, that makes it so connecting for your creative energy? -Feel free to add links to pics of your space if you have them online - :)