Theme week:: Birds!

Lisa Congdon's Indigo

Birds today are the theme and I had to start with Lisa Congdon's lovely Indigo Bunting. More birds below in three dimensional work too! Stay tuned, I am a bird watcher today and have more pretties up my sleeve!

looped raptor :: abby glassenberg

fishbelly rugs :: blackbirds

Tomorrow? Flowers! More birds to follow these today ...

Theme week:: found objects in art

First Heather Smith Jones with "Listening Rock" a beautiful mixed media print you can see more about right here,

Helle Jorgensen - Plastic Detritus IV lino cut This idea for Helle's work came from the objects which wash up on her beach. Makes you take pause, doesn't it? More found object art to come ...

Oh the art of the found object. So vast, so interesting, so appealing on so many levels.

Nick Bazzani :: dogs!

More animals today from Nick Bazzani. I love his photographs, his dogs especially make me giggle. They show the personality of the animal. His work is shot mostly in Italy which of course make the scenes much more lush and the light just a little more special. Check them all out here. You won't be sorry! These prints make a great gift as they are already matted and mounted... just ask for the gift wrap option on the notes to us when ordering!

Theme week:: Animal Art!

Hello Monday! How was your weekend? We had a fun time with the NH Open Doors event all weekend. See our flickr account for some photos - I was busy so I took some early on and didn't get as many as I would have liked. But on to our theme week 1!

For this week and next, I thought that we might mix it up a bit here. We are going to feature work each day on a theme. Today is animal day! Starting with the seafaring creatures.

First up: Mati Rose's beautiful whale and Melanie Wilson's mermaid - not exactly an animal, but beautifully aquatic!

Stay tuned for more animals throughout the day. Tomorrow? Found objects. Send me your work about found objects!

Enjoy these last days of pretty autumn with no snow on the ground -- yet!

my paintings on Poppytalk !

my paintings on Poppytalk today!, originally uploaded by artstreamstudios.

Thanks to Jan for posting about my new work. It's always a thrill to be seen on her beautiful blog.
The skies are turning a typical New England November grey today so I will have to make my own sunshine in the studio. We are preparing for the big Handmade Art Fair, which I am pretty excited about! I do hope you will get to pop by on Saturday or Sunday to see us!

The Handmade Art Fair :: this Saturday!

Yes! It's back - our Holiday Handmade Art Fair is arriving this weekend on Saturday and Sunday! As part of our participation in New Hampshire Open Doors, we invited our artists and a few guest artists to join us for a weekend of fine art, fine crafts, poetry and music! We have live music from a violinist, poetry readings from the Poet Society of NH, delicious local goodies and a huge selection of gifts for yourself and your loved ones from very affordable to the very very special. Free gift wrapping, with your purchases and a very festive atmosphere at artstream will be felt throughout the weekend! For directions to the studio click here and call us for more info at 603-330-0333.

Ginger Pear Cake!

Good morning! It's a lovely fall day out there and we are going to take a trip over to Keene to visit Grace at college. Before going off though, I thought I would share a new recipe I made up yesterday. It started off with a very ripe pear. They had to be eaten so I thought I would try and make a small coffee style cake from them.
Here is the recipe as much as I can remember - I threw it together, so it might be a little more of this or that, but you will get the idea as you go.

Cut up one or two very large anjou pears into bite size pieces.
1 cup plus a little more of White Wheat King Arthur Flour
1 6ox cup of vanilla yogurt
1tsp of powdered ginger or grated fresh ginger
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
a little milk to make a batter out of it!
1 and 1/2 tap baking powder
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
a little milk to make a batter out of it if it is too stiff.
Stir it up and pour it into a 6x9 inch pan. Cook at hot temp 375 until browned on top and toothpick comes out clean. It will be moist, but not sticky, sweet but not overly. We loved it. Let me know how it works out if you make it... enjoy today. It's a beautiful one!

Concord Arts Market :: Making the Mural

Oh my what fun we had this weekend. I think it was the best Halloween ever! It all started with a fun night of trick or treat and handing out 300 pieces of candy to the little ones in our neighborhood and the ones which bused in for the Hallow's Eve event. Mary Jo and Cilla came over as they have no doorbell ringers in their neighborhoods - and they brought wine. A good time was had by all! Saturday Chloe and I headed out to Concord to the fabulous Concord Arts Market to It's not perfect, but you can get the idea. Saturday night we took three little Greek Goddesses to the Portsmouth Halloween Parade. Mob scene, but fun. Note to six and a half foot dude in fake lederhose: you didn't need to stand on a chair in front of everyone...
Great time was had by all and the 70F weather didn't hurt one little bit! Sunday was spent picking up a new bed and general homey maintenance which was sorely needed after the busy week. What did you do for Halloween?

What will you be?

You could be a pirate!

or --

You could be a mermaid!

You could be a picture frame!

You could be a baker!

What will you be?!

Happy Halloween!

OK, I will admit it, I am not a huge fan of Halloween. I know i know, I should be, it's so much fun, so creative! ... blah blah blah.

For me it just means having to endure the whooshing sounds of inflateable hideous lawn decorations everywhere, as my husband pointed out and now has made it ever present in my mind that some even look like Trojans inflated, along with annoying orange and purple lights swinging from the posts and house trims everywhere, spending money on candy - a LOT of candy, (we get 300 + visitors for trick or treat) working and sewing up costumes (which alright we have looked back over the years and chuckled about a few of them for sure...) and pretty much shooting my entire evening hours of said day into just answering the door but gee, I guess I can dress up for that!

Goodness knows I can open a bottle of wine to endure it and invite a couple of friends over with witch hats to help! I wish I had seen this fabulous post at Not Martha earlier - I would have loved to whip up this handy loaf!

This year we are going to do the T or T tonight and tomorrow on the real Halloween Chloe and I are heading out early to Concord to create the community mural project at the Concord Arts Market. Then it's home again to figure out our costumes and all go to the Portsmouth Halloween Parade. It's supposed to be fun and lord knows I could stand some fun around all this hoopla, so off we go. No worries, we will take photos and share them next week. Hope that your Halloween is spooktacular!

Bell'Invito Letterpress Studio

photo by Victoria Wall from Bell'Invito :: The Aquarius book plate
Oohh and ahhhh! This letterpress studio - Bell'Invito has some breathtaking work. When Anna contacted me about their Zodiac Collection for 2010 fashioned with Don Carney's antique woodblock inspired ink drawings a la letterpress, I was eager to learn more. Love Don Carney. Love this line!

These beautiful images are available in cards, both folded notes and gift cards, and a handsome desk calendar. But what really took me aback was the beautiful book plates and accompanying book marks. I love my books and am always on the search for something out of the ordinary in a book plate. These hit the mark and then some! Take a look at them more closely at their site Bellinvito.

Romy Kuhne

Romy Kuhn is an artist from Arnhem, NL who - for one thing - makes these incdredible paper vases coated to make them semi waterproof. Beautiful! As seen at MocoLoco tweets!

Community Mural :: Concord Arts Market

sketch done!, originally uploaded by artstreamstudios.

This is the sketch I did for the upcoming Halloween version of the Concord Arts Market. I painted it on a 7x8 foot piece of canvas this afternoon .. I didn't have a lot of time, just a lot of ideas and well, it's a guide for the community to go with!
The idea is based on a night garden, late autumn, with a little day of the dead thrown in there along with my imaginary marshmallow on a stick flowers. Hopefully, everyone will have fun in the painting process on Saturday and I will be sure to get lots of process photos and the final product too!

Autumn in full bloom

the bittersweet is coming in ..., originally uploaded by artstreamstudios.

It's pretty, it's colorful and it's a pain actually to deal with as it likes to slowly strangle other bushes... but despite it's bad habits, we keep it!
Today we had a little frost outside which is very seasonal, with lots of leaves on the ground from the maples, and the birches. The oaks are hanging on dearly to their yellow foliage but I imagine this week, they too will be swept away from their branches. What color is it in your part of the world?

Friday Illustration Friday fun

holding fast-- mixed media collage

New peeks at some of my own new collage works - just in time for me to play along with Illustration Friday. The word was fast. I thought how appropriate for this week! I have just finished up a stack of new paperdoll girls which I was going to put into calendar form and decided I loved them so much that I would just keep them as 8x10 artworks instead and make some prints. What's fast about this piece? Well, she has a holding fast to that hanky with which she is waving goodbye with.

A World Geography project

which to me is more beautiful than the sum of it's parts and information.

Made by my daughter Chloe for her World History class - project on Africa. Under the weather here today, so keeping it short. Isn't it pretty against our newly painted foyer color "pebble"?

Photos of the renovations to come this month.

Mike Lewis Blue Bird Rock Prints!!!

rocking house finch! by mike lewis

Mike-Lewis-Blue-Bird-Rock-3437orig, originally uploaded by artstreamstudios.

Mike was kind enough to drop off some fine looking prints of Blue Bird Rock and Rocking House Finch and so now, we are going to have them all available at the shop for a very affordable $20...and the originals are in the Dwellings show too!

Come and get em while the last!

Some new work of my own

some new work of my own, originally uploaded by artstreamstudios.

Hello Friday! It's been a very busy week here at chez Schwake and I have been hiding in the studio to get some of my ideas finished this week. I have been having so much fun with these little ink drawings.
It's recycled wood from an woodsmith's shop, which are all lovely cedar wood. Each one is unique and different and will be in our shop and my etsy tomorrow by noon. Hope that all of your dreams came true this week, well at least ONE of them ... enjoy this brisk autumn day and think sweaters, scarves and lovely cozy blankets and fires!

Tim Wirth :: strawberries

Tim Wirth was part of our Deep South show and I grew to love his work the moment we opened the first crate. Above is one of my favorites-of-the-moment. See the whole basket full right here at his site.

Pippa Caley :: new lampshades!

I adore Pippa Caley's work and have written about it each time she sends me new fodder- but now - oh - now she has something which I just adore even more than her beautiful pillows and bespoke line of work. Lampshades! yes, her signature style is now adorning lamshades ... go have a look. So beautiful.