i started this piece several weeks ago and kinda fell in love.  i wanted to hold onto it for awhile before posting it up for sale.  do you ever do that?  feel a connection with your art and along with it the need to hold onto it for a wee bit?  it’s the heart — i am a deep lover of all things anatomy, particularly hearts, and this one is pretty fantastic in my opinion.

here is a detail shot of the heart:

i typically work fairly small, but this piece measures 16″x20″ — i’ve been doing larger things lately and i’m liking it!

a really wonder what an art therapist would say.  i was looking at some photos of my most recently completed pieces and they all seem to have some line(s) of separation.  divided color and texture.  two totally different halves/portions.

and some up-close details of the texture/patterns:

this piece is currently available here (along with additional photos): http://alteredbits.com/alicia-caudle-art.php

next up: some movable, light-up pieces i’ve been working on the past couple of years.  or that’s the plan.  i always get distracted or discouraged with the “whoops, got the wrong kind of LED” and whatnot then put it off again for another few months.  we shall see how it goes.

the husby, son, pup and i went down to lorane oregon last week to look at the cabins i mentioned in my last post.  so in love!!  i hadn’t been there in a couple of years and hadn’t walked out behind the property and in the surrounding area in about… twenty years!?  even the boy, who said “we’re never moving from this house!” when we left said “ohmygawd, you  have to buy it now!  it’s so beautiful here!!”.  he’s such a sweet boy.

it’s no wonder my fellas have fallen in such love with the area like me — look how beautiful it is!!  these are all within a few moments drive from the property (which, by the way, is WAY more beautiful than the previous photos depicted — i was an arse and didn’t take any photos though!!  wth!?):

in a nutshell, the property (despite being so very dear to me) may not be as perfect as we once thought.  the surrounding area is owned by weyehauser (too lazy to look up my potentially-wrong spelling right now) and they to aerial herbicide spraying, or at least used to.  fuckers.  i refuse to live around that.  the sole water source to the cabins is via a mountain spring which could easily be contaminated, for one.  BUT, there is a stream through the property with a state protected salmon run so they may not be able to spray anymore.  i’ve only found evidence that they have been doing regular spraying up until 2011 so either they stopped, or they didn’t.  if they’ve stopped, i will make an offer on the property and live happily ever after.  if they didn’t, we will find another property.

all of this has clearly effected my most recent art piece: cabin in the woods under the moon (shown above in my front garden).  maybe i’ll create 7 of them for some universal magic.  <3  this piece is currently available in my online shop along with a couple of other new pieces i haven’t shared yet >>

here are some detail photos:

the cabin

the trees

the moon

this piece measures 8×10″.  ingredients: 1920s sheet music (the cabins are 1920s also so it felt befitting), acrylic and ink on clay board.

this week, my heart is in lorane, my mind is on the gorgeous seven cabins (i already picked out my future art studio which has ivy growing up the side and japanese maple outside the window), and i’m hoping to find out about the stupid spraying so i can see what our next step is.  either way, there is now a fire under our arses to find that perfect property for us so we can branch out, have a larger farm, get goats and more chickens, and live off the land.  i’m not going to let this get me down.  we spent 9 months trying to find the perfect place in alaska after spending last summer there and when we discovered a school issue and that we couldn’t move there for ten years i got into a huge funk.  not this time!  whatever is meant to be will happen.  i think.  and i will be happy.  i have to.

UPDATE (about an hour later):

apparently there has been no spraying for 2-4 years and will not be any more spraying for 50+ years, once the trees behind the property are old/tall enough to harvest again.  in 50 years i’ll be 89!! 

meeting with mortgage guy today.  woohooo!  (oh, and the seller told the realtor who is his son that he loves that i was born there and that we would sign 2 year lease agreements with all of the tenants!)  it’s still hopeful after all!  little straw bale house and cabin-art-studio and art retreats and organic farm, here we come! 

so, if you know or keep up with me, you’re aware of the fact that the husby and i have been looking for a parcel of land for almost three years now (or a property with a house we could live in while we build our wee dream two-bedroom strawbale house).  well, i’m so giddy i can hardly even type right now!!

long story short, i was born in a little tiny cabin in lorane, oregon.  i once wrote a bio to sum it up (for my web design company).  this excerpt is quite insightful:

Born and initially raised in the small town of Lorane, Oregon (population 46.5 upon her birth), Alicia was graciously blessed with an Etch-a-Sketch™ from her parents, which fueled her creativity at an eerily early age. There was, after all, not much else for her to do than play with sticks in the mud or crouch behind the outhouse while playing hide-and-seek with her make believe gnome friends and baby goat, Columbine. Some days she would be hiding for hours as neither were very good seekers.

soooo…. i freaking LOVE lorane!  it’s huge now though, like population 357 or something.  but two days ago, while doing my weekly property dream search, i found this the house i was conceived and born in!!!  it’s not even just ONE house, it’s seven cabins on 22.something acres.  seven!!  we have an appointment with the realtor to drive down to lane county this week to view it.  omg, omg, i’m practically peeing myself right now.

the catch?  we can’t afford to keep our portland house and spend $279,000 for the dream property, BUT the cabins are all currently being rented so we would have income generated from it (meaning rent payments coming in would be about the exact same as mortgage payment going out — we may make $6/month or have to shell out $11/month — it’s that close).  that’s a plus though.  the plan?  let the current tenants remain for about two years, because the husby cannot quit his job for about that long (or drive three hours to work), keep our portland house, live even more like paupers than we currently do, and then sell this house when he’s ready to retire from decorative concrete.  we would have to tear down one of the buildings to build our new house (and install a septic system) according the the realtor as it’s only zoned for seven dwellings, but we are rock stars when it comes to recycling and reusing and that wee cabin would become the floors of our new house.  gorgeous dark 100 year old wood!  windows would be made into a greenhouse or cold frames.  door into a kitchen or art table.  it would ALL get reused.  every last nail.

then what would we do with 6 extra cabins and 22.something acres of land?  grow our own food.  have chickens.  have goats.  maybe get a cow.  have ART RETREATS with rustic cabins for people to stay in.  have MUSIC RETREATS with rustic cabins for people to stay in.  have mega fun spring and summer camps with kids doing art and archery (build your own bow and learn to shoot it), farming and livestock, edible plants in the wild classes — all kinds of fun stuff.  i would have a whole entire cabin to do weekly art groups with kids on the autism spectrum and invite our portland kiddo friends down for weekend arty retreats with camping and creek-side picnics, etc.

i don’t know how in the heck we’re going to make this happen but we’re going to.  i’m starting today to list all of my art goodies on my site for sale, slowly but surely.  i’m going to make all digital collage sheets $2 so if i sell 139,500 of them i can buy our dream property that i was conceived and born on… where my parents were married, where i learned to walk and name all trees, flowers and plants both by their common and their botanical names.  yes, the place where so many magical things happened.  i wonder if the gnomes will remember me.

it will be a huge amount of work to fix up that many cabins and to build our own new house (did i tell you i’ve already designed it??  apparently i have a knack for such things), plant acres of veggies and berries and fruit trees, build a barn and a chicken house and all of that but that is the kind of work i LOVE.  sweating and dirt make for a good day when it’s for yourself… and ending the day with art and family?  perfection!  i’m so excited i’m practically in tears (shh, i’m a girl).  right across the street from these cabins is another i used to live in when i was older.  in the woods behind it there was an old dump from the 1920s where there is still sooooo much treasure!  we found drinking glasses in perfect condition, antique silver, dishes, ornaments, tools, bones, and TONS of obsidian native american arrowheads.  i was a finder of cool things from about the age of two up.  still am.  i want to go dig around there right now!

how much food can you grow on 10 acres?  enough to feed ourselves and any other hungry person in the community, i bet.  i love feeding people.  it’s a passion.  so we will always grow more and donate part from each crop to those in need.  this is my dream.  and i want it to become my reality.

i’m not sure how far back the property goes but i can tell you in a few days.  it would be fun to have some of the hills back there.  i love hiking… but of course even if it wasn’t ours, i could trek around there any ol’ time i wanted, every single day of my life.

by the way, i didn’t take these photos but got them from the listing.  i should have photoshopped them up a bit to be more vibrant and lovely, but you still get the idea.  lorane is one of the most gorgeous places on earth.  to me, at least.  i was born there and i want to die there… and spent lots of time there in between.  some of my most favorite humans on earth are buried in the lorane cemetery and it would be nice to be able to visit them more often.  let me see if i have any photos of when i lived in either of the cabins….  ah yes, here is proof.  that little girl is me (my dad’s wedding to his second wife).  the lady next to me is my gramma bessie bell collie, renamed betty caudle (she was one of the most beautiful souls on earth) and behind, mel keep, my god mother, another one of the most beautiful souls on earth.  i miss those ladies so very much!

anyway, didn’t mean to make this so long, but wanted to share my dreaminess of the week with anyone who was interested.  you’re all welcome to come for a wee stay if we get this property.  i can’t imagine not getting it… but won’t allow myself to be totally crushed.

meet the second gal in my doll box series (the first, “exhibition of self” can be found in seth apter’s book “the pulse of mixed media” where i was one of the featured artists).  i fell instantly in love with that little face of hers and had to create something special.  at least i feel she’s special.  <3

like most people, she has her secrets; some are kept in the little drawer just above her heart, and others can be kept in the book within her belly.  the drawer is actually not empty.  can you guess what’s inside?

the book is made with bones upon the spine and a metal and shark tooth closure i fashioned out of miscellaneous found objects.

you can see several more detail photos on my site, here, if interested >>

what did you create today?

the perimeter of my studio has been getting more and more cluttered over the past [VERY busy year] but now that we have a new pup and i want him to be a studio dog, i’m tackling the boxes and mini-piles.  somehow, i managed to find a small cache of artwork that i never posted up for sale.  this is round one of “the old”.  since my walls are pretty much covered from ceiling to floor as it is, i’m having a “vintage alicia-art sale“.

charlotte in spring: i did do a blog post on this piece once many moons ago, but never ended up listing it.  why?  i’m ADD and am easily distracted by shiny rusty objects (and i have plenty of those around here to catch my attention).  otherwise, i have no excuse.

charlotte’s song #9:  i did a 20 piece series called “charlotte’s song (late 1800s to early 1900s sheet music and frozen charlotte dolls, you see)… and this is the only one that remains.  eighteen of the others sold, and one was given to my mum because she was in love.  so sweet of her!

charlottle sometimes: i created this piece in late 2010, originally [i think] for kerin gale’s book “inspired remnants, curious dreams” but i ended up submitting a different piece instead… so she ended up in the “post this on your website when you have a spare hour box”… apparently it took a couple of years for me to remember to do what i had intended to do back then.

if you’re interested in any of these pieces, you can find them here >>

next, the new.

over the holidays i ran out of time to work on my “keepers” series of little assemblages, but now that my weeks and weeks of company are gone and craziness is over, i’m back at it.  part of this was created awhile back, but i’ve just now finished it.  i bought two  pairs of these eyes that i used in the piece and lost one, so only have one left.  if only i remembered where i bought them!!  these were among my favorite taxidermy eyes ever!  even worse, i had 6 of these little round metal bits that they fit perfectly in, and now at least three will go eyeless.  about time for a taxidermy eye shopping spree again if i do say so myself.  if you have a favorite taxidermy eye shopping place, please let me know.  van dyke taxidermy is fantastic, but i can’t remember the other place i’ve gotten them.

the keeper of color.  5×5″, handmade box on collaged canvas.

click to enlarge if you’d like to check out the detail.  my favorite part?  the eye.  i covered it with several layers of resin and crackled it around the edges.  see:

this piece can be found in my regular shop, here: http://alteredbits.com/alicia-caudle-art.php, along with several additional detail photos.

just as a friendly reminder, you should head on over to seth apter’s blog, the altered page, here: http://thealteredpage.blogspot.com/

here you will find artists’ answers to the question “what is the one thing that you know now that you would have liked to have known when you first started to create art?”

i realized that i’ve not been 110% happy, and i do think everyone should be at least THAT happy in life.  what’s to be unhappy about when you’re the mother of the best boy on earth and the wife of the hottest and kindest [younger] man in the world?  it took a wee bit to realize that my problem is that i’ve wanted to have a farm for as long as i can remember.  i want to be an artist farmer… or a farmer artist.  over the past two decades i’ve outgrown web design.  i LOVE design.  but i HATE coding.  i’m too old school for all the new school technologies.  the fam and i have been looking for a new house with room for me to have a wee farm for over a year and a half but to no avail, which has been borderline crushing.  it’s really sad to fall in love with, for example, a 1920s 7 bedroom farmhouse on 9 acres only to find out at the last minute that it’s on a flood plain and flooded the year previous.  no thanks.

but…. i’m 98% happy now!  we have decided to buy a parcel of land instead and build our own little farm house — that way the house will be perfect and not mediocre (we have picky tastes).  we’re actually looking at 60 acres in douglas county, oregon (about 3 or 4 hours south of where we currently live in portland) and another 160 acre parcel a little ways farther down the road.  yes!  i have already morphed into a temporary architect and designed our house (a real architect said my designs were fantastic — apparently i have a knack for home design).  we’re building a straw bale home, complete with solar and wind power, and hydro as well if we have a good water source, and recycled rain water system (perfect in oregon) for bathrooms and laundry, a well for drinking… totally not quite off the grid.  we’ll have internet and cell phones, of course.  heat: a huge masonry stove.  passive solar.  all the good green stuff i love.  i totally should have been born in the pioneer days ’cause that’s really my cuppa tea for some reason.

to crank the happiness notch up a bit more, we’ve decided that since it will be a couple/few years before we can buy our land/sell this house, there is no reason we can’t have a mico-farm here.  we already have a 1919 farm house… so now our entire yard is a huge garden, complete with greenhouse, cloche and all sorts of goodness.  i’ll share more about this soon for my gardening friends (have several hundred veggie starts already inside, in the greenhouse and in the cloche).  we got a little farm pup named modoc… a 10 week old lab/border collie mix and 6 chicks hatching in a couple weeks (huge chicken coop/run done and ready to go).  i’m elated!  i now get to play in the dirt (we have about 1500 square feet of garden beds which is no “farm” but it’s a fantastic start), grow things and paint every day, along with the whole home school adventure, dog potty training/stop chewing that/let’s go on a walk, etc.  it all makes me so happy!  so, for the moment, i’m an artist and an urban farm girl.  woohooo!  if you’re in the area and need some organic tomato starts let me know ’cause i have 72.  i now realize that’s far too many.

despite my silence, i’ve been arting a lot as you can see above and below.  some of the pieces are still available on my website: http://alteredbits.com/alicia-caudle-art.php.  i’m working on some assemblages next which anyone who knows me knows i loveloveLOVE (1374% out of 100).  due to limited space at the moment (gearing up to do lots of remodeling around here) i have to work cyclically: paint/collage for awhile, then put that away to do some assemblage for a wee bit, then put that away to work on books, etc..

i have some other new stuff but i’ll save that for another post. this is already so long!

now, to save the best for last, i got an email from seth apter this evening to inform me that i will be featured in his tell all portion of the pulse next sunday. cruise on over to the altered page and have a look and a read.  you don’t have to wait until next sunday — go over there now.  he always has such amazing posts… i could spend half my life there and would be elated to do so.  (thank you so much, seth, for all that you do!!)  i will post a reminder on sunday morning in case you forget.

p.s. here is a photo of our new baby.  my second son, the canine:

see what wonderful artists are going to be featured in this newest issue:

and want to see a peek?  if not, you better close this window fast ’cause i’m sharing.  please do note that these are only a portion of what you’ll find in the next altered bits zine issue… there is sooooo much great art it may make your head spin.  it makes mine spin, at least.  love it all!!

more soon. 

go bid!  i can’t afford the first one but i think i shall donate $50 in seth’s name because he’s such a good and generous man and no matter how rough things may be for me right now, i know they are so much worse for those in the mid-atlantic region.

on a totally separate note, an odd warning…

if you’re like me, you love nature bits: sticks, stones, bird and paper wasp nests, etc.  all of my closest friends and family often collect things things for me, along with bones and other good bits.  a few weeks ago i commissioned my dad to make me some AMAZING art boxes (i’ll share that later — new motorized/light-up series in the works) and in the parcel he included two gorgeous and pristine wasp nests.  i was so thrilled!!  i was going to pull one out two days ago for an assemblage i’m working on but got side-tracked (what else is new?), and then went for them last night.  it looked like someone had poked their finger into the center of one as there was a wee hole where no hole had previous been.  i asked my son if he squished it in a fit?  nopes.  then i spy something moving inside the baggy it was in.  a WASP!  a big, fat, pokey-arsed wasp!  somehow it had managed to hatch super early in my house because it’s so cozy and warm.  who ever would have imagined!?  so, if you find a seemingly evacuated wasp’s nest, you may want to keep it in something tightly closed for… like a year… before you fiddle with it.  i’m quite allergic to those feisty little beasts.

one of the two looks like this with the white bits.  think a bunch more will hatch?  (this isn’t my actual nest — i was scared to open the box in case 13 more hatched and ate through the plastic bag they’re in).

during the whole cleaning and crap excavation, i realized that i do way too much.  seriously.  there are only so many hours in the day and when i cook a bare minimum of 18 hot, nutritious meals per week, do a load of dishes or two a day, home school for 6+ hours per day (more like 8+ when you take breaks and attitude into account), do web design for existing “old” clients as needed, tend to my shop (that’s kind of a lie — i don’t think i’ve added anything in a year), do the zine, have two art groups for aspie kiddos (one for homeschoolers, one for public schoolers)… it’s just all too overwhelming.  and that’s not even the half of it, but you get the gist.  when i have “free time” or force free time by neglecting laundry, i love to create my weirdo assemblages, make handmade books, paint (i’m not that good at it but i LOVE it so who cares), make journals and cuffs, collage, art journal, etc.  too much.  so i decided that i need to go on an art diet.  i’m hereby no longer making wrist cuff bracelets or fabric art journals unless by special request.  instead, i’m limiting my art to painting, assemblages and books… and collaborations, but only one at a time (jilly!!).  there is only so much time in my life and only so much space in my studio.  i’m also nixing my ancient desire to learn to knit and crochet.  as a result, i’ll probably be getting rid of about 472 pounds of fabric and yarn… and crochet hooks and knitting needles.  et cetera.  i’ll save the good stuff for give-aways here. 

cutting out the excess time-suck stuff means more art time and just as exciting, more time to catch up on what everyone else is doing!  it’s going to be like blog christmas, or whatever gift-giving holiday thing you’re into.  i miss my arty peeps (and nights of a full 8 hours of sleep).  slow down, alicia!

on the painting note, i love paint!  last year or so i started wanting to learn to paint portraits and figures “right” so i could start doing them wrong… i love the odd and disfigured for some strange reason.  my people often look dumb still, but it’s so much fun creating them.  anyway, i was recently commissioned to do a nude portrait, which scared the crap out of me.  recently is also a lie — it was over two years ago but he reminded me recently because i gracefully “forgot” due to fear.  so i created one this week and was a little surprised by the fact that i didn’t totally hate it.  the face is wonky, the limbs are uneven (love that), the hands are deformed (intentional), and her hair is abnormally red (among other things), but i don’t hate it, so i’m going to keep playing.  i can only post a peek because  he who commissioned me to create it hasn’t seen it yet.  i’ll share the whole thing at a later date if anyone is interested in seeing a weird naked lady painting.  i’ll take good pictures once the recipient has received it so you can see all of the texture.

i’ve also been getting about an email per week requesting more art tutorials, namely texture techniques (without the use of chemical art supplies), recipes for my inks and dyes since i’m allergic to 98% of the universe and often create my own goodies, and some of my strange books and bindings.  so, i’ve started a new “two story book®” tutorial.  i haven’t written it yet but the steps are all photographed and ready for me to create some free time to compose it.  this one isn’t super decorated, but one of the couple i’ve recently created (click to enlarge):

here are some of the inside [coffee stained] pages, all deckled and purdy on the outer edges

and here is some close-up detail of my binding.  i’m totally binding illiterate when i read other people’s instructions so i just make up my own, clearly.  looks like an ancient book to me.

once the zine is complete and i’m working on the tallest handmade book project, i’ll be whipping up this tutorial for all who are interested.  and painting lots more nudes.  i think i’m obsessed.