aquisition

i have myself a beautiful, blank canvas...

and i am enamored by golden yellow leaves dancing on a swirling wind against the backdrop of a deep dark ashen grey sky. it was an arresting site today.

can't wait to see what comes out of me.

but first i must attend to the mundane tasks of love i do...like cooking supper, cleaning the kitchen and caring for my family...then i shall wreck havoc on that too white space.

xo

Loam.

Loam...the name of the new store in washington connecticut that will be selling my jewelry...

the owner, Beth Fowler, describes the venue as "...a fertile marketplace for local/emerging artists, recycling(vintage furniture and art) and fair trade textiles from primarily (woman- based micro-loan businesses) foreign cultures to create commerce for them."

i am so excited to be a part of it. i can hardly wait for it to officially open on October 1st!

more info on Loam as it emerges...rumor has it there will be an online branch...stay tuned!

blocks.

it's my new favorite form for my 2-d work to take. blocks. they can be stacked or hung on the wall...and well...no words are really necessary. check out the set of nocturnal nasturtium...they can be done in any size up to 24x24 with gold leaf edges...the whole idea is one which thrills me.

you can check this set out on my standingflower etsy page...and convo me if you're interested in it...say you saw it on my blog and you'll save 10%! even on custom ordered sizes!

Picnic in the Rain

the Picnic Music and Arts Festival came and went. and it was soo much fun, albeit really wet.

the first few hours looked like it would be a dry, mildly cloudy day. i had many sales, a lot of positive activity and met bunches of people that were interested in my work. it felt great. so much good energy. the whole fair was brimming with creative people. i was so happy to be a part of it.

and then a few hours in, the rain hit...and my tent was just not big enough for what i was storing underneath. we kept pushing things in towards the center of the tent to no avail...

the available dry sales space had shrunk to the point of our space being inhospitable. the faces of people began to look a little downtrodden and the energy kind of changed...and then things got wet, prints, despite our moving them...

so my 9 year old son who was helping me and i packed up and left a couple hours early.

but it was great...and if things had kept up the way they had started it would have been a perfect day. at least packing up early gave us the chance to look around. great wrk happening in southern maine, folks. i'm so proud to live around here and be a part of it.

there will be another fair on december 13th...so stay tuned!!!

xo

sea foam...or jade.

i love the foam the waves leaves behind after they bravely crash onto the beach and wash back to the safe mass of the ocean.

ahhhh....sea foam.

beautiful pale jade nuggets and golden glass beads create a subtly hued halo around the wrist with the perfect swish and wash of color of seafoam...hung on antiqued brass chain with a secure brass latch closure and a weighted handmade brass finding to boot.

find it at my etsy shop.

delivered

the creation of this necklace felt like an epiphany of sorts. the design came to me in a dream and continued manifesting as i created it. there is something sacred about the frankincense beads i am working with. they are just so worthy of adoration. they remind me of raw diamonds and i have been treating them as such...and the bone bead is so pure, but carries with it an assymetric weight of observation...

in this piece the birdie messanger flies through the free-moving loop of hand hammered brass to deliver nuggets of frankincense resin, witnessed by a pearly bead of bone...hung on a long delicate antiqued brass chain 24 inches in length. closes with a brass lobster clasp.

<3 find it here on etsy.

Barnacles are the Mushrooms of the Sea

or at least they resemble cute chubby fungus when i attempt to create them. my barnacles...they seem to have had a life previous to the one i am giving them in my design. and what with their material composition, perhaps they have.

dug out bone nestles nuggets of frankincense resin...strung on brass that only gets more and more lovely with age. these designs are timeless, but the aesthetic in me needs to add that they look absolutely amazing on sunsoaked skin. perfect to take you from the end of summer into autumn.

find them on etsy.

my new fancy

frankincense.

little resin drops that i spear and string on wire and use for beads. they resemble honey hued raw diamonds.

paired with brass and ivory bone.

i just love them.

Gearing Up for PICNIC

i've decided that to make the whole PICNIC experience easier for me, more cost effective for buyers and to make the toting of purchases easier, i am going to bring my large prints in sleeves, unframed and unmatted.

framing can be so expensive, so time consuming for me and i actually consider it quite personal. i love framing the art i purchase and create for myself and do it according to my world and the feeling of my space. i am hoping my customers will feel the same way and have forethought and vision when viewing my naked work!

it just makes so much more sense to do it this way...i can bring way more prints to the festival, thus offer a wider selection and the work will be easy to carry for those shoppers on foot, too.

decision final. i am framing some little pieces...and a few medium sized ones...and sleeving all the rest.

water lily

this victorian brass waterlily hugs your wrist just right...and is secured by a chain made of hand wrought brass tubes. the kind of bracelet you can wear everyday and never ever tire of (i would know...i loved the first one so much i haven't been able to part with it...thus i made another for you. :))
come support the arts at www.tangiblesbysf.etsy.com or visit my work and I in person at PICNIC.

Black Sea

beautiful, deep black vintage glass beads from one of my grandmother's necklaces...upcycled into the Black Sea Necklace. separated by undulated hand made brass findings on an antiqued black chain, closing with a brass lobster clasp. Earrings to match, the black beads are suspeneded by the antiqued brass chain and measure a striking 2 3/4 inches long.

come see them at www.tangiblesbysf.etsy.com or in person at Picnic music & arts festival in Portland Maine on the 12th of September.

the oceanic series and the krakin...

i just love living near the ocean...the rocky coast against that expanse of undulating color...it inspires me. coming soon to www.tangiblesbysf.etsy.com and PICNIC music & arts festival on September 12th in Portland, ME right next to Angela Adams' tent!!!!

PICNIC music & arts festival

so it is official...i will be participating in PICNIC music & arts festival. we went last year and it was just sooooo good. great music all day and a lot of talent and great crafts to buy. i am so happy to be a vender this year. it is inspiring. i am designing new stuff just for the occasion... think art inspired adornment and portable functional art.

the fair takes place on september 12th from 11-6 in lincoln park in portland, maine.

it's be great to see you there! come support the arts.

for abby...

brassy pod slices...

new jewels of organic slices of horsechestnut. i've been wearing mine constantly...

www.tangiblesbysf.etsy.com

For Abby...

She Up and Bolted

she up and bolted...went to seed. it was inevitable. and some stopped looking at her for lack of soft lush petals. and they missed her finest hour...

jonquille

some guests from my daffodil plot.

le fleur...

please meet Iris.

bartlett

waltzing satsuma...

slightly puckered seckle pear

on the day you were born

invoking the spirits of my ancestors

"pods"

New blog Art Auction for "Pods"! a piece i adore which is part of the permanent collection of the University of Southern Maine. don't miss your chance to bid! check it out at www.myspace.com/tangyom or let me know if you'd like me to place a bid for you and i will...email me for details if you are interested.

xo

kent harris' take on Pat D.

Kent this is brilliant!

Pat in motion...

my dad...

I can still remember sitting on the floor of my second grade classroom 27 years ago watching him. My Dad. The most amazing artist in all the world. He stood in front of my little 7 year old peers as a guest speaker whipping out in a few marker strokes whatever the kids called out. Clowns, horses, hot air balloons…whatever their imaginations could think of he would conjure on the big blank pad of paper. I remember my heart swelling with pride as I looked around at the amazement on the other kids faces. I was so lucky…my dad was a sort of magician. And I wanted to be just like him.

Back then Dad ran the art department of an aerospace company in Connecticut. He worked in an office, commuted back and forth on an overcrowded interstate highway every morning and every evening for what probably felt like a thousand years. He supported us, his family with this work. And I was so proud of being able to go to any encyclopedia and open it to find my dad’s art…the Space Shuttles and Space Telescopes in there are all his work. To me he was famous…one of the greats.

Growing up my world was full of stories of all the other artists in our family, many of whom had died before I ever got to know them or perhaps stayed in the “old country” in Italy. Painters, master carpenters, fashion designers, poets, musicians…this was our bloodline. We came from creative stock. But he was certain to tell me of the trials and tribulations these folks all faced as artists. It’s a hard path to follow…hard to make a living at it and even harder to support a family doing it.

He had bookshelves crammed with big fat art books to pour through and lose myself in on rainy days. I was surrounded by the works of amazing artists, from the Wyeths to Diego Rivera to Pablo Picasso to Jackson Pollack to Michelangelo to Monet, to name a few.

Lucky I had so much art around me to emulate because throughout my life I have been the lucky recipient of all of my Dad’s hand-me-down top-of-the line art supplies. Fancy guaches, watercolors, a huge set of markers with every color under the sun in it…colored pencils, tracing paper…you name it. I would use the stuff in my own way trying to mimic him and all of those other great artists I read about.

As the last of his three children prepared to go to college, something amazing happened to my Dad. He decided to dip his toe into a different pond in the art world. He bought himself a canvas and with great care after work in the evenings, he did something he hadn’t done in years and years and years…he made a painting. A painting that did not have to do with spaceships or aerospace technology.

It was a polar bear…an amazing, lifelike polar bear meandering through the terrain of a washy background that felt cold like a blizzard. I remember seeing it evolve and watching drop jawed as he magically made this great beast appear on the once white canvas. The big bear emanated strength and assuredness and the ability to survive the harsh elements…in retrospect, it kind of was like my Dad’s spirit painting of his inner-artist-animal, though I don’t think he’d ever describe it that way. To my poetic self, it signifies his readiness to leave the security of the paycheck a corporate job offers and brave the often times harsh world with his creativity and his pure talent as his guide.

He (lovingly) coerced my mom to pack up and hightail it to Maine, the place we as a family had enjoyed on many a summer vacation. He wanted to paint. He wanted to live more simply. He went from dipping his toe into those waters to diving head first in with no looking back. And thankfully, I think he would say with no regrets, either.

Today, my Dad, Pat DeSantis, is a successful artist. He works in a studio and has his own gallery in the gorgeous carriage house attached to the home he and my Mom, Margaret, share. The P. DeSantis Studio and Gallery is located at 77 North Street in Kennebunkport…across from Patten’s Berry Farm. The chair at his big desk where he paints looks out over a beautiful yard into the Maine woods, a lot different than that office chair he used to sit in at work. His first of many paintings, that magical, mystical Polar Bear, is hung with a certain sublime pride over the mantel above the fireplace in my Dad’s gallery today. I think that bear feels more at home surrounded by the woods and the elements…and so does my father.

Today he makes his own art for a living and not surprising to anyone hearing our story, so do I. It strikes me as poignant, when I think back to my days in college, when after making an attempt to be a writer I switched my degree to art and my Dad responded with sunken shoulders and a big frown. He tried to convince me that having a trade, a more marketable skill would be much more sensible. He tried to dissuade me with talks of the reality of the starving artist. And I sat and I politely listened, but then turned around and did what he had been inspiring me to do my whole entire life…I flexed my creativity, just like he had and I became an artist. And art permeates everything I do.

And so I would like to say, to my Dad, “Thanks.” Thanks for believing in the importance of art. Thanks for being so brave and making the jump into your real self…the painter, and continuing to let that painter evolve showing me that there is no need for stagnancy in life. Thanks for realizing that I am as bullheaded as you and that you couldn’t stop me, and thus encouraging me and cheering me through my personal trials as an artist. And thank you, Dad, for inspiring me.

valentine monsters...

my sons and i made monsters instead of heart-laden trinkets today...

another blog ART AUCTION!

since the last one was so much fun...i'm having another.

www.myspace.com/tangyom

rusty cage...up for auction! come and join the fun!

My First Online Blog Art Auction!

i am attempting an online art auction on my myspace blog! it has proven to be pretty fun...a bit exciting even. don't know how profitable it will actually turn out to be, but it certainly is something to keep these winter days exciting!

if you are interested in the auction, you can find it on my myspace blog
http://www.myspace.com/pjtach
friend request me with a message about the auction if we aren't already myspace friends so you can see it...the print i am auctioning off is "persimmon" seen below. i'll write about how it turns out

digital imaging...