🌿Keep it Green🍃
Sustainability is about ecology, economy and equity. ~Ralph Bicknese
MetaFlower 2017… it is all connected!
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. ~ Mother Teresa
🌿Greenery it is!🍃
Nopal Cactus with Tunas! …next to the sidewalk
Today, I found this Nopal Cactus blooming right next to the sidewalk on my daily walk.
I was very amazed for it is getting cold here.
It’s been 4 years since my father passed away. 
I discovered presence and love without motion.
Nopales by the sidewalk (they have so many eyes) © Lisa Rivas
I believe this moment was sent to me from 🌿 “Beyond” 🌿, it’s almost as if Dad is looking at me.
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin.
It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity,
and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
~Thomas Merton
🌰
A visit to Donna Rizzo…
I had a wonderful afternoon yesterday visiting my dear friend Donna Rizzo, she use to be my neighbor but she and her husband bought land out in the country so now it is a hike to get out there. A real needed adventure!
Donna is a fabulous clay artist that has a very unique style. She has a fascinating way of looking at the figure (she was once a modern dancer from Atlanta), she creates all kinds of figures, specially women and animals sometimes with a dance or a twist. I love seeing what she comes up with and the use of all kinds of textures, patterns and the subtle stories in her work.
Here is a mood-board for you to get a glimpse of what I mean. She is someone I have always wanted to do a collaboration with, maybe create some sort of a Riz & Riv collection!
Upon my visit I took my graphite-carbon disc by ArtGraf (the best) and a Sumi-E Paper to tryout once again the creation of textures using lace taught by @noa-ambar-regev At first I had a hard time making an effective rubbing or “a frottage” when I tried it a few days ago in my studio, but now at Donna’s place things were happening very well! …I was puzzled as to why? And then I realized that I was working on one of “Donna’s solid, stiff, hard table” versus “My softer, cutting board, vinyl covered table”, which I use. I found that it is essential to have a hard surface for this method to work well.
In the end I did a total of 18 sheets of paper, and it was so easy. Donna did have the box of old textured lace, textured paper, rubber mats with designs, her wonderful clay stamps, and then the fabulous stash of vintage cloths, plastic doillies, crochet pieces from Mrs. Lawrence, her mother-in-law.
What a treasure trove!
From one of the “frontages” this pattern came about, with a sense of camouflage having the flowers hidden in the sand. Soon more to come.
Love what is happening, maybe the Riz-Riv Collection will happen after all!
“Truth is like a silhouette, it keeps appearing along with light, it can’t be camouflaged for ever.”
~Chandrababu V.S.
Don’t forget …
Memorial Day is a day we pause to give thanks
to those people
who gave their tomorrows so I could have today.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THANK YOU
Menlo Park, CA … Pop-Up Art Show!
I recently had a unique exhibition experience with a “Pop-Up Art Show” in Menlo Park, CA. put on by art-lover Grace R. Stewart. Grace approached me last year with the interest of offering “wonderful unique art” to the affluent community of Silicon Valley in the Santa Clara Valley, CA.
To me a Pop-Up Exhibit was a bit strange, I was use to galleries, museums and fundraisers.
The “Pop-Up Exhibit” is a new type of exhibit that offers unique possibilities to artists of offering their work in unique spaces/a new demographic and to an interested public without having to make huge upfront investment.
Exhibits are usually very expensive for both parties.
Here’s…a fabulous article in the New York Times about a Pop-Up Art Exhibition
“You Never Know Where Her Gallery Will Pop Up Next”
Grace Stewart & Renne Albro / Pop-Up Hosts
Wee Gems Collection I – 2016 © Lisa Rivas / Click image to buy a Wee Gem!
Picaflor © Lisa Rivas / Click to Buy
Cabbage Rose © Lisa Rivas / Digital image printed on rice paper with unique sequins / Click to Buy
Daffy Down Dilly © Lisa Rivas / digital image printed / Click to Buy
Daffy Down Dilly / digital image printed on rice paper with unique sequins
You can still purchase some of the Wee Gems from this exhibit! Click here