Sisters Three

Chris Beneman with her daughters Sarah, Kate, and Lisa.

Yesterday afternoon I had the great pleasure of drawing this beautiful trio of sisters, whose Mom wanted to catch them together while they were all home for the holidays, before the older two have to head back out of state and return to school. They sat for about an hour and a half as the sun went down. A triple treat to draw!!!

Imprinting

A student of mine happily at work at Pickwick Independent Press.

The Girls, I, monoprint

The Girls, II, monoprint (ghost)

A July bouquet brought from my garden to the print studio...

Adding a second layer of information to the monoprint plate...

The Girls, III, monoprint

The Girls, IV, monoprint (ghost)

The Girls, V, monoprint with colored ink and pastel

The Girls, VI, monoprint (ghost)

I'm back in a printshop again! After graduating from MECA with a degree in Printmaking in '06, I have not done very much of it! That's about to change since I've recently joined Pickwick Independent Press and have started teaching there as well.

Here are some of my recent monoprint experiments - a series about sisters - specifically, me and my sister Sue. Susan and I are one year apart - almost but not quite Irish twins, and we certainly have many of the characteristics of true twins. We were dressed alike and were inseparable, and were referred to simply as The Girls in our family of six for quite a few years. This series begins to speak about issues of identity, symbiosis, codependence, interdependence, independence, and love...

Sisters

Sister Spirit!

A photo on the wall at the cabin where we vacationed last month...

My wedding day in June, 1976, with my three sisters as bridesmaids...

Me and my sisters, circa summer, 1984...

Sisters' Day necklaces, made by Susan...

An exquisite corpse done by all four of us...(:^D) = B - >=======]

Martha, Amy, Deborah, and Susan, summer 2010...

Deborah (getting ready to walk down the aisle last month...)

Martha with our mom, Edna, wearing one of Mom's old square dance petticoats...

Susan on the dock at White's Pond in Wakefield, RI...

Amy, with our grandniece Patience Rose, dressing up as woodland fairies...

We had our annual Sisters' Day early this summer because we were all together on the east coast celebrating our oldest sister Deborah's wedding last month! Good times. I'm so grateful for my sisters. They are strong, beautiful women, ALL.

Show Your Hand

Fire Hand.

Or, show some appreciation for your hand.

I was out to dinner Friday night with friends and was noticing one woman's hands - they looked so soft and pretty. They were manicured and she had sparkling clear polish on each perfectly sculpted nail. I was looking sideways at her hands as I fumbled in my pocketbook for another fingertip Bandaid (I already had one on my dry split thumb) to put on my dry split index finger. (Otherwise, squeezing the lemon juice onto my crabcakes would have been an act of excrutiating torture...)

I often go into compare and despair about my hands. I call them peasant hands. This goes way back...

When we were in grade school, my sister Sue and I had a paper route in Norwood, the section of suburban Warwick, RI, where we grew up. For two or three years, we delivered the Providence Journal Bulletin every afternoon except for Sundays. As soon as we got home from school, we had to clip the wires off the piles of papers that were dropped by the Journal Bulletin truck at the edge of our driveway. We had wire cutters stashed in our trusty red Radio Flyer wagon, along with a large canvas shoulder bag. We'd count the papers, then divide them up, and one of us pulled the wagon, while the other would sling the heavy bag over her shoulder as we marched up Maple Street, folding the papers and tossing them onto screen porches and into front doorways, before rounding the corner onto Ash. We had sixty papers - a good sized route for two little girls - and it would take us till dinner time to finish delivering them to all our customers on those tree named, tree lined streets - and we'd return home after dark, ravenous for supper. Susan and I had to do the paper route. My parents both worked, but still struggled to make ends meet with a family of six. Two of our older siblings were in college at that time, and my father used the money we earned to buy our clothes. We were able to keep a small portion of the tips, and we were happy with that arrangement. Indeed, Sue and I felt rich as kings with our weekly allottment, and took it directly to Norwood Bakery where we filled brown paper bags with candy necklaces, red waxed lips, waxed buckteeth, chocolate Ice Cubes, and long scrolls of white paper punctuated with rows and rows of pastel colored candy dots. (No doubt what we earned helped to pay the dentist bill, too...).

I could write a book about the paper route, but the single story that comes to mind this morning involves my hands. On one particularly cold winter afternoon Susan and I were about halfway through the route, and it was collection day. Some of our customers left envelopes with their change tacked to their doors. Most folks left fifty cents and we'd get to keep the eight cent tip, whoo hoo! At Christmas time some pulled out all the stops and left us a dollar. Some couldn't afford to tip, and we'd get exactly forty-two cents. If there was no envelope waiting for us, we had to ring the bell, or knock on the door, and ask for the money. So this one afternoon I rang the doorbell of the house where a pretty girl lived. I didn't know her name, but I'd seen her at school. She was a grade ahead of me, and had long shiny auburn banana curls, and a wardrobe of puffy lace dresses (I had a no nonsense pixie cut that made me look like a boy) and when I rang the bell, she came to the door, curls bouncing, pink mouth munching busily on an Oreo. I was blasted with a poof of sweet smelling warm air as she released the vacuum seal of the storm door, and could see the color TV set behind her, tuned to cartoons. Her hand brushed mine as she placed the two quarters in my cold palm, and it felt almost hot, and looked as soft and white as a marshmallow. Then she closed the door with a bang, and I stood on the step in the blue twilight, thinking about the difference between our hands, and wondering with envy, Wow, what would it be like to be her? Hair all in curls? Laying around after school in the warm house eating cookies and watching TV until suppertime??

I have since learned to love and accept my little peasant hands. They are capable of many wonderful things. (Thankyou, hands. I kiss you now with a flourish and a humble bow. xxx)

What do your hands tell about you?

The Girl with the Pearl Earring...

Susan, 1977
photograph by George Simmons

... and the girl I grew up with. I always thought that my sister Susan resembled Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring. What do you think?

Happy weekend, all!

Sister Day, 2009

a Sister Day bouquet...

color choices: Amy...

Susan...

Debby's hands...

an exacting art!!!

the courtyard at my Mom's place...

whipped cream topped goody (ginger bread with fresh peaches...)

small gifts...

a magic act...

painted toenail mandala...

sisters plus one granddaughter and one daughter with a big pregnant belly!

two sisters walking the beach at Barrington Bay...

In 2002, my three sisters and I decided to start an annual summertime ritual that we call Sister Day. This year we met in July, at my sister Deborah's home in Barrington, RI. We exchange small gifts and eat good food and just enjoy each other's company. For this Sister Day, Deb treated us all to pedicures! What a luxury! My Mom also lives in Barrington, in the Alzheimer's unit at her assisted living facility, and after our pedicures, we had our afternoon tea with her.

Hooray for sisters! I am very, very, very blessed.

Abby's Baby Shower Favors

makeshift light table using a clear lucite table with clip on lamp...

Susan tracing...

Martha tracing...

Sue's granddaughter Patience Rose documenting...

first stage complete!

Edna inspecting...

Deborah trimming...

The Queen of Hearts by Patience Rose

Patience with stitched stack 'o' Queens...

setting up to paint on Deb's deck...

painting...

glittering...

painting...

painting...

another inspection...

an army of Queens!

off with their heads!!

at the shower...

My sister Susan and I have been at our sister Deb's house the past couple of weeks, helping to care for our mother, Edna, who has Alzheimer's. Mom lives near Deb in an assisted living home. While at Deb's, we also helped her to prepare for her daughter Abby's baby shower, which was last Sunday. Deb asked Susan and I to design the shower favors. She had a Mad Hatter Tea Party/Through the Looking Glass theme, and had purchased small heart shaped mirrors in black velvet pouches. She wanted a Queen of Hearts figure holding this pouch somehow. We decided to make felt figures, like the ornaments that I have made, and Susan set to work making a couple of patterns of the Queen of Hearts from the Disney version of the story. Sue and I then set up 2 light tables and traced 36 Queens on white felt using red sharpies. The next step was to sew each figure onto another piece of felt, using black stitching to "draw" in the details. After each Queen got trimmed, we took them all outside onto Deb's porch, painted them with acrylic paints, and embellished each figure with glitter, beads, and feathers. This was a 2 day project, and we had alot fun! I will post some pics of the shower soon!