Kat’s Arts Blog

Lately I’ve been collecting images from around the Web in an electronic journal to help nail down the plans for our house-to-be. One place I’ve found lots of good ones is a site called Houzz, which I found via their (free) iPad app, which of course I installed on mine.

Here’s a neat idea from Houzz:

Reusing old apple crates not only looks nifty, it keeps them out of landfills, so it goes along with the concept of “green building” we’re aspiring to, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts. Stained, painted or whitewashed they would look even better, but in some settings the “raw” version would fit just fine.

In my last post I mentioned that Phil and I are planning to build a house soon. Naturally, as an inveterate blogger, I plan to write about the process, but aside from one entry on my techie blog that mainly discusses how I generated a presentation of our plan, I have not yet started to discuss it online. For one thing, I have had a hard time deciding which of my blogs would be a suitable venue for such content, or maybe should I start yet another one? That would be really excessive since I can’t keep up with the four active blogs I have now. And since architecture and decorating are after all arts, I decided to write about it here.

The things I plan to write about include the house, workshop and garage design, including the xeriscape landscaping we have in mind, the “green” building techniques and materials we are considering, and everything else that goes into planning a new home. In case you haven’t been following my comments on Twitter about it, I should mention that the home site is in the Texas Hill Country, near Canyon Lake. In light of the flash flood here last week, one of the design decisions to cover might well be how to plan to prevent damage from similar events in the future. And while floods and xeriscape design might seem contradictory, they really aren’t. Both semi-arid and disasterously wet conditions are possibilities here at various times, so they have to be taken into consideration.

I won’t be neglecting the other “arts” included in this website. For one thing, there are already photos of our building site in the gallery’s landscape section here, and as for jewelry design, that has to be done somewhere. Designing a really practical workshop with areas for various craft techniques is certainly one of the aspects of this whole enterprise that has me excited.

Along with expanding the scope of this blog, I’m adding another element to the website: ads. I’m working on a policy statement about them that will become a permanent page on the site, but don’t be too surprised to see ads for a lot of home decor products, and possibly more. They do not constitute paid endorsements — I should be so lucky! But it is possible that we may use some of the products advertised here and if we do, I may write about them. When that happens, I will be sure to follow the FTC’s recent directive to inform you, my reader, about whatever commercial relationship exists between me and my advertisers, so you can judge for yourself whether I can be objective or not. While I think it highly unlikely any vendor will be willing to pay me enough to actually affect my judgement or comments, if you know about what’s going on you can make up your own mind. At this point, I feel like I ought to use the phrase “fair and balanced” …. Sorry, this isn’t a political blog. I just got carried away.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the addition. Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions anytime.

This week we’ve been in Tucson for the extravganza centered around the famous Tucson Gem and Mineral Show (TGMS). However, my primary interest is in materials for casual beaded and wirewrapped jewelry, not fine gemstones, lovely as they are. The bead shows and polymer clay (PC) workshops have been totally worth it, even if some of the serious gem merchants may think they are just a side show. To me, they are the main event.

I’ve acquired a good collection of semi-precious stone beads, and a lot of ideas and tips from the PC artists gathered here. Even my husband has gotten interested in the possibilities and fun of polymer clay sculpture after attending a class and make & take PC party. Christie Friesen, the clay sculpture class instructor, was both informative and a whole lot of fun. Her enthusiasm is as inspiring as her originality and skill as an artist and teacher. I have a feeling we will look her up at future events around the country as well as visiting her website and buying her books. She has a chatroom on her site that she says is very active, so once we get our internet connection squared away I will check that out.

As we put our new knowledge to work, and create new things with the skills and supplies obtained here, I’ll post pictures of them in the gallery.

I posted more pix in the gallery, including a bunch from our visits to Monticello and Fallingwater and some from a fantastic trip to Ireland in 2005. Slowly the empty albums are starting to become populated.

I just heard from a friend that there is another website with an almost identical domain name as this one: Kat’s Art at http://katsart.com. It belongs to illustrator Katrine Dickau, who does some lovely work. I did try to get that domain before settling on this one, but it was already taken. That’s the way the Web works, though. There’s only so many short names out there, and you do what you can with limited resources. My things are different enough from Katrine’s that I’m sure nobody will be confused, but you might enjoy going over there, too, to see what she’s got.