Wallhanging Route 66

It took a long time to finish this Wallhanging. I started right after I finished Viva Mexico.

I started at the beginning of March, but because of my parkinson handicap I can only work on the sewing machine when I feel real good. Also the writing on my blog gets more difficult for me. It makes me feel terrible sometimes, But hey that is what my life is. Got to live with that. So You can inmagine that I am very proud that I finnished this piece. The Route 66 or "my way" as I also like to name it means a lot to us. As my daughter lives in the US we drove many times on that road to bring us to her.

The mesurements are 110 x 140 cm It has a sleeve at the top what makes it easy to hang on a wall.

wallhanging handmade by Coby Lange

Small Art Garden

July 29th again.
That's how fast the time goes by. I wanted to write a few blogs this month and I did. Not as much as I would have had but better than not at all. So today I write something about our little garden. We are so lucky to have a place to go outside and enjoy flowers, scrubs and even a pond with some goldfish. But above all we love art and curiosities or even 'KITSCH' on the old wall around the garden. When we bought this house about 30 years ago, we thought we would close the garden so we had a bigger store. But fortunately we did not.

Dieters Art Wood Faces ith chandelier

Sometimes we go outside for dinner. Many times when people come to our gallery, they walk straight on to the garden and enjoy all the things that can be seen. Here are some pictures and I hope you like them.

Brass lizart

old copperpan with necklage

From above our chair with handpainted silk covert

Pond with chandelier

Love and Peace

Yesterday Paul Taubman from UBC wrote: write something about fun today. Well yesterday I did not like anything. All the things that happened in Hamburg because of G20, made me sad. Young people who destroy other people belongings who they not even know. Of course, not all young people were involved . Demostration is happily allowed in a democratic country. But the poor police and the people who saw their cars going up in flames, just terrible. But now it's over today and hopefully there will soon be rest in this beautiful city of Hamburg. Love and Peace

take care of our planet
this is a desert devil

Working a lot on "FREEDOM"

Since the opening of our Galery I have been very busy. After Raymonde Sampers paintings were gone back to her, we filled the room with textile art from myself. The small pieces on the walls with nice lightning and my large "Stadhuis" piece in the window. The little pond here is now sold to a nice lady from Germany

"Vijver" made with handpainted silks and tread

In the mean time I finished a lovely babyquilt for a little girl and it is now in the USA

babyquilt for kayleeanne

But the most important work I am doing is preparing for an exhibition in September with my friends from KC61 The theme is "Vrijheid" and I will make 2 large pieces for this show. One is finished but I have not made a picture from it yet, just the working progess

This is the start of my first piece called Vrijheid and is made from silk stuffed with fiberfill 

After that I wrote the name vrijheid and sew it on a large frame from the back,
not easy I must say. I painted the letters red white and blue. Then I will hang it on silk tread.
To say:Freedom hangs by a thread.

OMG I started the Berlin Wall That is a very difficult task, but I love it. The word peace I made first with a computer program, then painted in on silk cut it out and sew it down. Names, dates and faces followed. A white dove not to be missed. The picture here just shows the start and I am now almost finished with it . I put a large hole on the side to look through at East Berlin. At the end of August it must be finished and I will surely put it here on my blog. At the moment it gets a lot of attention from people walking in the galery and they come back to see the progress, so that is nice.

Yes, my birth month

Yes, november again, my birth month. I love autumn, the beautiful colors that nature makes, how long will that last.

 I remember when I was a child (and that is a very long time ago) November was cold and freezing. My memory is not so good, but I know that the last years november was much nicer. I like that a lot, all thought it might not be so good for mother nature, that global warming. There always has been a change in weather so who knows, maybe it is just normal. Darkness creeps in very early now and I have to get use to it, but as soon as the weather is not so grey, I am fine.
I have fun with my piano and made a very nice necklage again,because next Year we wil probably have back our gallery and I need to make more art for the shop.

At the beginning of this month we had a meeting with KC61 , that was a good one. Everybody was eager to have some input and came with new ideas. Me for my part told them about our gallery and the future possibilities. Wendy made a very good powerpoint presentatien about social media, which I alraidy use. well most of them like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin and Etsy. I will have a look at Instagram,but I am not sure if I will use all.

I just started an new art piece as I will have an exhibiton at TriVidha gallery in December.

I'am very satisfied

Not writing much lately, but whow I was working a lot last month. First I did some silkpainting to make a large kind of balloon, which is working very nice in the wind and for the next weekend Dieter my hubby and I will be showing our art at the castle Aerwinkel not far from here. Dieter will show 3 of his Faces made from wood. 

One of Dieters Art pieces.

And I made one on canvas printed tree designed from my textile art and that will hang in a very interesting large tree in the park.

Silk Art by Coby Lange

Then I got a nice letter from KC61 a group of very good artist and I am accepted in the group which is great. They too will have an exhibition  soon, but this time not yet with work from me, so I hope to be invited next time. I wil write about the artist from this group after their exhibition.

KC61

Yesterday I finished my latest artwork contemporary textile. I started in februar and did a lot of stitching. First I made a pattern from a landscape and than I worked small pieces all hand made and stitched them from top (sky) to bottom together. I am very pleased with it, as mostly I work very secure and precise. This time I wanted to work more freely. I took a workshop from Jude Hill, she workes a lot with raw edges and I tried to put this work a little into my piece.

Handmade and stitched contemporary textile art by Coby Lange

Keep going

To keep on going is all I really want to, but now those wishes are there but not always possible to fullfill. Anyway my life has changed a little and it feels like I have to move faster and do more and more. Restless is what you could name it. But what is nice about it is that I make many stiches every day and that means that my art work is growing everyday. Here a picture of that piece. 

I am sure I need to work on it at least one month more. At the same time I still want to learn more about textile, to combine different textures together and build up more layers. It is nice to see how I become looser in my work. I learned a lot from Jude Hill she creates lovely ragged pieces, and tells stories with her cloth. I also made an other collage from my sudoku papers.

 I like that a lot and gives me a smile when a piece is done. 

That is it for today. I have to get up and start stitching again.

The beauty of nature

Bulrushes, also known as cane cigars or cattail are well known. The latin name is:Typha latifolia 

They are found in the Netherlands. Almost anywhere along the waterfront. The one I found is from the lake on the golfcourse. In the summertime they have bright yellow flowers. 

Today the weather is far too warm for time of this year. It is 11 degrees and almost Christmastime. So I cannot believe there will be a white christmas this year. But who knows, it could change quickly. At this moment I am still working on my quilt, it is growing slowly, but steady.

Silk Velvet Cotton all together will make a lovely quilt for decoration only.
Just to make my stash  a little smaller.

Only a few hours more

  It is all over, our holiday.

Today was our last day in Spain and in 2 and a half hours our bus will pick us up to bring us back home. We were lucky than today the weather was beautiful again and we made a lovely walk to an other castle a little high by Fernals a small fishers village. The view was breathtaking and we stopped at a bar where Dieter used to go many years ago. We sat down a while to enjoy. Look at these lovely pictures.

                                                   

On our way home we made some nice pictures of old houses and gardens.

Now it is time to make this post ready and probably tomorrow there will be no post from me as we will be very tired from the long 17 hours  bus travel ahead of us. Maybe we find a way to sleep a little.

The rain in spain.

The rain in spain , yes it did rain to day and the temperature went down about 10C. I had to put on a warm vest and we bought an umbrella so we could  at least walk a little. We went to a small Dutch restaurant and had Poffertjes a typical dutch delicious breakfast. 

When we past the large place Dieter made a picture of me in the rain and send it to our daughter in Las Vegas just to let her know it is not sunshine all the time here. In the Casa de la Cultura was an exhibition of a Spanish artist named Jordi Urbon. His work is made with photos and digital art, which I too love to make. But he is very good. He tells stories with his paintings. The Casa de la Cultura inhabited also the library and cinema's. Very modern and nice. We liked very much the part for the small children, to look in all the collections of children books. Very colorful ad clean. 

Dieters painting of the castle from Lloret de Mar
in the rain, and some digital work from me,
made this picture.

When we came to the hotel I had to make a digital work too and I think it is not so bad at all, but ofcourse I do not have all the software You would need for this kind of work.

                                                            

It was worth it.

Long hours in Barcelona, but it was worth it. Ofcourse we had to take the bus that took 1 hour exactly. The weather was great for a day in the city. It was about 10 years ago that we had visit Barcelona the last time and it is beautiful. Many people from all around the world, also many young people. The first stop was the Plaça Cataluna and we made our first picture.

 After that we did manage to do the whole Ramblas till the harbour, but first we visited the big market. So nice, look at the pictures of the fruits and fresh fruits of the sea and fish.

                                         

We past a new kind of bridge and people were feeding the fishes, even in the harbour is the water very clean. 

Columbus showing the way to the USA

Then we visit a new very big Center. We had to stop many times to take a break as hour feet were hurting. On the way back we stopped again at the market place and had our lunch in a fish restaurant. It was crowded. On the way to the busstation Dieter made an other picture of one of the beautiful buildings. 

We did not make it to a museum or so, just too much to do in one day. When we came home in our hotel we had to take a little nap to get well again. Next time we take a sightseeing bus through the city, that is for sure.

A walk around the rocks

An other easy day, We went for a nice walk around the castle, climing some rocks,but there are many people going that way so it is very secure. 

There we first saw three cormorans, sitting on big rocks in the see enjoying the weather.

 I took some pictures, but I see now they are not so perfect, so I leave them small. Then a little further on. A man went into the see with a lot of material, like scuba bottles and a underwater camera.

 Dieter asked him what he was going to do and he said those cormerans are very selden here and I would like to take pictures of them under water. Well I hope he was lucky, because those birds never left their rock. 

After we found a place in the shade (because yesterday we had tooooo much sun) we took our pensils and blocks to make some paintings. 

A drwaing in my small journal

Today we wanted to have our lunch in the hotel but we missed it. To night we will have dinner with a friend from us, she lives here for 40 years, is Duch and has a kapsalon her name is Lucy and we invited her to La Campana, our famous chicken place. Tomorrow we will visit one of the worlds most beautiful cities Barcelona.

By the way it is now 4 o'clock in the afternoon and very warm outside about 26 C or 82 F and that in october.

How lazy can You be?

Yesterday we had such a beautiful but tiring day, that we made a very lazy day to day. On the beautiful beach of Lloret de Mar. We got our folding chairs, put them close to the water. Our watercolor and block. Dieter painted the castle in large, I painted it smaller.

Dieter at work

Than I tried to draw some people on the beach, but that is very difficult, they move so fast. But here are some impressions.

From my small journal

The water is beautiful fresh but nice to swim and so clean. The beach here has very little stones so if You get up it is easy to get clean again as You can wipe them off.

While I was laying on my belly elbows in the sand, hands under my chin, I only could see the shade of myself on the sand and I thought: There are You, no age!  You could be 10 20 50 70 it does not matter as long as You know life is beatiful.