Greetings from Japan!

Hello everyone. I have arrived in Japan for the IMHC in Kyoto. My first time to Japan. I had the great fortune to be sitting across the isle from April Vollmer all the way from Seattle to Osaka. Also with us was Susan Rostow, the inventor of Akua Kolor!
Japan is gorgeous and you should all come! I am in a ryokan (bead and breakfast type inn) in the hills of Kyoto surrounded by a bamboo forest above and Maruyama Park below. I have a futon I lay out on the floor to sleep which for me is rather like how we camp anyway. And I have wi-fi! Yeah!
At breakfast I met a family who were in town from Kochi, Shikoku. He is a paper maker and was here to learn how to make his tools - the screens. He said that it is a dying art and harder to find so he has to learn it. He is not a generational family of paper makers. When I asked him why he decided to make paper then, he said he saw it made he felt inside that he must make paper. I understand that feeling - it is why I do moku hanga.
Yesterday I met Annie Bissett for the first time. She and her friend from Tokyo came and met me for a tour of several temples. We walked on the famous "nightingale" floors which really do sound like birds singing! It was amazing.
It is very humid and hot - reminded me of our Michigan summer.
I will post pictures later.

Takin' Art to the Streets

Downtown Lansing; Michigan’s newest art gallery!
And I am pleased to have 2 works selected to be included.

On our 27th wedding anniversary my husband and I attended the opening reception and press conference one block from the state capital building. We walked the beautiful downtown streets of Lansing and enjoyed art along with people who just got out of work and were on their way home. People who wouldn't think of stepping into an art gallery were stopping, looking, enjoying, calling the phone number on each banner to learn more about the art and artist. Amazing!

We learned how the Arts are [finally] being recognized for the economic impact it has in our greater community. We met artists from all over Michigan and learned about their inspiration and passion for their art.

Below is the "copy" from the City Streets website. Please browse the works online if you can't get to downtown Lansing before Labor Day. And don't ever, ever doubt - the Arts make a difference in people's lives!

http://lansingcitystreets.com

This summer Lansing Art Gallery is turning downtown Lansing into an open-air art gallery with the City Streets Exhibition. Eighty works of art from Michigan artists are on display along Washington Square and Michigan Avenue, creating two intersecting corridors of artwork.

More than just a visual experience, the City Streets Exhibition is a fully interactive happening. In this outdoor gallery, there’s no need to silence your cell phones. You’ll want it handy so that you can dial in to hear phone casts of the artists talking about their work and their inspiration in their own words.

With the City Streets Exhibition, your opinion counts. You know what you like, and we’d like to know too. You can leave comments about your favorite pieces and vote for the People’s Choice Award. Just look for the unique voice mail and text numbers displayed on each artwork banner.

The City Streets Exhibition was designed to give you the opportunity to see art, to learn about art, to talk about art, and to share your opinions about art. What are you waiting for? Take a walk in downtown Lansing, Michigan’s newest art gallery!

The exhibit is supported by the City of Lansing Arts & Cultural Grant Program funded through the Economic Development Corporation with help from the Arts Council of Greater Lansing. The grant program is part of a ten year Cultural Economic Development Plan.

Weeping

Like everyone, I watched with horror the news of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It is beyond me to comprehend entire towns wiped out and their populations missing. When the opportunity was presented to our printmaking community to give to relief efforts by making a print that would be sold with 100% going to that effort, I wanted to help.
Coming up with an image that represented my thoughts and feelings and my style of landscape and water, was difficult. I didn't want to portray destruction. I wanted to portray hope.
But I couldn't get the sounds out of my head. The sound of things shaking and crashing....the sound of people yelling....the sudden quiet as the quake stopped and everyone and everything regrouped. And then the water. Rushing, tossing everything in it's path, surging forward. The sound of water lapping against debris and finally the stillness and nothing is left to make a sound.
After all of that, it is the sound of weeping I am left with in my heart, mind and soul.

Little Prints

After spending most of 2010 making quite large prints I decided to make some small, simple, postcard size ones to start off 2011. Here are 3 of them.

Terminus

Mirror Lake

Forsythia

God's Area Code

I got the call yesterday that I am one of 6 international artists chosen for the 2011-2012 season's Artist in Residence program at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula! 2 weeks in the wilderness getting newly inspired by nature to translate into moku hanga. http://www.porkies.org/artist.html

A cabin to use, a backcountry pass, miles of trails, over a dozen named waterfalls, Lake Superior views – it’s the opportunity of a lifetime for someone who loves Michigan as much as I do!

When I told a friend of ours that I saw area code 906 on my phone I heard a sharp intake of breath and then, “That’s God’s area code!” That’s how people who love the unspoiled and beautiful expanse of northern Michigan feel.

Jim DuFresne, in his book Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, A Backcountry Guide for Hikers, Backpackers, Campers and Winter Visitors (Thunder Bay Press), says, “It’s the feeling of being out there in a land where man is at best a visitor passing through [that brings people back year after year]. It’s the idea that this rugged corner of the Upper Peninsula has been explored and mapped and even laced with foot trails and backcountry cabins, but never tamed. Like a fortress against development and that oxymoron we call “progress,” the Porkies have always been this place where you retreated to rediscover yourself and the natural world around you.

It’s a timeless quality first experienced by the Indians and then acknowledged by the early miners. Today it’s a priceless quality that attracts thousands of visitors who merely want to wander down a path or pause in wonder along the rocky shoreline of Lake Superior. The billboards, the golden arches, the motorized pace of our society is somewhere else.

Out here its towering pines 300 years old and spectacular waterfalls. It’s sweeping views from rocky knobs reached by the slow and thoughtful pace of foot travel that keeps everything in proper perspective.”

How can I not be inspired by such a place! How many times do we get the chance to explore and creatively share God’s area code!

12 Views of the Shiawassee Exhibit

The Gallery at Craig Mitchell Smith Glass
proudly presents the
Lansing exhibit of
12 Views of the Shiawassee River
by Linda J. Beeman
May 1 - 30, 2011
1st Sunday Gallery Walk
Opening Reception, May 1
Noon to 6:00 p.m.

A special print, "Weeping", made in response to the earthquake and
tsunami in Japan, will be available with 100% purchase price donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society for relief efforts.



Craig Mitchell Smith Gallery
Macy's Wing, Meridian Mall
Okemos, Michigan
517-349-1345
Hours: Mon. - Sat. 10am-9pm
Sun. noon - 6pm

A Billboard.....A Dilemma

8:00 a.m., 17 degrees

I have my own billboard. With my art on it! It’s not something I ever thought of having. It’s not something I sought out. But an opportunity was presented to me and it caused a lot of soul searching. Why, you might ask. Well, first let me tell you how it came about:
Adams Outdoor approached the Arts Council of Greater Lansing last summer with an idea that had worked very well in Pennsylvania. Use un-sold billboards to promote art and artists. What a great idea! There minimal cost for the Arts Council and the artists. The ACGL approached their recent grantees with the idea and 6 of us chose to do it.

Now let me take you on my journey to get me to the point where I would say yes.

I grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s. So much was happening politically at that time. People were divided on every issue imaginable. If I could be really simplistic (because I can’t and won’t spend the time getting into it all!) I would just say that people were either rock solid about doing things the way ”it” had always been done (whatever “it” was) or they were rock solid about not doing “it” in the same, established manner. Let me focus on pollution.

For too long people had viewed the planet as their own personal waste can. Air pollution was awful, water pollution was awful. Litter – oh, don’t get me started! – was everywhere. Everywhere! No one thought once, let alone twice about dropping whatever they wanted to get rid of on the ground. Tissue, newspaper, cigarette butts, cups, cans, bottles, couches, tires…………you get the idea. No one cared. Well, finally someone – a lot of someone’s – did. Laws were passed, recycling started, Earth Day happened (April 22! http://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2011 A Billion Acts of Green!).

Ever heard of “Visual Pollution”? Litter on a stick? Highway junk mail? That was what billboards were called. They were everywhere. Every kind and size. No zoning, didn’t matter what it blocked, how close together they were. They were one right after another all over the place. And if they fell down, well, it became litter like all the rest. Then along came The Highway Beautification Act of 1965 (and it’s many, many amendments since then),a campaign started by Lady Bird and President Lyndon B. Johnson.

According to http://www.pbs.org/ladybird/shattereddreams/shattereddreams_report.html
“Lady Bird and her husband had driven many times from their home in Texas to Washington, DC, and had been frustrated by the increasing number of junkyards and billboards along the way. In his State of the Union address in 1965, President Johnson addressed the issue by saying "a new and substantial effort must be made to landscape highways to provide places of relaxation and recreation wherever our roads run."
The interstate highway system was built largely during the Eisenhower administration, and the billboard industry had been booming ever since. In 1958, Congress had passed a highway bill that gave states an extra half percent in funding if they controlled billboards, but the incentive appeared ineffectual in stopping highways from being blanketed with billboards.
Lady Bird wanted the highways clear of billboards and junkyards, and filled with green landscaping and wildflowers.
"Public feeling is going to bring about regulation," she told reporters, "so you don't have a solid diet of billboards on all the roads."
The power of the billboard industry, however, was a tough match for the White House and the battle to pass the Highway Beautification Act was fierce.
The eventual bill was a compromise between the White House and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. It stated that billboards would be banned "except in those areas of commercial and industrial use." Further pressure from the industry caused an additional amendment that required the government to provide "just compensation" to owners for losing their billboards.”

The magnitude of illegal and nonconforming sign removals under the HBA of 1965 was first identified in the 1966 nationwide inventory conducted by the Bureau of Public Roads. From the list of the 1.1 million outdoor advertising signs on state inventories, nearly 840,000 were found to be illegal or nonconforming and 260,000 were located in commercial and industrial areas (conforming signs). Can you imagine? 1.1 MILLION billboards and 840,000 were illegal or nonconforming!

Fast forward to today. I grew up with all that. I remember all that! It's why I am a conservationist, a passionate proponent of nature and preservation of wilderness. My artwork is of the beauty of natural areas. What am I doing even thinking about putting it on a billboard? My conservation organization memberships will be revoked! They will disown me!

But, I’m also an artist. Funding and support for the arts are so low as to be almost non-existent. The Arts Council that gave me a grant to produce artwork promoting the beauty and conservation of our waterways was asking me to help promote them and promote art on a billboard.

And so after a lot of heartfelt, purposeful thought, I agreed. The piece I chose was also purposeful. Stones Unturned. When I wrote about that piece I said that sometimes opportunities are presented to us in the pursuit of success but we don’t have to take them. We can leave those “stones unturned”.
But, sometimes we do have to take the opportunity. This time I took the opportunity.
Sometimes, well, I guess Lady Bird said it better than I can:

"Ugliness is so grim," Lady Bird Johnson once said. "A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony which will lessen tensions."

I hope people think it is lovely. I hope it will make people smile and seek out beautiful places. I hope people will be thankful for those beautiful places. I am. And I'm thankful for the opportunity.