BT Nine Patch

(see full image)

Wanda Hayes Eichler

Graywood Designs

Morning Is Breaking

(see full image)

Garden Heaven

(see full image)

Beneath the big Seven Sisters rose, just outside my kitchen door, a little corner of garden heaven. Sedum, strawberry, rose, mother and child sculpture from my daughter, Copper Country watering can. #gardening #roses #michigansummer

Storms Over The Thumb

(see full image)

Wanda Hayes Eichler

Graywood Designs

Flying, Soaring, Swooping

The seagulls along the Lake Huron shoreline put on acrobatic shows daily. Their springtime antics seem even more joyful. Good creatures of the earth and sky, they entertain me with their soaring and swooping.

Playful, graceful birds.

Why I Need to Write Every Day

It's an interesting factor in my life. Writing something every day helps. Whether I'm finding balance by writing, or whether it is the cognitive exercise, just the act of choosing words and stringing them together into something that makes sense is beneficial for me.

I started an Instagram account (I'm @wjeichler on Instagram) in mid February. Instagram, as many of you know, uses a square format photo, one that can be artful or insightful or playful or totally off the wall, to convey a feeling. Kind of like a poem, each Instagram post can be accompanied by words. 

I find that I really enjoy framing those words in my posts. Sometimes I use a sentence; sometimes I write a paragraph. In a way, Instagram has become my micro blog presence on the web. 

Lindsie Brown Verma, fellow blogger and native of Michigan's Thumb, commented on Facebook the other day about not finding time in her busy schedule to do the writing that she loves. I totally know what she is talking about and tapped out a little encouragement for her.

That's where the quote in this meme came from. I am realizing that the act of putting one foot in front of the other one, or, in the writer's way of saying it, putting one word after another, creates an energy that nourishes the day. Maybe it even nourishes the soul. 

Writing helps me focus. It gives clarity to thoughts. It brings purpose. 

Instagram's short format has taught me that, again.

FDAC -- Day 5: Home Place Barns

FIVE DAY ART CHALLENGE – Day Five: Home Place Barns

Ed and I are rural people and our rural nature is defined by the four barns on the home places where our parents were raised.

All four of the home place barns are still in place – the Eichler barn on Whipple Tree Farm near Pigeon, the Graywood Farm barn (Pauline Geiger Eichler’s home) on Geiger Road south of Pigeon, the Sunnyside Stock Farm barn (Vallanee Rose Luedtke’s home place) on County Road Y near Lomira, Wisconsin, and the Valley Drive Farm barn (Stanley C. F. Hayes’s home place) on County Road K, also near Lomira.

For this last post in the Five Day Art Challenge we will take a look at art work related to the two barns that have been restored.

The Thangles Barn on Sunnyside Farm in Wisconsin is home to Thangles, the quilting notion and publication company owned and operated by my sister and her husband. Two years ago in April, I spent a week with my dad on the farm. During that time I did a little watercolor of the Thangles Barn in my art journal. Dad liked the sketch, but he and I figured that I had the colors a little wonky, so I did a color chart and he chose a color that he liked for another version of this little drawing.

I’m partial to this little piece of artwork since my Dad died within weeks of our conversations about color and the barn, and I have yet to attempt that second watercolor, one that will be informed by Dad’s color choices and made better by my art study.

The Graywood Barn is the subject of the two drawings, one done in ink wash and the second, colored with watercolor. I used a photo of the barn before restoration had begun as the subject matter for both of these pieces.

The color version of this work was my Christmas gift to Ed for 2014 and now resides in his office. I completed this work during a Pen and Ink With Watercolor class last fall.

For this final day of the FDAC I am tagging the photography sisters, Marye Keim Maarsen of The Netherlands and Charleen Keim Neer of Michigan. Born and raised in the Bay Port area, both share a love of photography. Their artistic eye will be a delight, I’m sure.

Thanks for following my Art Challenge posts.