•: liberate blog :•

May 12 2013

Moms

[Andy took the kids to the park, so I made a quick made a cup of coffee and hope to write this post before they come home.]

I don’t usually post photos of us here, but this one feels right for today. That’s our family at the school Cinco de Mayo celebration where students performed songs they learned in Spanish, and where we ate tamales made in past years by one of the teachers and her mother. At every school event, they set up a photo booth for families, and we get the best (only?) family photos in this school hallway.

What this photo doesn’t show:

On the way out of the gym after the performance, one of my children smacked the bottom of the woman in front of us. (Yes, he did.)
While waiting in line for the tamales and during a somewhat emotional conversation with the best school principal on earth who is moving to another school, one of my children stood behind me lifting my bottom up and down (you read that right) while the child in my arms dove out to smack anyone who came near.

This is not normal behavior for my children, and I should have taken this as a sign that they were tired and it was time to ditch the Cinco de Mayo party. But we stood in line for our photo (another tragic family line experience), said cheese… and then pulled some wailing children right out the school’s front doors.

Seeing that Cinco de Mayo photo of me with my son on my lap, knowing all that was hidden behind those smiles, reminded me of photos like this:

Where’s the mother? I first saw these a couple years ago, I find them horrifying, and I think of them every Mother’s Day. (Click to see more.)

[I’m surely running out of quiet time now before everyone comes back from the park, so I’m going to try to wrap this up quickly.]

Mom, when life is confusing I still remember rocking with you. Thank you for everything you sacrificed for me… I’m sure you gave more than I know. I love you so much. Happy Mother’s Day!

And Happy Mother’s Day to all moms Today and Every Day. Peace.

[They’re back from the park. I’m going to go snuggle…]

March 04 2013

fiftyfiftyme february lists

Sooooo as it turns out, the nice people at fiftyfiftyme told me I should sign up even though I was quite sure I would not make it to 50 books by the end of 2013. So I did. I signed up. And I read more books than I did in January.

But I drew less. A lot less.

I’m going to keep reading, because it’s so good. I just have to refine the balance now. It’s going to be a good March.

My February book list:

3. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
4. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
5. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
6. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

And February’s movie list:

6. Kahaani
7. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope*
8. Silver Linings Playbook
9. Sound of My Voice
10. Argo

Reading now: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Watching next: I don’t know! But I have a good list to choose from excellent set of suggestions I received last month (read the comments).

What are you reading/watching? Anything good? Bad? As always, I ♥ suggestions…

* I count Star Wars because I don’t remember them (gasp!), and because I’m watching them with my nine-year-old daughter which is about the coolest thing ever.

February 18 2013

Reblogged The Reconstructionists
thereconstructionists:

In 1957, as her 15th college reunion was approaching, writer Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 — February 4, 2006) set out to survey university graduates about their education, life after college, and their present life-satisfaction. In a series of articles, Friedan noted a recurring pattern — the quiet, recondite, yet intense unhappiness of women in the golden age of the housewife. Termed “the problem that has no name,” it spurred an outpour of passionate responses from women for whom it resonated deeply. Friedan wrote:

The shores are strewn with the casualties of the feminine mystique. They did give up their own education to put their husbands through college, and then, maybe against their own wishes, ten or fifteen years later, they were left in the lurch by divorce. The strongest were able to cope more or less well, but it wasn’t that easy for a woman of forty-five or fifty to move ahead in a profession and make a new life for herself and her children or herself alone.

In 1963, after witnessing the profound cultural resonance of the topic, Friedan reworked the articles into The Feminine Mystique, which went on to ignite the second wave of modern feminism and to become the most influential book on gender politics in contemporary history. It championed women’s reproductive rights, called for better education, criticized workplace laws and cultural attitudes towards childcare responsibilities and, above all, advocated for women’s right to freely explore the fundamental question of what it means to live a full life.
She wrote:

Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — ‘Is this all?’

In 1970, on the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote, Friedan organized the nation-wide Women’s Strike for Equality. It culminated with a New York City march led by Friedan herself, which drew 50,000 women and men and became one of the largest marches in history. The following year, she and other front-line feminists founded the National Women’s Political Caucus and continued to work tirelessly for the full inclusion of women in mainstream society.
Friedan passed away on her 85th birthday, bequeathing a powerful legacy that shaped the feminist movement not merely as relentless advocacy for women’s equality but as enduring protection and celebration of the human spirit.
Learn more: Wikipedia | Autobiography

Reblogged The Reconstructionists

thereconstructionists:

In 1957, as her 15th college reunion was approaching, writer Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 — February 4, 2006) set out to survey university graduates about their education, life after college, and their present life-satisfaction. In a series of articles, Friedan noted a recurring pattern — the quiet, recondite, yet intense unhappiness of women in the golden age of the housewife. Termed “the problem that has no name,” it spurred an outpour of passionate responses from women for whom it resonated deeply. Friedan wrote:

The shores are strewn with the casualties of the feminine mystique. They did give up their own education to put their husbands through college, and then, maybe against their own wishes, ten or fifteen years later, they were left in the lurch by divorce. The strongest were able to cope more or less well, but it wasn’t that easy for a woman of forty-five or fifty to move ahead in a profession and make a new life for herself and her children or herself alone.

In 1963, after witnessing the profound cultural resonance of the topic, Friedan reworked the articles into The Feminine Mystique, which went on to ignite the second wave of modern feminism and to become the most influential book on gender politics in contemporary history. It championed women’s reproductive rights, called for better education, criticized workplace laws and cultural attitudes towards childcare responsibilities and, above all, advocated for women’s right to freely explore the fundamental question of what it means to live a full life.

She wrote:

Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — ‘Is this all?’

In 1970, on the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote, Friedan organized the nation-wide Women’s Strike for Equality. It culminated with a New York City march led by Friedan herself, which drew 50,000 women and men and became one of the largest marches in history. The following year, she and other front-line feminists founded the National Women’s Political Caucus and continued to work tirelessly for the full inclusion of women in mainstream society.

Friedan passed away on her 85th birthday, bequeathing a powerful legacy that shaped the feminist movement not merely as relentless advocacy for women’s equality but as enduring protection and celebration of the human spirit.

Learn more: Wikipedia | Autobiography

Via The Reconstructionists

February 15 2013

Andy sent me flowers all day yesterday:

He texted me pictures like this and I loved it.

We had a fun day, and I don’t think our family ever laughed so hard around the dinner table. My daughter was on the floor laughing at least once.

She and I are taking over the boys’ room for girls’ night tonight. We’re going to have snacks, watch Star Wars, and sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. No boys allowed. We’ve been planning this for months, and she’s completely giddy. I hope she makes it through the school day.

February 06 2013

Get ready…

The Youth Art Team is about to reassemble.

After donating 25 acrylic canvases and raising $360 to help equip a school in Haiti (here)…

after painting a public mural for the community (here)…

after taking an out-of-town field trip and giving $85 to support the students at Freedom for Youth we met (here)…

after researching, writing, and performing an original play about the community and raising $490 for Waterloo’s African-American Historical and Cultural Museum (here and here)…

and after painting another – HUGE – public mural (pictured above, more here)…

this group of K-12 students is getting ready to take on a yearlong photography project.

And we need 30* cameras! Put your old digital camera to good use by donating it to the Youth Art Team. (We totally could have applied for a grant to purchase new cameras, but we’d rather reuse the cameras people have laying around at home.) If you have a working digital camera you’d like to donate, please contact me. I promise these young artists will do AMAZING things with it! You won’t even believe it…

Digital cameras must be working and 4 megapixels or higher. First session begins on March 3, so I hope to have all 30 cameras in hand by February 22.

*We already received 13 18 20, but we need 17 12 10 more! Spread the word…

February 01 2013

I’m a fiftyfiftyme wannabe

As a freelance designer, mom to four who is trying to scratch out illustrations and my own artwork, hang out with the Youth Art Team, keep the house reasonably clean, and maintain my personal sanity, I cannot in good conscience sign up for fiftyfiftyme.

But I want to really bad.

I decided to see how January went. I only finished two books… and I started them both before 2013. But I could not have squeezed in another minute of reading.

I did watch five movies. Andy and I usually watch a movie over takeout on Sunday nights. Date nights! •: This is actually fabulous. He doesn’t want to run out for the food and I don’t want to do bedtime, so I pick up the food (aka alone time) while he puts the kids to bed. Then we feast. :• Ha, we do what we can.

So, it’s unlikely that I’ll read anywhere near 50 books this year – I’m shooting for 25. Either way, the challenge helps keep me from spending too much time looking at my phone and feeds my brain. So I’m going to follow along, but at my own pace.

Here’s my book list from January:

1. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
2. The Odyssey by Homer

And my January movie list:

1. Looper
2. Beasts of the Southern Wild
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. Arbitrage
5. End of Watch

Reading now: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Watching next: Anything that sounds good over takeout on Sunday. ;)

Read any good books you think I should add to my stack or seen any movies I should watch? I ♥ suggestions.

January 31 2013

Last chance!

Today is the last day to buy a 2013 Sketchbook Calendar.

Order by midnight tonight!

January 30 2013

He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.
– William Dean Howells

January 29 2013

Noise

It’s night while I write this. Andy’s at a rehearsal, and I’m sitting on my bed snuggled under my favorite blanket with a glass of red… and my blog.

But now that I found a little time to write, I can’t write anything that makes sense. My days are filled with so many voices. All I hear right now is noise.

I’m working on that.

In the meantime, I want to post photos I took in the hours right after the last of our family left, marking the end of our Christmas. Andy went to work that afternoon, and when the kids laid down for naps I found myself in unexpected, stunning silence.

I couldn’t believe it and snapped tons of photos because I didn’t want to forget. It was beautiful, almost sacred. When I look at these photos now, I can still feel it. One photo has a child in it just before nap, and somehow even then it was quiet.

This is what silence looked like that day:

The last photo of me makes me smile. I knew I would have some quiet time and planned to read one of my new Lionheart Magazines over coffee (I had been saving them in the unopened package all the way from Bristol until after Christmas). But that SILENCE was something else. I hardly read. I had to take a photo to remember that, too.

January 25 2013

Updated:

I finished updating my website late last night. I hardly talked to anyone for three nights while I worked on it, but it felt so good to see things come together.

My work was transitioning while I was discovering where I wanted to go with it, so when I redesigned the site around this time last year everything was sort of a jumble. This round of updates helped me see the progress I made in 2012… and that is a very good thing. Now I feel like my site represents me and my work much better than it did before, so check it out!

The blog is up next…

We have a fun weekend planned. Looking forward to getting out of my head and talking with people again. Have a great one!

January 21 2013

Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd.]

January 19 2013

I tried something new.

I hand lettered a sign in chalk. And I LOVED it. After hours of planning, I spent two nights while the rest of the house slept chalking this up.

For fun, here are photos from beginning to end:

Check these guys out. I’m particularly fond of one of them (xoxo).

January 17 2013

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.

– Edward Everett Hale

January 14 2013

New print!

Introducing…

Heart: Sometimes it feels like it will just burst.

5x7s and 8x10s available online (printed on a yummy 100% cotton based paper with inks that resist fading for 100 years). And now also ON CANVAS! See the listing and contact me for canvas pricing.

January 09 2013

The 2013 Sketchbook Calendar

It’s been pretty fun to put these together, wrap them all up, and ship them off to people again this year. They’re available online through the end of January.

Each month in the calendar features a pencil sketch from that year’s sketchbooks that I then color digitally. I print on a smooth sturdy paper with inks that resist fading for 100 years (same inks I use for my art prints)… and then I assemble and package each calendar by hand.

Check them out and find more specs in my shop: heidifuchtman.etsy.com.

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welcome!

I'm a graphic designer / illustrator / artist / maker, married to the best man in all the world, and mother of one girl and three boys in Waterloo, Iowa. (That's what our days look like up there.) I blog about art & design, the handmade, and my musings on life & creativity.

Check out the archive.

find me & my work:

My Website:

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MY WORK ONLINE

Art & Illustration Shop:

Handmade Shop:

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MY WORK DOWNTOWN WATERLOO

Plaid Peacock:

Shoppe on the Corner:

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YOUTH ART TEAM

These K-12 students will knock your socks off:

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Email me: liberateblog@gmail.com

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Copyright Information:

All content © by me unless otherwise noted. You may post or share my work if you give me credit and link back to my blog. Otherwise, you may only use my work with my written permission.

Thank you!

reading:

State of Wonder
(by Ann Patchett)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
(by Mark Haddon)

The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
(by Alexander McCall Smith)

tags:

thanks for visiting!