The Omniart Notebook

Another Goodbye Today I say goodbye to a large collection of my art. Again. Ever since the great smoky weeks of 2020, I have worried about the large collection of my artwork that I keep at home. Here in the rainforest, it does not rain much anymore. The trees get thirsty and dry. Each year, the fire season lasts longer. I live in a fuel loaded forest that is no longer burned every other year to reduce the underbrush as was once the case, when the native people managed the land. Of course there were no houses then either. The people were nomadic and visited here on a rotation schedule. These days the doom looms. No underbrush clearing, combines with global climate catastrophe, a so far twenty year long mega drought of the kind last seen a thousand years ago, and the tension is palpable here on windy hot days. I think through the scenarios. I realize that I would be OK with losing a house, with all of its replaceable furnishings, but I would not want to lose the years and years of art....

A Colorist’s House Playing House with Colors I love to play house. I just can’t believe it sometimes! I am all grown up and can set up a house the way I want to?  It seems unreal somehow. And it is. In the sense of the Real things, the truly important things, it IS just play acting. For, by my definition, Real Things last forever. So these supposedly real, grown up things, are just toys and games to my artist brain, which is quite childlike. In a way, I am designing a kind of stage set for the theater of life. So but here I am, fixing up an old house in just the way I would like! It is of course practical, but also, whimsical. It is aspirational, even symbolic, and with an activist dimension. It is the kind of thing you might expect when an artist plays house. It is the colors you will notice first when you walk in. The stairs and hallway leading up to the second story dwelling, and the landing at the top, are white walled, with black trim. A neutral straight passage. But as soon a...

We are traveling light.  My fiber yarn of choice for traveling is my embroidery floss bag.  I gather some twigs fallen from the trees as we wander.  I like the kind with little knobs on both ends.  One twig is a perfect equal cross, so it is just right for a God’s eye.  Ojo de Dios. We are visiting my favorite mountain, and I gather the colors of the mountain and its setting of sky and trees from my yarn bag.  The center, the focalizing point of the ojo is the mountain, of course.  Is is glistening, snow covered, crystal, outstanding 14,000 feet in the deep blue sky, with the forest greens all around. First I weave mountain, then sky, then forest.  Soon I will add tassels. “Some people have had visions during sacred ceremonies in which they received guidance from Infinite Creator who appeared before them in many shapes, though the eyes of the God were so intense and overwhelming that many could only see the eye of the God. To show others the visio...

I Cherish the Sheep They say every spinner eventually gets curious about other fibers than wool.  With me, it turns out the other way around. First, I try various other animal and plant fibers: The neighbor’s mountaineering pack llama fleece.  My friend’s prize winning alpaca fleece.  The guard llama, Blue, down the road from us, who ferociously watches over his own little sheep flock.   The family dog. The pet angora rabbit. The angora goats we had for a while, before they tried to eat all of the native flowers on the land, and we gave them to another sanctuary farm, run by a friends who had a lot of invasive plants to for them to gleefully chew through.  The cashmere goats we babysat, for a friend, for a few months. Exotic animals; yak, camel,  qiviut,  etc. Flax. Organic natural colored cotton. Rayon.  Hemp. Silk. Then raw silk, in which no harm is done to the silkworms. The abandoned cocoons are gathered, picked from the mulberry trees, a...

Homepathic Dye Experiment I am playing with colors again. I take a pinch of dye and dissolve it in a quarter cup of water. I pour half in a tiny little jar in the crockpot with a bit of fleece. I’m working with merino staples and a few stunning  teeswater twelve inch long curly locks I just got.  With half of my dye left, I stir water in the mixing pitcher back to the same quarter cup level. Half of this goes into the next little jar. The third jar gets half as much as the previous one, and so on, until jar number six, which is so diluted that the water barely shows any color at all! The orange dye at full strength turns the fleece almost red, but is quite yellow at the end, at the last dilution. Turquoise is lovely and deep at the first jar, but a pale minty green at the end of the line. Pink just keeps getting paler… “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

My newest book is out today, albeit only on this link, so excited for you to get a sneak preview!  I have been working on this one for years. Everything I know about color, from this colorist artist:) Understanding color in art, lifestyle, philosophy, and psychology. A fun little book of Omni’s art, and thoughts and meandering commentary on color in art and life. This 173 page book is full of colorful illustrations on every page, color insights, and useful tips for using color in your life, art, and mind. You will learn things about color perception and yourself, as waves of color wash over you, with a chapter on each color and more. To read the Omni’s Colorbook on your device in its entirety for free,  CLICK HERE: