anne ricketts

life's little secrets

2009-11-06T16:48:00.000-08:00

not that i have any,,,,or at least none that i want to share here...but i do want to say i read a great little essay by barb johnson and i want to do a blatent plug of her book"MORE OF THIS WORLD OR MAYBE ANOTHER" i bought a copy on amazon and am loving it. anyhow she wrote this article about being a late bloomer, and i was thinking of the quote on our fridge my wife got me for my birthday that says "life ripens all things" ......and i thought, i am in a perpetual state of feeling like i will never be there.....wherever there is.......and then i thought of my best friend telling me that never being there, is of course all that there is.

as my father likes to say

2009-11-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

if your ship never comes in, swim out to it. so since my last packaging guy didnt work out, guess he is doing other things. i went searching on the web and found this amazing young award winning graphic designer out of Portugal. i cant believe how technology has made the world such a small place. we are in the final steps of creating an exciting new look for my work......which of course i will reveal here first....hah!

my father also replied, when i asked him the other day,

"hey dad, is the glass have empty or half full?"

"depends on which glass."

anne ricketts: Thank God for Serendipty

2009-07-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

anne ricketts: Thank God for Serendipty: http://dlabrecque.com

Thank God for Serendipty

2009-07-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

i have decided to take the packaging plunge. i did a mini survay of some of my stores and then asked the fabulous jeweler margaret solow "http://nightingalejewelry.com/home.html"> how she does hers, which i love. but unlike me i soon realized she has the gift for gift wrapping and i don't. my idea of a gift wrap/packaging is to stick it in an old Ralph's shopping bag and call it a day. you should of seen me last Christmas, somehow i got the gift wrapping work shift......not a pretty sight under our tree. my wife on the other hand is an amazing wrapper.....oh well. so after i came to terms with my lack of ability in this area...a persons strength is in recognizing their weakness...hey that has to be a quote from somewhere....lord only knows where my brain scrapped that one up from. anyhow i contacted my old -as in i have known her since college days- friend. the super stylish Donna Labrecque. check her out! http://dlabrecque.comshe teaches branding at Art Center in Pasadena....just so happens she is working with a packaging person now......life is sweet. i love serendipity. i will update you on this process.

my packaging now and hopefully soon to be much inproved.........

mommy mush brain -who would have thought it would come to this

2009-07-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

i just spent the last five minutes trying to log on to my own blog account because i couldnt remember my password.....from two nights ago. now this sort of term memory loss used to really upset me til today when i went swimming with my best friend. we both have 2 kids seven and younger and above and in between their yelling and splashing, my friend and i were trying to have a semi adult conversation about current affairs- i know- why bother right? the sad truth is that it wasnt a conversation. neither of us could remember anything. the topper came when we couldnt remember for at least five minutes the name of that angular faced fellow with the turban .....world trade center....oh yeah ben laden. i feel better though cause i was the one who actually remembered his name. she was still stuck on it starting with an 'H".

sea world

2009-07-14T10:54:00.001-07:00

we just spent the day in sea world....what this has to do with anything is as as much your guess as mine. i think my problem over all with the blogging stuff has to do with my self esteem, ultimately i think who really cares? now i know that isnt exactly a positive way to operate in this world, and if we really are what we think or our world is created by what we think then i just have to say i am one lucky gal. i basically have a great life inspite of myself. is there a catagory for that?
i loved my weekend, love being with my family and even loved visiting my family as in brothers parents.
and now i am back at home....my gal at work, me here, breaking every two minutes to try my kids one more time to clean up their rooms. ava is a horse emma who has hoofs and therefore cant clean up her room. that is a new one.

off to watch the horse races.......

so long

2009-01-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

it has been so long since i blogged that i actually forgot how to log on........of course if i had done it yesterday i probably would have still forgotten. i still use a roladex and i have all my passwords under the "P" just to show you how out of the modern computer world i am,,,,,and i am also fighting my paranioa that now all the world knows where my passwords are - since god knows i cant remember them- and when if anyone breaks into my house they will get all my passwords.....
and so what does any of this have to do with art...why nothing of course. i am experimenting if i actually can do this, writing while i listen to cat powers and my kids fighting/playing/fighting right behind me.
i have significantly changed both the horse and the boxes/moving sculptures. it is all a good reminder that art really is about the process. once it is made it is done. i know that sounds so obvious (i will blame the obviousness of that statment on my attempt here to write with all this going on) but i forget just what a process it is and i want to rush and finish everything....which i am actually having to do cause i am going to have a show at link gallery in march. and i am hoping to get it all done. but i did totally redo the horse. i just kept thinking how i was doing the horse was not only so done before but not revelent to what i am trying to express. the memory, the moment the time of my childhood that was almost dreamlike, and i remember the moment i knew it was all passing. i was trying to capture that moment of both bliss and loss.. so i saw the topography i have done of that moment, with the plastic horse in it and i just thought that is it. i have to sculpt an exact replica of the plastic horse to match my photograph of that moment.a sort of companion piece to the photo . they both will be named "the morning Hope ran away"

Hope was the name of my horse and it is based on a overnight camping trip i took with my older brother john the week before he got married, and my horse got away and i spent 3 hours on foot trying to catch her the next morning.)

and i would have it cast in bronze and then painted to match the plastic horse and that also was my own little way of commenting on how so many artist dont make their own work, so i would make mine to look like a fabricated piece. i just took it to the foundry wed and i cant wait to see it done

so foto will follow to show what i mean. and i will sign off now and hopefully not wait for 7 months to upload about the boxes.....i took a little video showing the process of that. which has now changed to nest.....ahhh but more of that next time.

so long.

my new series

2008-03-22T20:40:00.000-07:00

i am so tired i dont even know what the date is, not that i ever really did.......just went to my foundry today and picked up a bunch of my nests and some other pieces for my stores.....i love my casting guy...does the best work. now it is just about finding the time and energy for this new series...i was thinking today that i really havent done a sculpting series, and certainly not a bronze series that was not primarily done for my stores....and what i am doing, exploring memory and impermanence, i am finally sculpting from a part of my self that all seems to have come together...strange it has taken me sooo many years to get here, of course my focus was really more the high end design stores, so this is different and feel so good and scary.

i am also in the midst of editing and retooling the pieces in my new series as i go, i am so glad for all of the years of doing work for different stores, consignments etc because it has enabled me to be able to step back and view my art for what it is, a piece of work.

amber has come in and given me some great feedback, i love her eye, she is so talented at all of what she does, so i changed my branch - my memory tree on monday. ripped, cut and hammered the base of it off and put on a large root ball that i still now have to sculpt. that has changed the dynamics of the piece is such a more powerful way. and now we are just looking at the nests, i will do 18 of them, one for each place i lived as a child, instead of the boxes...finally giving up the boxes!!! have tried to make that piece work for year and now i am admitting to myself (and all) that they just dont work, something amber has been telling me for years. but the nests are a great replacement, and now i am editing those, with her help, and having to do some recasting, but i would rather pay more to redo them then to use the ones that dont work. i will have to upload pics of the process, really fun, the kids love it to.

that is it for now, have to help M'Lady (known as amber to the outside world) pack easter baskets for the kids.

on the hunt for a horse

2008-01-03T15:27:00.001-08:00

ava (my 2 1/2 year old........ah so now you know why i dont blog very often - plus our 4 year old .....but that is another blog) so anyhow i finally realized that if this horse sculpture is going to be any good then i better get a real horse to sculpt. i let my fingers do the walking and found this equestrian center about 5 minutes from grandma's house (ie my studio) so off ava and i went to see what it was all about - plus i couldnt get anyone on the phone + ava loves horses.
so as we wound through tractville houses i have to say this place was like a little jewel stepping back in time. i/we loved it. when we got there it was empty, just a guy cleaning out stalls and he said we could look around, must of been about 50 horses or more boarded there......it was clean and just felt like another era almost, like we really were out in the country, made me miss my horse and wish we could have one...........ava and "big john" particularly seemed to hit it off. later i came back just by myself and the owner's daughter? was there, soooo nice, offered to pull a horse out of the stalls for me to sculpt. i opted instead to just set up shop by several horses as you can see.........i loved this place, want to go back and actually go on a ride (they do tours for 30 bucks an hour). oh i guess i should talk about my new series..........that shall be my next blog!

blue skies ahead...or just simply branch and box and the new series i am working on

2008-01-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

why this is underlining is just so par for the course with me..........anyhow, the branch and boxes you see are all part of this new series i am working on...that actually the horse is a part . i am creating a series in which i am trying to explore memory and transcendence, loss and longing. this is a body of work that i have been 'working' on in my head and actually trying out parts of it in different forms for a few years now,,,,,and it wasn't til just recently that it hit me i should be just sculpting it more in the traditional, since that is what i do in general! i would like to bronze most if not all of the pieces..sounds so obvious but i had been experimenting with plaster topographies for one as in the horse piece, which i had photographed and titled 'the morning Hope ran away"........i wanted to capture that moment in more of a straight sculpture form...which is challenging...to make it mine and fresh and yet i cant get away from the fact that it will be a bronze horse sculpture when i am done.......i have been waiting a long time to see if more traditional sculptural mediums will ever come back, not that i will stop doing them, and i remember when painting as in portraiture was such a no no and now everyone is doing it....so fascinating how the art world isn't to far from the fashion world in that sense...anyhow i digress. i feel i am finally working on a series that really comes from my heart, and still is done in the medium and with the craft level that at this point i have spent years working on. the horse sculpture and each piece in this series has to do with a moment in time or an aspect of my childhood and also loss....the week before my one brother john got married he took me on an overnight horseback camping trip......this would be our last adventure before he sort of left our own family.....it felt like that to me...even though he would still be around, and his wife was my best friend....there was both a simultaneous sense of loss and that this would be a memory for the rest of my life, something i would hang on to - a permanence to it. in the morning after we had camped i discovered that my horse Hope had pulled loose from her rope and was gone. we spent hours finding her and then trying to catch her. that moment so perfectly illustrates to me what i am trying to express...hopefully the peice can capture some of this. i want to do Hope just in that instant that she saw me, was startled and before she started to run...........i also am considering adding an element to the base but more on that later...am not sure how confidant i am to actually post those ideas!

the boxes and branch is something i will talk about more next time..............my kids are calling!

2007-11-07T12:16:00.000-08:00

New work in progress -->
To be continued...
11.29.07....been a bit busy....
these photos were posted so long ago .. the piece is actually cast and at trey's store (aris) in laguna beach. i will be loading photos of them to my function gallery soon...well krystal will.....i was going to write more....that is a robert wilson 1974 retro board i am sculpting by the way....then i thought these pictures sort of tell it all anyway.....

getting it togeather

2007-09-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

so krystal...my own personal goddess when it comes to the computer, uploaded some photos i took of pieces i am currently working on...i will try to upload, myself (please dont hold your breath anyone).
i finally started working on the male torso for Trey at Aris....i have had a number of requests for that over the years but worried about the difficulty of doing such a classic pose....making it my own. dont ask me exactly why i felt that way myself...lots of my work directly references the classics.....so i started on the torso and very soon realized i really needed a real guy in here to model for me. i kept making the figure proportional off.....neck too thin, waist too long etc, in other words feminine although when you looked at it you wouldnt think that, just think what is off about this piece? so my best pal zane hooked me up with this fabulous dancer (as in legit dancer...ballet modern etc) and i feel i am hooked. first off dancers make the best models, he could hold a pose so long it was ridiculous...i had to stop before him cause my hands were cramping. when i have had amber pose for me though she is great with creating a pose she does want a break every five minutes. and secondly i have to say micheal (the model) was just a sweet dream of a guy. and after sculpting and living with this torso for a bit now i cant believe i didnt do one sooner. i sort of re saw the male figure and feel in love with just the simplicity of the lines of the male body. very graceful. i ended up really wishing i was doing a full figure of micheal, he has a great classical face and his hands and feet are so beautiful....oh well, maybe i will someday. i was even daydreaming of doing a full figure, sort of matching female but not nearly as hokey as that sounds. but a classical pose of both him and also this female friend of mine. i think it could look really beautiful, both classical and contemporary at the same time. we will see.......

All My Shitty Jobs

2007-07-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

a favorite series of mine: All My Shitty Jobs ( or at least a few of them)

i think i started cataloguing my jobs really because of the influence of my girlfriend - she does that as part of her job. plus i always like to sort of box things up in my head- with the jobs it gave me a sense that maybe there was a reason i had had so many shitty jobs - at least i could do a series on it. it also gave me something to do at my last shitty job . i cataloged them by drawing on the back of outdated pace wildenstein Los Angeles
invitations cards. below are a few. i have starred (*) the ones i got fired from.

pen on verso of pace wildenstein LA announcement

5 x 7 inches

stumped for a title

2007-07-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

finally getting this going...bear with me, shall learn one of these days (fast hopefully) to upload fotos......am working on some new mockups for trey at aris - outdoor sculpture, am going to experiment with design cast, try to create the pieces out of wire mesh and then smear (for lack of a better word) the design cast on and see how it goes...only draw back sort of is that each piece with be one of a kind...that also could be a good thing.

more later

2007-07-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my notebook! Here you will find sketches, images, ideas, and brainstorms of what I am working on. This is my latest piece that is now available.