A little poem about living green…

Flying Green

It is time to be green
Toss the toxic benzene
Past is oil’s hour
We don’t need crude, sweet or sour
Make way for solar power
Or if not by sun, then by wind or grain
Let’s explore renewable terrain

It’s time to nurture nature
Call it by any nomenclature
We need to wake up now
Save the earth in Earth somehow
Each of us must do our part
When would be a better time to start?
Recycle, be open-minded, try new things
Let your creativity soar on green wings
There are vast open windows to explore
Once we decide to close petrol’s door.

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Poem and Artwork About Taking Care of our Environment – Being Green

Flying Green

It is time to be green
Toss the toxic benzene
Past is oil’s hour
We don’t need crude, sweet or sour
Make way for solar power
Or if not by sun, then by wind or grain
Let’s explore renewable terrain

It’s time to nurture nature
Call it by any nomenclature
We need to wake up now
Save the earth in Earth somehow
Each of us must do our part
When would be a better time to start?
Recycle, be open-minded, try new things
Let your creativity soar on green wings
There are vast open windows to explore
Once we decide to close petrol’s door.

The artwork above the Poem is called “Stoplight” and it is a statement about how nature and our need for living comforts and progress poise a delicate balance.  Note the bird nesting in the yellow light of the stoplight, juxtaposed against the florals and asphalt.  The work was inspired by a phonecall from one of Nicole’s friends, Rosemary, who saw a bird nesting in a stoplight and shared what she saw with Nicole.

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Poem and Artwork inspired by ((sigh)) Dieting!

On Dieting

Oh the endless craves
How I strive for caloric free days
And when I fail, to not so enjoy the tasty error of my ways
Is anyone truly naturally thin
Able to eat whatever they desire and when?

I hate to diet
I miss my butter
I miss my bread
Must I do this til I am dead?

I want melted decadent choc’late chips
Sumptuously slipping between yearning lips
But somehow never cushioning waist or hips
I want brownies, ice cream and cake
I want guiltless crepes when I wake

I want tea and muffins
Rich sauces and cozy stews
Pizza, pastries and pasta
All without an extra pound to rue

I want the workout without the sweat
The calories burned without the go out and get
I want to be fit and trim
Able to fulfill every edible whim

It’s undeniable, it’s true
I’m a ravenous hypocrite through and through
So for now, while horrifically healthy food will have to do
I shall relish sinful savory sweet dreams while I chew.

The artwork that precedes the poem is called “Tea Time” which Nicole painted after she attended an elegant Montecito tea, at which Nicole ate none of the delightful baked goodies there, even though she wanted to.  Nicole after the tea went home and painted the “Tea Time” painting, as a way of dealing with her craves!  “Tea Time” is licensed to a manufacturer that creates glass plates from the image, and is sold around the world.

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Young Colt

Young Colt was inspired by the frolicking freshness of a yearling.  The original work was created in 2000, inspired by my love of horses and time spent with equestrian minded folk. I tried to bring a feeling of Spring freshness and ‘aliveness’ to this work, by the bounciness and cheery colors of the cheery flowers in the field, and especially by the about-to-spring stance of the young colt.   I had so much fun creating this.   I wanted to create a scene that was full of movement and happy innocent colors.  Available in Limited Edition prints and more, available at Create.bz.

This site contains the valuable intellectual property of M. Nicole van Dam. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, M. Nicole van Dam® and Artimagination® are respectively federally registered trademarks owned by M. Nicole van Dam, and the contents of this site, including each artwork, each artwork element, title, storyline, book, character, poetry and text, are each respectively TM and (c) 1999-2016 M. Nicole van Dam. All Rights Reserved. Similarly, the artwork on this site, including also the look and feel and style of the artwork and individual elements within the artwork, constitutes the valuable trade dress of M. Nicole van Dam. No contents of this site or any artwork or writing on this site may be reproduced without the express written consent of M. Nicole van Dam. To request such consent or to license the artwork or other contents of this site, please contact M. Nicole van Dam.

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BIG Garden Plans for EMPTY BEDS!

I spent so much time researching the web for info on Ojai vegetable gardening – what to plant, when to plant, etc.  I found a great source of info on http://www.gardening-coaches.com/whentoplantveggies.php which helped a lot, and led me to three seed catalogs:  Seeds of Change, Renee’s Seeds, and Seeds of Italy, as well as some growveg.com software to help me lay out the beds.  Armed with those three catalogs PLUS Territorial Seed AND Burpee AND Harris Seed AND White Flower Farm (a friend gave me a $200 gift certificate – THANK YOU LORETTA!), I weighed and guessed and had so much fun picking my seeds!  I think you will see that I chose many things for the color – fun picks like: red scallions, purple carrots, red corn, yellow watermelon, rainbow chard… there is so much irony – picking beets and tomatoes and watermellons that are yellow while picking corn and carrots that are red!

Here is what is on order so far – this will keep me busy!:

Tomatoes

  •  Black Krim (Russia heirloom)
  • Sweet Persimmin (orange flesh heirloom)
  • Costoluto heirloom
  • Marmande (North Italian/French fav heirloom)
  • Chocolate Cherry
  • Razzleberry (gift, I don’t know that I would have found this one)
  • Cherokee Purple Organic heirloom
  • Pineapple heirloom
  • Yellow Pear Heirloom  (I had tremendous luck with these last year)
  • Red and Yellow Pear Mix
  • Red Lightening Hybrid
  • Japanese Trifele Black Tomato (looks like an interesting unique one)
  • Brandywine Heirloom

Corn

  • Casino
  • Mirai Collection (yellow, white, yellow&white)
  • Maple Sugar Hybrid
  • Ruby Red Queen Hybrid (red edible corn!)

Beets

  • Jewel-Toned blend (has Red Sangria, Golden and candy-striped Chioggia beets )
  • Touchstone Gold Hybrid
  • Detroit Dark Red

Asparagus (nervous about these, have not done these before, worried they will take over beds!)

  • Purple passion
  • Jersey Giant

Carrots

  • Purple Haze Hybrid (purple!  Need I say more?)
  • Tendersnax Hybrid
  • Purple Dragon
  • Red Cored Chantenay

Peppers

  • Giallo di Cuneo (Yellow pepper from Cuneo)
  • Flavorburst hybrid
  • Sweet Rainbow Mix (every color purple, red, yellow, green, orange)

Radishes

  • Watermelon (white with pinkish-purple inside)
  • Confetti Blend

Pea/Sugar Snap Peas (had great luck with these last year too)

  • Super Sugar Snap
  • Super Sugar Snap V.P.
  • Sugar Pod II

Onions

  • Red Delicious hybrid (first time I am doing onions, they might protect the other plants from pests so useful AND edible!)

Scallions

  • Tokyo Long White Bunch
  • Red Beard

Leeks

  • Broad London
  • Titan
  • Electra

Basil

  • Genovese

Kale

  • Lacinato
  • Dinosaur
  • Red Russian

Chard

  •  Bright Lights (from two different sources to compare performance)

Spinach

  • Whale
  • Olympia
  • Bordeaux (has red stems)
  • Taste of Asia

Other Greens:

  • Sputnik Arugula
  • Komatsuna
  • Maruba Santoh
  • Mizuna
  • Tatsoi

Eggplants

  • Asian Bride
  • Little Fingers
  • Farmer’s Long
  • Fairy Tale
  • Burpee Hybrid (big dark one)

Zuccini

  • Striato d’Italia – Italian Stripe

Broccoli

  • Barbados Hybrid

Cauliflower

  • Brocoverde

Brussel Sprouts

  • Diablo Hybrid
  • Falstaff (red purply ones!)

Watermelon

  • Yellow Doll
  • Tiger Baby
  • New Orchid

Sunflowers

  • Sunfower Heaven
  • Organic Mammoth Sunflower

I also am planting Marigolds for pest control and a Butterfly/Hummingbird/ecology attractant/enhancement seed collection.

I am planting all these using seed starter kits.  Last year I used the Jiffy kits – the seeds mostly BUT they ran into the plastic lid ciling far too soon, so I had to prop things up, very awkward and hurt the greenhouse impact of the setup.  This year I am trying Park Seed’s Double Bio Dome with 80 JUMBO cells; this setup has somewhat taller plastic lids and comes with seed starter food, which I think sounds beneficial, time will tell!

In addition, throughout the rest of the garden will be our fruit trees, more on that in a future post.

So where to plant all these things?  Using the demo of http://www.growveg.com/ garden planning software AND armed with a copy of Edward Smith’s “The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible” (the software takes into account crop rotation from season to season but NOT “companion” planting – things like tomatoes like carrots but not pole beans), I created the tentative garden plan below… This will keep me busy!

Another nice thing about the growveg.com software – it will tell you WHEN to generally plant indoors/outdoors and harvest what you put in your plan, based on your zip code 🙂  When my seed packets arrive, I will compare what the software produces to what the seed packets say.  Also nice, I understand that I will get reminder emails from growveg.com – I haven’t experienced that yet because I just signed up for the trial and finished my plan.
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About the Artist Family Garden..Pets…and Cooking Fiascos!

About the Artist Family Garden..Pets…and Cooking Fiascos!

Here are last year’s vegetable beds…

Mr. Squirrel, do you have reservations?

With last year’s harvest, I tried more carrot recipes than one would think possible – carrot breads, carrot muffins, carrot quiche, carrot souffle, carrot juice – even carrot and lentil curry! I did not make ANY corn dishes, solely because the gopher got to eat ALL THE CORN! I did steal one premature ear of corn just as he was pulling it down the hole! The horseshoe shown below is the horseshoe we found in the garden – apparently it was lucky for the gopher!

-And here are the beds as they exist today – including two new raised beds! The large green plants you see are celery, waiting to be harvested – YUM! Such fun, such anticipation 🙂

There will be grapes and corn in the narrow bed closest to us; cheery sunflowers in the backside of the longest bed with all sorts of peppers, carrots, spinach, kale, swiss chard, and tomotoes in the long bed (still choosing tomato varieties – I better hurry!); the continuation of celery and artichoke, as well as zuccini, eggplant, and a few other things in the middle bed; and at the bed at the far end will be berries, berries and more berries – blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries! YUM!

Lest you think we are only planting veggies and berries, we have some young fruit trees too, for which we have big dreams:

The above is a loquat tree we planted from seed. It should bear fruit by the time I’m 80!

Here is photo of one of our young trees we planted our big Leonberger decided it was a chewtoy, so that was the end of that – but we keep it in the ground, just in case it revives….

So now we keep our trees in cages, to protect them!

-and our most unusal crop 🙂

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New Products!

Here is an example of some of the products currently available from M. Nicole van Dam original designs.

How did these products come to pass?  Nicole’s fine art is available for purchase, lease, license and commission.  If you are interested in acquiring rights to use some of Nicole’s designs, or are interested in purchasing, leasing, licensing or commssioning a work, please email us at Email Nicole.

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Inca Dink, The Great Houndini is about to be released!

Exciting, exciting!  Our first children’s book publication is about to be released!  As part of the process, I needed to go into a recording studio, where I learned that sensitive recording equipment picks up just about every noise!  Stay tuned for details.

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Bottle of Dreams


If you would like to guess what this artwork is about, email us! We’d love to hear your interpretation and thoughts! All the artwork you see here is available in Limited Edition prints and many household and wearable products, at Create.bz.

Posted in Abstracts, Emoticons, Nicole's News Hot Sheet, Portfolio, The Human Element | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Rat Race

The Rat Race
The Rat Race

“The Rat Race” is about the marathon of life, symbolized by the corporate marathon.  There are many stories within this artwork, including as you look at the runners:  the worried working Mom; the older woman (bottom right corner, intentionally easy to miss) trying to keep pace but stay out of the fray until retirement; one executive tripping while another executive (the leading executive in the race) reaches back and grabs the tripped runner’s briefcase (symbolic for the spoils of corporate ladder warfare); a marathon runner whose number ends in 666 is smugly watchful of the leading runner’s efforts, ostensibly guiding the leading marathon runner;  the two executives who run side by side and protect each other in the race (but experience tells us sooner or later one will kill the other off in his quest to be first); and note the only executive NOT wearing a marathon number, symbolizing that she is wealthy enough to not have to work.  In the stadium, the audience also tells many stories – the pensive little girl holding a sign  ‘Run, Mom, Run” as her worried mother below runs by;  note also the only figure to be leaning back in the stadium – a man sitting with his arms above his head leaning back in relaxation – symbolizing an investor watching his hedged investments (he will win either way); the lovers (upper right corner) outside the fray, oblivious and above it all, because they are in love; etc.  My artist signature placed on the race track ground symbolizes that sensitive people often get ‘run over’ in “The Rat Race.”   This work was inspired by the competition, endurance required and complex personalities inherent in corporate life and life in general.  There are many stories within this artwork.

If you are interested in purchasing a print or other fun items with this artwork or licensing this artwork, please contact me at M. Nicole van Dam.

Rat Race is available in Limited Edition prints and many lovely stationery, household and wearable products, at Create.bz.

Can’t find what you’re looking for?  If you are interested in purchasing a print or other fun items with this artwork or licensing this artwork, please contact me at M. Nicole van Dam.

This site contains the valuable intellectual property of M. Nicole van Dam. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, M. Nicole van Dam® and Artimagination® are respectively federally registered trademarks owned by M. Nicole van Dam, and the contents of this site, including each artwork, each artwork element, title, storyline, book, character, poetry and text, are each respectively TM and (c) 1999-2014 M. Nicole van Dam. All Rights Reserved. Similarly, the artwork on this site, including also the look and feel and style of the artwork and individual elements within the artwork, constitutes the valuable trade dress of M. Nicole van Dam. No contents of this site or any artwork or writing on this site may be reproduced without the express written consent of M. Nicole van Dam. To request such consent or to license the artwork or other contents of this site, please contact M. Nicole van Dam.

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Black and White Animal Friends Series

Due to the appeal of Nicole’s black and white Leonberger dog images, Nicole was asked to create a line of more black and white images based on our furry and feathery friends. These lovely artworks join Nicole’s fun and heart warming creations! Please visit our animal lovers gift shop to find these fun artworks on everything from mugs to cell phone cases to playing cards and more! Here are a few of these engaging new artworks:

Lovable Welsh Corgi


Cockatoo


Maine Coone Cat


Papillion


Is it Just a Spotted Cat?


Rock Star Poodle


Pomeranian


Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

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