Penny Richards' photos

For Lisa C.'s "A Month of Hands" project. Making a freezer-paper stencil--see the nearby photos for the results!

Made with tomatoes from our very tiny driveway garden. Recipe here: pennamite.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/a-perfect-recipe-for-t...

For Lisa C.'s "A Month of Hands" project. Son is in summer school. That's our shady front yard, white picket fence and all.

Made with tomatoes from our very tiny driveway garden. Recipe here: pennamite.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/a-perfect-recipe-for-t...

For Lisa C.'s "A Month of Hands" project. Taken after picking up daughter from camp at the Roundhouse Aquarium, which is at the end of the Manhattan Beach Pier.

Hat crocheted during paper sessions at Society for Disability Studies meeting, June 2009. All yarn is from the Crayon line by Knit Picks.

For Lisa C.'s "A Month of Hands" project. I'm working with a collection of 19c. Scottish letters, this is the one I'm transcribing this afternoon (for more details about this project, see lettersfromsanquhar.blogspot.com ).

1. Suffrage Parade Backpack , 2. Ruth St. Denis Purse , 3. The Birdie Backpack , 4. Glenna Smith Tinnin purse , 5. Janet Scudder purse, front , 6. Suffrage purse, back , 7. My own upcycled purse, front , 8. Jazz Age purse, back , 9. Brains! Purse , 10. Peggy Bacon makeup case, red side , 11. Shoulder to Shoulder purse, back , 12. Rock Diva purse, back , 13. Thrifted brown purse, after, front , 14. Black thrifted purse, after, front , 15. Black Purse #1, after (front) , 16. Black Purse #2, after (back) , 17. Amy Johnson purse, back , 18. Helene Dutrieu purse (back) , 19. Thrifted black purse, after , 20. Suffragette purse, front Created with fd's Flickr Toys .

For Lisa C.'s "Month of Hands" project. Making salmon with tomatoes from our garden and onions, and Shan Fish Seasoning Mix from the Artesia Market.

For Lisa C.'s "Month of Hands" project. At the beach south of Redondo Pier, three hours before the fireworks over the Pacific Ocean.

Upcycled from a plain black thriftshop backpack with gesso, acrylic paints, paper collage, sharpies, modpodge, and krylon. Image of Hedwig Reicher as Columbia, at the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington DC, is from the Flickr Commons uploads of the Library of Congress (See below for original.) SOLD 8/09.

Upcycled from a plain black thriftshop backpack with gesso, acrylic paints, paper collage, sharpies, modpodge, and krylon. Image of Hedwig Reicher as Columbia, at the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington DC, is from the Flickr Commons uploads of the Library of Congress (See below for original.) SOLD 8/09.

For Lisa C.'s "A Month of Hands" project. Taken at Menchie's on Artesia Blvd, RB, on 7/2/09.

For Lisa C's "A Month of Hands" project. Taken 7/3/09. Purse in progress is a suffrage-themed backpack.

We're growing tomatoes in the tiny patch of dirt next to our driveway--it's amazing how many tomatoes even a little city garden can produce.

We're growing tomatoes in the tiny patch of dirt next to our driveway--it's amazing how many tomatoes even a little city garden can produce. These are the ripe ones on our kitchen windowsill yesterday.

This was a custom order for a friend. She provided an all-black backpack, and she provided the image she wanted me to use--a class picture from a teachers' college c.1929. (Her grandmother's in there among the new teachers all in white.) Background is gesso, acrylic paints, and sharpie markers. Because the flap is very flexible, I didn't use paper collage--instead, I made large xeroxes of the central image and transferred them using a gel technique. The whole thing is modpodged, and then kryloned for weather resistance.