Following the Moon: Renew You

Happy Year of the Black Water Dragon...Monday, January 23 through Thursday, January 26 brings us the New 'Renewal' Moon.


At the New Phase of each Moon/month the opportunity presents us with a lovely three days for creating a vision and with the Lunar New Year bringing its gifts of the Dragon just imagine what's possible.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl, Drozda, Watercolor/Arches

How does Renewal look in your Art/Life?
You can look deep inside. You see what needs Renewal.

At the New Moon you're standing at the Eastern most point on your Moon/month circle. It's the dawn, it's the beginning. Take a moment to gaze out and imagine the 4 weeks ahead...so much will be coming to meet you.

The New Moon is that classic space in which you hold the vision of the 'art of the start'. Feel inspired by the 'not yet experienced', there is adventure ahead. It's the time to embrace the active emotion that can propel you toward your passion. It's time to be visualize the emergence of new levels of clarity in your Art/Life.

Being filled with inspiration as the Equinox approaches...'something wonderful is emerging, something wonderful is on its way'.


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Following the Moon: Refining Tradition

Rescue, Drozda, Acrylic/wood, 2001

Monday, January 16 through Thursday, January 19 brings us to the 3rd Quarter 'Cleansing' Moon. At the 3rd Quarter Phase of each Moon/month the opportunity presents us with a lovely three days for giving grateful thanks.

You can take a deep soothing breath. You can refine this into a tradition.

At 3rd Quarter you're standing at the top most point on your Moon/month circle. Take a moment to gaze out absorbing the lay of the last three weeks terrain and count the blessings.

The 3rd Quarter is that classic space in which you can realign. Feel washed over by the wisdom gathered and guidance received. It's the time to embrace the Instinctive You. It's time to be grateful to yourself for all the ways in which you have wisely chosen to invest in your Art/Life.

Be filled with gratitude for the wealth given to you to share within your world.
...More


See you next Monday for the New Renewal Moon and the start of 'Ages & Stages...registration is open.


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Following the Moon: Nature/Nurture: YOU

Standing at the West Gate, Drozda, Ink on Bristol board

Monday, January 9 through early evening (EST) Thursday, January 12 brings you the opportunity to reflect (that's what Full Moon's make room for) upon all that you are willing to face and release as part of the Cleansing of your Art/Life at this time. I'd like to share with you the creative brilliance of my friend Lilan Laishley. You can Google her and sign up for her newsletter at the top of her home page. I put her link in repeatedly and for some reason it wouldn't open. Lilan is a word artist who writes a beautifully illustrated Full Moon journal/newsletter that you may enjoying subscribing to. I know that each month I brighten when it arrives and I am ever delighted by Lilan's gift for word-weaving the 'above with the below'.


This, the Full Moon segment of the cycle, is an important time for nurturing yourself. The Full Moon is that classic space in which we can see our shadow and it can sometimes feel a bit spooky and disconcerting. Thta's for good reason. It's a marvelous time of the Moon/Month to allow yourself the time/space to claim more of who you are now. It's a time to relate to yourself more clearly. Who you are now, in January during the Cleansing cycle is not known because you're in the depths of the Mystery. Yet even in the 'not knowing' you can recognize that you are filled with treasure of enormous value to yourself and our world.

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IT’S TIME TO BECOME AN AHA ADVOCATE:

January 12…this Thursday... registration opens

On January 24 as the New ‘Renewal’ moon begins, AHA’s for the Art/Life e-studio will open with ‘AGES & STAGES'...THE NATURAL ART OF PERSONAL ENERGY MANAGEMENT 'Ages & Stages' explores YOUR gold mine applying eight focused ways to deepen your Art/Life adventure. In this eStudio we will be getting personally attuned to the gifts and talents that are yours to share... in 2012...specifically. You'll be able to place your Art/Life goal on the Natural Wheel at Spring Equinox and watch the unfolding Moon by Moon.

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Following the Moon: Relaxing into the Middle Way

Hindu Flyer



Welcome to the Cleansing Moon cycle and our first step into the New Roman Calendar Year...may it bring all that your heart desires.

2012 will be bringing forward all that you have worked toward over the past 4 years.

My yearly article, Lifecycle Forecast for 2012, is posted and I hope that you'll take a few minutes to check it out. It's hefty so you may choose to bookmark it. The information is there for reminding you throughout the year that you've hit the balance point...this is the year of learning to walk, what in Buddhism is referred to, as the Middle Way.

Sunday, January 1 through Thursday, January 5 is a terrific period for taking all action possible to clear away the old and unusable. This is the Cleansing cycle so all manner of release and refresh is in order. We continue to move through the quietest time of the year. With Winter Solstice, on December 22, we stepped into the last quadrant of the Natural Year's walk around the wheel.

The next three Moon/Months are all about sinking into the MYSTERY... Ahhhh...couldn't you use some of that level of immersion in your Art/Life?


The definition of IMMERSION:

the act of immersing or the state of being immersed: as a : baptism by complete submersion of the person in water b : absorbing involvement c : instruction based on extensive exposure to surroundings or conditions that are native or pertinent to the object of study.

In the last few posts I've been sharing images of water and with the mild weather that we've had here at the beach it's been easy to hang out and take advantage of all of the beautiful views that surround. It goes without saying that during the Cleansing cycle hot baths, saunas, steams of any kind and floating, whenever possible, are in order.


Since I have been 'Following the Moon'... being a Luna-tic for 22 years now... I've also been experimenting that long with the keywords that represent each Moon/Month. Here's a review of the moon by moon keywords given to our culture as a gift from Sun Bear: January=Cleansing, February=Renewal, March=Purity, April=Clarity, May=Wisdom, June=Illumination, July=Growth, August=Trust, September=Love, October=Experience, November=Introspection(death&rebirth), December=Strength.

I've experienced many forms of consciously chosen techniques for Cleansings during this period of the year. I have several favorites...one of them is the Floatation Tank.

'In You Go', Drozda, Acrylic/wood

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A Water World

River View:Dusk, Drozda, 2011

It's the Strength Moon cycle and this week the energy is offering each of us the opportunity to be as creative, in connection to our current goal, as we can allow. We're moving toward a Lunar Eclipse at this weekend's Full Moon...The Full Moon makes me think of the pull of the tide so here are a few more shares on the topic of water.




Palm, Kim Keever


The glorious, albeit disorienting, large format photographs by Kim Keever are on exhibit at MOCA . I've had the pleasure of spending time with them over the last two months and also observing how catalytic Kim's method is for inspiring minds. My young artists in the MOCA 'Saturday in the Studio' arts apprentice program quickly found themselves enthralled. This was made easy for them with a terrific hand's on corner of the gallery. Two empty 20 gallon tanks are surrounded by baskets of many miniature landscape elements that Keever favors. With these, tiny clamp on lights and filmy fabrics that drapes 'like his pumped paints' they were very happy to create their own versions of 'tank art' (as they coined the term).
Here's a bit of info on Keever's process...and a video of him working in the studio...

"New York-based Kim Keever makes photographs of bonsai-scaled landscapes assembled inside a 200-gallon tank that is filled with water and topped with paint pigment and addressed with lights and gels to create convincing effects of clouds and atmosphere. His tropical vistas, sylvan forests, and mountain views openly wear their own artifice while they also display the fine-grained complexity of the real thing. Looking at them can be an otherworldly experience. NewArtTV visits Keever at his East Village studio."

Read more...and click over to my main blog see the charming water tale here

Gratitude to Water

Hooded Mergansers in the Cove

"Water, whether still or in motion, has so great an attraction for the lover of nature, that the most beautiful landscape seems scarcely complete without it. There are no effects so fascinating as those produced by the reflexions in nature’s living mirror, with their delicacy of form, ever fleeting and changing, and their subtle combinations of colour.”
- Montagu Pollock - Light and Water: A Study of Reflexion and Colour in River, Lake and Sea, 1903 -

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."
    Henry David Thoreau

A week of being on or near the water...during the Strength Moon cycle...

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Media Blend & Contemporary Retablo

Media Blend at Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art

"If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you", that would suffice." Meister Eckhart



My catalog blurb reads something like this...

Media Blend: Step outside the box and find new ways of seeing. Sticking with the tried and true can also be stiff and stagnant. Discover exciting combinations of materials... express... make handmade prints, stamps, stencils ... experiment with a wide variety of mediums...unsettle and surprise yourself. Each session builds on the last: experiment with ideas in deeper, more personally relevant ways and unleash an invigorating style...of your own.

Here's a sampling...

Your inspiration may be a gift...

It may arrive through a poem...

your impulse may rise up through a deeply personal story...

more...

Saturday in the Studio

Saturday in the Studio/Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art

Saturday in the Studio/Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art

I have an on going love affair with young artists and the positively open, spontaneous and joyful willingness that allows them to be inventors and detectives continually discovering ways to express and playfully explore.


Three semesters and a summer studio make up the yearly schedule for my program called 'Saturday in the Studio' an on-going series at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. I developed this program a number of years ago so that young artists would have a place to come and experiment with diverse materials and ideas of their own. Here's a collection of projects simply to celebrate unstructured imagination:

Saturday in the Studio/Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art

Each artist is free to develop their own direction....read more