Following the Moon

'Healing Heart for Tim', Drozda 2010

8x10"

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Welcome to the New Moon. Growth is the keyword through July. Keep in mind that the New Moon on July 11 brought a Solar eclipse. Sandra Mosley  offers some interesting points of reference for your creative path. 

In the 21 days remaining in this month I invite you to:
Pause a moment.
Close your eyes.
Take a deep calming breath.
Simply imagine the creative possibility before you.

The idea is that you can choose to slow down a bit even in the midst of the most active time of the year. You can recognize how you intuitively align, or you can start now, to become more consciously tuned in to the eternal rhythms of the lovely lunar patterns.
Note: 'Luna See' is presented as an artist tool for looking at time and your movement through time. It is offered as an instrument for gentling through the day.

'Earth Calendar', Drozda 1995

Ink and Prismacolor on Bristol

"...the light of the moon waxes and wanes, giving an endless succession of full moons and new moons. Think also of the continuous rising and falling of the planetary tides, inseparably linked to the invisible pull of the moon's gravity, as the earth spins and the moon moves more slowly than the earth turns. Without these eternal rhythms, our ancestral forms of life would never have emerged from the sea to find dry land.

You and I, being physically composed of more than 70 percent water, are moved and touched by the same powerful and invisible forces of the moon. " Joel and Michelle Levey


Between today, Monday, July 12 and next Monday, July 19, the moon's phases (new, crescent, first quarter) continue to provide you with creative focus points for visualization, research and action. Until Wednesday morning be setting your intention for this cycle. What do you choose to Grow during time? What are your studio projects and how will you allow time and space for them to come into being?


At each New moon you can give birth to the next piece of your vision. You don't have to start from scratch. Think of a spiral that unwinds through the year. Visualize where your over-all sense of creative identity is at this time. How's it growing?

Creating a Mind Map or a vision page collage between now and August 9 will bring clarity to this segment of the year's spiral.

July brings with it the keyword of Growth. Think about creative expansion. The idea is to continue tapping into your vision for the 29.6 days of the cycle. Each of the 8 successive phases that unfold from New (July 11-14) through Balsamic (August 5-9) provides a focus.
What are you now growing within the ground of your creative soil?

Our planet needs the artist who has the courage to express a new view and a true heart connection. This whole year is about feeling what is happening 'in the gut' as you forge a new sense of identity.  A renewed sense of identity requires that you know how to endure. When you practice conscious endurance you grow stronger and more capable.

On my studio wall for 19 years

My Short Story:

Each year at this time I have the anniversary of one of my art/life's most defining moments. We all get those and it's useful to be clear on what they are.

It was this point in the summer calendar when, as a young and trusting woman, I arranged to visit a house full of my artist friends on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. I recount that story in my graphic memoir published starting here last summer.

Telling that story, even though I've gone through decades of healing, was a profound and emotionally creative experience. I used a new medium, the Sumo paint program. I put this intense story of violence 'out there' by placing it into a blog format.

 I'll never forget how anxious and exposed I felt sitting here alone in my wonderfully tranquil home feeling every cell of my body recounting the experience as the simple Sumo images emerged.  It was chilling and empowering simultaneously.

By writing/drawing the memoir I was facing my fear of being seen at a very deep and a brand new level. I had echoes of demons reminding me that: being seen is very dangerous. Those voices tried to stop me. I felt possessed. I could watch the part of me that tried to convince me that if I did this, if I continued to work on this graphic memoir, something very bad would happen to me again. I didn't stop.

In creating those weeks of blog posts... I grew. It felt like the last vestige of reclaiming my authentic power. It required decades of growing to reach that point and it was a monumental creative event that no one even needed to see....and very few did. Growing can be like that. Private. Monumental.

I had told this deeply personal, yet universal woman's story, over the years to intimate friends and in women's shelters. I'd given a keynote address at a symposium on sexual violence. I had once been 'raped by the pen' when a reporter asked where my art is sourced and I told him the story of that summer "off the record".
He and his editor then proceeded to betray my trust when they went ahead and published my private journey in the popular arts monthly magazine that carried my 'whole story' thus 'exposing me' raw and naked to my community. I didn't know.... but my Muse knew... I was ready to endure and grow.

I have tremendous power and authority for my art/life as a result of these woven story lines. They don't control me, they remind me.

Be awake. Be conscious.

Have a pattern that provides the qualities you are choosing to grow in your precious art/life.


Don't have a goal? Don't know what this remaining 21 days of the July 'Growth' cycle is about for you? No problem. Your Muse knows and is gently, silently waiting for your engagement. Ask for guidance.
Isn't it lovely how, when we move into August, growth will gently place trust at our feet, lapping like a gentle soothing wave.


Be certain of this: When honest love speaks, when true admiration begins, when excitement rises, when hate curls like smoke, you need never doubt that creativity will stay with you for a lifetime.

Ray Bradbury



~May you sing your day~