Following the Moon

                                                                            Dreamboat #1, Drozda 2002

                                                                                                                36x36 inches

                                                                                                            Acrylic on panel

It's the Full Phase of the current moon cycle ... a fine time, each month/moon to reflect and review. Take the three day full phase, to realize that you are half way around the circle for this moon.

I'm investing in something very new this cycle: Blog Triage. I wanted to be able to look over my shoulder throughout the year ahead and see that I took a step toward learning something new and stretchy as part of my Art Life. It's been so fine. My little sweetpea brain is being challenged (hugely) and I love that... but the additional gift is the friendships with the group of  artists participating; a nurturing, stimulating bonus. Thank you Alyson and Cynthia.

How do you follow your dream of being the artist that you know yourself to be? It's a timeless question. One we come to ask in our own way... in our own time. I've reached a certain point in my life where I'm asking the question anew. I made a decision to consciously open a new door. Stepping through I began to look out ahead, to the decade before me, and ask, "What Next? What Now? What Matters?

Since 1989, after returning from an 18 week solitary retreat on a little island off the coast of North Carolina, I've engaged in reading time in a gentler cyclical pattern by following the moon. With the turning of the cycles and the seasons life takes on a gentle kinder rhythm.

The idea of becoming more intimate with the way time moves appeals to me.

While living on the island I invested my days in writing, painting and wandering. I moved easily from working in the studio to meandering through the marshes. In the early morning light I often followed deer tracks. Their soft hoof marks creating a  narrow path through the high grasses...their path stopping at the tideline. All my life I've followed deer paths. Something mysterious resonates when I see those heart shaped impressions in the earth. Yet here, at water's edge, these imprints seemed more mystical...as if these harmless creatures had strolled through the silence of the night marsh under the moonlight to come here to gaze out to sea.

In the Lakota tradition Deer represents Gentle Medicine. Deer is a totem for healing in my Art Life.

What powers and strengths assist you to be whole and centered in your Art Life?

Recovering from any type of trauma/drama requires a deep and gentle care.

There is no way to push the the healing river. Floating, rather than swimming against the current, brings repair with lasting results. Eventually it becomes possible to climb aboard a craft of our own making. I like to travel in a metaphoric mandorla boat. I have discovered that it is actually wiser, for me, to spend a good amount of time floating gently down the stream. I practice allowing my Art Life vehicle to rest in the moment as it prepares to lead me merrily to the opening of the path that lies ahead.

Did I Dream This? Drozda 2003

20x24 inches

Acrylic/found wood

A workshop presenter broke apart the lyrics for the popular Row Row Row Your Boat song. She pointed out that there are three rows and four merrilys. That is clearly the instruction to row gently down the stream. How about we stop struggling against nature. It's an exhausting up stream fight against the current.

I prefer the merrily down the stream approach... whenever possible.

~Sing the Day...merrily.

What's in a Name

Flotilla, Drozda 2001

18x24 inches

mixed on recycled wood

Several days ago Alyson asking me to address my blog name Merci 33.
Here's what has come to share.

Once upon a time 3 miscreants set me up in an entrapment situation, traumatized me severely and left me for dead. You can connect with the storyline where I created a graphic memoir last summer and posted it here on the blog from June through August. A post can be found here. You can imagine how physically, emotionally and psychically bereft the experience left me. One aspect of my recovery involved working diligently for 16 years to move beyond debilitating Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I lived in relative solitude for much of that time and devoted every day to inner repair working in studio and garden. It took time to learn to trust that life wouldn't brutally harm me again. I learned, and continue to enlist, unbroken focus; taking active measures to reclaim and rebirth myself, to walk in balance.

Alyson was curious and interested to know where the name Merci33 comes from and if I had ever explained that to my readers. In a follow-up email she went further and suggested that I tell the story of Donna Iona Drozda.

I'll be brief.

I love how the words we use and the way we communicate sends energy out into the world. Pain/pleasure, gain/loss, praise/blame, fame/disgrace. The list goes on and on. Some words help us feel hopeful and uplifted other words suck our lifeforce away and break our spirit.

Since 1991 the Lifecycle department of my studio outreach has been devoted to assisting us in walking in creative balance. The mantra for Lifecycle is paraphrased from Thoreau and states 'To affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts.' For Lifecycle I enlist a variety of well developed tools. I have a love affair with the work of walking through the world in a state of balance.

Merci 33: of course Merci means thank you. Thank you for every blessed moment. And 33 is an auspicious number that relates to 'All is Well'.
Therefore Merci 33 is a code for my life that reminds me 'Thank you. All is well.'

my plates remind me daily

My given name is Donna Jean Drozda. When I was violently attacked I could have been lost to myself for all time. However very quickly an artist/mentor came into my life and her lifestyle served as an example and helped me to immerse in the study of first Raja yoga and when my mind was able to calm a bit Hatha yoga. I was simultaneoulsy introduced to the Tao Te Ching. I have studied these daily for decades.

As part of the ongoing healing process I opened my studio to monthly 'Creativity Salons'. The monthly Salons were like protected circles, a gathering of artists who also shared like-minded souls. A core group of twelve of us engaged in a kind of 'collective creating' using the phases of the moon to circumnavigate the year. For more than five years we invested in the Salon environment where we were free to creatively invent ourselves anew.

We were a very playful group and one of the first things we did was give ourselves permission to choose a 'name for the day'. Instinctively I knew I needed my true  'Artist Name'...my own soul name. A name that belonged to me. What came is Iona. As in I own a Drozda...I own myself. Iona. No one anywhere, under any circumstance, has the power to take me from me. Not ever. It's been tested. It's been proven.

The Fields of Dewachen, Drozda 2001

30x30 inches

Acrylic on canvas

I feel very fortunate that circumstances came together to form a scar tissue that has made me stronger and more flexible as a result of what I have endured. I am a bona fide member of the 'Scar Clan' as outlined in the magnificent book Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

I am well aware that we are each stronger than we can ever possibly imagine. Often it is not until, or unless, we find ourselves faced with a true test of our inner strengths and resources that we discover just how Merci 33 life truly is.

So there you have it Alyson, in short form.

 Thank you so much for stopping by... may you always in all ways:

~Sing the day

Thank You: Mother Earth day

Rynard Drozda 2009

18x36 inches

upcycled materials

This piece is inspired by last year's mystical and fleeting encounters with Red Fox.

I like this little poem from Jamie Sams Medicine Cards to go with todays Earth Day theme:

Fox...where are you? Under the ferns? Becoming the forest, So I can learn?
Are you watching, invisible to me? Trying to teach me, to become a tree?

                                                                                         My Favorite Tree

In honor of Mother Earth Day I thought to share with you a great program for artists to take part in at no cost and with wonderful inspiration provided  as a result. The National Wildlife Federation Backyard Wildlife Habitat program. It can be accessed to register land at home, school, campus or business.

National Wildlife Federation certificate of participation

Once you download the National Wildlife Backyard Habitat application form and fill it out it's as easy as that. If accepted the land recieves a number designating its place in the national registry. The certificate pictured above is what you receive. For a small fee...you can also have a lovely metal sign to display in your yard. We installed ours on the post in the front yard and added the bird sculpture, nice touch don'tcha think? It's always quite wonderful to see how many people walking or riding their bikes past the house stop to read the sign.

 Wren House/Studio

We're fortunate to caretake an acre of forested land along the edge of a beautiful lake with eighbors who also appreciate and encourage conditions for good stewardship of the land.

We've had Red Fox living near us for many years. Catching a glimpse of their etheric beauty moving through in the low light of dusk or dawn is always a thrill. However this spring the gang has arrived and we are literally sharing the day with them as you can see from the pictures I took this morning.

 

Two of Four Drozda April 21, 2010

Wildlife Crossing Drozda April 21, 2010

Temporary Den Drozda April 21, 2010 

Mom Drozda April 21, 2010

 
Perhaps you will take a look around your homestead to see if you have habitat, food, and water available to support songbirds or larger critters. That can mean a small yard with feeders and a birdbath or something more.

Everyone needs a safe place of refuge and there is so much that we can each do, in our own unique artistic way, to help all sentient beings.

Happy Mother Earth Day all over the world.

~Sing the Day

Moon Day at the Wren

Tara's Moon , Drozda 2010

8x10"

White ink, prismacolor on black illustration board

I open the week by relating to the moon, after all it's Moonday. La Luna helps me to create and live in harmony with the phases and the cycles of nature. I love to live my life and make art in tandem with what I affectionately refer to as 'Luna See'.

There is a completely different pace when you begin truly noticing the patterns of the moon. Living by the phases is a wonderful way of relaxing time in all areas but particularly in the studio. If you visualize your kitchen wall calendar you see the days stretching out in a linear fashion that implies the need to 'Get there!' That's a Solar (masculine) way of tracking time. Obviously we need this way of moving through the world. But a glimpse at a lunar calendar page acclimates us to the mysterious (feminine) unfolding of phases and breaks the use of time into three day segments. In creating with and living with the cycles of the moon since 1989 I've come to see the balance of these two ways of moving through time. I see the moon phases as stretching time so as to allow breathing space. There are approximately 29.6 days in a lunar month and that divides into 8 phases, as was outlined here on the New Moon, April 14 post.

Currently we're in the Crescent phase of this moon cycle so the opportunity is ripe for researching whatever your creative goal is for this month/moon.

My current studio goal is to learn new techno-communication skills. To help me I've signed on for Blog Triage with Alyson Stanfield and Cynthia Morris. The behind the scenes learning, along with the sense of community, is truly inspired. The class is pushing us all in a very positively assertive and enthusiastic direction...if I might jump in and give my humble take (for all involved)... it really feels like we're learning plus having a whole lotta fun.

The assignment/research for this phase is to design a different look for our blog. One point of entry is our use of fonts and color. We're being asked to 'think gallery'. we're being asked to sync up website and blog so they are 'of a piece'.

The first action I took(reluctantly), after listening to the lesson, was to eliminate the dark gray background and white font. Personally I loved that look, however I had heard from several sets of eyes that white type on a dark ground is not easy to read from a computer screen. Alyson provided an amazing wealth of information including seven pages of lesson plan on this topic, so it will be an ongoing opportunity to change things out. For now, I've clarified my look by using white ground with black type. Simple. This is the way I started my blog and I admit I didn't feel comfortable with the 'step back' yet just a short time into the change I'm feeling more at home again. I'll continue to research fonts and link colors and over all design of the page. I am a happy learner.

2010 Treasure Map, Drozda

18x24"

collage, drawing red poster board

This is a synchronistic moment for a fresh start, a new sense of creative passion and an infusion of enthusiasm because this is the Aries moon cycle. Each year the Aries moon signals a new beginning (as nature demonstrates).  This makes for a prime time for mapping out studio goals for the whole walk around this year's Wheel of Life. Pictured here is my current Treasure Map. It helps me stay focused upon the energy and information I'm open to experiencing in the year ahead. I also keep a studio goal journal and have belonged to a weekly 'Master Mind' support group since 1984. A confidential {artist's} support group is a great, time honored way to keep track and prioritize the work.

What is your self-expressive goal for this new year's first moon cycle? And what are you creatively reaching for throughout this year? Whatever you're yearning to express and share you may enjoy the investment in doing your own version of a treasure map or mind map during the coming week.

In three days it will be time to take a specific action in relation to one of your creative goals. If you've read this far and would enjoy a gift of a 'Luna See Recipe' card let me know and I'll make that available to you.

Until next time keep in mind: when following the moon there's no reason to rush...ahhhhhhhhhh....

~Sing the Day

Follow the Moon

'Portrait of the artist as a Young Girl'

8x10"

Donna Iona Drozda

I couldn't let the day end without wishing you a happy new walk around the natural wheel of the year. Today the New Moon is in Aries, albeit a late degree, yet still this is the place to hold a vision for the way you would like your precious life to unfold in year ahead.

The plants and the baby animals are starting out fresh and so can we.

I hope you will embrace what life has given you up until today and open to all that you can be. What a great time to swim out into the creative sea that surrounds.

Happy New 'Natural Year'!               ~Sweet singing in your dreams

                                                                            'Moon Song'
                                                                                                          8x10"
                                                                                                  Donna Iona Drozda

Two illustrations for The Luna Calendar white ink, pastel, prisma color pencil on black illustration board

8 Steps to Living with a Natural Flow

        "Only engage, and then the mind grows heated, begin it, and then the work will be completed."

Goethe

'The Four Directions #2'

drawing: white ink on black bristol Drozda 2001 

For today's Blog Triage assignment we are asked to choose a topic that we are ready to blog about and then write it in three different voices. We are then asked to post the voice that most closely expresses our natural voice. We've been provided with a list of choices and I have selected mother, student and fellow artist. I decided to post all three since I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

My topic: Living  with a Natural Flow

Dottie, I think about you often as you've been 'resting in peace' since 2003. As my mom I don't know if you realize how you helped me (as well as your four other children) learn to live with a steady and continual focus (I notice that in the photos here you had provided me with binoculars for observing closely). It may have been those many trips to the Cleveland Zoo, wandering and watching, or the bi-weekly trips to the Cleveland Public library. I adored being able to go through the files of animal photographs filling the large brown paper envelope (the one with the figure eight closure around the paper buttons) with my favorite pictures for my next group of drawings. You encouraged me every step of the way to believe in my talent and to help me to create skills. Remember how you would remind me to draw, whenever I didn't feel well, or when I was frightened by something. You never failed to bring me paper or my sketchbook and you didn't coddle me...I don't think you saved any of those drawings, knowing there would always be more to come.  As I've looked back and reflected I appreciate that lesson. I took from that to value what's taking place now and to let the rest... rest.

Sabastian, you are eight years old. When you entered the studio you couldn't know that we'd be working together here at the contemporary art center studios until you're twelve. However I do hope that when you look back you will recall this: whenever you mentioned,with such joy and determination, "I want to be an architect when I grow up." I asked you to wait just a minute! Then, with a big smile, I would remind you that you ARE an artist/architect right now!! I would suggest that your only concern will be to not ever ever forget. I trust that you will have, at your fingertips, the memory of conceptualizing, drawing, planning, and constructing your many projects...from foundation to shutters to handmade trees and lawns surrounding your magical structures. Whenever you were in the studio you radiated a quietness and a focus that touched my heart and helped the other young artists by watching your example.  Each time your mother came to pick you up her tender pride filled the room.  

A house that Sabastian built

To my fellow artists I send out  a salute and an awareness that most of you already have a sense of flow and connection to the natural unfolding of time. For those of us who periodically lapse let me offer up a simple 8 step approach to 'going with the flow'. This eight fold path is based upon the natural and eternal phases of the moon. I've been a master teacher of working with the phases since the early 90's. It's a gentle and merry way to row your art boat down the stream.

All you need to begin is a classic kitchen calendar. Find the next new moon (which is April 14) and you can step into a gentle flow of time...month-by-month, year-by-year:

With each New moon…have a vision. Close your eyes and open your heart. Set a goal. Ask for clarity, which will lead to wisdom and illumination during the coming 29 days of the unfolding moon cycle. Create a treasure map using color, images and words to illustrate your heart’s desire. Three days later at the Crescent moon phase do your research and allow your vision/goal space to struggle like a seed planted in the ground. Imagine that it reaches up to find the light as it simultaneously stretches down to set a root. Breathe in the beauty and the wonder that surrounds you.

When the three days of the First quarter moon come it’s the time to take an action (write the letter, make the phone call, dance, or paint or sculpt your vision) all to inspire growth, trust and love for your goal.

The Gibbous moon phase is three days before the full moon; this is the time to remain positive…remain completely focused and create, create, create in connection to your goal.

The Full moon reflects. This is the three days in which you can see the shadow or hidden side of your vision or goal. This is when you can experience your goal's challenges from deep within. Now you can see, sense and feel what works and what may not. Introspection at this time leads to inner strength.


Three days after the full moon comes the Disseminating moon phase. This is the time to share what you have learned thus far regarding your goal. Speak to a trusted friend or mentor or write in your journal, or blog, recording your discoveries.

The Third quarter moon each month offers a time to say “thank you”. Now we begin to cleanse, renew and purify our thoughts and feelings being very grown up and recognizing that we’ve done what we can to accomplish the goal for this cycle.

The Balsamic moon phase each month falls three days before the next new moon. Now we release what has come and prepare to begin again…this is the time to dream the dream of the seed idea or vision that will be planted with the next new moon…

There you have it, a simple gentle recipe for circles, cycles, and following your moon….or as I like to say…enjoying your Luna-see…each new moon gives a chance to create a new vision.

winged moon

drawing: white ink on black bristol Drozda 2009

The two black and white drawings are taken from my archives of years of contributions to the pages of the beautiful Luna Press calendar...a wonderfully creative tool for walking in rhythm with the wheel of life. I also send out a monthly newsletter that keeps you abreast ot the current key energies of the cycles. You can subscribe at my home page here.


~sing the day

Celebrating the Day

I am so happy to be able to celebrate this day. Fourteen years ago, on April 7, I packed up the van with the 2 dogs, 2 cats and 2 birds and began a caravan with my partner driving the moving truck and a dear friend bringing all the house plants as we relocated from Ohio to Virginia.... moving from the glacial moraine to the edge of the continent.
Many of you have probably moved more times than you can count. Others may be like me, I'd lived in the same geographic area for more than 40 years. I traveled a good bit and felt a sense of expansiveness to life because of that but picking up and leaving it all behind was BIG. HUGE. With the move...everything changed.

                                                                  'In You Go' Drozda  Acrylic on Wood

    I'm so happy that it did. It's been a good shake up and I've loved coming to a new place to explore.

The Cypress swamp where I walk

 So every April 7 I take the day to wander and to wonder and to open to what will be coming around the next turn in the trail.

I've met the most wonderful people since relocating, and I knew the greatest folks before I moved, but one of the celebrations that is on my mind today is the amazingly rich and endless community of artists who I can visit through this medium of blogging. I love what you create and what you share. I so enjoy learning from you and being inspired by you. I'm new to it and I'm green but I am enthralled and entranced. I feel so fortunate to be in a community where beauty and wonder are so willingly shared by so many exceptionally gifted and talented beings.

I'm celebrating something else today. Every ninety days I set a goal. That takes me around the wheel of the year from Equinox to Solstice to Equinox to Solstice and round I go spiraling year after year. This quarter's goal is to improve my techno-communication skills. I felt that one way that could happen is through this wonderful art of blogging. To assist me I signed on for Blog Triage: Maintaining a Healthy Artist's Blog with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield. Today is the first day of a one month tune-up and I am rather thrilled to imagine the world of discovery that awaits me. I hope that you'll pop over and follow along throughout the next four weeks perhaps gleaning some tips that you can use....and of course, if you are here, I hope that you will comment (hint hint :-) sharing your wealth of knowledge with me too...this is exciting and I feel like such a happy learner!

At my monthly women's art group a call has gone out for books that have helped us, as artists, when we feel that the creative stream has been diverted or is drying up. What are some of your favorites? What books are beside your bed? What books do you reach for when you feel the need for sustanence? I have so many titles that uplift me but I wanted to share three today. Creating by Robert Fritz, Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung and I'd Rather Be In the Studio by Alyson B Stanfield. These are three very different books each with its own way of bringing up enthusiasm and courage for moving forward with what is. I am so appreciative that over the years the philosophy put forth in each has helped to bring me back into a feeling of strong yet gentle creative flow. I'm an Elder now. I'm considering the 'birdseed trail' that I might spread across the earth. I'm not interested in pushing any rivers but I am so jazzed by what there is to discover and share through our many mediums and their countless messages.

As I celebrate the fourteenth anniversary of my move I am also celebrating these vital foundation builders and all of you who inspire me so deeply and so wonderfully by sharing your world view with such passion and generosity of soul. Thank you so much.

~Sing the day

Esperance

Once a month I meet with a great group of women artists. We enjoy the challenge of learning new techniques and sharing information. It's like a monthly artist retreat and we have such a great time being with one another quietly working or wildly experimenting.

In February we were each given a soap box made of recycled cardboard to use for artmaking. I've been working on a my 'Esperance' series for the last few months. It has everything to do with hope for the environment. I actually first came across the term last fall when re-reading the enchanting book The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono. In the book the word is defined as "the feminine word designating the permanent state or condition of living one's life in hopeful tranquilty." That concept speaks to me deeply. As do trees.


 Recently Sharmon Davidson posted a wonderful collection of tree photos and quotes. For me she represents a kindred spirit and as such she is usually operating on a shared wave length. The day she ran the post I was reading it as the chain saws were sending shock waves through my studio/home. The sound permeated the day. After the trucks pulled away massive healthy Standing Ones lay at the street and yet another property in our forested neighborhood had been stripped bare. It's been happening more and more the last few years.
Storms and images on the news of fallen trees cause some individuals to rampantly cut trees.

So Esperance is a series where I am investigating the hope that nature brings. And although we cut and slice and dice our environments out of ignorance and/or fear I trust that there are enough of us who love this planet and her hair of trees to continue to do all that we can to support her health and well being even as we do the same for ourselves. We used to plant a tree whenever we heard one being cut down but our little acre is now wonderfully filled so I have taken to sending a donation to The Nature Conservancy or The Environmental Defense Fund or one of the other conservation organizations that I am so grateful for, knowing that there is a big picture.
How funny...I was given a soap box to incorporate into my work and it got me to stand on one!!...to stand up for our most magnificent and beneficial planetary crown of trees.

In March a member of our group, an amazing fiber artist, gave each of us a couple of  cardboard cones that fiber comes wound around. And so they too became part of this series...

~May you sing the day