Follow the Moon: Celebrating Quirkiness

Shrine the Divine I, Drozda 2010

7x5"

An encaustic experiment

  

Here we are one week into the Trust/Love Moon! This is an excellent time for discovering creative avenues to explore.

'Luna See' is presented as an artist's tool to help you find a gentler and kinder way to work with time. 'Luna See' will do no harm and may bring you much joy. I offer it as an instrument for affecting the quality of the day as the highest of arts.

In order to obtain and maintain balance, 2010 requires that you have a basic understanding of intent, intuition or a 'gut feeling' about situations. Throughout this year, self-esteem will be the indicator for the direction to take. Notice what is asked of you as you feel your capacity to endure. Stamina and fortitude are going to show you what you're made of and what can be accomplished.

Walt Whitman brings this brilliant touchstone:

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!

You have not known what you are,

you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,

Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time...

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,

These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they...

There is a poetic component to all that unfolds this year. Whether you deem the experience as favorable or unfavorable, there is action needed. The quality of the year requires your participation. It's a good time to apply the adage of 'this ain't no dress rehearsal' to every moment and to all that you get involved in.

The spotlight this year is on the solar plexus chakra, the third of the seven major energy centers in the body. In the Eastern tradition, this area is referred to as the balance point or center of balance. It lies behind the umbilicus, and placing your attention there is a reminder that you are always connected to the Eternal Mother. Be capable, balanced, expressive, creative and poetic in 2010.

 
Between today, Monday, August 16 and next Monday, August 23, the moon's phases (First Quarter and Gibbous) bring the opportunity for initiative and analysis regarding this cycle's goal. Taking initiative requires action. Get involved with the change you need to be making so that you can consciously trust your life more. It helps to participate fully by moving your body as much as you can. Dance, sway, fast-walk, swim laps while holding your goal in your heart. You have until Friday morning to actively feel and move your vision/goal for this Trust cycle. Naturally you don't stop moving from then on...that would be silly to consider...however this phase is particularly geared to get you flowin' with your goal. How great to take advantage of that. Come Friday the timing of this Trust/Love cycle opens out so that you can revise the vision you set at the New Moon on August 9. Sink into a deeper level of Self-Trust.
 
Be impetuous, and with your goal in mind, do one thing that is spontaneous and electric. One thing that gives you a feeling of s t r e t c h. Can you feel the heat when you allow space for a bit of wildness in conjunction with your objective? You have between now (Monday, August 16 and Friday morning, August 20 for this to happen. Funny, isn't it, that you can 'plan' to be unstructured? Of course you can. Life is all about paradox and polarities. By Friday the experience will naturally lead you to filter, digest, revise and ready for the illumination to follow next week.


Trust is analogous to faith, belief, confidence and Self- reliance. As mentioned last week: Summer each year offers the peak of possibility. Please continue to consider the positive, determined, venture-forth aspect of your innate inventive powers. The 8 moon slices of the monthly pie that unfold from New Phase (August 9-12) through Balsamic Phase (September 5-8) provide ground-breaking focus. Conviction and expectation are powerful adjuncts to manifesting your dream during these busy summer months.

Continue to establish awareness of the places in your art/ life where you could tear out, strengthen, and rebuild. Keep your eye on the prize while the year and all of your experiences shape your newly defined character. Since these changes can only happen if you restructure you may as well sink a little deeper into believing that what you want for your Art/life is what your Art/life wants for you. Trust that.
 
 

The Encaustic Retreat Gang:

Judy, Sheila, Betsy, our host/teacher/guide Karen, Me

 
I began the week attending a day-long encaustic retreat. The company, environment and the opportunity to dip into a new medium were all superb. In the middle of the week I took a huge plunge into the unknown...it has everything to so with trusting in one's deepest intention...more about that in the months to come. The week ended with an 8 mile kayak journey into the Great Dismal Swamp. In each of these situations I had to trust myself to do something new without fearing that I'd fall short of self imposed limitations/expectations.
 
 

Lake Drummond, Drozda 2010

 
Each August I consciously make changes and make space for new things. I do this precisely because this is an unnerving time of the year for me. I don't plan it to be so...but there it is and I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps it's an ancient echo of the biggest challenge of this life. Or maybe it's the place on the wheel where the greatest opportunity lies. I don't pretend to'blind trust walk' haven't you? Disconcerting at best. And what's needed? Trust. Capitol... T R U S T.

I feel fortunate since in the Art/life I am educated in: 'trust the process'. I have materials and media at hand. I have ideas and inspirations and BIG DREAMS. The question: how to allow all of this greatness to find its natural flow in the world (smile)... how to permit unhurried expansion and sharing to advance? I love a good challenge and so comes each years Trust cycle.

Art Light Heart Light Calendar page 2009

In line with this dynamic cycle I delight in sharing with you a page from the calendar produced by Dana Cunningham Anderson of Art Light Studio at The Bend at Moon Creek. She says in "how i make a calendar":

Each quotation is chosen over  the period of the preceding year AND in a last -minute search to create a balance of ideas. I stamp each quotation by hand, most often in black ink on white paper--a relished meditative process. Time slows down.I sit in a room with some old medieval  monk I've known a long time. He hand copies his manuscript, letter by letter, as i stamp my hand-carved letters at a small writing table next to his. We talk. He misses me when I am not there, welcomes me when I return..."

For many years Dana's work has held its place within my studio. Hers is a subtle and yet radiant work. She brings a reminder to me that what we produce is of value not due to its pomp and circumstance so much as for its heart. She reminds me of the quiet import of living with the Muse within AND beside me.

Between now and next Monday spontaneously engage in at least one new thing that somehow relates to your current Art/life goal. Once you've gone for the s t r e t c h filter and digest the experience so that you squeeze out the goodness.


The height of summer is the appropriate time to celebrate your quirkiness and individuality. This month's reminder: as artists we have a justified and historic obligation to be singular. Rejoice. Trust your process while you keep in mind the spacious and organic impulse to explore your edge place. Doing that now is being genuine in this area of the years wheel.

Continue to imagine the possibility as you trust your creative process. It is like no other creative process on the planet. How grand that is.


Special thanks to all dear commenter's this past week...what with retreats, studios and kayaking I didn't get in my replies..Thanks!

Shrine the Divine II, Drozda 2010

7x5"

An encaustic experiment

~Sing the day~



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I think I Could Turn and Live With the Animals

There's a Walt Whitman poem that BD and I read whenever one of our four leggeds leaves the planet:

I think I could turn and live with the animals, They are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.


This past summer my dear soulfriend Karin had to say goodbye to Zack the Cat, her constant companion of 18 years.

This event inspired me to honor the deeply rooted friendship that K had with Z and that we can be blessed to have with the companion animals that share our life for a little or a long time.

Looking through my sketch books I found a series of drawings that I had made of my sweet little LuLu the Cat. She died in 2001. From these original drawings I enlisted LuLu as my cat icon and hand stitched, then stained with India Ink, a series of cat portraits on small flags made of Kona cotton. The cat flags were inspired by Wind Horses also known as Tibetan Prayer flags. Each flag included good words about the nature of cats.

Since then I have continued to experiment and play with materials to gentle the idea of paying 'Homage to Companion Animals'.


Each 5 x 5 inch piece shown here combines Acrylic mono print, gesso, India Ink, hand stitching, and bees wax to create the trio: Spirit Cat I, II and III all mounted on canvas blocks.