Celebrate the Day

live oaks on the bay

It's been a wonderful time of working on multiple projects in the studio.

Each year I write an article that pertains to the creative energy of the coming year, posting it with my pals David and Sandra over at the wonderful Zodiac Arts.

Finished my first Art House Sketchbook Project sent off on time and completed...whew! I was wondering if that would actually happen. Included here are a trio of sketches.

Next came the completion of the new large painting for Tri-C and Ursuline College Art Therapy 'Simplicity' Symposium...four paintings shipped out via FedEx yesterday for that annual event at which I am the invited guest artist. ...thank you all for including my work once again...it always is a coming home for me.

From FedEx I drove over to the Office of the Purchasing Agent in downtown Norfolk to hand over two hefty packets containing proposals for the Norfolk Light Rail Public Art project. There is a Public Art commission call for 1-9 artists to design windscreen and pavement medallions for the stations. I went to the meeting two weeks ago and decided to throw my hat into the ring. There is a tremendous amount of preparation required in compiling all the necessary pieces and parts to satisfy the commission requirements and of course there is also stiff competition. Now we wait and see.

A new series of studios start this week at the magnificent Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. For the winter semester I'm offering Contemporary Retablo/ExVoto and Saturday in the Studio along with a day long Beginning Blogging for Artists a few weeks from now.

I am grateful each day for all that I have been given in this life and for all that can be shared from a place of creative joy and compassion for all living beings.

May you have a week of walking your path in grace and simple beauty.

Happy New year

I send along to all the very best wishes for a new year filled with the wealth of the creative spirit that allows life to flow with beauty and peace.

May we howl at the moon and fly free. And may the Earth Mother be the better for our having walked her paths and rowed gently down her streams.

A Day of Thanks

I send out the best of giving thanks wishes to the world and to the beauty that surrounds.

Every where I look I see dazzling beauty and it seems all the better living where the sun shines so brilliantly even on a cold crisp leaf raking day.

Gary Snyder has a beautiful poem that sums it up well:

Prayer for the Great Family

Gratitude to Mother Earth,

sailing through night and day—

and to her soil: rich, rare and sweet in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing, light-changing leaf and fine root-hairs;

standing still through wind and rain;

their dance is in the flowering spiral grain

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and silent Owl at dawn.

Breath of our song clear spirit breeze in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets, freedoms, and ways;

who share with us their milk;

self-complete, brave and aware in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;

holding or releasing; streaming through all our bodies salty seas in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where bears and snakes sleep— he who wakes us—in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Great Sky who holds billions of stars— and goes yet beyond that—beyond all powers, and thoughts and yet is within us— Grandfather Space.

The Mind is his Wife. so be it.

after a Mohawk prayer
Gary Snyder, Turtle IslandNew Directions, New York, 1974, pp. 24-25

Nature Nurture

Leaving words to a minimum is continuing to be the most welcome of experiences even as the days become more active. This month two new artist residencies begin and the activity level will soar...1000 children making art...I love it and I consider ...how does the garden grow?

The answer that comes : Beautifully... one seed at a time.

Here's to planting new visions, goals, and dreams...may they bloom and spread their beauty.