Following the Blue Moon

 Journal page, Drozda,  2006

It's been a busy time, no?
As it ought to be during this most active 'doing' time of the year.

Celebrate the Full 'Love' Blue Moon with some dancing.

I'm so happy to share with you the 'Life in Transit' project that I've been investing in since last fall and now launched  as a public art initiative in collaboration with dear artist friend, poet/educator Toni Wynn and nonprofit partner, Tidewater Arts Outreach.

'Life in Transit', a public art/education project, honors and respects the strength and vitality of women around the world who have taken creative action to be liberated from domestic violence and poverty.
As a 'think global, act local', venture LiT invites a group of marginalized and culturally invisible women (who have participated in a community shelter support program in our community) to creatively express their inner strengths and inspire courage through personal art made public.

Please visit our new Face Book page, friend us and give the project a LIKE...we're moving toward sponsorship by our public transit system, enlisting their support in making 'Life in Transit' a community outreach...is your life in transit? ...visit our blog and share your courage and strength.

Read more...

And may you dance...

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Following the Moon: The Light Heart

The Four Directions (detail), Drozda 2004

10x8"

White ink on Black illustration board

October is the Experience month of the year. Have you been noticing the way that the last 18 days have unfolded for you? It's quite something to simply allow this to be a glimpse, a mini clip or trailer, of what 2011 will bring. I jot a few notes at the close of each day. I was genuinely taken aback when I did my review from a year ago. I like what I see and yet I found myself whispering: Be careful what you pay attention to...because more is on the way.


The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

                                      Frank Lloyd Wright

Welcome to the Gibbous Moon phase, Monday October 18 through Friday, October 22. The Gibbous days are some of the most creative each month...read more

Following the Moon

The Bodhisattva, Drozda 2001

48x60 Acrylic/canvas

The second phase of each moon cycle is called the Crescent. It comes three days after the New Moon. The new moon started Friday, May 14. Since then perhaps you've noticed that some new opening(s) has occured for you. I've noticed that in my own life. I've got a large and challenging project before me as I step into this new walk around the natural year.  And I have enjoyed seeing how Claudine and Sharmon are posting 'brand new' news. Be sure to pay attention and celebrate yours.

Stay connected to your current passion, your artist dream. 

It's here, this week, where we can place our focus upon the plan for our goal. The Crescent phase offers this space each and every month/moon...how cool is that!! 

Now we won't be naive and think that we're giving the Universe a shopping list of things we think we deserve. It isn't like that. It's more grown up than wishful thinking. It's recognizing and owning our gifts and our talents and realizing that this 'ain't no dress rehearsal'. ..I tend to look at, and experience, this part of the monthly cycle as if I am tending the seed vision that I recently planted.  During the Crescent phase I observe that seed as it begins to push up and down simultaneously...root down, shoot up toward the light. We can't make that happen...that's a natural unfolding...its instinctive, that's the Crescent phase.

Journal page, Drozda

10.5x8" ballpoint pen on paper

Next step: between Thursday, May 20 and May 24, take a specific action. That time period will be the First Quarter phase. Put it on your calendar: a specific action between Thursday and next Monday! Take intiative. Express some aspect of your artist vison and the dream that lives in your gut that you yearn to give birth to. Make a phone call, write an important letter, start the new series, pick up your camera, go exploring, set up your work area, scope out the gallery or on-line shop set-up....you get the idea.   

See what it feels like for you. Share your action in the comments and we'll all learn as we go.
 
Some excellent words to apply in thinking, conversation and generally moving through life this week are: growth, positive assertion, opportunity, motion, movement, development, breaking away.

Thanks Julie for asking, in the last post's comment section, "what comes after May 14?" I hope this brief post will give you some ideas for engaging in the start of the 'Wisdom/Illumination' moon cycle.

Journal page, Drozda

10.5x8" ballpoint pen on paper

Bottom line, as so many before us have demonstrated ...(listen all creatives who are now hooking ourselves onto the chain of all the artists who have ever lived and worked throughout time)...follow your passion, your bliss, your awareness of your skills. Be reminded as you gently apply the lunar cycles to your studio time that there is no one, ever before, who as had your artist eye, your artist soul and your artist opportunity to shine like the star that you are. Aren't we so blessed that you're here...yuppers we sure are!!

~Sing to your Muse...she loves that.

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

Retablo and Ex Voto with a Contemporary Spin

Our six week studio (at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia) exploring Retablo and Ex Voto (from a contemporary perspective) has come to its conclusion. First we learned the history and tradition of this Mexican folk art... how the retablo, which literally translates to 'behind the altar' originated with "Santero boxes" carried into Mexico by the Spanish Conquistadors of the 16th century. The history of the boxes is complex and by the 17th to the 19th centuries they were gradually transformed, passed from one generation to the next, until the art form morphed into charming pictorial images of saints helping to lift one through the difficulties and challenges of life.

In our studio the artists constructed a timeline that mapped out highs and lows of their own life experience. From there they chose a direction for creating a piece of work that celebrated a miracle or honored an issue that holds personal meaning. I wish that you could also hear the reading of each artist's statement, a required part of the studio, as of course they provide a way to deepen the engagement with the work...I trust that you'll get the feeling that a good and meaningful time was had by all.

Carol has a love affair with all things related to the Chesapeake Bay environment. From her living room window she has a lovely view of the Euclidean Plane where sky meets water and she spends time on the beach daily walking with Saffron, her Golden, collecting whatever catches her eye. Over the years Carol's taught herself how to incorporate seaweed into her art, dying fabrics and making handmade paper that is impregnated with the




weed's undulating patterns. Here she has incorporated found wood, double sided photos, fishing line and a Whelk's egg case to create a retablo about Being Home.

In the two pieces presented here she has incorporated the house shape; as icon that serves as a recurring source of inspiration for her work.

Over the years Patricia has had a dream time visitation. The dream contains imagery of marriage, lost children, an ominous well and a canine (alternating between wolf and dog). Here she has delved into the meaning and the symbolism of the well and brought it to a place where, when entered, one finds reflective gold representing what lies within.

Her medium is paper mache, paint mixed with sand that is layered and carved, leather, mirror, gold leaf and plastic still life bananas :-) embedded inside the feet of the well.

Terri tends to work large. Clay is her primary medium. For Contemporary Retablo she scaled down, choosing a cigar box as her 'Santero'. Her elements of personal significance include Christ, woman, child, temptation and the redemptive journey.
Terri employed bisque, metallic paints, embossed tin, photographic image transfer, cardboard collage and grommets to create her piece.

I wanted to share these pieces with you because it inspires me greatly to see what comes from working as a group, watching the play of common ground... in this case employing the tradition of Retablo/Ex Voto.

I designed the Retablo/ExVoto studio more than a decade ago. It is always such a treat to see what comes rising up to meet each individual in a personally relevant, completely 'in the moment' fashion.

May you find art in your heart.

Friday Mixed Media Gang

Last month a group of artist pals got together from 10-2 in the library meeting room to inspire one another and make some art.

It was so much fun that we gave ourselves a name 'The Mixed Media Gang' and decided to get together once a month with each of us taking a turn to introduce a technique or share materials.


Today we learned, from artist Michele Barnes, to work with gel monoprints. She has simplified the process from what you'll find at the link here making it very easy to begin printing as soon as the gel sets up. Shown here are just a few of the images as we were being shown the process and then began our own experiments.

Looks like the possibilities are limitless and it's a lot of fun to get a silk screen effect with such simple materials.

Have you tried this? Do you have any images to share?

Steps and Stages

I'm honored to be invited once again to be the guest artist at the Ursuline College Art Therapy and Counseling Department /Cuyahoga Community College Pre-Art Therapy Dept. Tenth Annual Exhibit, Lecture and workshop. This year the theme is Simplicity: Creating a Vision of Doing More with Less.

This is 72 x 44" unstretched canvas tapestry is in process. It can be seen in an earlier stage in the last post...included here are a few details.

Lately I've been inspired, in my work, to pare things down. Simplicity and simplifying are concepts that I have embraced, in terms of this artist's lifestyle, for many decades.

Even so I have not often applied the idea to my use of color. I suppose more than anything else I am a colorist. I am intoxicated by rich and layered hues. So I'm experimenting and simplifying the colors within this painting. First using a customary riot of color and then applying layers of glazes to 'fog' or quiet down the color range.

I enjoyed realizing that the planet Neptune, which is often thought of as 'a fog' is coming to kiss my sun for the one and only time in my life and, perhaps as a result, I find myself particularly enamoured these days by all things natural... when seen through a veil of mist...the idea of being cocooned and contained within fog simply thrills me.

There are two other canvas that will be traveling along with this one and hopefully they will be posted in the next few days...in bold contrast.

Thank you so much for any comments you may have regarding this unfolding.
Happy day.

The Wabi Sabi Wrap

Today was our last Wabi Sabi studio at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia and a delightful gathering it was. Each of the six artists presented their completed, or near to completed, piece(s) with an attendant statement regarding their personal experience exploring this ancient Japanese aesthetic. The images posted here are well representative of the handmade, imperfect, transient, natural, soft, aging, patina quality that is often used to describe Wabi Sabi. The artist has a love affair with seaweed and enlisted it as the basis for the hand made paper bowls. She intends to allow them to return to the sea by casting the driftwood (holding the bowls) back into the Chesapeake Bay from whence the seaweed came.

click on image to enlarge

All Soul's Day

The entry for November 2: All Soul's Day in A Pocketful of Miracles by Joan Borysenko reads:

Seed Thought

All Soul's Day is celebrated in many countries as a day both for remembering the dead and for celebrating the liberating aspects of death. Death is a loss as we perceive it from this reality, but for the mystic who has dedicated his or her life to union with the Divine, it is a joyful celebration__the Marriage of the Spirit that Jesus and other teachers discuss. In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Carl Jung wrote that "when the pious Cabbalist Rabbi Simon ben Jochai came to die, his friends said that he was celebrating his wedding. To this day it is custom in some regions to hold a picnic on a grave on All Soul's Day. Such customs express the feeling that death is really a festive occasion."

Prayer/Practice

Divine Beloved, sometimes You seem so far from us in daily life. May that gap be closed by my growing desire to be One with you now, so that at the moment of death I will fly to Your Heart on wings of awareness, forgiveness, tolerance, gratitude and the growing wish to be of service to all beings. May all remnants of negativity be burned from my heart so that the purity of love can burst forth in joy.

Spend a few minutes in the peacefulness of shamantha/vispassana meditation, centering prayer or egg of light.


This evening my studio/home will be filled with women artist/friends. It's our final 'Moon Day at the Wren' for this year. Each month we've gathered and honored the 2009 theme: 'Women Taking the Lead to Save the Planet' for the Womens' History Project.

Tonight under the Full Moon we'll step outdoors and gather 'round the dancing fire to welcome and remember our 'creative ancestors' and the roots of our expressive nature in joyful anticipation of what will be surfacing in the year ahead. Let your spirit fly over to join us!

Maps as Metaphors

Today I was at the Rawls Museum Arts in Courtland, VA presenting 'Maps as Metaphors: Charting Your Own Identity' using the inspiration of Sun Bear's circular Earth Calendar/Medicine Wheel as our entrance point.

With the wheel plus Angeles Arrien's Signs of Life the eight artists participating went off into the beautiful afternoon to create works inspired by the creative journeys they are currently interested in mapping.

Bravo!! to Sandy Lupton for all of the organizing skills that made the day hum. And thanks so much to the other artists in the circle: Donna, Barbara, Brenda-Gail, Twila, Jill, Ragan and Jenine. The works that came out of our studio time were an inspiration for this entrance point into the 'Underworld' of the feminine that is upon us for the coming six months.

This is a powerful time to consider what you will invest in between Fall Equinox and Spring Equinox. See if you can let yourself 'BE' as often as possible.

Egrets post for Sharmon

click on image to enlarge

Sharmon made a request and so here...

are the three paintings posted yesterday from the series 'Bird Watching'.

Titled: 'Lake Smith #1', 'Lake Smith #2' and 'Daybreak'.

Each work is on canvas 20 x 24" and in each I'm playing with my customary layers and scratchings. In #1 and #2 the flower centers are filled with glitter glue and just to play with the surface a bit more I've varnished all three in combinations of flat and gloss to give the impression of water reflecting juxtaposed with the dull quality of the early morning fog.

Thanks and enjoy Sharmon!

Bird's Eye

As 'Memoir in Two Chapters' unfolded from June 8-September 11 this little trio of new paintings took their place at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia for the Faculty Exhibit.

They're from the current series 'Birdwatching'. I've been a bird watcher all my life. Recently I've been enjoying the elegant and focused beauty of watching Egrets move about in the cove. I can see them from my kitchen window or my garden. They are highly independent and most often solitary and yet from time to time they will consent to sharing the shoreline, particularly when the Cormorants are herding fish beneath the surface waters...a great ballet, a wonderful sight.

A college student recently reviewed one of the Egret paintings in this series titled 'Still Point' .

And for those interested in a lovely artist newsletter visit Heron Dance. A recent quote:

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity. -Anne Truitt sculptor.

Angels Surround

The evenings in the late summer garden are intoxicating with the scent of the Angel's Trumpet swirling in through the window's on the night breeze.

I am saying thank you to All That Is for the ability to look back using the art form of the memoir. It allows a space for the gaze into what was without being pulled away from the preciousness of the moment. I love reading, writing and taking classes in memoir.

Here then is a short Afterward to the Memoir in Two Chapters that ran between June 8 and September 11.


AFTERWORD


I was raised to believe in Guardian Angels. And believe in them I did. I had a trust in life, a naivete' that caused one person important in my life to refer to me as "unassuming".

Mother always said, "Give them the benefit of the doubt." and this particularly odd one "You'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar."


I was house sitting in 1982 and I read an essay in my host's college journal that was titled 'Rape as a Spiritual Experience'. I was enraged and outraged. I became 'beside myself' the same way I did when I took rape crisis training and learned of the documented post traumatic stress (PTS) syndrome that is no different than that visited upon veterans of war.


It took me years to realize that the Hells Angels were, for me, 'The Angel's from Hell'. These Angels took be into the Underworld and showed me a cavernous dark.

Like any demons worth their salt will do they tried to make me small and of no use.

Like any monsters, dragons or strange beliefs that we invite in either consciously or unconsciously they tried to strip me of all dignity and worth.

Like any demon they brutally lay in ambush.

They preyed upon my Innocent state of being. And from them I learned that when brought face to face with what we believe we cannot endure we do indeed. We do indeed. We endure. And more than that, much more than that, we rise above...individually and collectively...our true spirit, beyond the Beyond, lifts us away from danger. We float with effortless ease above the battlefield. The body may be battered upon return, or we may not return at all (transcending the body), yet our sweet strong empowered creative spirit lives on.


This is a Big ol' School called Earth. I learned that at 19. I wouldn't have been able to comprehend that or assimilate that without a model. Immediately Life sent me that model, my mentor, my guide...my guardian Angel in Alice. She offered me an example of what Life could be. She demonstrated a life of lightness of being employing yoga, art making, gardens, gentleness, laughter and balance in all ways...even in the midst of her own severe loss and heart break.


I could address these issues at length and ad infinitum but I prefer to recognize that the 'Angel's from Hell' made me a life member of what Clarissa Pinkola Estes brilliantly refers to as 'the scar clan'.


Like my friend Indigo Girl decided, I hope that you will pull Estes' work off the shelf and read again this concept. You'll find the treasure of her wisdom on page 374 of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

You too may discover that we are each indeed much stronger, far wiser and certainly more capable than much of the mass consciousness cultural out picture would have any of us believe or subscribe to currently.

Notice the manner in which you have faced your demons and faced them down. Celebrate your ability and your capacity to thrive rather than survive.


This Life is all so temporary and precious.


Rumi says it so well: Let the beauty you love be the work that you do there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

My Earth Angel

On my way to the long low poultry houses I pass the large fenced vegetable garden. It feels like a sacred space, far more private than the rest of the surroundings, and so out of respect I have skirted it...until today. Now I unhook the rusted latch on the slatted wooden gate and enter.

Life is burgeoning. Bees and butterflies are at work in profusion. My inner senses dance among the variety of shapes and colors and textures. I realize immediately that in order to be whole again I need a garden in my life.

Something catches my eye and as I squint through the oversized foliage of a summer squash. I see, perhaps two hundred feet up the slope, lying snug against the earth, the main residence, a low single story contemporary designed home. There is a natural pond outside the back door.

I stare.

The sun is reflecting off the surface of the water.. Through the brilliant light I think I see an apparition. I watch as a graceful nude figure emerges, rising up and out of the pond with ease.

There's fluidity to her movement and dignity in her posture as she wraps herself in a flowing white garment. She stands in the sun and idly creates a long single braid in her pure white hair before the shadows absorb her into the house.

I am entranced.


This artist memoir celebrates the 60th year.
This graphic created in SUMO

Traveling

I was invited to climb aboard the bus. The band was ready to travel for a week of playing clubs.

Sam who was older and more settled than the other guys in the group gave me a paperback book to read. I became entranced as we moved on down the road. Titled The Way of Life according to Lao Tzu, this book had a similar affect on my mind as the sugar cube...it made a huge space.

I don't recall much of the week on the road, but the book, also know as the Tao Te Ching, has stayed with me for all the years since.

From Wonder into Wonder

Being in the altered state of the sugar cube has its merit.

48 hours later I remain insulated and blissfully unaware of recent events. My mind is spacious and soft. I have been gently placed into a world of nature and wonder.

In the farmhouse I meet the group of rock musicians. My traveling companion dances around her boyfriend. The mood is festive. There is a lot of cheer. One of their tunes is played repeatedly on the radio.

The next morning, out on the front porch, Sam, who is from Hawaii, silently fashions me a pair of sandals from leather scraps...they lace up past my ankles. On the wooden step beside him the fluteplayer sends a silky sound drifting out over the cool grasses like smoke.

The old school bus outside the front door is being packed with sound systems and band equipment. They are readying to depart to the next string of performances.

This is chapter 2 of my memoir on early art influences...a sweet turn.

Quick graphics created using Sumo

I Remember

Eventually he turns left onto a dirt path that winds back and back and back through the blackness. Not so much as a firefly glow pierces the dark.
Dense walls formed by fields of corn rise up on either side of the path. We all laugh. The leaves are slapping against the car doors and coming in through the open windows as we pass.

I'm directed to a flannel sleeping bag already rolled out on the wide plank floor.

In the morning I step outdoors onto the front porch of this ancient farm house.

I see lush open meadows, gently rolling fields surrounded by forest in all directions. I'm standing in the middle of a huge natural bowl. A large flock of sheep wanders close enough that I can hear the sound of the grass being ripped away from the earth as they graze. Listen.

A new sound. A new world....


...to be continued.


This memoir began with the June 8 post and chronicles early influences in this 'Art Life'...that is loved so dearly.

This closes the chapter on a particular rite of passage.
Thank you for your kind emails and inquiries. The three 'Angels from Hell' (as I came to think of them) were killed in the coming year. Two of them by police during a raid the other in a gang fight.

After Midnight

We arrive at a bus station. Stepping off the Greyhound I notice a country store and a place for horses to be tied to a rail in front of it.

A little car is waiting.

A fellow, very friendly and happy to see us, drives us into the deep dark countryside.


This is a memoir tracing early art influences. The quick graphics are done using Sumo.
On August 21 this chapter will close.

My First Trip

We travel into the night.

No Where to Run to

As the day winds down I realize I have nowhere to go. No home to return to. No sense of direction.

On the beach I see a familiar face. A girl that I know from the clubs still lingering at the shore.

We talk for a while and we agree that I will accompany her.

She's getting a ride downtown to the Greyhound Bus station.