melanie-pearl

Cezanne, Art and Bearing Fruit

2012-01-29T19:04:00.000-08:00

"I have asked myself whether the short time given us would be better used in an attempt to understand the whole of the universe or to assimilate what is within our reach."

"We must not be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go forth and study nature. Let us free our minds from them. Let us strive to express ourselves according to our individual temperament."

-Cezanne

Where I Care for Myself

2012-01-25T21:08:00.000-08:00

Safe Place Revisited
48"X68", Oil

Aunt K has the original version on her wall, and that's exactly where I want it to be. I found I needed my own, too, so I just repainted it. This time the strokes are a little softer, and it's a little bit bigger...almost like I could just step into it.

For scale: (Dang, it wasn't until I got it up on top of my fireplace to dry that I realized how gigantic it is. Hmmm. For the first time EVER I feel like it is too big. Well, it won't stay on that wall, so maybe that's it.)

Cherry Blossoms for Bridgette

2012-01-19T05:30:00.000-08:00

My classmates love tattoos. I love my classmates. It's really a perfect combination.

The New Self Portrait

2012-01-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

the first one the second portrait the previous one

Bubble Scaffolding

2012-01-14T09:15:00.000-08:00

"Well before the time by which the axioms of abstractive individualism were able to impose themselves, some psycho-philosophers of the early Modern times already understood that the inter-subjective space is filled with symbiotic, erotic, and mimetic-competitive energies that contradict fundamentally the illusion of the autonomous subject."

---P Sloterdijk
Spharen I. Blasen: Mikrospharologie

Because of Sloterdijk's book, I have been thinking about "Bubbles" for a few weeks now. (I am still processing the beautiful image that showed up in my dreams two weeks ago.)

Fittingly, several of Sloterdijk's ideas fly over my head. More importantly, they hover just long enough to resonate in my spirit. I comprehend the importance of the "bubble" (the rich inner world of the individual) and I believe in its undeniable relationship with other bubbles ("foam"), within a much larger sphere (the "globe"). All three exist in relationship, and cannot exist independently. (Now there's an ancient concept.)

In supervision this week, after successfully comprehending (and even "love[ing]"!) the most abstract treatment plan I've dared to write, my professor challenged me to "scaffold" with my treatment plan. (I know. Seriously. How did I get so lucky?) I awoke this morning, at 4am, and painted the Bubble Scaffolding image.

I am in the helping profession because I love people, and even I will readily admit I sometimes fantasize about just staying in my own bubble: It often begins when I sit alone in total darkness and let my thoughts and imagination just go. I paint in this space. I write there. I create there. I pretend it would affect noone if I forever indulged this uncensored, comfortable, deafening place. I am eventually humbled out of this state by my own thoughts and needs which prove the impossibility of my extreme selfishness. Even if I wanted to stay in my own bubble, something would inevitably pop me out. Even---no, especially---in a womb-like state, I still exist in relationship.

If not out of the goodness of our own hearts, or for the goodness of much larger things, then we might all be interested in the scaffolding of each others' tender bubbles out of the stark reality that our own existence depends upon it.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Creative Reciprocity: Micro to Macro, Micro to Macro

2012-01-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular." -Carl Jung

"From the very nature of the inner conditions of creativity it is clear that they cannot be forced, but must be permitted to emerge." -Carl Rogers

"Art is a way of emptying the mind and centering the self." -Alan Watts

Great destruction takes place when there is no outlet for the creative spirit. (an idea attributed to Carl Jung and Marie von Franz)

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” -Albert Einstein

Away

2012-01-02T21:21:00.001-08:00

Away

hidden
although exposed
the curious human
whose mind sharpens
the body
betrays

clouds roll
drawing with them
a great curtain
whose heavy presence
is weightless
gray

marked
bearing down
onthe colorful shell
whose drained pigment
is swept
away

eyes darken
slowly barring
the brittle soul
whose open windows
fail
today

exposed
although hidden
the curious human
whose body stiffens
the mind
away

Techinical Mischief

2012-01-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

Apparently while trying to figure out dynamic views, I somehow disabled open permissions. I did not mean to close off my blog to anyone---including you, Mom (thanks for letting me know).

2012: Rediscovery

2011-12-30T11:00:00.000-08:00

My husband’s grandmother now lives in a nursing home. She is on oxygen a lot of the time. Her food is ground like a baby’s. She goes to bed before 8pm. She depends on others. “Grammy” is a lot of things. She is not (and never was) perfect. It is most apparent Grammy is elderly. It has become difficult to see her as anything else.

It is extremely easy to forget who Grammy was even ten years ago, let alone conceive the fact she was once my age. It is difficult to remember she is also magical. She is still the same woman who communicated her soul through music---and she taught many people how to do this with music, for themselves! All the noisy stuff on my piano is evidence of this. She gave us the piano, and on it sits her metronome, her music box and her rain chimes.

While listening to the music box today, I was moved to tears.
Cody walked in on me listening. I explained, “Beethoven is just so beautiful! I’ve never---”
He interrupted and said, “Beethoven has been shoved down your throat---”
I finished his thought with, “---to the point it was no longer Beethoven!”

What happens when we become so “enlightened” that music becomes cliché, art becomes a blur, God is just God, souls are classified by body, etc.? What then? Death is obvious, but it is not the only option. It is also the perfect setup for rebirth.

In 2012 I plan to look a little closer at the familiar, the obvious---and hope for discovery.
Click here to watch and listen.

Tree Tattoo Pendant

2011-12-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

Remember when I sketched these tattoos? My friend's favorite was the "Ancient" tree. I gave her this pendant today.

The pendant bears it's own meaning to the recipient. The giving of this pendant (to me) symbolizes the difficult-to-describe, powerful dimensions of living in relationship with others. When I think I know someone...when I think I have them figured out...I dig deeper. I try and move to a place beyond words and qualification. (Sometimes this happens involuntarily, other times it is quite a challenge.) This place is a place called love. What I find in love is that all people are truly amazing.

Sometimes that which is 2D deserves to become multi-dimensional. This can be seen in the drawing (2D) becoming a pendant (3D). Or in people who appear to be one thing---and are actually quite complex.

X Metaxis

2011-12-12T06:13:00.000-08:00

This one's just for scale.

Of course she's not done...

Metaxis

2011-12-08T20:46:00.001-08:00

suspended lies a pregnant brush
hanging in the air
though it is not spoken of
we both know it is there

united by The chasm
a steep one that divides
eyes fixed upon the brush
for the hope that it provides

the brush is not a bridge
it cannot heal the soul
still we reach with broken hearts
longing to be whole

MetaMelanieism

2011-12-05T17:46:00.001-08:00

I am currently studying a postmodern theory, Narrative, which has been an excellent challenge to my "self". So, I have been navigating my way through this theory so that I won't feel phony when practicing it with clients.

In my navigating I keep returning to the Chesterton quote:"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logicianwho seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” If anything threatens to break my head, it would be the total irony of postmodernism.

I have always identified with modern artists, because of the naive, romantic mysticism with which they create(d). I have for quite some time identified with postmodern artists, because of their "no-rules" approach---but then I have also wrestled with the "no-truth" that eventually emerges from this "no-rules" when postmodern art philosophy is carried to the extreme. So, overall, because of the heavy value I place on process over content, I have always leaned more toward modern art---but can't quite call myself a modern artist. Consider the following diagram, where my position is represented by a big, black X:

See why I have thought of this as a problem? I am not quite one thing, but definitely not the other. (This diagram reminded me of the tightrope walker oil pastel (above) I colored five years ago. I wrote a poem to go with it then...I'll dig it out one of these days.)

This is the space in which I have always lived as a human. I was there long before I knew the name of either pole, or that the continuum even existed. I have lived here, artistically, too. ...and now I find myself in this ambiguous place theoretically as a therapist, too. Wah-wah, right?

Wah-wah, wrong. I am just beginning to understand why being in this space is not actually a problem---or why it might actually be a good problem to have (consider the art that has and will come from this!).

In my coming-to-terms with the roots of Narrative theory, I have discovered the suggested (because not everyone agrees on the name of said space between yet) term "Metamodernism", which defines a concept that acts like a tension bridge between the polar opposites of modernism and postmodernism. Though I am more poet than logician, I believe the point of Metamodernism is to keep moving on the continuum, never fully realizing either pole. This creates space for me to practice Narrative theory even if I don't subscribe entirely to its postmodern roots.

When practicing Narrative Theory, you help a person externalize their "problem". You help them name it so they can explore it in new ways, so they can see how it affects their lives, so they can evaluate the consequences of it, narrate how it has gotten them to this point, and re-story.

The really crazy thing about all of this? In studying my own self/problem in relation to Narrative Theory, I have proven Narrative theory works.

I gave my position a name. I quit thinking of that position as a problem.By now I am actually a little bit excited about the possibilities of my position.

(Now you know why I posted the Herbert poem in the previous post, below. 400 years ago Herbert wrestled with being between. See the last two lines of that first stanza.)

George Herbert (1633)

2011-12-05T17:43:00.001-08:00

Affliction. (IV)

BRoken in pieces all asunder,
                      Lord, hunt me not,
                     A thing forgot,
Once a poore creature, now a wonder,
               A wonder tortur’d in the space
               Betwixt this world and that of grace.

My thoughts are all a case of knives,
                     Wounding my heart
                     With scatter’d smart,
As watring pots give flowers their lives.
               Nothing their furie can controll,
               While they do wound and prick my soul.

All my attendants are at strife,
                     Quitting their place
                     Unto my face:
Nothing performs the task of life:
               The elements are let loose to fight,
               And while I live, trie out their right.

Oh help, my God! let not their plot
                     Kill them and me,
                     And also thee,
Who art my life: dissolve the knot,
               As the sunne scatters by his light
               All the rebellions of the night.

Then shall those powers, which work for grief,
                     Enter thy pay,
                     And day by day
Labour thy praise, and my relief;
               With care and courage building me,
                Till I reach heav’n, and much more, thee.

Leather Ring

2011-11-30T18:56:00.001-08:00

I made my first leather ring today. It was commissioned for a very special gal from a very thoughtful boy.

Since she doesn't know it belongs to her yet, I've blurred out the tiny letters of her full name (they wrap around the leather). I died and distressed the leather and scratched up the silver so it already looks worn. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Hope she likes it!

Feet

2011-11-27T18:24:00.001-08:00

Isaiah 52:7

More on the Extraordinary

2011-11-23T06:55:00.001-08:00

"I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I had no words for." -Georgia O'Keefe

What is it about poetry?

2011-11-19T12:20:00.001-08:00

Last week a friend asked me, "What is it with poetry? I've never really gotten it."

For me, the essence of poetry is hidden in the ordinary experience that becomes extraordinary. Sometimes the experience itself takes years to become extraordinary. Sometimes the experience crystallizes in a flash. When the articulation of such an experience follows, a poem is born. The poet looks for and recognizes this opportunity.

For me, the extraordinary experience is about the deep connecting of my eternal spirit with my feet of clay. The experience reminds me to balance my spirit and my body, weighing daily living with matters of eternity.

I often feel the extraordinary experience before I begin to consciously process it. I look out for the extraordinary, anticipating the articulation that might follow*. I am an addict for this. This is the reason I write poetry. Additionally, I not only experience the extraordinary firsthand, but I have found I can also experience it through the poetry of others' conveyed moments. This is the reason I read poetry.

Here's one such favorite poem that perfectly captures what I have just described, for me. Another poem which does this for me is the 23rd Psalm.

Detail from a ceramic bowl I keep on my desk at my internship.
It is filled with sand and shells I've gathered from different beaches.
These objects are rich in meaning, full of poetry.

*This also happens to be why I love all art forms. I could replace the words poem/poet in the preceding paragraphs with the words painting/painter or silver/silversmith, song/musician, etc. and it would all still hold true. The common denominator is the extraordinary experience, the variable is the medium through which the experience is articulated.

Ruth Pitter

2011-11-16T19:39:00.001-08:00

I blindly bought a beautiful (there are actually mica flecks in the dust jacket---and you know how I like shiny things) book of poetry by Ruth Pitter about seven years ago. Even though some of the poetry still goes right over my head, I have long felt the lines reverberate in my soul.

By now I know that Ruth Pitter lived a daring life, true to her soul. There is something so pure, so solid about this that is clearly evident in the great span of Ruth Pitter's life/poetry*. I'm not sure what I am more impressed with---her life or her life's work. Thankfully I do not have to decide, since the two are ultimately the same. Here are some of her words:

"I was sitting in front of a cottage door, one day in spring, long ago; a few bushes and flowers round me, an bird gathering nesting-material, the trees of the forest at a little distance. A poor place---nothing glamorous about it, except that it was spring in the country. Suddenly everything assumed a different aspect---no its true aspect. For a moment, it seemed to me, the truth appeared in its overwhelming splendor. The secret was out, the explanation given. Something that had seemed like total freedom, total power, total bliss----a good with no bad as its opposite---an absolute that had no opposite---the thing, so unlike our feeble nature, had suddenly cut across one's life---and vanished."

"But Love in his own person, I say, is lord of all, forever; and the glimpse of glory, so far as it goes, is the truth. I'd stake my life on that. I do stake it....Whether the revelation comes by sexual love, or seems to be directed through the arts, through science, or through religion---and it can seem to be coming from every direction at once---in whatever way it comes, for someone who has had such moments...from a single flash---[she] can determine the values of life and death. We are then, in the words of Scripture, 'strangers and pilgrims, seeking a country.' The ordinary pleasures and pains of life are not undervalued, but they are pleasures and pains by the way. The way is the thing; we can't be anchored to the world's values, or we shall begin to rot. We follow the gleam, hunting the thing wherever we can get new of it. The world's goods and the world's ills are marginal, are secondary, because far beyond, we have seen something."

"For many of us this makes life entirely different, at least for a time... We are so amazed at the transformation, so astonished by what we see, at the different quality life can assume, that we go about in a dream...I can remember, at no more than fourteen years old, seeing that altered landscape; looking at the very grass in the files with stupefaction, because apparently it had changed its nature, and 'put on immortality' to quote St. Paul."

Wild Honey
You, the man going along the road alone,
Careless or wretched, rarely thoughtful, never serene
Possessing nothing worth having; man of the sickly pleasures,
Man of the mawkish, wrong-headed sorrows, typical man
...
There in the riddled tree, hanging in darkness,
There in the roof of the house and the wall-hollow,
The new like pearl, the old like magical amber,
Hidden with cunning, guarded by fiery thousands
(See where they stream like smoke from the hole in the gable),
There in the bank of the brook the immortal secret,
In the ground under your feet the treasure of nations,
Under the weary foot of the fool, the wild honey.

*Special thanks to Don W. King for the great knowledge he freely shares about Ruth Pitter's life and for the biography he has written about her. Since I only own one of Ruth Pitter's books (1936---and can't afford to buy the others right now b/c of the textbooks I am buying) I loved reading his interpretation of bits of her poetry sprinkled throughout the bio.

Also, I'd like to mention my great grandfather (1886-1985) lived near the same life-span as Pitter. Though Ruth Pitter (1897-1992) lived in England and GD Ensz lived in Inman, KS, they both lived through some pretty amazing times of discovery, peace and war.

A conversation with the past, present and future

2011-11-14T08:19:00.001-08:00

I finally checked out Shadowplay Eterniday through Friends University interlibrary loan and found the shadowbox below pictured in the book. There's a good chance I could have seen it before, but I do not recall it...and I do tend to remember things like this.

Joseph Cornell Toward the Blue Peninsula (for Emily Dickinson). 1953.

Of course when I saw the shadowbox was dedicated to Emily Dickinson, I had to check out why. Long before Cornell, Emily Dickinson expressed her love and fear of living freely, as a spirit full of hopes and dreams (she calls this her "Blue Peninsula", see poem below).

Emily Dickinson (1830–86)

It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness—
I'm so accustomed to my Fate—
Perhaps the Other—Peace—

Would interrupt the Dark—
And crowd the little Room—
Too scant—by Cubits—to contain
The sacrament—of Him—

I am not used to Hope—
It might intrude upon—
It's sweet parade—blaspheme the place—
Ordained to Suffering—

It might be easier
To fail—with Land in sight—
Than gain—my Blue Peninsula—
To perish—of Delight—

Cornell is definitely responding to this poem with his shadowbox---he is allowing Dickenson (and others) to dream (the empty perch, the window sooo blue and full of hope), while anchoring that free spirit with a solid depiction of reality (there's actually more reality than dream depicted within the box walls).

Below is my own bold response to Cornell and Dickenson. There is more dreaming (blue) and less anchoring (the antique lock). If you could look inside the square window of the lock you would find the contents of Cornell's box just as he left them. There is no glass front (open wide) separating the viewer from the possibility of the blue peninsula. The viewer is IN the dream, the hope. So is the Phos Hilaron bird. So is the Phos Hilaron bird. There is no land (yet) and the poetry lives on.

This whole experience perfectly illustrates a large part of why I create. I create because it allows me to experience community and conversation with spirits of the past, present and future.

Joseph Cornell: "The traveler abroad is dependent on outside things; he whose sight-seeing is inward can in himself find all he needs."

Emily Dickinson: "To shut our eyes is Travel"

The Air Parade

2011-11-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

More to come...

The Air Parade Oil 48'X30"

a prayer (of this painter)

2011-11-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

another shirt
a streak of paint
sure to keep
my clothing quaint

shantung silk
and gold brocade
still seduce
the air parade

keep my eyes
on the unseen
return to me
the faded dream

that I might paint
upon Your lead
distracted not
with earthly greed

Finished Phos Hilaron

2011-10-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

One year and a few months later---she is finally free to fly. She flies home to Houston Thursday. I will shoot some video/more pics of her in natural light tomorrow.

http://melanie-pearl.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-other-easel.html

http://melanie-pearl.blogspot.com/2011/05/she-finally-found-her-perch.html

Detail:

Phos Hilaron: Looking Out, On the Perch, Free

Matryoshka

2011-10-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

I think one more layer should do it...and then I can finally put it away. I do like seeing them all together.

Do you think he would have endorsed blogging?

2011-10-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”
-C.G. Jung

Metamorphosis

2011-10-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

Embryo
from your first breath you have been
naked and exposed to atmosphere
always aware you were formed
in a different experience away from here

Larva
adjusting as though you possess an endless energy
experience found form
comprised of brittle structure
that could someday be reborn

Pupa
you bravely let the structure crumble
seeking shelter deep within
exhausted by awareness of
the beauty that has always been

Cocoon
your camouflage conserves
who you were made to be
as you cannot distinguish
fake from authenticity

seek shelter and protect
who you were created to be
while you are being given
ears to hear and eyes to see

Imago
the ones who love you now
love you the day you can receive
what they have always loved
and in your heart believed

Cocoon

2011-10-13T13:11:00.000-07:00

Cocoon
48X22

Beautiful People

2011-10-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours." -CS Lewis The Weight of Glory

Sketchbook Snapshot

2011-10-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

Fifteen Years
charcoal 8X10

(Looks like fifteen years have taught him to evolve and cover all but one tiny triangle of his head with the covers...just in case I wake up before him.)

Fair Trade

2011-09-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

I took this toolbox full of jewelry over to the student office this week and tonight I exchanged some of the proceeds for an 84" X 6 yards roll of canvas. Of course this means I have to make stretcher bars and cut and staple and gesso---but even that will be good work. I am going to make some big-ass paintings, folks. Woo-hoo!

Burnt Pearls

2011-09-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been burning things on purpose. I took all of this silver to a very scary place. If I had an extra arm I would have taken photos in those seconds. The silver becomes a really pretty, rose, glowing color that is best seen in the dark. (Yeah, I sometimes fire in the dark.) The only reason there is any form to these pieces is because I mercifully backed off the torch at the last second.

As I explained to a friend yesterday, there is only a few seconds difference between total failure,cool experiment and nice piece of jewelry. Since I haven't mastered knowing when to back off before it's too late, I just let these pieces go on purpose. I did learn more about those critical seconds from these pieces.

These beauties are destined for the scrap pile, but I thought I'd photograph and share them. When unpolished, they look like something I could have stolen from the dentist's office. There's lots of silver here---which is why I can't afford to sell them considering what they look like. At least this expensive material is refinable.

No, I did not actually burn pearls. I did do that a couple years ago just to see what would happen. There really was a small glass bead under all those layers of nacre. It was sure stinky!

Copper Cuff Bracelet

2011-09-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

I saw these 1" shiny copper cuffs in a local gift shop and decided I needed to have one. I have my thick copper sheet marked out to make 7 more. If you want one or two just let me know. I can put my .925 "MP" maker's mark on the inside or outside or not at all. Your choice, $20.00.

The Path

2011-09-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

Oil, 11X14

The Beauty of Natural Light

2011-09-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

What Is The Light
That you have
Shining all around you?
Is it chemically derived?

Cause if it’s natural
Something glowing from inside
Shining all around you
Its potential has arrived

Looking into space, it surrounds you
Love is the place that you’re drawn to
Looking into space, it surrounds you
Love is the face that you’re drawn to

(Photo credit Paul Riley. Taken 09-14-11 in Tulsa, OK)

The Power of Reframing

2011-09-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

I am proud to share that the idea of "reframing" has its roots in Systems Theory. This beautiful concept---part of the field of study to which I have dedicated myself---promotes powerful change. It's not simply the words that change in this video; it illustrates the deep-shifting capacity of the human heart. Do you realize your heart was created with this amazing gift/capability?

Though I often forget (and now you have my permission to remind me when I do), in my heart I believe there is always room to explore new/other ways of doing/being/viewing. Will you join me in exercising this intangible yet valuable gift with others?

RIP, LJ Pracht

2011-09-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

I just went to buy more saw blades and I found out my friend Jim Pracht passed away three days ago. I had been thinking about him, thinking I should go check up on him. I just had a feeling things were not okay.

I will miss talking with him, learning about whatever project he is working on, hearing about how and when he purchased certain stones, etc.

Rest in peace, friend. I'm glad you get to be with your parents again. Relish those streets of gold---and all the gemstones, fire and light. Someday I'll take a walk up there with you.

High Jewelry, High Aspiration

2011-09-09T05:07:00.000-07:00

Mme. Chanel was also an idealist: (From the Chanel website) "The constant search for flexibility, mobility and comfort perpetuates the idea of freedom that has always inspired Mademoiselle's creations."

Go HERE to see some really beautiful jewelry (The Collection) and watch an amazing video of the casting process (The Inspiration). Look out for the diamond sifting and the tumbling platinum casting grains. Wow! Lots of sparkle, lots of raw beauty. Fabulous!

Yes, I think I must try a few ribbon pieces myself. Perhaps I'll make my ribbon tree.

Embarkation

2011-09-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

embarkation

the beautiful, rolling, open sea
stretches far beyond me
with every swirling ring of glass
reminding me the shore is past
because I sail authentically
my vessel with integrity
i will no longer feel the fear
of doubting when horizon’s clear
for failure to discover land
will never close the open hand

This piece began with the ornate copper shape that I made from copper metal clay a year ago. I have wanted to make something with it but never sat down to make it happen. After I drew my design on paper and cut it out, I glued it to the silver sheet and then sawed around it. (That's (almost .999) silver sheet I made (fired into an ingot then rolled a zillion times) with Roger's help.) Once the basic shape was there, I used the orange topped little files to smooth and shape. As I soldered the copper piece to the silver I began adding the tiny copper and silver "slugs" I've collected from all the tiny holes I've previously drilled.

The final look is unplanned and full of character---like something shaped by the sea. I love the patina so it remains unpolished. I guess it's no surprise what started basic ended up looking nautical---I've been working on the poem for a couple weeks now.

an unexpected commission

2011-08-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

desperate to look
so many times denied
forced to steal my subject
by memorizing lines

an ever pregnant brush
inspired and alive
put lines down on the canvas
but never captured life

so when you asked
i did not understand
i could not grasp
the task at hand

i simply started painting you
seducing me so still
and truth lept off the canvas
completely without will

Foolish, me.
tossing on this shifting sea
to think I could portray
without the paint involving me

An Ugly Painting

2011-08-26T06:51:00.000-07:00

If I believed my fortune, this blog wouldn't exist. Here's the ugly painting to prove the point.
99 brown squares, 1 green.
I couldn't even force the perspiration to cut in every single square.

(This will also be for sale tonight.We bought Chloe a fortune for the show tonight but she didn't have time to work on hers.)

pearlprice.com

2011-08-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

This is a reference page for pearlprice.com customers to find me now that I am not longer keeping the domain name pearlprice.com. Please contact me here on the blog.

another poem

2011-08-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

the fossil

embedded in strata
eyes drifting like a soul free of body
scanning the temporal
desperate for clarity
veiled haze vision
without anchor
bricks
buffet
brushes
bottles
brass
beveled mirrors
reflecting rock and clay everywhere
senses roaming like a body free of soul
accepting the temporal as
truth in experience
sold as an anchor
feeling
smelling
touching
tasting
hearing
seeing
deceptive and evil
just a thought or experience
burned into memory
and cast forever

Call for Art/Art for Sale

2011-08-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

Friends of mine are putting on this really fun Final Friday collaborative show. $10 gets you a piece of Masonite and wall space for the show. All artwork will be for sale that night for $25.

My fortune and my contribution to the show:

12"X16", Oil

Tattoo Designs

2011-08-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

Ideas for my friend Emma's next tattoo. What an honor!

Flower

2011-08-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

Correcting this to my family's chagrin. It has been driving me nuts for months now.

After the white dries I'll correct the black part. Maybe I'd like to make it rainbow before it's all said and done. Thought I'd share what a difference a few lines/white does to the balance/vibes.

Happy Birthday, Michele

2011-07-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

I made my sister-in-law Michele a set of notecards/envelopes, bookmarks and gift tags for her birthday. In order to give a gift like this, you have to know the person loves to send snail-mail. Michele has always been good about sending notes of thanks and encouragement.

The artwork was collaged in Microsoft Paint, printed in draft quality (hence the softness) on old ledger paper I got from my neighbor Betty's auction. Some of the layers are paint, some are distressing ink. The rose images are vintage---they might look familiar.

Origin

2011-07-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

These two pieces originate from having (as Dr. Rathbun would say) clay feet.

I once read about metal guiding the jewelry making process, how it tells the observant creator what to do. It is true we can manipulate what we are given---but I also think metal (or any artistic media) mysteriously knows how to mirror its creator.

Sitting

2011-07-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

If sitting with any unfinished painting is difficult, actively sitting with an unfinished portrait of myself has been really difficult.

I sit with this painting and look at it for what it is. I look in the mirror or at the photo, then back to the canvas. I get to know myself as I am today. I work with what I really see---sensory see---not what I "think" see. Gradual strokes and shifts are made and truth begins to emerge, evolve. Sometimes I choose to portray what is real. Sometimes I portray what I like to imagine.

There is no other way to do this sitting. It just takes time. The extreme heat of summer is mercifully drying the paint quickly so I don't have to wait a whole week before adding another layer. Anyway, One would think I'd be used to all of this by now.

Sitting with oneself is just part of life. Since I'm human until the day I "arrive", I might as well get more comfortable with the process...and let you sit with me along the way. The two older posts are going back up now.

Welcome back, alizarin crimson.

2011-07-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

I saw Radiohead play THIS SONG several years ago. To me, this song (lyrics and melody) has always been onomatopoetic for resolution. It's the perfect soundtrack for my painting, my evolving safe place.

Portait of Artistic Temperament

2011-07-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

Last week I finished reading The Swan Thieves", a book that combines my love for people affected by mental illness, psychology and art. I found a little bit of myself and other artists I know in the quotes below:

"People love to do things for him because he seems happy even without their help, so oblivious to his own needs and to their wish to help him. I've never understood this. I used to think he was kind of cheating, tricking people without meaning to, but now I sometimes think life is simply compensating for what's missing in him."

"[He] did not care whether or not people thought he had a style; he considered his work one long experiment and rarely used a single look or technique for more than a few months."

"...no, [he] was taller and more powerful-looking than anyone on the is crowded sidewalk. He would have loomed here, as he did at [the psych hospital], although New York would have better absorbed his vividness. I wondered for the first time if some of his depression had come from simple displacement: a person larger than life, larger than most, needed a setting to match his energy. Had he gradually wilted, away from Manhattan?"

"He set to work on a demonstration, and I watched him; I watched his faded shirtsleeve rolled up on his sketching arm, his green-brown eyes flicking back and forth to [the still life] while his body was still and focused on its quarry. The back of his curly hair was flattened as if he'd slept on it and then forgotten to brush it, and a lock at the front stuck up, growing like a plant. I could see that he was unaware of us and of his hair, unaware of anything but the [still life]. Suddenly I wanted that unawareness for myself. I was never unaware. I was watching other people; I was always wondering if they were watching me. How could I become an artist like [him] unless I could lose myself in front of a whole group of people, lose myself like that to everything but he problem at hand, the sound of my pencil on the page and the flow of line emerging from it?"

"I still own that very [book], the one I saw lying on his desk that day. It's one of the only gifts from him I've kept; He gave possessions away as casually as he helped himself to other people's, a characteristic that looked at first glance like generosity, until you realized he never remembered anyone's birthday and never paid off small debts."

"...I had already spent my adolescence in a world I shared with myself, the occasional friend or boyfriends, and my journals. Robert told me while we were living together that he had also felt alone since childhood, and I think that was one of the things that most endeared him to me."

"I loved sniffing my hands after I washed them for dinner, to prove to myself over and over that the smell of the paint was ineradicable. It really was. You couldn't wash it off with any kind of soap. I sniffed my hands during other classes and looked at the paint that clung to my fingernails if I didn't keep them safely clean, as Robert instructed us. I smelled my hands on my pillow when I went to sleep.... No scent could mask or even overtake that pungent, oily odor, which was mixed every day on my skin with the equally sharp smell of the turpentine that didn't quite get the paint off. This pleasure of smell was second for me only to the pleasure of applying the paint to the canvas."

"Once in a while I find myself flipping through my card file, in actuality or just mentally, searching for that important painting for which I have no card."

That last quote is particularly true for me. Sometimes my quest for beauty has me flipping through my mind, scanning the internet, going to galleries, creating and destroying. I will say Kostova knows a whole lot more about art/the artistic temperament than she does technical/ethical aspects of being a mental health professional. To me, it was worth reading just for her character development and story construction.

Too Much

2011-07-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

Part of my process is to create and destroy or to make and re-make. Sometimes I have to turn a canvas to the wall for awhile. I just took down two photos (of my self-portrait) because they have to "face the wall" for awhile.

I just woke up feeling icky about it. I'll put them back up eventually (because I really believe in illustrating the process)...it was just too much of myself hanging out there to leave up unfinished.

a little more true.

2011-07-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

I guess this proves why one should sketch BEFORE one paints? :) Still, I like the dirty/filthy version.

This will take time...and I don't even have the patience to finish the sketch. I do think the painting will be fun to correct.

Primary Heart III

2011-07-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

It's almost six months later and though I'm looking a little tired, I'm more awake than ever.

Imagine If...

2011-07-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

It feels so right to have oil paint stuck under my fingernails---to have linseed oil in my nasal passages, again. I worked on this piece last weekend. Here's how the canvas started back on a mild January evening. I remember the day well because it was unseasonably warm and I was excited to paint outside after months of being indoors. My friend requested the piece for his office. It will finally land on his wall soon.

(The brushstroke up close)

The inspiration for the painting:

The song/video below (see 5:15 if you don't have time to enjoy the whole thing)

+ Equifinality

+ the beautiful inner child whose wings we (my friend is also a therapist, though he is licensed and I am not yet) help discover/repair

+ the bliss of flight

+ peaceful imagination

= Imagine If

Sigur Rós - Glósóli from Arni & Kinski on Vimeo.

A quick side note:

Just tonight I read the following sentences in the fictional story I am reading:
"You can ask me, but I might not answer, that's all. I don't think painters have the answers about their own paintings. No one knows anything about a painting except the painting itself. Anyway, a painting has to have some kind of mystery to it to make it work."

So far, sharing my meaning continues to be an important part of the creative process for me. I sincerely hope my sharing does not take away any mystery for you. I risk sharing because I know my own meaning evolves and changes over time...and I believe the same is possible for you. So, don't be afraid to give it your own meaning. I might trade my own meaning for yours some day.

(I will take a brighter photo of the finished painting in the sunlight soon)

A poem about more than just sound waves

2011-07-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Dedicated to all the Paradigm Sailors who seek new ways to navigate ancient seas. Hold on to yourself. Keep sailing. Move beyond blame.

It's Not Your Fault

hovering on the horizon
ancient pain
as sure as the tide
comes quick as the years
in a storm of sound
defensive and deep

words like weapons
carried on waves
turning over
turning under
turning out on
themselves and everyone

all within distance
shut their eyes
plug their ears
and hold their breath
caught in a perpetual pull
that seemingly ends in death
but does not

instead it roams unleashed
gathering souls
gathering steam
gathering sound
at deafening pitch it is passed
one more generation, down

Now that the hot month of June is over...

2011-07-01T05:27:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd share this painting which left a huge mark in my mind when I first saw it in a book years ago. There is just something so amazing, so embryonic and beautiful about her.

I believe we encounter things in life (experiences, images, people, etc.) which change us forever. Sometimes we recognize the influence and revel in our "ah-ha" moments. Other times the influence remains a mystery...and that is beautiful, too.

Yesterday morning I sketched the mandala pictured above. I just chose the colors as I went---but the flesh tone and reds were first. As I sat there looking at the finished sketch Flaming June leapt off the page and I remembered that painting.

The mandala and Bird's Nest drawing in my sketchbook have come out of my own meditation, therapeutic processing and research for a paper I am currently writing for school.

If you want to do a fun exercise, draw your own bird's nest and then read about the exercise/click on the link below or send it my way and we can talk about it. This mandala happens to include my own Bird's Nest Drawing. Though my family is not depicted as birds, and though the "nest" is actually my body, all four of my family members are represented in this sketch. My daughter a baby (at the center because this drawing is for her), my son still an egg (sun) and my husband the tree.

These Hands

2011-06-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I cast my own hand. Cool and freaky, huh? Peeling away the alginate from the plaster was like finding a surprise treasure in sludge.

It's a little distorted because I used a tiny bag to cast in. I will use a deep narrow bag or bucket when I cast for the final piece. More to come....

Safe Place II

2011-06-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

(a very rough draft)
When I am painting in the dark
Senseless of all sight
I cannot capture you
I do not even try
You tuck yourself in every stroke
Deep within my brush
Invisible on my palette
Loud and yet a hush
Though I cannot see you
I feel you in the air
Enchanting other senses
Heightened and aware
Somehow brighter in the night
Doubtless, you are there
Hidden and then found again
what morning light will come to bear!

It's Not What You Think

2011-06-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

Midnight in Paris

Go see it, and then let's talk about it.

(photos from the set)

Like most things in Hollywood, it's advertised to sell. If you saw the preview you might think you know what it's about. It's not about that. Or maybe you're just thinking Woody Allen? Give it a chance. This is a real fun movie with something to say!

Solution-Focused Silver

2011-06-11T05:31:00.001-07:00

My last Solution-Focused/Structural Theory class was dismissed early this week because of threatening weather. It was a good thing, too, because I really needed to bang around on some metal.

This positive/negative design (nothing new, but the meaning is) has been floating around in my head since I bought this. My coursework/application finally pushed it into reality.

Focus on the positives, what you do have, and beauty emerges.

Keep your eye on the doughnut, not the hole.

ps)I even made my own jump rings. (This is not something I love to do.) Like I said, I was really missing the smell of silver on my hands.

Lucky Me!

2011-06-05T06:57:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile I have these moments where I wonder what in the heck I am doing standing around "wasting" time. These moments happen the most in antique stores or at art supply stores. Yesterday it happened at an auction. I got to thank a Korean war veteran, talk with neighbors and laugh with strangers. ...and now I'm convinced I was really supposed to spend my morning this way yesterday.

I've only been to four auctions ever. I went to that first one at the Newton Armory for some reason---I couldn't have been more than 9 years old. I remember being FASCINATED by the noise and the auction calling. I was taken to the second one when I was 22, and again, I was fascinated but I bought nothing. The third one...well...this.

Yesterday I went to my neighbor Betty's auction. She is moving to a retirement village. Almost all of her life's accumulation of stuff was laid out on her lawn and driveway. She has outlived two of her husbands, and two of her three children. Other neighbors of ours, and their kids have really helped Betty get along to this point.

So I went to the auction because I wanted the light up globe. I ended up buying the globe and the red toolbox, the dovetailed shelf drawer (see it under the globe), an old whirly popcorn popper, a slide projector, the mid-century desk sorter---and a metal ammo box (with a projector in it) that was once decoupaged with authentic, old, travel labels. I paid the most for the globe, $14.00.

The auctioneer and his cronies had fun when they found out I was buying the wooden boxes but had no intention of keeping the contents. They thought I was silly, and they made no bones about it! Of course they loved taking the contents off my hands for free. I did keep some of the tools, and I wanted the projectors for art.

After buying my stuff, I sat down and spoke with Betty about the difficulty of the day for her. She found out I bought the projector and wanted to tell me about it and how old it was. She wanted to be sure I knew about the slides and who took them. Since the slide projector I bought was from the 50's I just listened and kept my mouth shut. I thought she was mistaken.

Well, when I got home I opened the old metal box and studied the projector. I found the papers and the "script" for a slide show about a Mediterranean cruise taken in 1926. Just then the auctioneer called my home and said I owed them five more dollars. I ran the money over and told Betty about what I had found, but that there were no slides in the box. She told me to go find them---that they had to go with the projector. I found the glass slides laying in a box under a tree, in a separate pile from where I bought the projector.

I took the slides home and immediately looked at each one of them. They are AMAZING!!! One of Betty's father-in-laws took a trip to the Holy Land in the 1920's. He then came back and did entertaining/informative slide shows across the Midwest about his trip. Along with three photos of him, there is even a promotional brochure about his traveling show.

I have to do a simple re-wire on the bottom of the projector (it works but it sure smelled "hot" and the wiring looks shady) and then I think I'll be fired up to view once-celebrated slides that haven't been projected in years---and to project all kinds of stuff. I feel so incredibly lucky. There is no other way I could have afforded to own/use all of this. Isn't it just such a lucky find?

...Imagine what my old projector will do for art?
ps)I was sure to thank Betty for seasoning that whirly popper pan. I'm sure we'll make popcorn and watch the slide show soon. I'll announce the first screening here.

Safety begets creativity

2011-06-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

"I used to go to Bob's Big Boy restaurant just about every day from the mid-seventies until the early eighties. I'd have a milk shake and sit and drink. There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milk shake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner."

-David Lynch, from his book Catching The Big Fish

The Sum

2011-05-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

After putting this vivid color change off for awhile, several unexpected sea changes finally pushed me over the edge and toward the canvas.

Snapshots

2011-05-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

I took a Sand Tray Therapy course over the last two days. This really reminded me of how I construct shadowboxes. Working something out takes work, but it is worth it when it reveals something new. Here are a few of the trays I photographed. (I photographed some of my classmates', but without their permission I can not post them. They were amazing!)

She finally found her perch.

2011-05-07T21:09:00.001-07:00

She flew into my dreams last night and sat right between me and my painting. Though you can't tell it yet, She's definitely on the "free" side of that opening. I'm excited about the additional depth She brings to the painting (literally and figuratively).

She was always the missing element I just couldn't get my brush on.

Sometimes it's hard for me to wait and trust that something like this will come together. 9 months ago: Without the Bird and The Gold Leaf but still no bird. My Aunt Korrene paid me to paint this (though neither of us knew what it would be) almost one year ago. Because of her patience and willingness to commission it and then let me have free range---and change it and then leave it alone and then come back to it---I can't even begin to describe how parallel the evolution of this painting continues to run with my own formation.

More Serenity

2011-05-06T08:34:00.001-07:00

This is approximately .980 silver---I can't say the purity because it's from a hand rolled ingot made of scraps of .999 and .925. I think the patina did something funky and cool so I left it unpolished. I am left to wonder if the patina is due to the metal or something else...

...like by accident. Literally. Earlier I spilt my cooling water on my bench, so when I needed to cool the hot metal I stuck it in what I was drinking. (Don't worry, I didn't drink from the cup after this.) Anyhow, whatever I was drinking coupled with my flux/pickle/solder/pumice and then more fire did some funky stuff. I hope I can replicate this finish again.

Serenity Prayer

2011-05-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

I need this around my neck these days. My vintage Serenity prayer medallion is gold---so I made myself a silver version today. I'll be making more variations of this as time permits. I want to incorporate a copy of the vintage praying hands out of copper and see how cheap I can make these things. I'd love to be able to give them away---silver is just so expensive these days.

"God, Give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, And the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." -Reinhold Niebuhr per Elisabeth Sifton

Time is relative

2011-04-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

This morning I got all gussied up and reported to my internship placement site only to find out there was no reason for me to stay. So, I drove to the downtown library and stuck a quarter in the meter only to get to the doors and find out they didn't open for another hour. I mumbled something out loud like, "It must be one of those days."

I sat at the stoplight waiting to make a left turn...and then at the last minute I decided to go right instead. I remembered I was out of fine silver bezel and I thought there was a chance my silver supply store would already be open. It was open.

I got to see two of my friends (I only see them there) whom I hadn't seen since the last time I bought silver, about 9 months ago. One of them, it turns out, is just beginning a battle with cancer. I put my keys and wallet on the table and sat down. We talked for 2 hours. He showed me the amazing cross sketches he drew while recovering from his first surgery (the second is coming soon). He carefully laid out gemstones on top of the sketches and told me how many years he has owned the stones.

We talked about what it means for him to be an artist and a businessman. We talked about how he grew up in that same business (before he bought it from his father). We talked about what it means to watch a piece of jewelry metamorphosize into the finished piece. We joked about the fact that none of us can afford to buy (let alone make) our own jewelry. The price of silver has doubled since I started buying from him.

I eventually went home and decided to set one of my grandma's mother-of-pearl buttons into a ring. I thought about how long the MOP button must have been sitting in that old tin before my grandma gave it to my aunt, who gave it to me ten years ago. This morning I made a ring out of it and now it sits on my right hand.

(That tiny spiral in the second photo is what I purchased from my friends today. $48!)

An Anchor for the Journey

2011-04-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

The cloche arrived. It was as fun to paint as I anticipated. I have a lot to clean up on the glass part of this painting. Actually, the whole painting needs tuned/toned, but here it is for now.

Edit: I cleaned up a few of the angles and brightened the brass and rope. Though there is miles to go, I wanted to see both versions next to each other.

Brush Ch'i

2011-04-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a fabulous day. I am at an exciting time in my school work and I feel my whole self rising to the occasion. I am certain this energy played out yesterday in these pieces. I had several hours to myself and I felt zero timidity with my brush. Sometimes it's hard to take risks on canvas, even though oil can always be reworked. (See photo 2---that painting is at least 10 layers deep.) I like very much like the idea that I am growing more comfortable with my brush strokes and the place from which they originate. To some it might look like a wild mess---to me it's just life working itself out.

Even this painting was taken off the dining room wall and worked more to a finish. I still have some white (over blue sky) and yellow ochre to add back in. I am finishing this painting now because I believe it is the one that will hang in my new office at my internship. Remember, I painted it for the Greensburg auction and then bought it back for myself? I guess I sensed it wasn't done/I wasn't done with it. I am so glad I kept it for this time in my life. It still reminds me I am being carried and sheltered...and perhaps my clients will also be comforted by this.

Still pushing paint around...

2011-04-08T20:01:00.000-07:00

...and getting lost in the form and tones which spontaneously emerge.

Big Fluff

2011-04-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

When my mind is racing with terms like "Pica", "Agoraphobia", "Centripidal" and acronyms like "FIRO", "OCD" and "BPD", sometimes I just want/need to simply be.

School is so intense right now (two major exams in the next two weeks)that working in short bursts on paintings (or a 'zine) that have deep significance to me only adds to the intensity, instead of providing the usual release.

Sometimes I just push paint around, take it off, put on more, and repeat. (Or I bang on metal, hold it in the fire, manipulate it and repeat.) This time a tiny canvas just wouldn't do, so I bought this giant mo-fo (4'X4') and then had to figure out how to get it home.

It might just look like a flower---but it's also an oasis, a peaceful flow of my being. It is going to sit around and be worked whenever I just need/want to be. I'll post as it transforms.

Juxtoposition

2011-03-31T05:01:00.000-07:00

What could be cooler than a stash of seventy 2000 year old tiny metal books? Maybe a giant rope tied glass cloche to put over a stash of them? I did buy the cloche. (It is in transit. I found it in RealSimple this month.)

Don't you just love the rough rope texture next to the smooth glass. I'm thinking seashells should go under it. Or maybe a cool piece of pottery filled with seashells? Or maybe my antique collection of squaring tools? Yes, adding metal to the mix would be cool.

Other than cutting and test firing enamel on a few copper disks, I did start one project in March. I assembled this lamp for Cody's birthday. It's evolving (not done) and there are more beer tops to be added. I am still searching for the perfect shade for the bulb. Click Here for more info on those ancient codices.

Reinvesting

2011-03-10T04:34:00.000-08:00

After selling two paintings back in December, I've been sitting on the cash trying to figure out how best to spend it. Besides wanting to buy a new torch, I bought these two tools yesterday. Would you believe the Swanstrom disc cutter cost more than the torch? Yikes. Sheet metal tools are expensive, but in the long run it is much cheaper to work with sheet than precious metal clay.

I will now be able to cut my own washers and circles. That's a big deal! Nothing is more frustrating than needing a certain size circle or washer and having to wait a week to get it in the mail...and then you pay more for the cut than the silver. I will also be able to dome the things I cut.

So, instead of just this:

I'll be doing more stuff like this:

...and all in the same day! Oh, and yes, the sketchbook pages are already flying. Yay!

Low Tree

2011-02-27T09:26:00.000-08:00

Maybe 1 out of 50 of my sketches is ever brought to canvas or made into a piece of jewelry. Then something happens to make that sketch leap off the page and it has to go somewhere. I work creatively to figure out this placement. Once an idea or a sketch takes on meaning, dimension and is "brought into the real", it is difficult for me to ignore. The subject evolves before, during and after I work with it.

Sometimes my meaning resonates with other people. Sometimes the subject even takes on its own meaning for others. Whatever the case, it's out there to be reckoned with.

Six Months Later

2011-02-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

The Primary Heart Evolving

Dare

2011-02-24T05:18:00.001-08:00

Where the feminine and masculine aesthetic are closely juxtoposed, the intense relationship between beauty and the grotesque emerges. Withold judgement and encounter this unpopular reality here: EDIT: I just saw this video and thought it should go right next to Thom Yorke dancing. It's just so dang cool to experience other people doing what they love/were made to do.

2011-02-22T13:07:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that many of my first experiences creating aesthetic beauty happened at my paternal grandmother's house. She would cover her kitchen table with newspapers and give me a brush and a cup of water. Most of the time there was no color involved. Just wet newsprint. Sometimes a black box of Prang colors.

She always kept a whole drawer full of paper and scissors and brushes that I would go unload immediately when I went to stay with her. One day Gram-Gram got a calligraphy set from one of her sisters. She shared it and taught me how to form beautiful letters and flourishes. I remember the name of my favorite ink cartridge was "Peacock". Eventually she gave me my own identical set.

While in China four years ago, I brought back a set of traditional Chinese brushes and ink sticks for Chloe. Today I tried them out for the first time.

I am sure I did this because I just finished reading the graphic novel, Forget Sorrow by Belle Yang. It is a beautiful story about intergenerational connection. Above, with Belle's permission, I posted a beautiful still from the book, in which her Chinese art teacher tells her the brush must be "loaded" with "Chi, the breath of life".

The book tells about Belle's ancestral family---the generations before, during and after communism---through her art and strong narrative. Within the story, Belle's great-grandfather teaches her father calligraphy. Though my roots were Mennonite, and formed a good chunk of the way around the world from her father, I too, learned from a grandparent how to load my brush with Chi.

This book powerfully confirms that there are many aspects of Chinese culture which naturally support systems theory and the multigenerational transmission process.

Birth Day Gift

2011-02-16T05:28:00.000-08:00

(at 9)

Though I've always tried I can not capture you. Sometimes it frustrates me in the moment, but it does mean I get to keep looking and trying. Anyhow, looking reminds me of how you continue to evolve.

You think this day is about getting gifts and being one year closer to driving. I think it is the perfect day to remember what a gift you have been to me.

(5 years later)

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

Greater Than Symmetry

(That's the cover, and here's the inside of my Valentines.)

Fluff For Sale

2011-02-11T13:09:00.000-08:00

From an email I sent a friend this week: "I have two other "safe place" images I can instantly engage when I feel my own anxiety creeping up. I actually painted and better than I could have imagined, captured my first safe place. I am still too inhibited to even attempt painting the second. I am too stretched (studies, work, family) to successfully navigate that intermittent space of trying to birth that powerful image (the imagined/subjective) into the real/objective. So, I spend a lot of time on "fluff" these days...but even that is therapeutic."

Here is some of said therapy:

Acrylic, Copper, Silver, Sealing Wax

Approximately 3"X 4" (tiny canvas)
For Sale $25.00

Fifteen years later

2011-02-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

Something about these:

Makes it okay to post these:

In spring of 1995 I took my first and only painting class. I painted these two paintings while in that class. (I would say who my teacher was, but an artist herself, she has a good name and I would not like to tarnish it by attaching these paintings to her name on the Internet. Another post, perhaps.)

Over the years I have grown really annoyed with how flat the patterns/pile on the fabrics look despite the shading/contour on the background. Back then I was already annoyed with how large the bust is compared to the dresser upon which it sits. The contents of the "still" life in the wooden cabinet continue to threaten, spill out and smash my feet.

At least in the second painting this was deliberate and directly due to the subject matter. The props were mine, except the wooden cabinet. That said, most of whatever translates on these two canvases is an accident.

Matisse on the other hand, knew how to paint "right" and added to his paintings what he "felt". Those first two paintings pictured above are what he attributed to be among his first paintings. He went through a somewhat classical painting education (he even studied under Bouguereau, the painter of the woman and the wave that I posted last month) before evolving his own style.

His own style involved feeling what he observed and expressing that on canvas. His paintings were intentional, though certain types of people will likely question this fact forever. He "sat" with his subject while seeking to "capture" it. Once in his grasp, he bravely embraced or fought (depending on how you see it) that process.

I am thankful Matisse studied, persevered and showed the world his perspective, his experience. He still encourages the rest of us to do the same.

(detail from the second painting)

20 minutes to paint, 60 minutes to sleep

2011-01-27T06:29:00.000-08:00

He stares at me while I cook dinner, while I talk with friends, while I do homework...he even stares out the picture window and overlooks the neighbors. He might be 2D but he certainly is an intense presence on the easel. I guess that's why I have a hard time turning him to face the wall even though he wears me out.

As usual, I have had to "sit" with this painting for awhile. After not touching it for a couple of weeks now, I intensely went after the canvas with a course brush this morning. This happened. What's next? Who can know?

(Meanwhile "his" counterpart is running around in Garden City and before going to bed tonight will dance around here in KC.)

Goodnight!

172!

2011-01-18T22:04:00.000-08:00

Paul Cezanne was born 172 years ago. He painted himself A LOT over his lifetime. (Apparently I am not the only one who thinks it is infinitely more interesting to paint a man with facial hair.) The first one is my favorite.

Earlier today I added orange to the blue portrait of Cody. My plan is to keep all of the paint colors pure and just add layer upon layer of color. We'll see how it turns out!

Pause

2011-01-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

Just a few weeks ago I Googled THIS LIST during dinner. Our family was having a discussion about beauty.

My ten year old boy said, "That's stupid. They paid millions of dollars just because they know that man's name? But they wouldn't buy your pretty painting because you aren't famous?"

I'll admit I'd be tempted to pay good money for any of the paintings on that list if I had it. Especially for Kilmt's Adele. (See photo at left and read more about how this woman, as a child, remembers eating Sunday lunch under this painting). The paintings on the list embody historical significance and they are each beautiful for many reasons. Unfortunately for those of us without large amounts of money to buy or travel, this means we have to settle for internet reproduction.

Mason was naively referring to Pollock. Without wanting to squash his gut response, I carefully explained it wasn't that simple. However, in several ways, Mason is right. Children,uninfluenced by "value", instinctively identify and pause for beauty. This is partly why spending time in their presence is a gift. They remind us we don't have to have a lot of money to surround ourselves with beauty.

Don't have a child to borrow? Try this: Shut your eyes and imagine your childhood home. Look around for beauty. Consider what you find.

What did you see? What was your experience? Where did you find beauty---inside, outdoors, in a face, on a wall, in the airwaves?

I remember my mom's piano playing and singing. It was like a soundtrack to whatever I was doing. Maybe that's why I love to paint to music. I remember daydreaming under trees and gazing at the sky. I remember the feel of my dad's carpet-like, perfect green grass between my toes. I remember marvelling at individual snowflakes. I remember many of my cousins' laughter and their beautiful, soft, smiling faces. I remember the smell of my grandmothers' love-infused baking.

***
Engage your imagination. It is just as much a "sense" as touch, taste, smell, hear and seeing yet we forget to use it.

Know what you find beautiful. Remember to pause for it. It's not only important for you, but for those who experience life with you. It is a gift you were made to share with others.

The Idiot

2011-01-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

I started painting Cody's portrait today. I've been after him to sit for me ever since I started reading The Idiot. Well, on Sunday he actually sat so I could sketch him. He didn't sit still for 5 minutes. So, I'm working from a photograph I took that day.

Cartier-Bresson to Michael Kimmelman: "You know, Picasso didn't like Bonnard and I can imagine why, because Picasso had no tenderness. It is only a very flat explanation to say that Bonnard is looking in a mirror in this painting. He's looking far, far beyond. To me he is the greatest painter of the century. Picasso was a genius, but that is something quite different."

Bonnard's Self Portrait (that Cartier-Bresson was looking at)

Bonnard to Matisse: "...portraits cannot be done in a day, or even two, but how to refuse a painter whom one has already refused several times and who finally comes ringing your doorbell, all sweaty with his kit and caboodle?"
*********************************************************
Why The Idiot? My husband does an amazing job living as an artist and as husband/Dad/provider to our family. In work circles he gets goofy glances about the fact that he sings and dances on tables on the weekends. From the bar crowd he gets goofy looks for mentioning his day job/lithotripsy.

True to Dostoevsky's The Idiot, my husband is actually quite genius. So was Bonnard. So was Picasso. Each just figures/figured out their own way of seeing and living as an artist.

Dostoevsky's Gania says to the Idiot: "And where on earth did I get the idea that you were an idiot? You always observe what other people pass by unnoticed; one could talk sense to you, but---"

Thank God "talking sense" into an "idiot" is actually quite impossible.

*******************************************************

EDIT: I found this forgotten painting of Cody (from one year ago) this evening when I remembered this portrait while talking to my friend about Bonnard's use of color. I had not even see the above Bonnard portrait until today and I suspected the colors were similar. In case you wonder why my husband is always sleeping in most of his portraits it is because it's the only time I can get him to be still. He loves my ninja portraits of him. No, not really. But I do it anyway!

This was from the day after Christmas this year (He needed a haircut):

The Gift

2011-01-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite paintings will be en route to Texas this week: the big blue and green one in the center, which usually hangs on my dining room wall. Yes, in a way I’m sad to see it go. On the other hand, it’s moving is the reason I create. This painting will appropriately rest on the wall in a psychologist's office. Though it will not physically move, I hope it will continue to spiritually move those who also find a safe place in it.

Here are a few beautiful words from Lewis Hyde’s book ,The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, which I started reading over the holiday break:

“A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties.”

The gift as a constantly flowing river:
“When someone tries to dam up the river, one of two things will happen: either it will stagnate or it will fill the person up until he bursts.”

“A market exchange has an equilibrium or stasis: you pay to balance the scale. But when you give a gift there is momentum, and the weight shifts from body to body.”

“The only essential is this: the gift must move.”

In his book Mr. Hyde tells why the term “Indian Giver” exists. Before the white man, the Indians would pass the peace pipe from village to village. It was a gift that kept moving. When the white man came and smoked with the Indian, the Indian gave the pipe to the white man. The white man thought, Ooo…this will look splendid in our Field Museum and took the pipe out of circulation. When the Indians realized the pipe was no longer going to move, they went to the white man and asked for it back. Sadly, the white man thought it was better to possess, or consume the pipe than to participate in the gift exchange: he called them “Indian Givers”. Mr. Hyde then flips the term on its side, suggesting the terms “’white man keeper’ (or maybe ‘capitalist’), that is, a person whose instinct is to remove property from circulation….”

Though money was given for my painting, the exchange was experienced as a gift. I did not possess my own hand or brush the night this painting magically came together. This painting was given to me as a gift. And now that gift is appropriately on the move.

(Yes, I intentionally stacked up most of my paintings for the above photo. I like seeing them all together, quietly (or not so quietly) representing an emotional army of me. They were painted between 1995 and as recently as yesterday.)

Portrait of ][

2010-12-30T11:51:00.000-08:00

This is a portrait of my friend. Yes, that's his wife and children in there, too---but this is about him and his connection to them. An abstract genogram, maybe? An abstract portrait? I don't know what to call it.

This guy, his wife, my husband and I had this wonderful 6 hour long conversation the other night. We talked about art, guitar, guns, home schooling, parenting, grandparents, etc. It was a deep conversation full of tears and laughter.

I woke up the next day and needed to process through some of the shared thoughts, which I did as I painted. This emerged.

The blue indicates spoken truth. His children are shown green (cultivation) in the shape of the Nautilus because of this poem and his purposeful gate keeping in their lives. The wavy lines represent emanating love, blood, umbilical cords, connection, spiritual affinity.

Though this painting is full of many symbols they are meant to be experienced as a whole. ]['s spirit is inseparable from everything represented here, shown between the brackets.

Before I dreamt about genograms

2010-12-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

03/2007 Commissioned by C. Hill

(Her family photos)

My Glass and Wooden Cloth

2010-12-26T19:20:00.000-08:00

-The Bonnet, 2007

-The New Moon, 2007

-Ears to Hear, Eyes to See, 2006

-St. Christopher: Carry Us, 2008

-Evolution, October 2007 for Wheatland Mission

-Clay Feet, 2008

-Constructed Mirrors (Walnut, old fence, walnut), Coat Rack (Old header) and Love/Pride, 2007

-Babylon, Private Collection

-Me and my Shadowboxes on display at CathARTic, 20th Century Club, 2007

"Behind the glass barriers the contents of the boxes are untouchable and protected. The wooden board frame and cool glass are the only things we can make contact with. The rich, erotic and dramatic inner contents of the box are permanently beyond our grasp. They exist, forever cut off in their private, silent and still world.... In terms of content and imagery, the meaning of the boxes often involved the stimulation and exploration of memory---they were tools for the recovery of lost time.... Ultimately the box provided security and protection."

Quote taken from the chapter on Joseph Cornell in The Artist's Mind: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Creativity, Modern Art and Modern Artists, by George Hagman, LCSW (Kindle version 2010).

This has to be the best non-fiction book on art that I have ever read next to Kimmelman's Accidental Masterpiece. So many pages confront me with the words I have never been given to describe myself and my creative process. Pinch me!

IX

2010-12-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

O How may I ever express that secret word?
O how can I say He is not like this, and He is like that?
If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed:
If I say that He is without me, it is falsehood.
He makes the inner and the outer worlds to be indivisibly one;
The conscious and the unconscious, both are His footstools.
He is neither manifest nor hidden, He is neither revealed nor unrevealed:
There are no words to tell that which He is.

Kabir, from 'Songs Of Kabir', translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Painting by Bouguereau The Wave

Meine Familie/Finished Genogram Project

2010-12-16T06:13:00.000-08:00

Here we are in all our glory and complexity. I love my family more today because of what I learned from this project. Now to run the final copy of my paper....

My paternal grandmother and her family (She was the eldest of 5 children.):

My maternal grandmother and her family (Look at my great-grandfather's life span. What a time of discoveries he lived through!):

My maternal grandfather and his family (His mother died when he was only 2.):

My paternal grandfather and his family (The only boy and born 11 yrs after his sister.):

My mom and her family (Lucky for me, everyone kept going after her brother's early death.):

My dad and his family (One aunt got a tiara, the other a crown that says "listener". Lots of gatekeepers here.):

My brother and his family (Don't you think they should have had at least 10 more babies?!?!):

Me and Mine (Two of the three color photos on the canvas.):

Gold Leaf!

2010-12-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

The painting was finally dry enough to put the gold leaf on. I love it!

Watch the end of the gold leaf process here. Special thanks to my little peanut gallery for the awesome videotaping.

Edit: I have just started repainting nearly the entire piece. I could not live with the opening or the space below it. I'll post new photos once it's reworked...and releafed!

Aren't they handsome?

2010-12-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

I added names and dates to the top and second row.

Started over on the photos. Think I'm finally settled on deckle edges. The next step, which is to add the rest of the photos, should really change the look a lot. I hope to have all of the artwork done by the end of this weekend.

Then I finally get to start writing the analysis paper I've been forming in my head. Curse my curiosity; I stayed up until after 1am again last night. I connected a few new facts about the people at the top of the canvas.

I learned that my oldest known living relatives were Peter Hoeppner and Anganetha Wilke. They were born around 1650, were married Dec 6, 1671 and died in Danzig in 1715 and 1718 respectively. Their marriage happens to show up twice on my family tree. Because:

Six generations later Dietrich Heppner (b. 1873) would marry his second cousin Anna Sawatzky. (This means Dietrich and Anna's grandparents were brother (b.1816) and sister (b. 1814 ). Yeah, that's a little freaky.)

Those two cousins, who eventually became my great great grandparents both immigrated to the USA in 1876; he was 3, she was 2. They met in Minnesota and were married in June 4, 1896.

The first picture in from the left on my geno is a car full of people. That's the kissing cousins! They had two more children after this photo was taken (10 kids over 19 years). Can you believe the fancy clothes, bows and hats---think of the laundry this woman must have done?!? (The swag on the car says "Butterfield" for their town in MN.)

I was lucky enough to know their boy, my great grandfather David Heppner (b. 1902), until I was 15. He was a quiet, kind man with a lazy eye. He is the third boy from the left standing up, looking down at the camera, wearing a beret.

Art imitates life once again.

2010-12-06T20:01:00.000-08:00

I added the rest of the gold leaf tonight. It's difficult to photograph.

I added a few names and dates and marriages. A few more lines were added. I also added my great grandparents siblings as squares or circles (way up at the top under the brown line).

Mom's beautiful photograph is being replaced. I accidentally got some Cadmium Red on her and Chloe said it looked like she was bleeding.

I shared with Mom today that the thing I would most like other people to get from looking at my family on canvas is this: Family systems are rich and infinitely C-O-M-P-L-E-X. I am only scratching the surface here (really!), and look how totally impossible context is to ignore. Look how hard it is to get stuck on any one person or any one relationship. See how each person orients him/herself to those around him/her? Look up or down the generations and you begin to understand why.

So, tonight when Cody cautioned me about getting my canvas too cluttered, I, stuck in mineral-spirits-world calmly said, "I want it cluttered."

ps)Two cool things I never knew: My maternal grandfather's dad and mom got married on my birth date 101 years ago, in 1909. Also, my paternal Great, great grandparent Thiessens were married on the same date as Cody and me 121 years before us, in 1875 .

2010-12-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

Some of the gold leaf is now in place. I added a few pictures. Smeared some oil paint around, took off the copper tags. I'm still trying to decide what to do with names and dates. I didn't like the copper tags after I got them on. Something about the scale and the material wasn't right. Hmm....

Oh, one major difference is the horizontal line under my great great grandparents. It signifies agriculture and the fact that they lived in two cultures. I'll probably sand it down so that some of the canvas comes through and it's not so stark. I like it that the rest of the genogram is looking more organic because of that line; like roots and tunnels.

On the other easel

2010-12-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

Here's a commissioned piece I've been working on all semester. Phos Hilaron. 3'X3'

I had 2 requirements: 1, gold leaf 2, light with no distinct source

The gold leaf is next. I expect it to change the painting entirely. (The white will no longer be the brightest point on the canvas.) Will post photos as soon as the oil is dry enough to lay the leaf.

I'm bringing it to Wheatland Mission through the advent season. Come see it. I'll be sharing what it's about. I'll probably do that here, too, when I get time.

Here's the evolution:

These next two demonstrate the beauty of working with oils. If you don't like it, you can always change it. The canvas was too wet. I was actually scraping the paint off with a palate knife. There is no white on this canvas. (The white is the bare canvas.)
This is what happens when you try to do too much too fast. Mushed colors.

The painting sat outside on my deck for a few weeks in this state. I like the muted colors of this one but it was really washed out. It would have been a great base for a collage.

After it was good and dry I brought it in and added the color back in.

This last one shows how I had white in the radiant light. I took that out today. I feel like the light pops more as light without the white in there. The gold should add the real pop. If it doesn't...well, there's more to come.

Added Dec 2, 2010

2010-12-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

I am now in the process of adding names. I am hand stamping the names on copper. I almost feel names are secondary* to everything on the genogram. After they are all in place I will darken in the letters so they contrast against the copper and will then be easier to read. There is something symbolic about this picture:

I do like the look of another layer.

More colors and some photos to come soon.... A lot of things on here are still subject to change. I mean that in an artistic sense, but I guess it is also literal.

*The names are important to me. I'm just saying that if you were a person studying a foreign piece of art you would likely not remember names and instead you would remember relationship, lines, shape, etc. (And here I'd like to just point out, again, the similar vocabulary between art and systems therapy. Serendipity or Design?)

It took a turn

2010-11-27T07:19:00.001-08:00

So my genogram took a turn. I figured it should really be mine so I made it that way. The prior look was too historical. It was time to connect with now.

It is not done yet. No apologies, right? If you're in my family and you're on here, I love you.

ps)I'll never tell what all the symbols mean, unless they are attached to your name and you ask.

Painting this has been about as therapeutic as actual therapy. I remember when my own therapist drew my genogram with Crayolas and I watched. I had this strange calm come over me---just watching him put the lines and colors on the paper had a hypnotic affect (a-FECT). If you would ever like me to do a genogram interview and drawing of your own family, just ask. I'd love to share the experience.

Remember that Adoption Jewelry?

2010-11-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

Thought you might enjoy these almost as much as I did:

Isn't he beautiful?

Baby is safe and sound with Mom and Dad in Africa, waiting for the final word. They will be home just in time for Christmas!