Ebb and Lull Week

The day after Christmas the neighbor who had the best Xmas decorations in his yard took his lights down and put it all in boxes marked Free at the end of his driveway. Remnants of such effort of splendor, effortlessly tossed to the curb.

I wanted to share these dear little gifts tags with you (right), and thoughts about...

...the ebb of symbols from the week before
flows into the lull of
detoxing from sugar and shopping
a workspace not normal yet
the end-of-the-decade stories on tv at the gym
and the tiny lightbulb going off in my head
shining on resolutions.

Christmas in Eaton Rapids

Cousins Dance 1967

Dear creature!--you'd swear When her delicate feet in the dance twinkle round, That her steps are of light, that her home is the air, And she only par complaisance touches the ground.

Thomas Moore

Going Skimming

I love the internet. I admire the youthful focus I see running through it like a mixed colorful bundle of ropes, threads, tinsel, twisties yarn and cords.

But sometimes I wish that the writing was more condensed. No matter how much I admire those clever darn well carefully chosen words--

Unless it's techie stuff I need to know, if I see a big fat paragraph, I'm going skimming.

It's how I use the web, shop and go through a bookstore. I'm thinking, "Do I really want to have the time to read this?"

I prefer the thought of 'having' rather than 'making' the time. Slow down for your soul and all.

When I gave myself permission to make this bloggie brief and mostly visual it made me happy to post regularly, glad to be here with you. It is a joyous tight little splat of creativity, like paint on a...never mind this paragraph is growing to skimming pool size.

If Fun is the Big Top of the Soul--

"...Stretching out the sky as a tent-cloth,
covering your lofty halls with water.
You make the clouds your chariot,
You surge on the wings of the wind.

...the earth is filled with your creatures,
even the wide and open sea itself..
upon it are ships a-sailing,
and that great beast you made to have fun!"

from Psalm 103/104

Mr. PotatoHead Creepy Crawlers: the Dangerous things I used to do in 1964

In the 1960's a Mr. Potato Head set came with a myriad of plastic parts tipped with dagger-like points made for jabbing into real vegatables.  Did I get stabbed--yes!  Did I care? No! Who cared about a little pain when I could make my potaoto anyway I wanted, even adding dagger ended objects that did not come with the kit. Mom's Christmas tree pin covered with rhinestones...toothpicks with fabric flags...yarn and pipecleaners on thumbtacks for hair!

And Creepy Crawlers: a kit that came with a hotplate, plastic goo and metal molds so you could cast your own blueheaded green legged orange bodied fly or beetle or butterfly.  Did I get burned?  Yes...and I would  ice it and go back to create new bugthings.

Would I let my kids play with these toys now?  Yes, with supervision--I was left alone with my experiments probably too often as Mom watched soap operas and took care of the mountain of ironing that erupted from 60's styles and fabrics.

Below is a link to a Good News Network posting about  a new book by Gever Tulley about children being allowed to experience a world full of danger...and creative potential.

http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/most-popular/general/50-dangerous-things-book.html

Fun is the Big Top of the soul

Slow Art and Kittens: a visit to Slow Planet

Earlier in the week I posted to Carl Honore's Slow Planet Blog. You will find Kittens below in the November 23 post.

http://www.slowplanet.com/blog/2009/11/30/slow-art-and-kittens/

Three Bathers

In 1936 Matisse gifted the city of Paris at the Petit Palais with his beloved "Three Bathers" by Cezanne (right) purchased in 1896. Matisse felt this to be one of Cezanne's most important works.

"His series of paintings showing bathers present one of the great dreams of mankind, the dream of union with Nature, the longing for an earthly paradise."
from 'Cezanne' by Hajo Duchting, Tachen 1999.

Matisse refused to sell the piece through periods of financial challenges.
"In the thirty-seven years I have owned this canvas...in the critical moments of my venture as an artist it has restored my spirit; it has been the source of my belief and my endurance."

Scan Art

A scanner is a camera I can boss around. It is accessible. I can work backwards... how often can you say that about art?

Scanning opens a window into projects I started with love and stopped, thinking them too close to the surface;  images from childhood, remnants of dresses I wish I could wear, secrets.

"Kittens" 2006

Happy Birthday

You are still that child inside

The one with the silly hat feet too big for the body

Wearing moms wig/shoes/red lipstick

Giggling everyday often

Wet from too much ocean/rain/mud and you are not cold

Dizzy with Halloween candy and easter basket chocolate

Giving away paintings and putting on ‘free’plays

Singing cowboy songs to the record player in the basement

And dancing dancing dancing.

The Gateless Gate

"The great path has no gates,
Thousands of roads enter it.
When one passes through this gateless gate
He walks freely between heaven and earth."

Mumon Ekai (1183 - 1260)

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm

goosebumps and happy tears

A response from Sheila Berger to November 4 post~

"...I was struck by your last name--the painting you chose and have felt compelled to write you.


When I began the blue series, I spent many hours at the Natural History museum in NYC. I would look endlessly at the bioluminescent
creatures that lived deep in the ocean. Nature is so incredible-living things adapting to darkness by lighting themselves up became a metaphor to attempt to find the light within myself and others.

Finding clarity and light are what we all seek, I believe--so in that spirit, I thank you for your blog and believe it was not an accident that the Lumen found the BioLuminescence...."


http://www.sheilaberger.com/
pictured above Aquatic Dreams on Land, 2006, 14'' x 18''

Pond at San Juan Capistrano Mission

“When we do things with only a part of the mind, we are just skimming the surface of life. Nothing sinks in; nothing has real impact. It leads to an empty feeling inside. Unfortunately, it is this very emptiness that drives us to pack in even more, seeking desperately to fill the void in our hearts. What we need to do is just the opposite: to slow down and live completely in the present. Then every moment will be full.” —
Eknath Easwaran                                                                 

Bad Art Thingies & the Inner Snick

About a decade ago I read an article about building community through making ‘bad art thingies’ together. The idea: A neighborhood host volunteers his home and kitchen table, and participants bring potluck food and recyclable materials -- empty cereal boxes, fabric scraps, sequins, wrapping paper, old birthday cards, toilet paper tubes, etc.

The host provides basics like scissors, crayons and markers, construction paper, glue and staples, and decides whether to open up the creative possibilities by including hot glue guns and paint.

The process: Sit down at the table and make something out of the stuff. It could be an oatmeal container with glitter, two straws and sections of the comics taped to the side. No rules, except talk, eat, share supplies and techniques. Then take home your thingie. Or swap thingies. Toss thingie.

This made me unexplainably, wildly happy. I ran to the garage and pulled out an empty laundry soap holder.  I brought it into the studio and started covering the sides, using old wallpaper, stamped cardboard, scraps of old paintings I never liked, postcards, spiraled pipe cleaners, etc.
Breathless with the complete absence of the ‘inner snick’—I was in kindergarten again, smiling and singing away.  The humble nature of the materials freed me up. The only part missing was that thick paste with a paddle attached to the lid that smelled like wintergreen lifesavers.
My husband who didn’t read the article, saw my thingie and said, “Uh, honey, where are you going to sell that?”

I still have it. I invite you to make one. Feed the Beauty.
If anyone knows where I can find the article mentioned above, please let me know.<

Crystal Cove, Laguna Beach, CA

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

Thomas Merton

Photo copyright 2009 Sophie Lumen

The encaustic work of Sheila Berger

Falling and Floating, 2006, 30'' x 45'' triptych

"Influenced by a lifetime of travel to some of the most remote parts of the globe, Berger's paintings are both a reflection of the visual richness of these experiences and a space to pause. Here, the world's fecundity is both marked yet stilled. As Berger's process is a slow and ritualistic one, the work likewise demands the viewer's quiet concentration, gift of time, and a willingness to listen to their silence.

Part of Berger's pleasure in crafting these paintings is the celebration of a technique unchanged for thousands of years: the melting of encaustic, repeatedly painting her special custom-made wooden panels until they have the desired texture.

The result is a tabula rasa awaiting Berger's impressions. With the introduction of pigments, and the use of wood-block patterns some centuries old--Berger, like an exacting alchemist, builds each painting into a palimpsest of memories, moods and emotion, welcome emptiness incised, such varied signs of life.

...Growth, change, creation – Berger's work is a hopeful and fertile present to us all."

By Adrian Dannat, for Paul Kasmin Gallery, 2009 www.paulkasmingallery.com

Sheila's work can also be seen at www.sheilaberger.com 

"We find what is funny"

I recently met 'Isabel', a lovely woman who is rapidly approaching her 90th birthday, and her daughter 'Rhea' at my day job. Isabel is an intelligent, alert lady who despite a serious heart condition displays an active interest in others and her environment. Rhea has a good natured, healthy, fresh-air feel about her, and clearly enjoys her mothers company. Isabel proudly told me that Rhea works out every day, walks and bikes on a trail nearby their home...and that she has had MS for 30 years.

They asked questions, told stories and laughed. While they were laughing Isabel piped in, "We laugh all the time. We think so much is funny--we find what is funny. That's what we do."

from The Quiet Eye by Sylvia Shaw Judson

"When you love someone, you love him as he is."

Charles Peguy, French (1873-1914)

Cloth Napkins

We decided a few years ago that we would commit to using cloth napkins instead of paper. My daughter protested at first when she realized it would be her ongoing chore to fold clean napkins and put them away. Then one summer she went to a day camp for homemaking skills. Besides menu planning and a field trip to the grocery store, lo and behold there was a unit on napkin folding. There she learned to fold napkins in the shape of a rose, a bishop's hat, a pyramid, and a flute for champagne glasses. She was taught where to place the creation on a table setting. It changed everything. Now if a friend is at the house on a 'napkin day,' he or she will be brought into the ritual, and patiently taught to fold a rose.

Sunday Afternoon

"We apprehend Him in the alternate voids and fullness of a cathedral; in the space that separates the salient features of a picture; in the living geometry of a flower, a seashell, an animal; in the pauses and intervals between the notes of music, in their difference of tones and sonority; and finally, on the plane of conduct, in the love and gentleness, the confidence and humility, which give beauty to the relationships between human beings."

Aldous Huxley