1000 bits of my heart: Week 2

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1000 pieces of my heart:  week 2

“The woods were made for the hunter of dreams.”

Sam Walter Foss

Studies in brown 3

{10 – 20}  A visit, a walk in the woods, some pressed leaves, brown paper journals, and a Secret Garden.

This week has been quiet, but a couple of weeks ago, was full of people and visits w people.  Rands and I were in Washington, D.C. with a new squad of World Racers.  Mostly there were meetings and quick meals in between meetings, but there were also some wonderful moments with friends and racers, old & new, tucked in between the information exchange.  It was exciting and humbling to be with these world changers as they left for their 11 month journey.

 

D Squad praying for N Squad

D Squad praying for N Squad

I stayed in town and spent a delightful couple of days talking about books and telling stories with my Candi-friend.  Hard to believe that we’ve known each other since we were teenagers at Belmont College-now-University.    A favorite moment was going on a foggy, crisp explore in the woods with Candi; her daughter, Cami; and their terrier, Roscoe.

Studies in brown 2

The day turned up some studies in brown and we were in the woods much longer than it seemed that we were.   It was one of those feels-like-20-minutes-but-it’s-really-been-an-hour sort of treks.  I love when time falls away because you’re soaking in exactly where you are.  We stopped to peek at dead-tree-woodpecker-houses and weird mushrooms and told stories and walked in silence.  All in all, just the way, a slow explore should go.
Studies in brown 1
And, although I didn’t play tourist and go to any museums or monuments this go ’round, I did receive a tour of Cami’s bookshelf, her Hobbit Legos and her beautiful bottom-drawer nature collection.  It felt like a tour of her heart.

Untitled

{Pressed leaves shared from Cami’s collection}

And, I revisited my November and December journals. There is so much to be gleaned from a good journal retrospective.  I was wrestling with perfectionism and a bout with the flu during the holiday season and handmade, grocery bag journals with their sweet, humble brown paper were a great way to diffuse the pressure.  I especially love white pen on brown paper.
Untitled

Lastly, I started a new journal on January 1.   It’s an altered copy of The Secret Garden, which is a shift away from the larger scale that I used for most of 2012.  But, I like it for it’s wonderful phrases and portability.  Still, I miss 9×12 and watercolour paper, so we’ll see what comes next.

The Secret Garden journal

As always, we’ll see what comes next.

 

 

1000 bits of my heart: Week 1

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“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” Walt Whitman

 

A year in journals - 2012

 {A year in journals – 2012}

{1-9}  7 Journals, 1 List & a bird

This week was goodbye to 2012 and hello to 2013.  As I gathered journals kept, I was struck by how infrequently I shared journal pages this past year.  My creative habits have been minimalistic for the past couple of years, with most of my creative expression happening in private, on pages and with simple daily photos with my phone.

 

Staying active and creating “art in the crevices” has served me well, but in a closer examination of my creative process over the past couple of months during IGNITE, I have felt the rumblings of a call to the deeper parts of my practice.  When I get quiet and listen, I feel the magnetic pull of my big girl camera and brushes and a longing to be here in this blogging space documenting and sharing.  It’s all I want to do.

 

This past year has brought a lot of exciting change.

 

And with that change has come the dance of staying in balance.

 

And let me say, at the risk of much disagreement, that I think balance is overrated.

 

Sometimes passion creates imbalance and we just have to step away from the line in the middle and be breathtakingly over into our practice.  We must trust that the pendulum will eventually swing back in the other direction to the next area of passion that needs attention for a season.   We must:

 

dive in

 

take risks

 

do the thing

 

follow the alternative path

 

drink deeply

 

misbehave

 

find the place

 

say a dramatic no

 

embrace a dramatic yes

 

My expectation for this year is that it will have less balance and more passion.  That there will be more depth and grit and life in my creative practice and less worry about how to get to everything and everyone.

 

My intention is simply to listen and create.  And then listen and create some more.  To respond to the cry that exists simultaneously in my belly and my heart.  The cry is demanding and persistent like a newborn baby and I am delighted beyond measure to respond.

 

The Secret Garden journal

on creating vessels and containers

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I continue to explore the ideas of vessels and containers.   In the studio the containers are varied.  There are jars that hold embellishments and pens and bins filled with paper, textiles and tools.  In a large, corner cupboard filled with a repurposed toy storage system are workshop supplies and stuff that I hope to turn into other stuffs.  And up on the wall are photo holders holding ephemera that I took out of drawers because I just needed to see.

I also view the journals that I create as vessels, waiting for my story and my ideas.  In IGNITE, the Fearless Painting teacher training, we are creating another sort of vessel.  The assignment was to create a sacred art piece, a reliquary, to hold the relics and discoveries of our journey through IGNITE.

This reliquary necklace was born out of a magnetic pull to the pendants that saw when I first began to research reliquaries from the Medieval & Renaissance period.  This was a shift from my first idea which was to use a storage cupboard that I have in the studio that contains small jars of beads and embellishments and houses jars of ink.  I liked the idea of relics in glass that I could look up and see rather than a box with things tucked away.

True confession:  I fought and fought this project.  I know nothing about jewelry making and the size of pendants initially seemed prohibitive.  But, I kept going back to the idea of lockets and charms as a way to document this journey and ultimately decided that the discomfort of learning something new was a small price to pay for listening to my inside voice and following my instinct.   So, I headed off to the store and came home with a bag full of empty lockets and lengths of chain.

Part of our assignment was to reflect on the source of the materials that we were using; it was in this process, that I settled.  Listing off the materials and tracking them to the earth began to reveal the draw and brought the work to life for me.

  •  Metals – Pendants made of brass, copper, and my beloved silver speak of support, borders/boundaries and are malleable.
  • Metal charms, which have always fascinated me and I’m looking forward to collecting, point to magic and whimsy.
  • Paper/Wood/Trees speak of words and voice.
  • Glass/Sand  point to transparency and transformation in the fire.

 

I’ve created pendants with bits of nature and poetry that represent our different assignments and discoveries and have a lovely collection of charms, that to me, document a truth learned or a milestone crossed.  I must mention that this piece, by definition of the assignment, is a piece of sacred art.  For me, that means that not only is the piece itself sacred, the process of creating this piece {which is ongoing} is sacred. I have said for years that I don’t separate my spiritual practice from my creative practice.  If something is sacred it is infused with the Divine and set apart.  And so, when I engage in the act of creating, I welcome the Divine and set the space apart.  For me that means entering my literal space with rituals and mindfulness, and tending to my internal spaces before, and as, I create.  Anything born out of that space and mindfulness is then sacred.