Trick or Treat? Is it Real?

                                            

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose, that makes your rose so important."   

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince. 

"Lazy Love," 6x6"  Drawing with thread, inspired by a work of 17th cent Meissen porcelain.

"To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness." ~Robert Brault

Dabbling in photography while visiting my brother in Boston, June 2013.

"And think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course." Khalil Gibran, The Prophet. 

These photos of water connect very much with the abstract paintings I've made like those featured in my post on 1/1/13

"Love isn't something you find.  Love is something that finds you."  Loretta Young

I took this by the harbor.

I made this invite and accompanying postcard for a recent show, my painting of Balbec is featured on the middle left.

These photos are from 10/10/13, when we were tie dying in Art Club.  

"Love makes you do crazy things, insane things. Things in a million years you'd never see yourself do. But there you are doing them... can't help it."  ~Brandon Boyce, Wicker Park

I loved the way the sink photos from my 12/12/12 project worked out in the D204 show flier above and, I was excited by the opportunity to take a few more!

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom." ~Anais Nin

Kathy and I in Art Club, as reflected in some purple dye.

   I've been making art about love for years.  Many times inspired by fairy tales and favorite books- looking at the way I want things to be, or wished it was, or wonder if it could be, or even marveling that others want it to be one way or another.  To invite some balance, last weekend I began reading Charlotte Kasl's "If the Buddha Dated; A Handbook for Finding Love on a Spiritual Path."  An excerpt on identity that I particularly enjoyed is below.

"You are unique in all the world... just as the oceans rise and fall, just as the moon waxes and wanes, you have an inner world that is fluid and shifting... Staying loyal to your journey means you never abandon yourself by compromising your integrity or discounting your intuition or the signals that come from your body- the knot in the gut, emotional detachment, or loss of energy signals that something is amiss.  You learn to realize when you "hit your edges"- when you feel backed up against a wall, scared to see what you see, know what you know, or feel what you feel.  When people hit an edge they usually run away by going numb, distracting themselves, changing the subject, counter attacking, overindulging in food or drink, or blaming. 

 "We may hit an edge when someone hurts us, or when someone loves us more than we love ourself.  It is harder for many people to allow love to pierce their heart than to have chaotic, painful relationships." ~Charlotte Kasl's Ph.D.

    It is not as romantic to know that we may be afraid to love or of being loved.  It is sorrowful to reflect on the moments when we have given up a piece of ourselves, our identity, our integrity, in the name of love.  I sometimes sit back, and wonder, "Where did I learn to love in this way??"  Disney, my mother, books, Shakespeare?  Love is beautiful, but it is also dangerous, creeping in, appearing out of the blue with no rhyme or reason as Proust pointed out when I quoted him on 2/19/13.  I have been aiming to show some of this complexity in my art, some of the irony in a beautiful couple lazing about under a tree in the afternoon.  If only it could be so simple.  So easy.  I hope that the laborious method I have chosen to depict the already laboriously sculpted image centuries ago has some impact on the viewer.  Centuries later, two artists contemplate the same scene.  So much time, so much effort, going into one flirtatious afternoon.  A beautiful moment that may have only lasted hours or days between those lovers until they quarreled, or parted ways.  There are moments like that which are so fleeting in reality, that I wish I could linger in forever inside my memories.  However, even then, those memories are tarnished by time, the knowledge that it didn't last, it couldn't last.  -As anyone who didn't marry and live happily ever after with their first love knows all too well (Hello Sleeping Beauty, my childhood favorite- whom I emulated 3 Halloweens in a row!!)  Do the 15 hours I spent sewing this love scene change the way it feels, is there a hesitation, a doubt, a wonder at it's very possibility- and yet still a hope, that maybe it can be found again?  This is what I wondered as I sewed while proctoring the PSAT tests, while listening to Proust, and while on my flights to visit my brother in Boston, and back again.

Halloween, 1989.  My brother and I as Prince Phillip & Sleeping Beauty.

"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam. Yet I know it's true, that visions are seldom all they seem... but if I know you, I know what you'll do: you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream..." ~Princes Aurora, 'Sleeping Beauty', Disney

A New Home

"The happy years are those that are wasted; we must wait for suffering to drive us to work."   ~Marcel Proust, Time Regained, ch III

 I moved this summer, and in the madness & happiness of packing, unpacking, and making art- I have had no time to write!  Well, now that it's getting cold out, there is much to tell:

"Bench; Summer 2013 Watching Game of Thrones."  40x17x17"

I made the legs with my dad this spring, over the summer I spent 40+ hours hand spinning fabric with a drop spindle, and weaving.

It is one of many handmade touches that are making my new house feel like home.

The warp.

The whole weave.

New kitchen set-up.  My first map painting, and some chairs I refinished summer 2012.  

The view from my kitchen to the back porch, I crocheted this curtain.

 I found moving a bit taxing mentally, and I took a very intensive summer course on Yoga Therapy.  My art, in contrast, returned to the comfort of repetitive motions like hand spinning and crochet.  They offer a meditative quality that is so soothing.  I have read every book by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (AKA, the Yarn Harlot); and in All Wound Up, she connects knitting (and other fiber arts) to meditation.  Here are a few of her musings that I'm particularly fond of.

“...the number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting. Knitters are so compellingly clever that they simply can't tolerate boredom. It takes more to engage and entertain this kind of human, and they need an outlet or they get into trouble.

"...knitters just can't watch TV without doing something else. Knitters just can't wait in line, knitters just can't sit waiting at the doctor's office. Knitters need knitting to add a layer of interest in other, less constructive ways.” 
― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

"It was so simple that I was almost ashamed that it had taken all day to put it together.  Knitting wasn't always about creativity, and neither was writing; it was about creation, bringing something into being.  Making a thing where there wasn't something before. When I was writing, I was coming up with an idea, and then using my skills to make it a reality.  Same thing with knitting. I was imagining a sweater, or socks or whatever, and then using my skills to translate that image in my mind into a real thing you could touch and see.  I had been right (and rather wrong) the whole time.  They were the same, they fed the same human need, they enriched the soul the same way.  They were not an act of creativity, they were a pure act of creation. 

 "Who knew.  To your spiritual self, writing a novel may be exactly the same as knitting a sweater."  ~Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Free-Range Knitter

 While spinning and weaving I watched all of "Game of Thrones," and "Orange is the New Black." The Marathon tv was justified by the art, and the slow paced art was justified by the tv! At the end, I feel lucky to have a beautiful hand made object in my home, and Game of Thrones has left me feeling very lucky indeed to be a woman living Now, rather than any time in the past!