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