After taking a most excellent on line class from the amazing Keith LoBue, I have found a new passion for tools.  For Christmas I am over the moon about receiving a flex shaft and a torch enameling kit from Barbara Lewis.  She is having a give away drawing for one of her new DVD's on torch fired enamel.  If you have ever been interested you should check it out here: http://www.paintingwithfireartwear.blogspot.com

Summer Reverie

I know.  It's been a summer and I finally emerge....just a little bit.   I stepped back and took some time to do what my soul requested.  I listened and was rewarded with reverie and new skills, and renewed connections and insights.  The last day of summer holiday looked like this, because I finally sat down and breathed in the late summer light.


Today, I discovered soul food that moved me so much I needed to share right now.  I found it on the most excellent blog, Brain Pickings.  Natalie Merchant, an enchantress to be sure, researched Victorian poets and set some of their words to music.
This is a performance she did for another most excellent web site, TED talks.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/natalie_merchant_sings_old_poems_to_life.html

She Flew on Wings of Steel

And a view of some of my new pieces that come from the work I did in Keith LoBue's Steeling Beauty workshop in Artful Gatherings.  The best on line workshop I have ever experienced.

My monogram in forged steel or The Dancing Woman

John Frame and My Bohemian Soul

Saturday I was privileged to experience the John Frame exhibit at the Portland Art Museum.  I was profoundly affected by it, an affect that has continued, non stop, to work it's magic on me.  His work is art in it's truest sense and it is profoundly altering my thinking about how I want to approach my own work.  I am humbled and inspired.  Some of his story can be found on a series of videos on You Tube.  I just want you all to know this creation exists in the world.  Now I want to go back to pondering it's magic...and how it is changing the way I see my own pieces.  Something that must be completely obvious to formally trained artists or makers, but I have come so slowly to realize on my own, is that I need to show you who I am.  When I look at the work of other artists, I want to understand who they are.  John Frame has changed my viewing lens from a critique of the piece itself to experiencing the unique being expressed in that piece.

Summer Talisman of a WomanWith a Bohemian Soul and a Love of Collecting Interesting Bits of Texture and Color

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

It's the beginning of strawberry rhubarb season and I took time out from all the things that usually get most of my attention to bake my man, aka The Garden Gnome, a birthday pie. With the left over strawberries and rhubarb, I made a compote that he likes to mix with yogurt.  It was deeply satisfying to make something in time with the season, for my beloved, from a family recipe that connects me to a line of ritual that brings soul to our kitchen.  I want to create more time for this. Time to bring soulful experiences into our life.  Making something in season from a recipe with a meaningful history is on my list.

Emerging Spring

Creeping Jenny and Violets

As much as I love weather with personality, and colder ocean colored days, every cell of my body is yearning for some warm light on my skin and colors to emerge in the garden from the damp mud.  This weekend we have been gifted with the most glorious days and the sentiment it inspires, "Another Day in Paradise".  Because the sun is long in coming here, we Oregonians lift up, smile, dance, go outside and greet each other with that joyous look on our faces we all understand. We are recharged with joy.  I got out early and took a few pictures of the spring colors growing fat in my garden.


I am loving the eccentric garden path wall my man, otherwise known as The Garden Gnome, is building.  All of his stone walls have spines and sensual protrusions scattered throughout.  We both have stone lust.  It's a good thing.


Now, to the studio or to the garden? 

Gouguin Emerging - Tree Peony

Tangerine Tulips and Ajuga

Affirmation Talismans

Kelly's Affirmation Talisman

Sophie wanted something really special for her friends and inspired by my celtic bells, asked if I would create Affirmation Talismans for them.  Kelly's birthday was coming up so I made hers first.  Sophie described her and shared qualities she loved in her friend.  I could picture her easily in my mind.  I began to visualize colors, textures, symbols, lines, with her in mind.  I made sketches and listed the stones that carry the attributes I thought would affirm those beautiful qualities Sophie treasured in her.  And then the making began.

Sue's Affirmation Talisman

Sue's essence also formed easily in my mind from Sophie's description.  After sketching, musing, and finally making all the pieces that would form her talisman it was completed.

I loved creating something meaningful and powerful, unique to that particular person and what they may want to express in their life.  Soul work.

An Invitation to Warm Away the Winter Chill

I was very excited when I discovered our new cafe in Oregon City several years ago. You could tell the moment you walked in that it had been created by people with a vision and a passion.  Over the years, the Yates family has made it a place that pulls you in because of it's soulfulness.  The walls open to the sidewalk when the weather warms and the furniture is cozy and vintage.  Phil has been experimenting with vertical gardening and made the walls inside and out a paradise.  Out back is their garden where the compostable waste from the cafe kitchen is recycled into edible beauty.  Sitting in the midst of all this artful creation with a latte and a pastry is so west coast urban charm.  A couple of years ago they added a place for artists to have their studios and this year Karen Grondin opened her gallery and frame studio in it's midst.  It was my dream to be a part of this space, this community.  Because dreams do come true, Karen has invited me to show some of my work in her gallery.  I welcome you to come visit and let the magic of this place warm away the winter chill. 

http://singerhill.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grapevine-Graphics-Picture-Framing-LLC/118967241524014

Soul, Biology and the Symphony

This weekend I experienced one of the finest, critically acclaimed symphonies and symphonic choirs in the United States, the Oregon Symphony, directed by Carlos Kalmar. OrSymphony.org .  This was a rehearsal performance which allows you to enjoy the relaxed interplay of the performers and learn about how subtle changes in how a piece is played can dramatically change the "color" or experience of what you hear.  It was amazing, and soul filling and something I am still experiencing with joy as I replay the event in my mind.  They played the exquisite Haydn's Creation featuring the lovely soprano, Christine Brandes.

This is not the performance I experienced; it is another performance of Haydn's Creation

As I looked around at the audience I saw a homogenous group of elders.  There was no mix of generations enjoying this amazing cultural event.  Our symphonies and ballets, our museums are struggling to stay viable as our public funding goes to corporate tax breaks and the pentagon, and the middle class income is stretched to cover even basic living expenses.  Our public schools have had to eliminate music and art programs so our children learn less of the art and literature that is their cultural heritage.

When I was young my mother took me to the ballet and I experienced a thrill in my soul like I had never before.  On sweet rainy afternoons she and I would sit together on the couch and listen to classical recordings of Sibelieus and Beethoven and The Grand Canyon Suite.  Did I love the symphony yesterday because I have sweet memories of these cultural experiences?  Is my love of this music because my mother exposed me to this kind of soul food when I was young?  What will happen if, as a result of diminished public funding of the arts and art classes in public education  all but the most privileged of our children are prevented from experiencing and understanding the deep beauty of their cultural heritage? What will happen if our public museums and libraries close their doors for lack of funding?

So, thinking about this flips me into all the reading I've been doing about brain development.  I know... sadly, this is how my brain works.  I've been warned that if I use the phrase "brain development" I risk a quick click away from my story by my readers.  But really, doesn't the idea that the structure of your brain changes with your experiences just rivet you?  And isn't it so fascinating to know that your mind records patterns of repeated experiences as important and worthy of hard wiring into the brain structure?  And don't you want to know that the neural pathways that are no longer activated by your experiences will chemically wash away to be recycled into new pathways?  In other words, "Use it or lose it"?  If on a grand scale, culture works in the same way, will we lose the things that deepen our human experience if we allow corporate media to dominate our cultural experience?  What kind of a mind will our modern culture create?

Creating Your Own Reality

Sometimes the prevailing reality hocked by our culture doesn't appeal to me much.  I like to alter it a bit to suit my own sensibilities.  My altered reality looks more like this video which has been around for a while but I like coming back to it and being reminded after touching in to something like the "news":

Stones Understand the Language of Affirmation

I do believe, because of my experience and what has been said by many others, that if you hold a thought as true in your mind, that thought operates on your life as true.  Like an affirmation you hold in your mind and revisit to strengthen it's power in your life.  For longer than we have memory stones have been used as a vehicle for this kind of manifestation. The attributes of stones have been affirmed over centuries in many cultures and therefore have a special power for those who are attuned to them.  Their power lies not only in their history, but also in their beauty and their affect on our physical body.  If you hold a stone  warm on your skin, if you open yourself to the full experience of it, if you name it's power for you,  you can feel it vibrating within you.  You can feel your affirmation more clearly in your mind.  It becomes a talisman for your desire.

Working with stones in my studio, I like to think I am a new part of a tradition of makers creating amulets and talismans that can be used to affirm our desires for strength, or grace, or clarity, protection and grounding, any attribute that supports our ideals and our highest good.  Even if someone has no interest in amulets and talismans,  my hope is that they will feel the charm of wearing a piece handmade in this way.

 When I create for someone I know, as I did with these earrings, I hold them in my mind's eye and the creating becomes a kind of prayer specifically for them. I made the ear wire from 14 karat gold filled wire in the shape of a small shell for her dainty ear lobes.  Thinking about her work in helping others I chose my favorite citrine nuggets for the end drops and their attribute of dissipating negative energy allowing for the clarification of problems and solutions.  The smokey quartz used as the anchor adds another layer of protection and grounding.

Finally, for the joy of beauty, I added a golden disc of brass I have etched with my favorite leafy swirl and layered with a patina of alcohol inks.  Instead of capping the citrines with the discs, I turned the discs up into cups for receiving good things.  I hope she experiences all that is intended when she wears them..and if she believes it to be so, it shall.