In Tara's Garden

In Tara's Garden

9.5 x 15.75 inches

ingredients: vintage book cover, image transfers, acrylic ink, Derwent watercolor pencils, cut-outs, metallic pens, Pitt artist pens, monotype, woodblock prints, found objects, brads

Tara is known primarily as the Tibetan Buddhist bodhisattva (enlightened being) of compassion and action.  According to Wikipedia, "Tārā came to be seen as an expression of the compassion of perfected wisdom... Tārā is also known as a saviouress, as a heavenly deity who hears the cries of beings experiencing misery in sansara (the cycle of suffering, death, and re-birth)."

Tara is one of the earliest known dieties; her origins are not entirely clear, but some scholars believe she may come from pre-Buddhist animist religions in Tibet. She has many different forms or aspects, of which Green Tara is one of the most popular. Green Tara (Khadiravani) is usually associated with protection from fear.

According to wildmind Buddhist meditation, "Green Tara is a forest goddess, and in one story is shown as being clad in leaves. Her Pure Land, in distinction to others that are composed of precious gems, is said to be lush and verdant:

Covered with manifold trees and creepers, resounding with the sound of many birds,
And with murmur of waterfalls, thronged with wild beasts of many kinds;
Many species of flowers grow everywhere.

She is therefore a female form of the "Green Man" figure who is found carved in many European churches and cathedrals, and who is found in the Islamic traditions as the figure Al-Khidr."

Stronger Than You Know

Here is the finished version of the piece I showed in progress in my last post, starting with a couple of details:

Stronger Than You Know              9.25 x 13.5 inches

ingredients:  vintage papers and ephemera; found objects; image transfer; vintage photograph; vintage fabrics and lace; stitching

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.

                                                                                                           ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The Dharma and the Dao

This piece took form very organically, though it probably doesn't look like it. I had this figure from an earlier work that had just never worked out, and I really didn't think it was likely that I'd ever find a use for him. I copied him from an ancient Chinese or Tibetan medical drawing (minus a bunch of the tiny pathways), showing the pathways of energy movement through the body. Apparently they saw the human energy/astral body as having only five chakras at that time; I represented 4 of these as flowers and one as a butterfly. (Later I added the crown chakra in the form of a stitched 'star'.)

 Anyway, I had cut out the eastern hemisphere from a vintage atlas and ended up not using it on the previous piece; somehow they ended up together, and I thought, well, maybe... Then I remembered the moon I had cut out for something else. They looked alright together on the ledger cover I had just taken apart, but it was pretty boring., and seemed too large for the narrow cover. I then played around with the idea of placing the ledger cover on top of a larger one, but the only one that was really large enough was, well - a LOT larger.

Now I had the opposite problem - what to do with all that empty space. I decided that since the design was very centered and simple, it might be best to stick with that, and also to continue with the circle motif. Oddly enough, I immediately opened one of my map drawers and found this beautiful semi-circular piece of a star map that was just the right size.  When that happens, I figure I've got to go with it; I cut out a piece of  a topographical map the same size for the other side.

Whenever I see a design that's very balanced and symmetrical, I think of yin and yang, and the dao.  With this piece, I began to see the left side, which is marked off in regular and specific increments, as the more civilized, regimented part, associated with learning to do things a certain way.  The right side became for me the side of nature, unpredictable and meandering, like the rivers I stitched. So the left side was the dharma - the Buddhist teachings, while I have always connected Daoism with nature. I have always seen Buddhism and Daoism as being quite compatable, and many of their philosophies seem to overlap.  One idea common to both of them is that everything is connected, part a whole. I wanted to emphasize that humans are part of that whole by having the stitched lines on both sides leading into the circles on the figure.

The edges were empty, so I chose two different types of characters to embellish them with: Tibetan letters with instructional arrows to represent the teachings (dharma), and very early primitive Chinese characters to represent the dao (nature) side. This piece is very logical compared to most of my work, and so I felt the title had to be The Dharma and the Dao.  My other possible choice was Toward the One.  What do you think?




“The Formless Way
We look at it, and do not see it; it is invisible.
We listen to it, and do not hear it; it is inaudible.
We touch it, and do not feel it; it is intangible.
These three elude our inquiries, and hence merge into one.

Not by its rising, is it bright,
nor by its sinking, is it dark.
Infinite and eternal, it cannot be defined.
It returns to nothingness.
This is the form of the formless, being in non-being.
It is nebulous and elusive.

Meet it, and you do not see its beginning.
Follow it, and you do not see its end.
Stay with the ancient Way
in order to master what is present.
Knowing the primeval beginning is the essence of the Way.” 
― Lao Tzu (Daoism)




The Heart Sutra  (Buddhism)

...form does not differ from emptiness;
emptiness does not differ from form.
Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form.
So too are feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness.

Shariputra, all Dharmas are empty of characteristics.
They are not produced, not destroyed, not defiled, not pure;
and they neither increase nor diminish.
Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, cognition, formation, or consciousness;
no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind;
no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch, or Dharmas;
no field of the eyes up to and including no field of mind consciousness;
and no ignorance or ending of ignorance,
up to and including no old age and death or ending of old age and death.
There is no suffering, no accumulating, no extinction, and no Way,
and no understanding and no attaining.

Because nothing is attained,
the Bodhisattva through reliance on Prajna Paramita is unimpeded in his mind.
Because there is no impediment, he is not afraid,
and he leaves distorted dream-thinking far behind.
Ultimately Nirvana!

Essence?

I finished this piece over a month ago, but have had some issues with getting things photographed due to my camera not working and the weather not cooperating (to say the least!). It's hard for me to describe what this piece is about, so I'll just say it's about essence. I was going to title it Between the Veils, but maybe Essence would be a better title.

ingredients: vintage book cover, pages, and spine; image transfer, drawing, collage, stitching, feathers, watercolor pencils



Bone
by Mary Oliver

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something

for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer's head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long

and thought: the soul

might be like this

so hard, so necessary

3.

yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn't see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don't we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts

certainties

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.

Time to Push?

I don't really have much time to read art business books or blog posts, but I try to spend at little a little bit of my rare and cherished free time learning about how to be an artist, as opposed to how to make art.  In truth, it's a pretty boring subject, but one that's important to those of us who aspire to attain even a modest amount of "success"- insert your own definition here - as artists.

So lately, things have begun to pick up a bit, and I have been selling some work, as well as being invited or selected by juries to participate in some fairly important exhibits. Recently, my work has been published in an art 'coffee table' book as well as on a book cover, and I've been notified of a show (possibly solo) coming up this year. So here's the thing: isn't this the time to push?  I mean, now that I've gained some momentum, I feel I should work as hard as possible to take advantage of it.


 Here are a few of the things I'm working on now:

 If you've been reading my blog lately you probably remember my Book of Secrets.  I've laid this one aside for a while to work on other things, while contemplating issues I still haven't found answers for, such as:

 Snakes eyes,...

                                                                                       ... or no snake eyes?
And what about the nagging questions around locks, latches, chains... or what?

Here's another piece in progress:

For this one, I cut some old book covers into panels, and attached an old 'star guide', game piece, puzzle pieces, and monotype scraps. 

I like how it's coming along so far, but my big question is how to attach the panels together.

I was thinking of something like hooking them together with large jump rings, but now I'm not sure.  Sew them onto ropes or cords of some kind, maybe?




  Stay tuned for the next post, because along with the answers to these and other burning questions,

... I'll show you, in depth, what's on my easel! 




 
So, what do you think?  Time to push?

What it's About

One of my favorite art instructors was/is well known for asking us the tough questions.  First and foremost: What is it about?
     "Yes, I see what it is," she'd say, "but what is it about?"  What it is and what it's about are rarely one and the same when it comes to art.  As artists, we want our work to communicate something to the viewer, but a painting of an apple does not necessarily mean to convey the idea, "here's an apple."  Visual art, like a written passage, is not very satisfying if it doesn't require you to make inferences.  Most readers/viewers will tend to feel cheated if the creator of the work hits them over the head with their message, and it's also just not very interesting.

When I showed my latest piece to my family on Christmas day, my son-in-law wanted to know what I was thinking when I made it; he wanted to know what it's about. A legitimate question, but for me, it's not always an easy one to answer.  I mean, I know what it's about, but it's always difficult to put it into words.  After all, if I were good at putting words together, I'd be a writer, not an artist. For me, creating meaning from color and line and form is so much easier. But it's our responsibility, isn't it, to help others interpret what we've created.

Theory of Flight

ingredients: vintage book cover; vintage book pages, ledger page, children's writing paper and book parts; image transfers; vintage stamps; vintage map fragment; found objects; brass wire; acrylic ink; hand stitching; feathers


So here's what I told him :
I was thinking about flight, and how unlikely it seems. Like, how do things fly if they're heavier than air?  I know there is a scientific mechanism, called lift, but really, when you think about it, it just defies common sense.
We talked about how there is a fundamental mystery about it, something we can't really fully understand just by using our senses.  I guess the pulley and those other metal things represent the scientific theory, the causation of something happening, how it affects something else which causes something else to happen... and you have flight.  But really, isn't it a bit like magic? The objects, feathers and drawing could just as easily represent a magic spell as something scientific.

As we discussed this, I felt like he 'got it', and was able to come to a deeper appreciation of the piece, as opposed to just seeing it as something decorative.  And I was wondering what other artists think about this aspect of being creative.  Do you think we should be able to talk about our work, or are the viewers 'on their own' so to speak?  How much do you explain, and how much do you leave to their own interpretation?






p.s. I apologize for the terrible quality of the photo, but I have tried numerous times with a borrowed 'point-and-shoot', and they never come out totally in focus. Anyone know somebody with a used DSLR they want to sell?

Time Management, Forward Momentum, and a Revelation

Since I started working on several pieces at once, I've found my productivity has greatly increased.  This shouldn't come as any great surprise, of course, because it's really just common sense, but I was always afraid that if I had more than two pieces in progress at any one time, I might become scattered and unable to focus my energy on anything long enough to finish any of them. In the last year or two, though, ideas have been coming at me so fast and furiously that I feared I'd lose them altogether if I didn't at least get the pieces started.

Happily, this shift in my working habits has really worked out well, allowing me to work on a piece until I got stuck, then let it rest, ideas percolating quietly while I forged ahead with something else. I don't get bogged down or frustrated with one piece.  I don't obssess. To put it succinctly, I am wasting lots less time than I did previously.

I thought it might be nice to share some of this process by showing you what I was also working on while finishing The Spell is Broken.

Here are three pieces I've been working on.  The tall one standing up behind the book is one that went oddly astray.  It might be due to the fact that I had no real clear plan, but only a nebulous idea of "an old map", which came to me while looking at a foxed and stained vintage book page.  The parts around the perimeter of the piece came together pretty quickly and easily, but the main focus - the map part in the center - did not. I knew I wanted the rivers to be done in embroidery, but had little else in mind.  I fugured something would occur, as it usually does.

 

Nope.  I tried a figure, a dragonfly, maybe 8 or 10 other ideas, but - nope. Anything I could come up with was only overshadowed by the now too detailed (I thought) perimeter.  Everything I tried had to be ripped off, if I had gotten hopeful enough to even glue it down.  So there it sat.

I started working on an idea I'd had for a long time, called Book of Secrets.  Finally I'd been able to find a black book large enough for the project, which had been my major roadblock up to this point.  I cut out the part of the front cover where I inteneded to insert the smaller book cover, and bent some copper sheeting around the edges. Meanwhile, I also did some alteration on the design on the small cover, and found a keyhole escutcheon to put in the center, as well as some locks and things that will go on later.

The hardest part thus far has been attaching the snakeskin; despite copious amounts of acrylic gel medium, I'm not sure how well-secured it is, or how well preserved.  The stitches around the bottom edge are there as much to hold it in place as for decoration. I'm not sure I would reccommend sewing a snakeskin onto a book, but if you do, it would probably be best to split the snakeskin so it's flat instead of tubular.  I'm just sayin'.

One Saturday morning when I got tired of fighting with the snakeskin, I started the piece in the back of the photos.  This one came together pretty smoothly; the thing that slowed it down was just the huge amount of stitching.

Here is the finished piece, entitled Revelation. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I'll be showing you further progress on the other two soon, along with another new one!



What processes, methods, or approaches work best for you in the studio?  I'd love to hear your ideas!

At Last, the Spell is Broken...

Well, that's what I had planned to title it, anyway...

I'm anticipating the inevitable questions here.  Like, "Is she turning into a bird?"  "Is she turning back into a human?"  "What's that weird thing on her head?" "Is someone chasing her?"  "Is she going to fly?"  "Is she falling off the mountain?" "What's the ladder for?"

Why do they always expect me to know this stuff? 

Where Wings Come From

When I was a child, I was not very good at discerning what was real from what wasn't.  My parents often remarked that I had "lots of imagination." In some ways, I suppose it could have been an advantage, as I'm sure it must have been a large part of whatever combination of influences and  natural proclivities ultimately made me choose the life path of an artist.  I would lay awake at night, convinced that there were all sorts of monsters inhabiting my room. After finally exhausting my parents' patience, I knew there was no use calling them for help; grown-up eyes were obviously unable to see these creatures, and they were no doubt bound to tell me to go to sleep, because there was "no such thing" as monsters.  And though I tried very hard to convince myself that my parents were right, the monsters disproved this theory by continuing to appear in my room after dark.

Callanish Stones on All Souls Night

 Chrysalis
 
  

When I was about six, my next door neighbor and so-called 'best friend' revealed to me that I was actually an alien from another planet who had secretly been left here and adopted by Earthlings - the man and woman I now mistakenly regarded as my parents. Soon, she said, my real alien parents would return for me, snatch me from my bed at night, and take me back to my home planet.  Absurd as it seems, I believed her. I did not tell my parents about this - I don't remember why - but I must have driven them crazy with my frequent nightmares and tearful pleas to sleep in their room. I don't know how long it was until I got over this fear, because as we all know, child years and adult years are not at all the same, but it felt like a very long time to me.

Icarus Reborn

I was thinking about all of this today because I have started another piece depicting a person with one wing. It's a theme/motif I've been working with for many years, and is for me a deeply personal symbol of my inner self.  I knew these winged or half-winged figures were emotionally connected to me, but at first I thought they were just a representation of my favorite fairytale, Hans Christian Anderson's "The Wild Swans", which I had read over and over again as a child.

 A wonderful illustration from the story, by Russian illustrator Nadezhda Illarionova.

Here's a short summary, if you don't want to read the whole story, but it basically involves a girl whose 11 brothers have been turned into swans by - who else? - their wicked stepmother.  A fairy tells their sister she can reverse the spell by knitting shirts out of nettles for her brothers, but of course everything goes wrong, and she has to dress them in the shirts before the last one is finished, leaving the youngest brother with one wing instead of an arm.

Book of Dreams, first page spread

At some point, I realized that that, subconsciously, the one-winged figures represented more than an attachment to a favorite storybook character; on some deeper psychological level, I identified with them.  Too bad Carl Jung's not around to figure that one out, I thought. I briefly researched Jung's archetypes, but none of them seem to shed any light on this. Perhaps I unconsciously see myself as  not fully human; it's true that in many ways animals make more sense to me than people do. Some sort of transformational process feels closer to the mark, though; maybe it represents the hope for change, a desire to become something better than I am. Or, could it be that my neighbor's alien theory wasn't so far off after all...? :~)


Anyway, here is the new piece thus far:

No, she doesn't have a wing yet - but stay tuned; I will post any further progress as it happens.

Doors of Perception

 “There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors of perception."
                                                                                               ~ Ray Manzarek of the Doors, 1967

Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory—all these have served, in H. G. Wells’s phrase, as Doors in the Wall. And for private, for everyday use there have always been chemical intoxicants.
                                                                                      Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954

Doors of Perception

ingredients: vintage book covers, vintage book page, vintage used envelope, image transfers, acetate, acrylic ink, watercolor pencils, metallic and nonmetallic artist pens, mica, leaf, found objects, milagros, stitching, glass beads, brads, beads, electrical resisters, vintage key




If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. 
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
                                                                  ~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790




reference: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/17/rock-doors-between/

Stuck in the Middle Again...

I have been steadily working whenever I get a chance.  In the past, there were far too many times when I'd get 'stuck' while working on a piece - just couldn't figure out what to do next to save my life.  I would waste time fighting with it, trying this or that idea, and hating them all.  A good solution, I thought, would be to work on more than one piece at a time, so that I could let one rest while I attended to another, thus lessening the frustration as well as giving it time to percolate in the back of my mind. This also keeps me from wasting time, which is at a premium. I'm sure many of you do this, and it's generally a very good strategy.

However, I have now reached this impasse with 2 pieces at once.  Story of My Life, which I showed you at an earlier stage of unfinished-ness, has come a little further, but then ground to a halt again.

The other one I'm currently working on is this, with the working title Doors of Perception:

The problem with mixed media is that you may not have exactly the right 'thingamajig' or 'whatchamacallit' you need in order to complete the piece to your satisfaction. One thing that helps when doing this type of work is to have a wide variety of materials available. The more stuff you have to choose from, the greater the odds that you'll have the perfect object or material in your studio.  Unless you have so much that you can't find anything, which is a whole other sack of potatoes. The other drawback is that you may be regarded as a hoarder.  My kids are not shy about telling me this; other people are probably thinking it, but are too polite to say so.


So, in the meantime, what do I do? Start on another?  Make pesto?

Instructions

how to assist a person with an anxiety disorder

things we are trying to do all the time: 1. be safe

things we can’t help but do all the time:
1. second-guess ourselves 2. behave impulsively and reactively and defensively

3. take everything personally 4.worry 5.worry 6.worry 7.have difficulty
accepting compliments
8. have difficulty reciprocating friendly gestures 9. have difficulty
finding the courage to respond 10. have difficulty not being
suspicious of others’ intentions 11. make a huge deal out of the
smallest thing
things you should keep in mind:1.we’re scared of everything 2. pretty
much all of the time 3. it’s an actual disorder
4. it manifests as impulsive behavior 5. you can’t fix us with words 
6.telling us “worrying is silly” won’t make us stop worrying

7. it’ll only make us feel silly 8.and then we’ll worry even more
9.“oh god, am i worrying too much? what if she calls me silly
again?”10.like that 11.also, we wear a lot of armor 12.cold,
heavy, affection-proof armor with spikes 13.we constructed this armor
as children
14.we’re fairly certain you will never be able to pry it apart

15.but there is a nice person under there, we promise

 things you can do
for a friend with an anxiety disorder:
1. stick around 2.ask him/her if they’re comfortable in a place or
situation 3.be willing to change the place or situation if not 
4.activities that help them take their mind off of things are good!
5. talk to them even when they might not talk back 6.(they’re probably
too afraid to say the wrong thing )7.try not to take their reactions
(or lack thereof) personally 8.(the ways they express themselves are
distorted and bent because of their constant fear)
9. (and they know this) 10.give them time to respond to you 11.they
will obsess over how they are being interpreted 12.they will anticipate
being judged 13.it took me four hours just to type this much
14. even though i sound casual 15.that’s because i have an anxiety
disorder

things you shouldn’t do:1. tell us not to worry
2. tell us we’ll be fine 3.mistake praise for comfort 4.ask us if we
are “getting help”5. force us to be social 6. force us to do things
that trigger us7.“face your fears” doesn’t always work
8. because—remember—scared of everything9.in fact, it would be more
accurate to say we are scared of the fear itself

emergency action

procedure for panic attacks:
1. be calm2.be patient3. don’t be condescending4. remind us that
we’re not crazy 5.sit with us 6.ask us to tighten and relax our
muscles one by one 7.remind us that we are breathing
8. engage us in a discussion (if we can talk, then we can breathe)9.
if we are having trouble breathing, try getting us to exhale slowly10.
 or breathe through our nose11. or have us put our hands on our
stomach to feel each breath
12.  ask us what needs to change in our environment in order for us to
feel safe13.  help us change it 14.  usually, just knowing that we have
someone on our side willing to fight our scary monsters with us is
enough to calm us down

if You have an anxiety disorder: 1. it’s okay.2.even if you worry that
it’s not okay.3. it’s still okay. it’s okay to be scared. it’s okay to
be scared of being scared.
4. you are not crazy. you are not a freak.5. i know there’s a person
under all that armor.6. and i know you feel isolated because of it.7.
i won’t make you take it off.8. but know that you are not alone.

 

Don't Forget to Breathe

10.5 x 7 inches

ingredients: vintage book pages, image transfers, found objects, vintage dress pattern, vintage ephemera,

 stitching, on vintage book cover

I don't know who wrote the brilliant poem/words above; if you know who the author is, please let me know so that I can credit him/her. 

Message From a Dream - finished

I have completed the last piece I was working on for the "In Your Dreams" exhibit which is coming up in February.

Message From a Dream

 ingredients: vintage book covers, vintage Japanese envelopes, stamps, vintage book pages, image transfers, graphite drawing, watercolor pencils, metallic oil crayon, mica, feather, stitching

I've also revised the two "language of earth" pieces I was working on, thanks to the valuable opinions and advice you all gave me when I was stuck. It really does help to have some fresh eyes on work that you've been staring at for so long that your perspective is all skewed and wonky, don't you think?  I decided to ditch my original idea of connecting these together as one piece, as it seems they will each work better on their own.  If you want to see what these looked like before, click here.

 The Earth Sings

 As someone had suggested, I tried to connect the sections of this piece a bit better so that it's more integrated, and flows better from one section to another. I added brads to the compass, and spread the hydrangea petals from the top left into other sections of the piece; the stitching has been extended into the bottom left part where the globe is.

The Earth Speaks

On this piece, I just added blue stitching to the metal object plus a little more connecting it and the map, as well as to the ash seeds at the top.  I'm actually pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season, and not getting too stressed out.  I will be trying to do the same.