Secret Doorways

Secret Doorways

collage, 5 1/2 x 5 1/4

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. Daisaku Ikeda
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/doorway.html

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. Daisaku Ikeda
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/doorway.html

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. Daisaku Ikeda
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/doorway.html

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. Daisaku Ikeda
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/doorway.html

“She had always lived her best life in dreams. She knew no greater pleasure than that moment of passage into the other place, when her limbs grew warm and heavy and the sparkling darkness behind her lids became ordered and doors opened; when conscious thought grew owl's wings and talons and became other than conscious.”
~ John Crowley, Little, Big


Doors pop up in my artwork pretty often. As you are no doubt aware, doors and doorways have always been imbued with symbolic meanings, going back to the very beginnings of literature, including the Bible.

 Doors, gateways, or thresholds often symbolize transitions, transformation, passage from one type of reality to another (Dorothy opens the door of her house and steps into a completely different world.), from reality to non-reality, or from being awake to sleeping, and vice versa. They may also stand for entrance or exit, communication, initiation, or opportunity.

 If closed, they can represent mystery, boundaries, and barriers (Will the gates of the Emerald City be opened? At first Dorothy and her friends are told to "go away!")

Often it is the task of the hero of the story to pass through a door or gateway in order to complete their quest (Can Dorothy escape from the room where the Wicked Witch has her imprisoned?).

 When the character in a story stands before a door, they must make a critical choice, to enter/exit or not. Frequently, this is an important turning point which moves the story forward. 

Our everyday speech is full of idioms about doors:

"Off your hinges? You make a better door than a window? Katy, bar the doors! ... we don’t want her shadow to darken the door.

There are so many door idioms. We beat paths to doors, get a foot in the door, see someone to the door, close one door only to have another open, and think fondly of the girl next door." (sloWalker - red Ravine: walk to the bottom)

“There's a difference between fear and paralysis. And I've learned that I don't have to "grow up" to be open to opportunity, to be willing to step through doors without being pushed. I just have to be brave. I just have to be slightly braver than I am scared.”
~ Victoria Schwab

Ephemeral

Often I am struck, and deeply touched, by how willing some people are to share their inner life with their blog readers. When I read posts such as Jude Hill's 'As a child I was very afraid', or Denise of grrl+dog's 'My Dad as a Voodoo Doll', I feel I have been given a gift.  A gift of trust. After all, how could you put yourself out there like that without a great amount of trust that someone would read it with an open mind, without making judgements? How can they trust that anyone is even interested in their most private, personal stories? These people, I think, are very brave.

I often feel that no one wants to know about my real feelings, as if even friends and family members are only thinking of what they want to say next instead of actually listening while I blather on. And this may well be the case. But sometimes I think that maybe I should try to be brave, especially when something happens in my life that makes it hard for me to carry on as normal. The death of someone very dear to me, who has always been there to love and support me since the day I was born, certainly qualifies as one of those events.

Ephemeral

ingredients: vintage book covers, vintage ephemera such as stamps, book pages and handwritten notebook pages, ribbon, lace, vintage game piece, monotype, stitching



I made this piece two days after my grandmother's funeral.  It seems that making art is my way of processing things.

About being brave - I'm not very good at it.


The Summer Day 
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?