[L, diary, ephēmeris] 1) BLOG

For a long time I have resisted and discouraged anyone from copying someone else's artwork.  Not only because it is illegal (if financially profiting without attributation) but because I thought it inhibited creativity. That it stalled imagination, made it 'safe' to draw acceptable art that drew praise. 

I have changed my mind. 

When a friend forwarded a link to Suzanne Ens' website...

...I discovered a multi-gifted artist, delightful art, and an opportunity that our Saturday Art students could learn a great deal from.

Here's the video to prove it:

...and please follow Suzanne's link to see astonishingly affordable art on her website?  You won't be disappointed.

Inspired, again, by another FASO artist! 

This time by Dianna Cates Dunn's magical painting, Moon Dream:

In the midst of composing a 'Love' comment, I had to stop writing. The memories of creating a deeply personal soft-sculpture, crafted more than twenty years ago, were spilling over as I wrote:

Yes...dreamy...am lingering from moon to orb to bigger orbs and back again.... jewel-like...glittering beads...like the beads on a small bag made to carry a friend's jewelry to the wedding of her only surviving son....

...I had to stop, had to find those photos of the jewelry tote that echoed Dianna's moon:

My moon is not as glittery as Dianna's as I'd remembered, but the dreamy quality is the same.  Maybe even more so.  The emotional connections still strong. I had not been confident about giving this gift to someone who kept her inner life private. I was afraid to ask permission from her, afraid to bring up painful memories of her young son lost to cancer. So I asked her husband, but even he was unsure how she'd react. 

It was impossible not to imagine the emotions any mother would have, silently aware of the absence of a son in the wedding ceremony. 

So, I began sewing, trusting in the comfort carried in small totems; tangible symbols of Invisibles.

...surely the tiny effigy seated companionably on a bejeweled-satin moon would share his brother's special day, too?

Art heals.  Connects.  Makes visible the invisible; it hears the silent words of wounded hearts. 

Much distance and many years have since separated the friendship we once had, but recently a brief email arrived with a photo of the little tote providing a loving bridge where we could meet in the middle and share again, for a few moments, a significantly rich memories for both of us.

"Briefly, I now have two of the most wonderful books, written by Marie Popova. One is called THE VELOCITY OF BEING, Letters to Young Readers. Here is a drawing discovered after class, influenced by this book:

The literary part of the book is a little above the kids but so gorgeously illustrated they are continually drawn to it, responding to the stories within the letters as best they can.  With almost non-exisistant English, Chay Chay had no idea what the letter says about the power of reading, but the illustration reached him, motivated him, and I had the private joy of discovering his path in the casual clutter left behind at the end of the day.

    

What delights me most is that I can find a match for every one of his illustrations except the figure at the top of his copied ladder and moon...I think he has marvelously inserted himself in it.     What do you think?"

 

Later, this email was edited into a larger post but the kids continue to surprise me with private examples of the book's continuing influence.  Last week, this was discovered in Resty Joy's drawing book:

There's a funny story about my not realizing she'd copied/edited it from Popova's book.  I'd taken it seriously, as if SHE were the one who'd discovered the described note in her drawing, had found it inside one of OUR books, so I was almost frenzied searching through the bookcase seeking a book old and worn enough to be the one...until she produced Popova's  Velocity of Being.  Here's the page that inspired her:

Confession Time:  Lately, I've been feeling emotionally unable to effectively continue holding Saturday Art with the kids, as well as having the energy to maintain this website. I was about to pull the plug on both.

The last four months of full focus on hauling PILAR, the re-stepping of her masts, re-rigging them, too, has been intense; ultimately rewarding but depleting on several levels. So, while my boat's needs were being met, the kid's needs were not. That morning, I'd gotten frustrated and disgusted with Resty Joy's lack of interest in an, admittedly hasty ('busy-work') word game, given to the others.  Later, after my bad attitude towards hers, but prior to being suddenly allowed to see what she'd been working on, I'd seen her sitting alone in the far corner of the room, hunched over her drawing book with a large and droopy pillow on her head, and knew I was failing.  Time to quit.

Everything changed when she freely brought me her book to show what she'd been working on.  This, from a child who hates having her photograph taken, who routinely speaks so low she cannot be heard then says, 'Never-mind' when asked to repeat what she'd said, and routinely answers, 'I don't know,' to any inquiry for a personal preference...though she does know because she's extraordinarily bright when it sneaks out of her.  No wonder I'd thought that the lonely letter found in the artwork story of a library book, asking someone to write to the author, had inflamed my own guilt for earlier being dismissive towards her!

Sometimes the way she designs her art work, or asks a difficult question, or repeatedly watches one special video of a Israeli/Palistinian Women's Peace March, I am filled with awe. Humbled. 

Saturday, it was clear that it is not for me to judge how much or how fast what I have to offer bears fruit.  Selfishly, it bears fruit in ME, so I will continue to provide a Saturday place of exposure to exploration for the children to visit.  And, I will continue to post what we do there...in all it's gloriously messy humanity. 

In that, Maria Popova guides me, again:

 

"Looking back on the most important things I have learned about life, I keep returning to a central paradox of our culture: We know that the flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst, yet we crave stories of overnight success and spontaneous self-actualization, disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming, in the incremental ripening by which we become who we are, the innumerable tiny choices, the imperceptibly small steps by which we pave the path to our own destiny in the very act of walking it. We are each a continuous becoming, our future a rosary of presents strung along the strand of presence — presence with the smallest corpuscles of existence: the smell of a neighbor’s curry slipping through the window cracked in midwinter, the atlas of wrinkles on the hands of the cashier scanning the box of strawberries at the grocery store. Sensing, noticing — the raw materials of presence, and thus the elemental stardust of our becoming."

Self.  Other.  A Work of Art.

These were the last three words for a thirty-one day photo challenge, completed last February 9th of this year, nine months ago today, as I write.  Though there were three words for three days, only two photos were produced, each created from photographs originally taken by other photographers.

For the first two of these three daily words, an exuberant portrait (taken twenty-seven years ago by George Hyklema) was cut apart, rearranged, one-half was edited as sepia to visually emphasize a literal meaning of Self & Other. Separation. Two, not one. Which, especially when two are strongly entwined in a relationship, always remains a reality, but poignantly even more so when bereaved of the other.

Day 29/ SELF             -             Day 30/ OTHER

The photo for the last assignment in the 31 Day Photo Challenge, A Work Of Art, was taken by a National Geography photographer. Admired for the warmth and humanity it radiated, it was cut from a magazine and framed more than thirty-five years ago. It has been hanging on the bulkhead of PILAR's sleeping cabin for most of those years; the husband's large hand, gentle around his wife's shoulder, his wife's good humor reflecting long years of companionship, toil and joy, daily serving as inspiration for an equally satisfying marriage.

Day 31/ A WORK OF ART

During the time of the Challenge, I wrote daily of the process, printing small copies of the photographs to paste into my journal.  Here is what was written on Day 31:

(0530hrs) Friday, February 9, 2018 -

     Hard to stop looking at the last page, the last photos of the 31 Days...the three together are their own work of art.  I wonder how many (if any) will understand the symbolism.  See the effort put into them to present--fulfill--the words of each challenge.

     Originally, I'd wanted to reduce the opacity of Bill's photo when I saw that sepia alone still dominated as much as the vibrant colors of Self. How true that still is, isn't it? His presence has barely faded since his death.  Which is what I'd hoped to convey by the sepia. Ironic that Other and Self remain equally strong, past or present, whether in metaphor (sepia) or life's vivid color.

     Finally leaving it as it was, not taking the 'learning curve' time to alter the image in Photoshop was an artistic decision as well as practical.  The challenge was SELF/OTHER, not grief.  Widowhood.

     But what I love about the synchronicity of Day 31's Challenge is the message of togetherness.  Marriage.  Not separation of self and other.  A good marriage is a true work of art.

In conclusion:

     ...regretfully the 31 Days of photo-focus has ended--but not really.  Only that specific format. The structure. I take photos almost everyday, focusing on life around me, PILAR, the garden, the activities at the house...

     The enforced structure of the specific words was educational. It pushed, forced a deeper level of thought.  Not just in choosing a subject but in composition and production.  It was HARD to light that last photo!  I didn't think I was going to be able to do it--the light was so dim, the glare on the matte glass dulling the faces behind it.  A flashlight cleverly propped on the bed solved the problem.

     Almost didn't think I could make the 31 day commitment, either.  It took a LOT of time away from work on PILAR's needs.  But it did bring enormous satisfaction.  Enough so that I'm considering using a list of my own words...all the ones beginning with 'TRANS' that I'd collected when hoping to make collaborative art with...someone.

   But NOT every day!

"Stubbornly writing the story of our own finitude and impermanence,

is our only true homecoming to wholeness..."

--Maria Popova, paraphrasing Patti Smith--

Last week's Midweek Special, a post celebrating twelve years of brilliant writing from Maria Popova, was particularly inspiring so I wish to introduce her to those who may not yet have had the rewarding experience.

     "Because I believe that our becoming, like the synthesis of meaning itself, is an ongoing and dynamic process, I’ve been reluctant to stultify it and flatten its ongoing expansiveness in static opinions and fixed personal tenets of living. But I do find myself continually discovering, then returning to, certain core values. While they may be refined and enriched in the act of living, their elemental substance remains a center of gravity for what I experience as myself.

     I first set down some of these core beliefs, written largely as notes to myself that may or may not be useful to others, when Brain Pickings turned seven (which kindred spirits later adapted into a beautiful poster inspired by the aesthetic of vintage children’s books and a cinematic short film). I expanded upon them to mark year nine. Today, as I round the first decade of Brain Pickings, I feel half-compelled, half-obliged to add a tenth learning, a sort of crowning credo drawn from a constellation of life-earned beliefs I distilled in a commencement address I delivered in the spring of 2016."

Click Here to read all ten in the order that they were written, prefaced by her personal story and then closing with a list to her favorite posts, inspired by those she most loved reading and writing about in her first decade of Brain Pickings.  The list is so meaty that it is difficult to select a favorite, but here's mine, from year nine:

1. Seek out what magnifies your spirit. Patti Smith, in discussing William Blake and her creative influences, talks about writers and artists who magnified her spirit — it’s a beautiful phrase and a beautiful notion. Who are the people, ideas, and books that magnify your spirit? Find them, hold on to them, and visit them often. Use them not only as a remedy once spiritual malaise has already infected your vitality but as a vaccine administered while you are healthy to protect your radiance.

Popova and her linked selection of authors and artists will magnify your spirit. 

 “What you produce is not necessarily always sacred…what IS sacred is the time you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, BIG MAGIC, Creative Living Beyond Fear

Last February of this year, I began writing a post that languished unfinished until recent prods from numerous sources, old & new books, pod casts and personal doubts about effectiveness, have finally prompted a return to discussing the art of valuing creativity in our everyday lives.  I'd written:

       "Yesterday I scheduled an afternoon of editing a manuscript with a local woman who, every Saturday for the past fourteen years, has cleaned and done laundry for me.  This morning, before I'd read Clint's post, The Origin Story,  from his example of George Morton's conviction,"...beauty can emanate from darkness as well as light." I'd filled numerous journal pages echoing his thoughts as they concerned the life-story Ludy  has been composing very Saturday afternoon. I concluded: But it can shine from the in-between, as well. Perhaps, even more poignantly?

Comparisons between Morton's life and Ludy's, the access to opportunities he had despite an equally poor start in life., pained me.  Ludy's output was that of an aging wife and mother, sixty-plus years of life in a rural village of native bamboo and Nipa-roofed homes, where her natural talent for storytelling was hindered but not diminished by a severe lack of exposure to any literature or even the paper/paper/time to write them. Ludy's output and level of skill was nil until she began participating in the One Candle Schoolhouse activities, and pitifully little, since.  What she has written, and had published, would be barely glanced or tolerated by most.  No possibility of competing for recognition, and yet....she deserves it.

Why? Because life for all of us will be enriched when we can re-frame our references for recognizing art we unconsciously express within daily lives. Below are a few supporting quotes that encourage me when I begin to question the worth of my own efforts:

BIG MAGIC, Creative Living Beyond Fear

                     by Elizabeth Gilbert

(pg.108) …after a certain age, no matter how you’ve been spending your time, you have very likely earned a doctorate in living…we need you to reveal to us what you know, what you have learned, what you have seen and felt…you already possess absolutely everything you need to possess in order to live a more creative life—except the confidence…but we need you…need your work in order to enrich and inform our own lives…you are already creatively legitimate by nature of your mere existence here among us.”

(pg.202) “…our ancestors always operated with a sense of being in a reciprocal emotional relationship with their physical surroundings.  Whether they felt that they were being rewarded by Mother Nature or punished by her, at least they were engaged in a constant CONVERSATION with her.”

DANCING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD,

                      by Ursula K. LeGuin

(pg.186) … discussing a book she wrote about a non-existent tribe, the Kesh:

"Most Kesh poetry was occasional--the highest form, according to Goethe--and much of it was made by what we call amateurs, people doing poetry as a common skill, the way people do sewing or cooking, as an ordinary and essential part of being alive. The quality of such poetry sewing, and cooking of course varies enormously. We have been taught that only poetry of extremely high quality is poetry at all; that poetry is a big deal, and you have to be a pro to write it or in fact, to read it.  This is what keeps a few poets and many, many English departments alive.  That's fine, but I was after something else:  the poem not as fancy pastry but as bread; the poem not as masterpiece but as life-work."

BIG MAGIC, Creative Living Beyond Fear

                     by Elizabeth Gilbert

(pg.219)  “There’s a hole in our world from all the art people did not make—there’s a hole in US from the loss of their work—and I cannot imagine that was ever anyone’s divine plan.”

 

(pg.259) “You were born to create, regardless of the outcome.  You will never lose trust in the creative process, even when you don’t understand the outcome.”

(pg.263) “…hold your head high. You made it; you get to put it out there.  Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given. You were invited and you showed up, and you simply cannot do more than that.”

THE PEOPLE I LOVE THE BEST (last paragraph)

                    Poem by Marge Piercy

"What you produce is not always sacred...What is sacred is the time you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life."

 

The above quote came from the book my niece, Alison, recently sent to me:  

BIG MAGIC, Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert. 

 

When I read it, I immediately put down the book and opened the laptop in order to make a quick post of it to my home page, which I've begun using somewhat like one of the social media platforms I don't know much about, other than they are quickie ways to connect.

 

I have not used any of them because I'm not very good at quickie anything.  Generally, I have to labor to unearth what it is I want to say or accomplish; the lasting effects of a perfectionist mother impatient with young children's learning curves. Sigh.

 

However, ingrained ways can be modified, I'm happy to report, which is why I responded so strongly to Gilbert's observation about being creative...it is exactly what I persist in conveying every Saturday with whomever joins us for the afternoons of discovering our collectively innate creativity.

 

It is exactly what gave me the courage to post something further to this site's navigation bar category, SATURDAY ART. 

 

When I'd set up the new format, several months ago, I'd had my biggest hopes for showcasing the truly delightful artworks being produced by children and adults who swore they had no abilities for art.  But then the sheer variety of what we were doing overwhelmed me...I wanted to make short videos rather than still photos, wanted readers to feel they were participating, too...but all that took time to do right, and DOING IT RIGHT (NOW!) became a taskmaster I couldn't face.

 

So let me say right now that I'm determined to not let that old buggaboo--needing to be PERFECT--keep me from practicing what I preach to the others:  it's okay to not be perfectly skilled--ever. 

 

It's GOOD to make imperfect things because that's how we learn and grow and make our lives happier and more rewarding. 

 

Maybe not perfect, but as deeply rewarding as if it were. 

 

And who's to decide Chay Chay's little sculpture isn't perfect?

 

 

 

INSIDE & OUTSIDE

Day 8's challenge, INSIDE, was the first time I realized I could combine two days into one:

"The sensitive vibrating string oscillates and results for a long time after one has plucked it.  It’s this oscillation, this sort of inevitable resonance, that holds the present object, while our understanding is busy with the quality which is appropriate to it…vibrating strings have yet another property—to make other strings quiver. And thus the first idea recalls a second, and those two a third, then all three a fourth, and so it goes, without our being able to set a limit the ideas that are aroused and linked in a philosopher who meditates or listens to himself in darkness and silence."

GETTING IN THE GROOVE -edited by Sally Davies

I thought I was very clever to take a photo of a hand-painted plate of an outside (Day 9), waterfront cafe scene, hanging inside (Day 8) on the cabinside of a boat. It quickly disposed of two days' challenges.  Plus, I loved the intricate harmony of multiple perspectives it offered.

And, just  like the vibrating strings of musical resonance, a quivering which arouses further harmonies, the sudden recognition of there being a porthole alongside the plate with it's own view of outside from inside...well, oh MY!

But what a challenge THAT was to capture.  The exposures needed for the inside plate caused over-exposure to the scene through the porthole, while a correct exposure for the sunlit yacht outside then underexposed everything inside PILAR.  Obviously, Photoshop was needed to combine the two.  Which then began a time-consuming nightmare of having to recall how to use the software from the dim recesses of what's left of my brain.  Too clever for my own good, wasn't I?

But it worked.  Eventually.  Not perfectly, the yacht through the porthole was still over-exposed, but then--this was just an exercise to stretch one's self. Next time, and then the next time after that, and so on...it would improve.  It was/is so wonderful to feel the hesitant baby steps of developing skills begin to have direction, strength, and joyful (even if possibly premature) confidence.

BEHOLD the not very glamorous sight of a yacht's companionway ladder! 

This is PIILAR's ladder and further views and information about the building and restoration of her is beginning to happen HERE, in this website. 

I had wanted to take an easy escape from having to write anything lengthy (while still profound, of course) by quoting from Todd Walton's post, LITTLE BIT OF TALENT, or, as I think of it:  EVERYBODY HAS TALENT. However, though Todd's blog post reverberates with my own beliefs (Mirror Neurons?), his view has a differently focused message to impart.  His is truly the best introduction to what we both believe--

• that the joy of being creative is an innate gift we all possess

• that we need to celebrate ourselves, our talents, and relish the freedom to express them without dismissive comparisons from ourselves or anyone else. 

Todd's way of introducing these concepts is to make it fun!  Easy.  Non-competitive.  Egalitarian. His post asks, midway, How do you like the concept so far?  responding himself, I LOVE IT--and so do I!  If we could all participate in his game show, we'd have begun the process of loosening the barriers we have that keep the world in turmoil.  This is the first step in how we become better people, live better lives. Keeping things simple and accepting, we can then learn that trusting ourselves to make mistakes is the only way to do anything better the next time. 

• No infant runs a marathon with their first step. 

• No individual is born knowing how to speak any language fluently, read comprehensively, write imaginatively. 

We stumble and sputter and blush and cry with disappointment when we are shamed by our failures to replicate an arbitrary social standard of perfection. But with each crude pencil sketch or clay ashtray, every deviated recipe, choice of clothing, selection and display of home furnishings, we explore who we really are, not who others have said we are (or want us to be).  We learn what has true value for us by not letting fear of failure or feeling foolish stop us.  We then begin to illustrate those values with the symbols of them that we surround ourselves with.  Me?  I love living on the water, on boats because they are so fluid and so challenging to one's sense of capability.  Survivability.

However, to some on boats who see my no longer interested in cruising, the desire to simply continue living aboard a sailboat home has a reduced stature.  No longer a sailor but a landlubberly houseboater. Sigh.

It's tough, not fitting in with the assumed correct way to draw, paint, or sculpt, design and decorate, wear or build.  Live.  It's more comforting to feel part of a community of like-minded people.  We need companionship, in varying degrees and forms.  Finding acceptance and the resulting transformative growth that happens within a community is everyone's natural right.  But 'One Size' CANNOT fit all.  Waste of time to try.

My cousin Vickie once said she dreamed of living in a house where  everything in it was something she had made.  I've never forgotten that inspiring vision of hers, and try to emulate and encourage others in, if not the same goal, their own version of such an ideal.

So there's the photo of PILAR's companionway ladder being refinished after many years of practical and spiritual pleasure, with many more future years ahead.  The ladder is just one of many personalized aspects of PILAR that I am looking forward to showcasing in this website.  Everything about the ladder was the result of trial and error education, fueled by a simple love of trying to figure out how to express a feeling of beauty, inside, into a functional application externally.