They Say It's Your Birthday!

Today we celebrate our arrival at a full year on "The Journey." What a great year it has been. Yes! Yes! If you weren't here with us, you can check out where we began.

Sunrise on October 28, 2011
 A fresh new day in a fresh new year of art and journaling

Technically the journey started about ten years ago when I realized with great certainty that a change was required. That something important and necessary on the road to fulfillment had been left behind, that I'd been languishing on the wrong path.


By the time 2010 was halfway through, and many false starts abandoned, we reached the point of heeding advise from a fellow traveler on the creative quest: quit waiting for "retirement" to begin studying and making art, do it now! And so, I discovered my first online class, a very beginning exercise in color theory. There was very little interaction with fellow students or the instructor, a well know and talented quilt artist who paints whole cloth quilts, but still and all there was paint on paper, a fine text to reference, some "aha" moments, and a first step down the road.


Just in time for this new resolve, a brand new mixed media retreat was fashioned and brought to Chicago, "Create" by the magazine, "Cloth, Paper, Scissors." Knowing nothing of visual journals or mixed media, I was drawn to attend by the promise of something different than a quilt show, and the perky personality and designs of crossover artist, Melanie Testa, I signed up for a full day class in visual journaling. This was my breakthrough. I felt an instant connection and camaraderie with Melly and the type of art she did. I could understand how all my years of textile art experience could only be enhanced by learning to draw and express my own visions on paper first.

Pokey Bolton captured this photo of me making my first ever mixed media journal page in Melly's class. I later discovered I was the "poster girl" for the registration page for a number of Create retreats.

Melly offered her help as mentor to my next step in the process: using the blogging world to find my community and record my journey. Her ready assistance and support made it possible for me to begin attending a stream of online drawing and design classes in both textiles and mixed media, while starting this diary to chronicle the trip. It has been not only a way to reach out to others, but an invaluable reference tool for myself: to see how far I've come.

My earliest and most favorite drawing and painting explorations have been with my furry friends as inspiration.

So what has this year of blogging and art brought forth?

 A record of my travels so far.

 An appreciation for my own abilities (a bit of the self love I was lacking.) 

Expanding the skills to record what I see, create and share a story (visually and verbally), connect with strangers and through that connection become friends.

A link with the broader world of creativity and exposure to new artists and ideas every day.

Connections with lovely people from all corners of the world, from the next town over to places like Australia, Finland and Tunisia.

My growing stack of journals and sketchbooks, including handmade storage boxes and folders.

Some statistics will wrap up the activity of my year--

The blog by the numbers:

32 blog posts hit over 7700 times

65 public followers

A visual record on flikr:

a photostream with 23 sets, 297 images, and over 19,000 page views

The formal study of art and design:

at least 20 classes and workshops with 8 different artists

The media in which I record my art:

8 different journals/sketchbooks started

2 recycled paper storybooks created

2 collections of small watercolor paintings (totaling 32 pcs.)

2 boxes, 1 folder, and 1 journal cover from painted canvas 

2 lutrador hippo themed story books

Some of my favorite projects have involved drawing in my handmade journals and books.

 Textile art:


3 machine technique quilts (in progress)


3 embroidered panels (ongoing)


4 mixed media pieces (ongoing)


9 hand technique textile panels (woven-based, embroidered and quilted) (two completed and sewn to jackets)

My most recent painting, using a never-ending inspiration: my garden.

Looking back on all this mountain of productivity has both amazed and delighted me. It has shown what I am capable of, what I want yet to do, and where my next year is likely to go. And yet, if you asked me a year ago where I thought I'd be at this moment, my modest answer would have been that I hoped I'd be able to draw passably well. But life has brough me so much more than that. I wouldn't want to jinx anything by trying to define the future. I'd rather embrace it with anticipation and delight in all its surprises. I'll see you there, my friends!

Love the One You're With

A certain Stephen Stills song has been an anthem in my life lately. Maybe not in the original literal sense, but relating to the need to forget old worn connections that block my path to the life I need to live. Let go the old tired stories, it says to me, the unproductive ties to people and institutions. Truly love the life you have or find a new one.


In my youth (and I consider that period extended until about age 50),  I was an emotional thinker. I dealt with change in my life in a very personal way. I was living under the control of what Eckhardt Tolle calls the "Ego".  If you aren't familiar with his philosophy, this is the part of our personality that saves all the stories of our lives and retells them again and again. Mostly, Tolle believes, this is to our detriment, because the retelling of the past is the very thing that separates us from our true life, here and now. It feeds on the negative emotions and defines boundaries, and builds walls between your true self and others. Its main job is to justify its own existence.


At first it is a scary thought to contemplate not needing the past, but that is not to say we need to forget. What is imperative is learning the skill of living in the moment. Most people will say that of course, they live in the moment, where else could they be? But the reality is that very few actually do. Most people's conversations, if you listen closely, are centered on the past or the future; their bodies, even down to the act of proper deep breathing, are strangers to them. How many people do you know who actually eat and move with conscious awareness of the experience? Even participating in sports in not in the moment if your mind is set on the completion or the win.


 I am coming to believe, that for an artist, presence is really the only way to live. When you are truly in the now, you are in the work at hand. In fact, it is no longer work, just a conduit to something that you are. Sometimes your art will convey a story, sometimes emotion, other times just a quiet connection. This last is for me the state I am most often in these days. 

My first attempt at painting a moving object, my very active kid.  Even completing the portrait involved following him around the house for several sessions.

I have been practicing Tolle's lessons of being present for several years now, and the more time goes on, the more I am enjoying the release from the past.
At first I thought, how can I live without my stories? But the irony was, living in my stories kept me from enjoying the life at hand, the possibilities it held. It is only since I let go of so much that troubled me that I have come to find the mental space for art as a way of life.

The Hippo Journal: with good humor and joy

The Hippo Journal: and other select friends

A  close friend passed on this week. She had battled cancer for several years with grace and dignity and fully engaged in her life until the last few days. That is how I hope to continue with my journey, however long that may be, no regrets for what didn't happen, but always ready for more. My reaction to the news of my friend's passing, and then through the events of honoring and celebrating her life that followed, may have seemed a tad distant or cold to those who continue to live with regrets. I felt an utter calm and acceptance, in my head and in my body. 


Mourning has begun to enter a new sort of understanding for me: I honor the dead by continuing to live. It has become quite clear to me that change is the constant rule of nature, and all loss must be balanced by gain. My job, while I am here, is to be a conduit for life. If I take loss as a personal affront, I might as well be gone myself. I remember well a conversation with a famous quilt artist about her father's 100th birthday celebration to which 100 guests had been invited. I asked if this wondrous crowd were the generations of an especially large family. She assured me that, no, these were mostly his friends, because this was a man who had continued to celebrate his life by making new connections all the time. 

A spring story continues: basic quilting is done, time for embroidering the details

So I am learning not to mourn the broken connections in time and place, the body that by nature, must wear out before the spirit.  While my flame still burns, I'm wearing a smile. I'm seeking connections to other bright flames. I'm putting myself into the painting and the stitching. I'm talking to others to share as best I can my understanding of joy in the moment.

My new Facebook profile picture. A recent shot by my husband seemed to capture it just right (with a little tweaking on my part)

I hope my art, the physical manifestation of this presence with life, may pass on and be an inspiration. But if, (and surely it will be), it is lost to the ages, I won't mind. I did what I was supposed to do. I burned my lamp and lit the darkness for just a moment. I passed on the torch of the human race. I mattered.

A New Paradigm

This week's story caused me a big brain cramp trying to birth it.  It may be because it's more about my messy state of mind than the neat and pretty art I've been up to. Change, which I can't control, versus drawings and designs, which I can. I've interspersed the art for relief when you get tired of the words. Hope you don't get a brain cramp too.

When I was a public school educator back in the eighties, our school administration conducted a serious of lecture/workshops to introduce the faculty to some "new" social terminology (lifted from the field of scientific research): the paradigm. Simply stated, this is any philosophical or theoretical framework widely accepted as the norm. When you embrace the paradigm, you are "in the box." 

The goal was to acknowledge our current habits of reasoning and learning, and  to begin thinking "outside the box." This movement to new social structures is called a "paradigm shift." As I recall, we were instructed that a BIG ONE was happening in society.  The computer was starting to be everywhere, and for that and other reasons, our world was getting smaller.  Now we had to be on board to teach our students  the art of change.

Sketching at the mall with water soluble pen

Soon to be a victim of changing paradigms

At least that's how I recall it. Maybe I was doodling in the margins, and thinking about a guy named Fred, but I swear there were boxes and arrows and all kinds of lists of "what's in" and "what's out" and "what's about to be in and out."

That was about twenty five years ago (I gave up teaching about five years later, for numerous reasons I may talk about another day), and it's all really a blur except for the gut memory of confusion and boredom at these sessions. But in the end, a lot of change has come to pass in the way we think about and live our lives. This considerable shift in social structures has brought about what I believe is a big change in brain function as well. In those days, even with the prevalence of computers and video games, most of my interaction with people in my life was face to face, or at least ear to ear (with extended phone conversation.)  On the days that I couldn't get to my friends, we would talk in endless detail in cohesive phone chats.

Sketching on location: outdoor details (as seem through a window)

Just before the snow melted

Nowadays the phone almost never rings, and "chat" is barely more than instant text exchange. Most of my daily human interaction (outside that old school presence of a live in spouse) is done in tiny tidbits of short isolated postings over the Internet. As much as I love to death all the new people I am meeting and the possibilities of relationships that abound, it no longer has the same intense, messy personal connection of those pre-cyberspace days. I look at the sheer number of humans I talk to daily and then consider how many of them can be there for me in real life. What can be so comforting in theory (unlimited connection), fails to fulfill the real human need for physical proximity, eye contact, touch. "LOL" is definitely not the same as laughing together.

A box made from art to store small art journals

The bottom and inside of the box; a real, not theoretical one

And yet, if it weren't for this new "box,"  I wouldn't be talking to all of you, and I wouldn't be exploring my art which has become, in a very short while, the center of my life. I think I understand there is no going back and I wouldn't want to. So I've decided not to emphasize the negative aspects that come with change, but embrace what's good in it.

My most recent design in Contemporary Woven Boro, called "Blue Moon Heart"

Being aware of the box, I too can think outside. If I can help it, I will have a long connected life. It is far from over, and I intend to continue looking beyond the horizon where the best of the future will be. I'm going to follow that sun.