Little dolls find new homes

tomorrow we are going home to London [I exaggerate, we’re visiting, but it still feels like going home!] and so i find myself doing grounding things today, just by kind of automation in a way. It is one of these times when I feel glad that myself knows what to do, and does it, without a big jostling match. It is rare, but good when it happens.
I haven’t been running for ages.. for various reasons, the dips and crannies of living I suppose.

Anyway I ran to the beach this morning, had a swim and ran back, picking up a box of apricots on the way back. I enjoyed that. I need to touch the earth and breath air and space and move and put one foot in front of the other. I did it. It’s grounding. Now I am quickly writing this, a visual mark, to myself. I am in a rush, which helps me actually do things because it quietens the critics a wee bit. Also, I guess, knowing that we are going home lifts my spirits a bit and gives me a bit of soul energy to do this.
so I started off with ‘I need to make my heart’ … and I am making it.
Here it is so far.. it has two sides and I am not sure yet, how I will display it, showing both or one.. we shall see… I am not even sure where it is heading exactly.. but the tassles coming from it, and the stick structure, i like, so far.


Going back to my scapegoat doll, which is hard to explain and still isn’t ‘finished’ as such, the process is turning out to be quite illuminating for me.. I might have to finish this post later.. 

Somehow, I would like to attach the little folk being made, to the heart.
See how it was:



But that was a while ago… the heart has changed.. and two of the little people have followed new life paths and been given away by the heart.
This is what I want to write about. This is the process that feels like the gold in the cracked vessel,  for me at the moment.
Firstly, here is this little dolly

  

On the front is ‘Mama Rosi’ [oops slight little spelling mistake… but ], and on the back ‘Gabriel’.

She made herself, it turns out,  to be given to Rosi, Gabriel’s ‘maestra’ from his ‘Asilo’ where he went for the first 3 years of being in Italy. He finished at the end of June. He called her Mamma Rosi and adored her and she was such a special part of his life [and of mine in a way] because she just cushioned our landing a bit, and took Gabriel under her wing and just had a mindset and outlook that just bridged the chasm between our home in London and this new very different place and culture. I wanted to thank her, in the way that I know best and that is most authentic to me, and I wanted to teach Gabriel about endings and about gratitude and the importance of special people.

So that dolly was for Rosi with love and it gave me a huge amount of joy to give it to her. I feel strongly that giving my art away, art that I love, is also, for me, a kind of vulnerability, and so its good. I guess that’s why this process has been important for me, as part of my scapegoat. To give and receive are two things I find equally difficult and yet something I yearn for because it is connection. Its a big topic! We also wrote a letter thanking Rosi. [I’m trying to work out how to download it from instagram because we forgot to take a photo but Rosi put part of it on instagram!]

I as inspired by both what my cousin and what he has achieved in his life so far, and also by his wife who  totally inspired me on many levels. I wished I had had more time and foresight to pick her brain more on parenting things, as I just related so much to the little bits i witnessed and heard about her parenting [and family] approach.
here is her dolly!

  



and now for my next little dolly. We had some family visit us from America, my cousin G who I havent seen since school I think, so that is a loooooong time! and i met his amazing wife and their little boy who is just a bit younger than Gabriel, and he’s the youngest of 4, so they are a big family like we are, my brothers, sister and myself.



I feel a tenderness to this little dolly. She feels as if she is breaking out of her shell, trying to be tough and grownup but she’s still little, not tiny, but little. I put her with my Guardian. The Guardian and her seemed to click immediately. Here they are!
  

so that is the state of the dolls….
oh, this is what the family used to look like… just to remind me!:



and i dont know what else to say!
I need to try harder to connect more and write more and not hide.

Guardian doll so far

This is my guardian doll so far.

She is the guardian of my journey, this one or another, they intertwine, are at crossroads, they seem to compete but mystically unite, somehow, out of time and place. i am trying to believe.

I like her face the most at the moment. She is full of detail, with the sewing, her face is layered with colours and texture and roughness. her eyes are open and she is not afraid to cry. Her charcoalness makes her brave even if a little unreachable. She has
coloured forms coming out of her head, making her at first surprising and a bit shocking but then brave and full of voice. She speaks her own language, but only some can hear. Only some will dare look.

Her body is still a bit awkward, and she wishes to hold something, up to the sun perhaps. She likes her baggy clothes full of colour and beads and joined together fabric like a fishing net or passed down clothes. She wears Spiderman on her arms and Aslan on her front. Her neck is strong, it holds her tears.
She speaks to me of ambiguity and dichotomy and holding opposites, and being all things, sometimes bravely sometimes not sometimes quietly sometimes not.
I think she has a lot to say, I hope she tells me, I hope I can receive her messages, i hope they reach me.

I think that today, she is saying happy sad birthday. Even though it does not feel like a happy birthday kind of  day, perhaps it can be happy and sad at the same time, somehow.
Perhaps my guardian will need more colours and threads and beads and maybe even a little spirit animal, but for now, she is giving me my birthday.

It's time

Funny how things travel in circles and spirals. It's comforting and painful at the same time, depending on what is traversing the circle ...  I want to talk about the circles  I am in tune with, the comforting kind I guess, the kind that I've walked and walked in my life, and which are also my most steadfast allies for other paths that must inevitably be walked. Walking in these kinds of resonating spaces are the ways I am able to speak and breath and reach into my soul.

I've had a few synchronisities around the idea of 'something creative with my hands - a day`, both for the spiritual discipline [in my case], and the momentum of effort, and to see what happens! and for fun!

Most recently DRAWRIOT but also, last year: Building an Artist's life - Jolie Guillebeau, also instragram and other findings, have all been sending me little messages.
My hands and colour [and written words] are my voice, and so, playing with these is one of my favourite meditations. I must do it, in different sized bits, often, like eating, and breathing.
I found a little book and I will aim to do a drawing a day, of sorts, or, something on the page, that is made with my hands.

So its a bit like I did for many years Here and a bit less so here.  Circles and Spirals.

And here are pics: The front cover of my book, my first few drawings and and I even have an early addition by Gabriel!  The first drawing is about pebbles and gratitude. more to follow.. pebbles are another synchronous topic for me at the moment.

Front Cover

Drawing a day 1

Drawing a day 2

Drawing a day 3

Gabriel's drawing on our designated New Years Day: 2 Jan 18

Last year I started an incredibly powerful, nurturing, healing, supportive, creative, playful, intruiguing, earthy, online course/gathering, with the incredible artist Barb Kobe . I found a group of souls and artists who I could connect with and relate to on many levels [ thanks to technology!] It became my survival blanket, along with the odd trip home to London.

The course starts off with setting a healing intention. Again, I was traversing a life spiral of mine. My healing intention was, to find my voice, again.Here is some of what I made and wrote at the time. The first bit of writing is a left hand right hand conversation. More on that here: a book I bought many years ago, on a particular spiral! There is also a kind of collage/drawing I made which was part of the process of 'finding' my healing intention. The actual healing intention is the messy handwritten page. It's interesting now, a year on, to see which symbols and metaphors have travelled with me, and even which are old friends from previous journeys. I love that about art and spirit.  

[I have just bought a book, which I am dying to read and explore, about just this type of thing, in the form of spirit animals, something I really resonate with. Animal Speak: The Spiritual & Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small. TED ANDREWS ]

This year, 2018 I am doing the course again!

But first, about pebbles, and stones and rocks and mountains and earth. I guess, I must be an earth person, i dont know, or air. or both. I am drawn to both and sometimes feel I am being pulled in both directions by them! That's when I need heavy boots to stop me flying up into the currents..
Most days, I hanker to put my feet in the soil and i wish to wake up and be able to walk outside onto earth, and to commune with trees. Another delight I found! about trees!!
So i found this wonderful artist, on Instagram: Natasha Newton who paints pebbles and does amazing art and writes from the heart. It is not at all the type of art I make, but I resonate profoundly with the whole: the art, the pebbles, the writing, the ethos etc.
 One night this week, I couldnt sleep at all and spent a few hours perusing instagram and found Natasha Newton, who uses instagram as a kind of art blog, in a way. Great idea.

One thing she wrote which really struck a cord with me was called something like "10 facts about myself" where she was just brutally honest about herself. I found that so incredibly refreshing and releaving to read. It is something I just so want to do in terms of my voice, to be able to have the courage to express whatever I want to however I want to, but with it being about me not other people unless, like this, which is positively about other people. I guess that moment was pretty key for me, because it made me remember that I used to love to write as part of my practice . Its a lot easier and safer and more comfortable than speakin with sound, which is often just too fast for me to keep up!

So along with my drawing a day, I guess I will try to dabble with writing a bit more, and put it somewhere visible, rather than 'just' hiding in my Morning Pages. [which I will always try to do no matter what].
On the point of brutal honesty, I do find myself sitting with a tad of ambivalence along with the enthusiasm under my skin.. it's to do with boundaries, which for me is something like a giant circular pendulum swinging in all directions, and seldom calm.  but then,  I am reminded, there is that theory:  keep walking, open the doors and don't let the 'ambivalences' of life slam their breaks too hard. I will think about this particular path as being about the process of doing, rather than about being 'read/seen' by anyone.
And that reminds me, again! A book I loved, some years ago, was a book by Rollo May called Love and Will which was another key text for me, about how love and will are inseperable. So making art, for me, is an act of love, but requires will. It's obvious but brilliant, so the book is a lot about polarities like apathy and it's opposite, and much more.  I love all Rollo May's books, the ones I have read so far...  how lovely to suddenly have them pop into my brain at this time! thank you!

Back to Natasha Newton and pebbles. I came across this book: " A handfull of quiet. Happiness in 4 pebbles" by Tich Nhat Hanh. 

I bought it for me and Gabriel to do together. After all, we do live next to the sea! I want to do this but i also want to make gifts out of the ideas in this book, and see what happens. It feels like something I can give that is from me [even though its also from Tich Nhat Hanh, but that is how the world of giving works!]
 It's a synchronise book for me. Oh yes, and Natasha Newton also blogged about this amazing place, called The Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, or South Lookout, which has  different site installations by different amazing artists, who I love such as Anthony Gormley, Wei Wei, and more. They have a different artist in residence each week! but the one I love most [of the ones I know of, I have only just stumbled upon this magical world!] is the table of pebbles on the beach with messages on them, like postcards or messages in a bottle. People [anyone!] are invited to write on a pebble and add it to the collection. It reminds me that everyone's voice is valid and equal here. So: Here
and here:

 

And in the summer, as part of our 'baby sitting in English' holiday with our Mountain Friends Family, we did melted crayons on pebbles creations and glass pebble creations too!

 

 

And lastly, I would like to post some pictures of my 2017 dolls.
I am working on a little review of my process over the year working on these dolls and my ideas and feelings for 2018. And before I am tempted to write a tomb, I will post some pics.
I do want to take some more pics perhaps with the dolls together, now that the year is over, but for now, to get this done [an act of will and love!] i must post what I have.
1st: Guardian Doll  [I really do not have great photos of this, yet]

Spirit Doll half done and start of
what became the Guardian Doll,
or vessel of the Guardian

 

This was my very first 'doll' in the course. Not exactly a doll as such but more of a collage of emotional puzzle pieces put together and just revelling in the emtional vocabulary of the group and experimenting and playing. I guess this became a kind of a gatekeeper for the proces for the year.

2nd . Scapegoat and some bits and pieces:

Scapegoat

scapegoat

made alongside tomboy and scapegoat

It took a long time to make the scapegoat, and i kind of made her 'the wrong way around' because i started wiht he clothes and then added the body!

the 3 amigo's. 

My  tomboy-ish doll - this was a key doll for me I think. It was the return to the circle of my adolesence where things happened. A huge amount of shadow but a huge amount of light. so... I am still very much on this circle, and trying to remain excited and curious.

This is my tomboy doll which was an important
precurser to my scapegoat, as it turns out.

Tomboy hero and scapegoat getting to know each other..
little did they know!

another friend for the tomboy hero doll!

So the above is a bit of a mixture of different things going on simultaneously...Next came my little bird soldier doll, at which point I sort of fell of the track of the 5 dolls for the course and just sort of made what i needed to make. But it's ok. I am working on the others in my soul in the background and doing the course for another year will afford me to hopefully realise more of these important milestone dolls! 
Back to the circle of pebbles, this doll has pebbles in her boots for weight!

 

and finally, some little bits and pieces in the making:

and artists I am loving from my midnight perusals of instagram as well as some others found along the way:
Mona Luison, Amy Mimu, Clarissa Calleson, Sha Sha Higbey,
Instagram: Ansogill, miss-kina-makes, strangefolksdolls, ievate, salleymavor, ligreego, alicemarylynch, ines-seidel,
and many more! these are just off the top of my head now!

so, it is time to post.... process not perfection.