January 5, 2018

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.