dogs dogs dogs

I cleaned lots of poop from the back yard today.
I cleaned some blood from the carpet today.
I snuggled with two huge hug able yellow labs today.
and it was all good.

One more day of this dog sitting gig, and I am back on a plane home to my family and my own little cute dog.
This art retreat/dog sitting has been a time for lots of reading, journaling, watching movies (yes, I admit) and solitude.
All good.
Just the change of scenery has been so rejuvenating and positive.
and I am sure one day, we will move out here - I just love Colorado, the mountains and the clear air and the way everyone wears outdoorsy clothes (not like New Jersey/New York - believe me.)
I hiked a bit today along Boulder Creek - I was so relaxed and in tune with the calming energy of the water/sky/rocks I didn't even need to take pictures or sketch.
I was happy to just be. . . .
That's a great thing.
and of course, my two lovable monsters have found their way onto some journal pages:







"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." --Anne Frank

Week 4 - 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women

Surrendering to Creative Cycles -- This chapter really spoke to me - I sort of cycle through joy and frustration every day as I do this work. Making art your life is not really a popular choice when the world measures your worth in how much money you generate. I always disagreed with the idea of GNP being just based on money - so many fantastic accomplishments are measured outside of their monetary worth.
"Product" should not just be money!
When we look at the Greeks or Romans or any great civilization, we certainly don't measure their monetary output - we read their plays and poems, look at their sculpture and architecture, we ponder their creative work.
So, I am committed to this life I have chosen and to walk a creative path.
This month I am lucky enough to have a little note written about my website and this blog in the magazine Rubberstampmadness. It's just a little paragraph, but somehow even this little shout-out helps me keep on.
The question "How do you manage the bright spots in your creativity cycle?" is important - it is essential to rejoice at each little victory we have, even if very small and personal - just doing this work is brave and not always understood by a money making society.

For me, it is necessary to focus on the positive and to work hard to keep the negative at bay.
Like Rumi says, "where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure."
Life does come in ebb and flow, seasons of rejoicing, then struggle. It makes us all human to endure these cycles.
Sometimes I feel like I have more than my fair share of such struggles; health and money problems, work problems, very little "success" in the world's eyes - making almost no money at what I do, but then - there are 6 billion of us on this one small planet, and you know that if I have access to this computer, and a studio to make art in, I must be doing pretty durn well in the larger scheme of things.
I have a fantastically supportive husband and three great kids. . . .
Gratitude.
That really is the big big key.
To ride out the lows with knowing we are blessed in so many way.
and the lows really do help to make the art real.
Just look at Vincent Van Gogh, bless his dear heart.




"Diamonds are only chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs, you see." --Minnie Richard Smith

Do Your Thing - and then Share it!

Here's the thing I want to tell you today:
that working in an art journal can be transformative.
If you gather some materials - collage papers, juicy markers, ink pads for color, spray mount to put it all together, then spread all this out around you and just start tearing and cutting and playing.
Then you will find something.
The act of creation really is a sort of high - it creates a way for your inner essence to escape and find expression.
I can't tell you how many people in my workshops found this a freeing and amazing process.
They had learned decades before that to color outside the lines is wrong.
It stifled and restricted their belief in their own creative energy.
Go ahead and color all over the lines!
Make a mess - let that inner critic go, and just laugh at it's negativity.
Once at a workshop, we created a journaling wall - I unrolled a large white roll of paper, hung in on the wall, piles up paper and pens and let anyone who wanted go to town.
I never had the chance to take photos of it, so I guess I will just have to do this again at the next workshop I teach.
It took the whole weekend (it was a 3 day weekend women's retreat) but after the three days, the paper was full of amazing self expression - enlightening and encouraging to everyone who took the time to read it.
We really are all in this together, and if we learn to share it all, it is much easier to make it through.



"There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art reatreat, continued

To be creative is to be open. For me, it's not something I can force. I just put the papers and pens in front of me, sit before the blank page or book, and see what happens. Sometimes what happens doesn't please me, but I have even learned to honor that as well.
If we aren't open to mistakes, if we don't allow the accidents and mishaps, how will we ever get to a totally new place?
How many voyagers of discovery knew exactly where they were going? None.
Or they would not have discovered anything new.
If you already know where you're going, there can't be any surprises.
The biggest change in my life has been openness.
Openness to whatever the Universe chooses for me.
It certainly is not always what I wanted, but usually it is a much better plan than the one I had.
My art is not brilliant but it expresses something for me, and it turns out my calling is helping others' discover their way of self expression, and using this process for healing.
I never would have figured that out on my own.
If we truly trust that life has the best outcome for us, and we give away the ego and desire for personal gain, really good things do happen - and if allow the space for our own voice, make the time for the art to flow, it will.
It will, Baby!



"To be creative means being familiar with being a little lost. If we are always full of what we want to do there is not room for the new. Creation comes from cycle - sometimes small waves and sometimes big waves. And as the waves end, they want to rest - they have given all they could and need to replenish before moving again." --Michelle Cassou

art journaling retreat. . . . dancing the dance.

Well just like me, I lost track of the days.
I am still here with two large loving dogs, now a bit snowed in, working and dreaming and, although lonely, enjoying this contemplative time.

I finally got out the watercolors and did a little work in the shamanic journal - I do have different journals for different reasons.
I can't bring them all with me, but a few can travel.
So this one is a little moleskin which takes watercolor well - the large journal is more for collage, so too much water wrecks the pages. I would like to figure that out for the next journal, because wet things take a long time to try and I don't seem to have the patience.
The idea of just taking a little book and exploring whatever comes up is just the point for me. That's what this whole thing is about. I have that very strong fear of the blank page, and it has taken me years to just jump in and not worry about results because if I worry about results I will freeze up.
I don't make the most wonderful art, but I have learned something along the way about Just Doing It.
and I was surprised and honored to learn that my website has been highlighted in Spring issue of RubberStampMadness -- online link can be seen here.
Every little bits helps!
Happy Journaling Today!




"And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it." --Paul Gauguin

Taking Risks - week 3 of Secrets of Highly Creative Women

The subject of week three, taking risks, is one close to my heart.
I have often taken risks and had things not turn out how I planned. Lately I have been regrouping in a big way and wondering if I made many many mistakes with my strange and seemingly random choices.
But even in failure, there are lessons - in 2005 I planned a long long awaited for month in Paris. I was asked to do some illustrations for a book, so I worked out the whole month to be there to do the groundwork, then I was UN-asked - the author chose another artist . . . . but you know what -- I went anyway.
I have to tell you that I suffered a bit on that trip - lots and lots of things went wrong:
*my outgoing flight got canceled and I had to buy a last minute plane ticket for $1500 so my budget was shot and I had almost no money there.
*Luggage got lost and I had no clothes or shoes for 2 weeks - ended up getting HUGE mongo blisters from wearing my one pair of shoes
*family issues too private to go into here but it was tough
*apartment was not what I hoped for - very small, hot and loud
*got sick, like I used to always get when I traveled - now I know I have Celiac disease but i did not know it them and you know I was indulging in tons of amazing pastries and bread.
But I learned a lot, I grew a lot, I now know Paris pretty well, and I got lots and lots of art out of it.
I made some cool connections there, and some awesome friends came to visit me and we hung out In Paris - and what is better than that?
and I got to see Lance Armstrong ride into Paris for his 7th Tour De France victory and that was almost worth the whole trip.
I still want to go back to Paris, with more planning, a better place to stay, more time with just my camera and journal, and now with the learning curve I "suffered" through behind me, I think I could make it a better month.
But you know what?
I am still glad I went.




"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down." -Ray Bradbury

day 6 - Still At It

We choose what to believe - and this profoundly affects our lives.
I have been reading a very beautiful and moving book, "Listening is An Act of Love" by Dave Isay. It is a celebration of every day normal lives as told in the storycorps project - something Dave Isay founded to get regular people to tell their stories. He found that if you put a person in a booth with a recorder, and if the interviewer were a loved one, you could often get amazing and moving stories out of them.
Each of us have inspirations and miracles in our lives, we so often don't share them or focus on this part of our beings.
The stories are so moving - sad stories about the Holocaust, 9-11, and amazingly happy stories of great generosity and love.
They really do inspire me to think the higher thoughts, take the higher path, and to know that love really is the key to all life.
I love my journaling practice, and I love the Shamanic work I do, but without love, all that is nothing.
If we believe the best in people and life, if we have faith in things not seen, and we decide to create a loving place for ourselves and everyone in our path right here on this earth, now, then it will become manifest.
I am going to try to walk that path more in my life.



"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." --Lewis Carroll

Day 5 - Art Retreat

Today's theme - Heal the Planet -- Heal the Self.
It's really all how you see things - I am here in Denver dog sitting for my brother who just got married in Chiang-Mai Thailand (see some great wedding photos here) . . . I just walked all over his yard picking up dog poop, and last night I spent a sleepless night with two large dogs continually jumping on me to go out. So I could say I am doing pretty low level work,
OR I could say I am on an art retreat - which I am.
I am using this time to catch up on all my reading, make tons of journal pages, regroup and re-assess what and why I am here.
I know I want to do healing work - on myself, on my family and friends, on the planet.
I know my art is what I seem to be good at and what pleases me and feels like my calling.
Putting those two things together is the trick.
I like to think of myself as an arts activist - trying to use my art to make this world a bit better, and I believe in this as my purpose.
I also know that one powerful image can change the world - think of the Shepard Fairey Poster of Obama with the word "HOPE" that went around the globe and helped (maybe) get our new President in place.

So today, even though I had to pick up lots of dog poop, I am where I should be, and I am grateful to be here, helping in one small way.

Art Retreat - Day 4

Today I am thinking of health.
You know what you should do -- drink more water, move your body, make good food choices, and get outside . . .
It's just so hard so often to keep these intentions right there in the forefront of your day.

But today I am focusing on this, on being healthy, and here are two pages to help me remember to do that:




"All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move." --Benjamin Franklin

Day 3 - amended image

I added something important to this journal page:

Art Retreat Day 3

The journal pages are flowing.
It is so wonderful to just have time and space to dedicate to this, and I have CNN on and am watching this historic inauguration.
Very inspiring times.






"I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe." --Dalai Lama

Art Retreat Day 2 . . . . part b!

Today Barrack Obama called for a day of service in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I am here dog sitting (I guess that is my service) but that seems a bit lame, so I wanted to post some inspiring stories here as my one small part:
interviews
These are interviews from USA Service.

I want my art to do more in this world . . . I am trying to figure out how. . . this retreat, hopefully, will give me some new ideas an give me some vision how I can help in some way.
and this page was inspired by a quoteof Abraham Lincoln's I heard at yesterday's Inauguration concert:

Art Retreat Day 2

Today was the day for getting supplies! My brother kindly left me a gift card to Michael's -- the top photo shows the journaling supplies I scored, the second shows jewelry do dads I got on a whim, and after that -- some of the jewelry I made.
I can't say how fun it is to just have days to make art, just two dogs to watch in the morning and evening.
I highly recommend dog sitting as a way to get an art retreat built into your schedule; the trick is that you are away from home and all the countless distractions which keep you from creating endlessly. Even at the studio, there are always the to do lists in the back of my mind - here I am 3000 miles away from all that and have nothing to fill my time with but art art art. . . .
I made many pages today while watching the wonderful inaugural concert from the Lincoln Memorial.
How could I not be inspired by that?
I also have a pile of books which I have wanted to read for ages, and I even found a local health club offers a week free!
oh ya.
Lots more journal pages to come tomorrow. . . .



inkpads for smearing color on paper, some wonderful little collage papers, new stamps, spray mount and luscious alphabet rubber stamp set


So many cute jewelry things are out there now, I couldn't resist, and I already made two pairs of earrings and a bracelet to match!


"During [these] periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight." --Fritjof Capra

Art Journal Retreat - Day 1

Getting Started - I open my journal and there are the pages, ready to take whatever lashing I give. I always start with images, usually photocollage papers I have done in photoshop, then add some ink to color them more, maybe some torn images, some words.
a doodle or two.
and paging through my journal is like visiting creative longings from my past, friendly reminders that I am trying to figure out this whole mess that is life.
For me, the act of journaling is my life line, my way of getting out the feelings, frustrations, joys, wanderings in my mind that come and go. Without my journal to record all this, I would feel quite lost.
I am now in Denver with two big cuddly dogs - and this is sort of a journaling retreat for me.
My brother left me two gift cards - one for Michaels Arts and Crafts and One for the vitaman shop.
How did he know?
Those two are exactly what these two weeks are to be about.
and as a funny aside, my long-time batchelor brother is going to Thailand to get married, and on his facebook page was this priceless comment:
"Doug? Getting married? I will believe that the day we have a black president!"




"My sketchbooks are my companions and unconditional friends, especially in a world where not many people understand us creative infidels. My journals never criticize or judge my work. An open sketchbook is like two outstretched arms welcoming me."
--Edel Rodgriguez, from "An Illustrated Life" by Danny Gregory

What Have I always Loved?

For the second week's prompt for the 12 Secrets of Highly CREATIVE Women:

What Have I always loved?
Color, shape, and wild freedom of expression!
Total Chaotic Messiness!

I am finally living this bliss by making my Creative Journaling the focus of my work.
and It feels so good!

I just make crazy pages in my journal and see what happens -- and I get to share them here, and talk about them in workshops, and even travel a teeny bit to share this work.
I meet once a month with a journaling group and we cut and tear and paste and color together, then share our pages - it is awesome.
I feel like I am finally doing what I was meant to do, and it only took 47 years to get here!

and I can't resist adding some other things I use to keep the MUSE happy:
*Great Music
*Chocolate
*Some more CHOCOLATE
*Good coffee, often
*Healthy fruits and veggies - preferably organic
*piles of collage paper, images, books to tear up, ribbons and sparkly things
*A nap on the futon
*drumming tapes
*my cuckoo clock which sings Edelweiss every hour on the hour

*anything colorful and exhuberant

friday

A huge jet airliner goes down in the Hudson and no one is even hurt. . . . the first African American President is poised to take office and the whole country, dare I say the whole world, will be watching and celebrating Tuesday . . . . there is a front page story about Shamanism in the Washington Post . . . .
I know the economy is collapsing and everyone is panicked, but I see so much amazingly good news all around me.
Maybe the focus all being on money is finally coming around to the reality that SPIRIT is what counts, money is not worth so much of our focus and emphasis.
The INTENTION of our whole culture has been to make money, and that simply has to change.

Sure you need money to live, but I for one, am learning to live on much less in a much richer way.
Art does not equal money.
Money does not equal success.

To be a broke starving artist is to be far richer than many fat cats with all their material goods.
Now I go dog sit for two weeks in Colorado!
Journal pages to come.



"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition." --Alan Alda

connection to the mysterious

Mystery - "what is beyond understanding, not of the rational mind."

Well, I certainly know that I want to go beyond the rational mind - the dance of Shiva - the cycle of creation and destruction are part of this mystery and certainly for me this not a rational thing.
For me, going beyond what my brain thinks into what my consciousness feels is much more satisfying -- I guess that's why my journaling is mostly not about words any more.
Words seem to lock me into the rational mind, and I want the mystery mind to live in the pages.
Images, colors, random scribblings, all this is much more connected to the eternal for me than just plain old words.
Although - funny enough, here I am using words to talk about this whole thing.
so words still help me move toward understanding.
I just don't want to make the words my focus.

The Egyptians' words were little pictures - hieroglyphs - showing how much closer their civilization was to the mystery that is life -- maybe they had not learned yet to let the rational mind think it knew all the answers, I suspect they knew the rational mind had no clue. . . . and that the mystery of the world, the flooding of the Nile each year, the coming and going of life's cycles, all were part of a larger mystery.
I love the way their images show this mystery, and their words are always part of the magic of their images . . . .
See the quote there after the picture?
Let's prove Joseph Campbell wrong -- look for the mystery in your work.




"Poets and artists who speak of the mystery are rare." --Joseph Campbell

Joy**Love**Bliss**Happiness

and why not?
Isn't it a choice?




"Oh I do want that thing, that oneness of movement that will catch the thing up into one movement and sing - harmony of life." --Emily Carr

"To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things." --Will Durant

today

These two images were taken at the Anthropologie store at Rockefeller center right before Christmas -- I have never seen such exuberant paper chaining and happy colored decorations all piled together; this splendor will inspire my pages many times to come, I suspect.

I find inspiration in places least expected, so I go there often to see what I find. If all life is planned out, there is no room for unforseen and happy accidents. What you don't look for, is often the best thing you find.

Stuck?
Go somewhere new, explore a place you have never been, bring a camera or a sketchbook, or your journal.
or better yet, be an explorer at your own desk, in your own studio, in your own bed. Surround yourself with some good paper, juicy markers, a glue stick and lots of random things to tear. Add some ink pads for color, and you have a recipe for something new happening in your journal.
and a good little movie playing near by is never a bad idea, in my book.

Be a Journaling Explorer -- discover a new continent in your pages, and put up a flag of victory claiming your right to this new world that only you could create.




"Muse, muse, and muse. Do some yoga or other activity before working. Read a poem, then let it go. Listen to the silent voice of your work." --Linda Saccoccio

rest and renewal

January and February are always hard months for me.
Lack of light, cold short days, so much harder to get outside and be fed by nature. . . . so I know to feed the soul a bit extra compassion and inspiration during these lean times.
I will be going to Denver for two weeks Saturday to dog sit for my brother, who is going to Thailand to get married.
but it really is not a dog sitting job, it is more a retreat. I will bring tons of books, lots of art supplies, maybe eat a fruit detox diet, and make lots of pages in my journal.
or maybe not.
maybe I will just watch movies -- if you don't see me much here, that's why.

but when I get back, I bet there will be a new flood of inspirational pages, because that's how the muse seems to work. She comes when least expected, but I hope she honors my soul renewal time.
Last year I did an Eat, Pray, Love retreat at my brother's cabin in the Rockies - each of one day I focused on one of those three things - eating magnificent and healthy food one whole day, meditation for a whole day, then making calls and connections of love to my family the sole focus of the third day.
It was a good retreat, and I also might follow that template for these two weeks . . . . I also dream of leading a women's retreat where we do this as a group - wouldn't that be awesome?
We'd have to get a message therapist along, maybe a yoga teacher. . . . I could do the art workshops.
Keep this in your mind for the future. . . .
The inner self needs nurturing, just as the outer self does.




"The mind is but a barren soil – a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter." --Sir Joshua Reynolds

stubbornly stubbornly stubbornly

keep at it.
just keep at it.
Christo wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris, he wrapped the Reichstadt in Berlin, he wrapped Islands in Miami, and erected hundreds of glorious orange gates in Central Park in 2005.
Everyone said all of this was impossible.
He did all this just to get people to talk about art.

Just
Do
It.

Open up your journal and say what you need to say.
Make what you need to make.
Your voice is worth your time.


"Yes we can!" --Barack Obama

self expression = beauty

Visual images can be beautiful, and they can be chaotic.
I sometimes wonder about how to balance these two competing things.
My perfect journal pages are beautiful in their cluttery disorder.
For me, the illustratey kind of art, the kind that just shows one basic idea presented clearly or with one statement in mind, often is not very inspiring.
I look for confusion and complexity -- something my eye wants to linger over and wonder about.
I like many layers to images so I keep looking and then seeing more and more.
Many pages in my journal are not so pretty at first glance, but for me, the more I look the more I see, so I am satisfied with what they say for me, and what they look like.
and really, our world is so full of images that are meant to sell us stuff, images of sexy, young, plasticy-perfect humans, that beauty for me has to be something other than one clear image, more than the air-brushed perfection I am told is how things "should" look.
If I am reflecting my own inner chaos, the pages in my journal will be chaotic, messy, torn and ripped, perhaps spilling off the page, even.
The book will be fat and the binding worn and broken.
The book will have been around the block a few times, like me.
Thinking things should be "perfect" and unblemished is so LAST MILLENNIUM!
Not worrying, allowing lovely chaos and visual cacaphony - this is the new way to see things.




"Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning." --Katherine Anne Porter

everything OLD is NEW again

so what do you say about the new LOOK here?
I jazzed up just a bit, huh?
2009 - time for new beginnings, new starts, renewed enthusiasm, self-care and focusing on what I need to keep on keeping it going.
A time to BE whole and BE healthy . . . .
I will be truthful and tell you this last year feels like the most challenging one we ever had - we sold our house, moved into a rental, hubby changed jobs, kids left and came home again. . . .
we got a crazy little dog who still poops and pees in the house.
BUT - I got a new studio.
I kept at this journaling work.
I learned a lot about Shamanism and moved forward in my own personal journey toward knowing who and what I am and why I am here.
and that's the point, NO?
To be whole and to be healthy.

Challenges are all part of this whole life work thing we are engaged in.
I am still here, chugging along, taking each day as it comes, finding JOY where I can.
and I am working on some pet/power animal portraits and I put two of the collages in my journal - so here they are:



"If ya ain't got it in ya, ya can't blow it out." --Louis Armstrong

just mucking about in my journal

"Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it?" --Frank Gehry

Sing your Song

If you don't sing it, who will?

Yesterday I attended an arts fair at my Unitarian Church and I was inspired by the poetry readings. . . .
to string together words that speak to something deep and profound in us, to stand in front of a group and share those words is such a wonderful thing.
Although my main medium is visual, I also love words (I am here, after all, writing them!)
so, with the wonderful work from yesterday in my mind, I offer this:

My Spirit

My Spirit wants to soar and sail
my body holds it back
It's oldness creeping up on me
slow cautious movements
The container that houses the self I know
is not always co-operative or very strong
It has so many needs
Yet
I am sure that as we work together,
this old carcass and me,
We can achieve something.
and I know this megaphone through which I share all that is bursting out
needs care and nurturing
So I give it the right food,
make it stretch and lift some weights and and then
walk it in the woods for peacefulness
I let it sleep often and deeply.
and I hope our partnership will last
until I have said
what I need to say.



"A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm and arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland." --Kahlil Gibran

today, an ode to your SELFNESS

As I start the new year, I vow to be true to my own voice.
This year, I will try to keep that intention close.
I sometimes (no, often) feel sort of self conscious about my different-ness. As someone who spends my time creating, I am often wandering in my mind and spirit to places the every day world isn't too familiar with.
or interested in.
I know that anyone who is creating their own unique and individual voice in any kind of new work is somehow forging a new path, and that following along the status quo just is not in my nature.
I can't sum up what I do neatly on a little business card - like "teacher" or even "artist" . . . .
So today, and this whole year, I vow to bravely seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
I will follow the muse where She leads.
If the world finds that weird, so be it.
I hope one day they follow along and learn something from what I have done.
At the same time, I vow to also remember something I heard at a Shamanic workshop I was attending, where the leader said "Remember, we don't want to lose our minds" and a friend added "tempting as that may be. . . . "
Here's to 2009 - to expanding the mind without losing it.
Allowing the spirit to lead.




"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness." --Allen Ginsberg