Monday - Friday

The dailies continue....when I can fit them in. They don't always actually happen on the very day, sometimes a day later, depending on how life intervenes. That bothers me, but I remind myself not to get to rigid about things and to allow life to unfold of its own accord. The point is to commemorate the day, in a way....to notice it, to make note of it....to leave a trace.

July 23, 2012

July 24, 2012

July 25, 2012

July 26, 2012

July 27, 2012

Tomorrow is another work day for me at the library, although it is Saturday, but then Sunday and Monday are my weekend. I hope you all have a fine weekend and I'll see you early in the week....until then, take care and enjoy!

Lost Histories

July 2, 2012

July 3, 2012

July 4, 2012

July 5, 2012

July 6, 2012

Kind of a crazy week with a holiday in the middle, but another full one of juggling all the various tasks of life, including precious time in the studio. Johntimothy and I finished watching the first disc of a BBC documentary The Story of India, which we really enjoyed. It's taken me back to my on-again-off-again ponderings about history, specifically human history and the rise and fall of civilizations. These notions are showing up in the work as I sit drawing, the thoughts echoing in gentle waves. I am fascinating by the way civilizations are lost, the way history lies buried deeply in the earth, found only thousands of years later under countless levels of sand and earth. While many of the events of our times are clearly disturbing, I find I am almost always shifting my thinking to the long view of deep time. When will the cultures that define us disappear, slowly covered by the sands of time....what mysteries will be left behind to be found by those coming long after, perhaps by thousands of years. How does it happen that history is completely lost? Each generation serves as a link between the ancestors behind and the next in line and yet, there is so much to be passed on, we take most of it for granted. How we lived, what we ate, what we wore, what were the customs that defined one culture from another, what patterns precipitated drastic change, did we even see it coming? Civilizations are unearthed from thousands of years ago and to be sure, there are many mysteries....but what we see often are the dwellings, where people ate and slept, loved one another or were at war, where people made things and dreamed dreams about the future. Just like us. It's the traces we leave behind....do you think perhaps it's what compels us to make art? This is what I think about....it is encoded here in the work. 

Hope you have a good weekend....stay cool if you are sweltering and keep warm if you're suffering from the other extreme! Do have some fun and enjoy at least a few moments of fascination!

The One Thing

I'm having a great day in the studio, which isn't always the case!  I'm working to resolve my part of a collaborative exhibition with my husband and the deadline is looming...August 24th.  We've been working on this for most of the summer, but somehow I haven't been able to make anything that feels right.  Now, I understand what I'm to do. This morning I started drawing in white ink onto of the blackboard painted paper and before I knew it...the channel opened and I was right there in the flow, drawing those tiny circles that connect endlessly...like seeds or cells.  I realized that it's always about getting to the essence, the "one" thing, that gets at the core of something.  I knew in the middle of the first drawing, that all 36 drawings would each be an exploration of the one thing...the way the those interlocking little circles in white ink laid on top of the black chalkboard paint and interacted with the pencil.  It was a time of meditation as I connected tiny circle after tiny circle, stopping on each one when the shape declared itself and then moving on to the next piece.  When this kind of thing happens for me, this moment of recognition, I feel it in the pit of my stomach....I am in a flow where my hand is making the thing I am longing to see.  Simplicity, simplicity itself.

There are a couple of images in of the pieces in progress above...more will happen on the black chalkboard paint, but the drawing in the white ink is what the pieces are about....in a way I can't describe in words.