The Daily Rituals

Welcome to the middle of January! Here in South Dakota, where I sit, tucked away in the southeast corner of the state, I am waiting for the predicted snow showers to start....funny how sunny it is....snow showers? Hmmm. Whatever happens with the rest of this winter, we've certainly had a reprieve here at the beginning....it's bound to be a short one.  The other morning, there was ice flowing down the river, as I mentioned in my last post, and we spotted one the of bald eagles beginning his or her weekend with a leisurely raft trip down the river on a chunk of ice.  We watched the bird coming down the river from a few houses up....pure joy, for eagle and for us!

Wish we had a better close-up lens....this was a zoomed in crop shot of the rafter as he or she passed by the house!

Meanwhile, the slow art making practice continues....with slow, but steady progress. I continue my other little rituals, like the morning drawing pages that I do each day.  I wrote about this some time ago here and thought I show you the stacks of paper I have since I began in early August....some months were not as complete as others....you know how it is, life gets in the way of life!

There are 10 meditative drawings each day....just letting my hand move across the page. I so recognize myself on those pages....it's like looking in the mirror....the first drawing from today below.

This is a cropped view from the center of the page where the drawing sits...

As a balance to the slower work, having these daily practices is a wonderful.  I've just added one thing more to the mix....so now there are the 10 morning page drawings and 2 pages of writing, and am adding back the daily "drawings" on teabags mounted on bristol board that I was doing in Wyoming.  These have to be intuitive and playful, because I don't want them to take too much time from the slow-building work, but I think they'll give me some sense of completion for each day.  We'll see how this goes.  

The first one yesterday started out as more of "found paper" collage on the teabag, but morphed into a teabag on teabag collage. I liked what was happening so did another one for today....they are little still life pieces...just cut out teabag shapes adhered to....teabag!!! 

January 15, 2012

January 16, 2012

Hope you all have a fine week.  Thank you so much for all the supportive comments on my last post....it's great to have friends across the world....we have much to share!

The Structure of Daily Rituals

Daily Drawing, October 20, 2011

Here we are on the verge of another weekend....December is racing by.....I've even turned another year older since my last post.  It never seems to end and as the years accumulate, I find it shocking that I'm not still in my mid-thirties!  In the flurry of trying to complete the Nocturnes, I had kind of forgotten about the "daily drawings" I was making in Wyoming.  I've just photographed another group of them, which are really a combination of collage and drawing and will share a few here.  I just added the drawing from October 21st to my Etsy shop and will continue to add the others over time. I started out numbering them, but have gotten myself very confused, so now will list them by their creation date.

Daily Drawing, October 21, 2011

These pieces make me realize how much better I feel and how much more productive I am when I have a real structure to my day....the repetition and the rhythm allow for all manner of rich possibilities to unfold. Contrary to what you might think, the daily repetition of tasks can keep you centered and in the moment. I had that kind of rhythm to my day while I was in Wyoming and at home, naturally, there are many ways I am thrown off the path.  Posting these Daily Drawings is a nice reminder for me to get back to the kind of daily structure in which I thrive.

Daily Drawing, October 24, 2011

Hope you have a fine weekend....see you next week!