The Daily Practice of 2013

Greetings! This has been a good week....productive on many fronts. As is so often the case, the creative process itself, when it is truly flowing, will allow the simple solutions to all manner of conundrums to bubble up to the surface. I've been wrestling for quite some time with the daily practice, as many of you know. Because I am someone who loves a routine and a rhythm to my day, I love having a daily practice that takes place in the studio. Before the holidays, I shifted gears in my daily practice and began a series of small 2x2" collages that were private....that is, they weren't meant for my Etsy shop and they weren't for sale anywhere. I've continued that practice into the new year, but the question of the MissouriBendMusings shop still hung in the air. I toyed with closing the shop, but I've met so many people through the shop and through the daily practice....so many people had written to me over the year to let me know that the practice had given them inspiration in some way. What more can any artist ask, except to touch people? I decided that, not only could I not let it go, I didn't want to let it go. So....how to incorporate a second daily practice that would end up in the marketplace, but one that would not require too much investment in time and energy in the "marketing" end. Somewhere in the process of working this week, I saw the practice as one of small works (these are 4"x4") in ink and wash. Another important aspect of the daily practice is that it should be one that allows for a sense of discovery, that the process of making becomes a vehicle for my own explorations. I think I have it....here is the first week of January....you can find them all at MissouriBendMusings.

January 1, 2013

January 2, 2013

January 3, 2013

January 4, 2013

January 5, 2013

January 6, 2013

January 7, 2013

I also found myself returning to book pages....one of my favorite themes and formats. This piece reminds me of a long lost diary page....

Page From A Lost Diary

This is made on Japanese paper coated in beeswax....the pseudo handwriting is all hand embroidered.....fragments of earlier ink drawings are also hand stitched to the paper. Hard to capture the nuances og the warm, buttery yellow Japanese paper....it looks worn and aged...lost and found.

My weekend is Sunday and Monday, so tomorrow I go back to work at the Library....when I return here I'll tell you about the Absence series. Hope you have a great week ahead....cheers!

Pages from the Book of Open Windows and Counting Days

I've just got a few minutes here, before I head into town to go to my one-afternoon-a-week job, performing librarianesque duties at the National Music Museum in Vermillion (now, that's something to Google...it's world reknowned collection of musical instruments...right here in Vermillion, South Dakota!).  So, I'm off soon, but thought I'd share the resolution of the piece I posted several days ago, Page from The Book of Open Windows. A bit of randomness here and there and it announced itself finished and allowed me to move on to the following piece...a bit more subdued, but still, I do like it...a page from The Book of Counting Days (complete with detail shot below).

Hope you are having a good week....so far, so good for me.  Back into the studio tomorrow for more fun, merriment and a good dose of angst!

The Made By Hand

A little slice of the desk as I left it a few moments ago, with a piece in progress in the foreground.  Alas...I suddenly realized I was quite out of the very thread I was using and not a strand of it to be found in any of those chaotic baskets!  Tomorrow is another day.  But as I sat sewing, I alternated between moments of meditation and impatience.  I almost always feel behind where I feel I need to be and these little pieces, small as they are, often take quite a long time.  But it's when I remind myself that the very act of embroidering by hand is the only way this work will get made, that I slow down and remember exactly what it is I am doing.  It's about making by hand, slowing down time, being in the moment and knowing that no one else is called to make the work that only each one of us can make.  There it is...that's all there is, the traces we leave behind.