bee creative

to be so many things (going big)

I used to worry (and every once and awhile still do) that I loved to do too many things.

The worry is/was driven, I think, by being part of a culture that values specialization. Success is often defined as becoming very good at one thing. 

That's just not who some of us are.

It's not who I am.

A few months ago (I know I should have paid more attention to where but I can't remember or find where) I discovered an artist that I wanted to know more about, Meryl McMaster.

So, I ordered her book. It arrived at the end of last week and it is full of wonder.

Buffy Sainte-Marie, in the foreword, writes about how it wasn't always that people were specialists.

We knew how to do many things. 

After some of the other reading/listening I've been doing recently (Nick Offerman/Wendell Berry in particular), it really clicked into place that we lose something really important when we specialize too much.  It's not just about not knowing where food comes from or how something is made, but how we might be and interact with the world around us.

There is a loss of faith in our ability to be something more than a consumer. It shows up every day in the news.

And as I go out into the garden every day right now and collect or harvest for projects or food, I am watch all the changes that are happening so quickly in this season. I am thinking about how much I learn from being curious about growth, about nurturing a garden. Thinking about how a garden is always a process. 

About how it influences me as someone who makes things; how I make them and why I make them.  A garden is abundant with possibilities. 

This is partly a response to Grace's and Jude's posts regarding making, but also something that I am almost always thinking about...

"Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"  Mary Oliver

 

learning from mistakes

Gibson and Widget were napping on one of the rocking chairs.

Timber was napping on top of the armoire.

I thought, here's my opportunity to cut out some fabric!

The fabric wasn't even unfolded before I had all three cats playing peek-a-boo as I shook it out.

I retreated to the front porch...

First cutting the yardage in half and then laying out my two pattern pieces.

The top is from, The Act of Sewing and the skirt is one that I self drafted. 

I rounded the curve in the arm hole a little bit as I cut the first piece. 

The first layer was used as the pattern for the second layer.

I've found that I like this top better when I use the neckline for the back on both sides.

***

This afternoon I've been listening to presentations for an online early childhood education conference.  There was discussion on the power of making mistakes. 

I thought about how many pieces of clothing its taken me to reach the point of being comfortable making clothes that I am happy with. 

To reach the point where a pattern is a suggestion and nothing else because I know what I like and what works with my body type. 

There have been a lot of things through the years that were cut up and used for something else or that are still waiting for me to imagine another use.

Thinking about how mistakes are only mistakes when we imagine a desired outcome, when we are expecting a certain result. 

***

Thinking about this:

"Our culture has beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don't produce anything obvious, aren't easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren't easily named, are categorically in-between."  Ann Hamilton (found here)

And, from Neil Gaiman's book Fragile Things (which I am getting my own copy of as soon as possible!)

“600 professional dreamers would have been needed, to reveal the nature of things hidden beneath the roots of the trees and in the deepest mountain cabins and the depths of the seas for the map to be worth anything needed to contain the visible empire and the invisible.” Neil Gaiman Fragile Things Chapter 2

Professional dreamer...that's the job I want. 

 

#100 still so many questions

Today's marks, inspired by the neighbor's porch light and tree branches. 

Made with oak gall and iron ink which is an ink that is pretty much permanent and has a long history of use.  Using it is a connection to tradition.

Turmeric ink which isn't light fast and will fade eventually.

The top image was made with layering the page three times digitally; the center a cropped section of the page.

This is the original page.

I also copied the page and then used the copy to make the two painted butterflies.  I added more turmeric ink and indigo ink to these.

I made some notes today...thoughts about the last 100 days. Still processing really.

A list of words: time, location, story, ephemeral, permanent, sky, layers, filters, flowers, birds, the ocean, boats, rocks, dots, lines, wet, dry, found, organic, digital, connections, relationships, unpredictable, and resist.

I've played with a variety of ways of making marks, a variety of papers. 

And this too, layered images as another way of telling a story.  A liminal space between digital and handmade.

There are still so many things to explore...

 

 

# 22 language

 

I don't have the words quite yet but there is something about working with the pigments that is a conversation.

Between me and the pigment, between me and whoever might look. About how it might be altered digitally as well.  I am not sure I would call it art, but I would call it story telling. Maybe because it is a word that is more comfortable.

It's about local, or location since not all the materials I am working with are local. (I would like it to be as local as possible.)

And about transformation and change, which is inevitable...mine and the materials.  How amazing is it that plant can become paint or ink?  That soil and rocks can be as well? How am I being changed as I learn what can be created?  How it might flow or not flow?

About what might be possible and curiosity.  Like many I am not sure about the word "sustainable" anymore, but how can we be more respectful?

And...thinking about languages we grow up with, the languages we learn to speak, the ones that we struggle with, the ones we might learn in the future? 

just beginning

Sunrise one day this week:

Layers of light.

Sorting I stacked a paper star on top of a painting I had done.

Hmm...

So here it is another version (three layers, one filter).

Another way to be.

I've shared this before but for those who wonder, the text is:

Crepuscular midnight stands at the road,

Where the stars have spilled from its purse.

You cannot go over the road past the fence

Without trampling the universe. 

"Steppe," by Boris Pasternak

Last night, when I couldn't sleep, I listened to a conversation with Katy Payne (On Being).  The discussion was about listening to whales and elephants.  

As I lay in the dark listening, I imagined there were whales singing deep in the ocean, right then at that very moment.  Elephants rumbling at a pitch just below what humans can hear.  

Something to think about in the middle of the night when it is dark and quiet.

Speaking of whales singing, Payne says:

"And so what that has done for me is to make me feel that what lies ahead to be discovered is absolutely limitless. We are not at the pinnacle of human knowledge. We are just beginning."

 

 

edges

Yesterday, off work a little early, I took a walk along the bay...

I love how the pier on the left catches water.

The light is changing, the wildfire smoke is gone in the air and it is cooler.

It was so good to walk.

Early in the morning, which is now dark for so much longer, I am stitching by hand. 

I love the quietness. 

I am going very slow and really paying attention. 

Linen fabric is easy to stitch through, the thimble not really necessary but I've been practicing at times. 

I really enjoyed hearing everyone's thoughts and experiences with thimbles.  Thank you all for sharing.

 

where we might go

Yesterday, early in the morning, I went to the beach.

I gathered rocks and played with them.

Daydreamed.

Wrote in my journal.

Watched two trains that passed by,

a couple playing with their dogs, one dog leaping into the water to catch a tennis ball,

a couple of adults with toddlers exploring,

a few other people, walking,

and the boats.

 

There were a couple people in kayaks, a tug, a guide boat, a few small boats, one large yacht, sailboats, and just as I was leaving, a fishing boat. 

My favorite was a barge being pushed by a tug. 

It was foggy and the crane on the barge was obscured. 

It left me wondering where the crane might go...

and about work and play.

 

row row

 

I've been thinking about Jude's definition of art... Do I make anything I would define as art or is it all craft?

I do draw a line between the two.  For me craft is making something useful.  Knitting a useful pair of socks to wear is a craft.  Weaving net for fishing is a craft. Making a basket...

And all this can be art too.  A work of art can be useful, can have purpose.  Purpose is what separates the two for me.  Is there a purpose to what is being made. 

And then there is decoration, perhaps better called beauty. Some things might just be beautiful (although that can be very subjective).

We need craft, beauty and art. Art as communication, as consideration, as perspective.  Craft, and people who are makers, to make useful things...things for shelter, for food.  Beauty feeds us, makes us fall in love, become caregivers... 

Where we get in trouble with all this is when value is assigned. 

And...can how we live our life, our lifestyle, be a form of art? Don't we all present a perspective to the world by how we go about living? Is there craft? Where do we add beauty?

How we define words, how we are defining self...

endlessly fascinating.

time spent

Yesterday I went to the beach for a couple hours, early while it was quiet.

Mostly people launching kayaks and paddle boards.  One very beautiful rowboat went by...

  The water was incredibly still and the sky immense. 

quiet