bee creative

#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...

 

 

#86 fool

Fooling around...another way of saying play.

 

First harvest...even thought it's so cold that snow is still in the forecast.

Rhubarb Fool...

# 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? 

#8 to be

Recently I've been revisiting the On Being interview with John O'Donohue.  Listening to it in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.

He says,

"I mean that everyone is involved, whether they like it or not, in the construction of their world. So it’s never as given as it actually looks; you’re always shaping it and building it. And I feel that from that perspective, that each of us is an artist."

Today looking through an old sketchbook I found a quote I'd copied by Madeleine L'Engle (pretty sure I found it here):

"But unless we are creators we are not fully alive.  What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint or clay or words.  Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living."

Not sure if I've ever shared this but I chose my blog name as a bit of a play on words.  Deborah, from a Hebrew word meaning "the bee," + creative...

A prompt and reminder for myself.

 

something else

Something I haven't done for awhile.

Something I hold gently.

A poem.

 

breathe

The brown shirt is done and includes a secret message on the inside of the hem:

I need to remember this.

Hearing them, looking up and watching the geese shift positions. Imagining...what is it like to fly like this? Their wings glinting (what made me think of that word?) with sunshine. 

I didn't get as far as I wanted, but it's a start.

Reminds me of making mud pies and mud stew on the porch as a child. The browns are soil from the garden, the pink is a sample sent as a supply for class.

 

science

From the farmer's market today...romanesco. 

One of the most amazing vegetables.

It's a fractal.

Where my indigo that was fermenting sat for a couple weeks. 

It left a footprint.

Ice-dyed fabric that I bought, and that they dyed, at a local yarn/fabric store (Spincycle). 

I want to try this... of course I do.

Definition of science in Ways of Being by James Brindle, "A guide to thinking, not a thought: an endless process of becoming."

 

on the line

As a phrase it means, risk and danger.

When the phrase came to me I was really thinking about what was on the laundry line.  That was before I had to get Gibson down; he was dangling by his paws after climbing up the fabric.

I think it's the clothes pins he's after. 

Then I thought of the line I stitched today.

And of writing a line of...poetry? 

I made notes right on the fabric during a class today.

Mantua-makers seam.

All of this is not to be confused with a train of thought.

Which might be derailed.

 

states of being

B is for

Buoyant (glass balls at Mom and Dad's), which can be the act of floating or a mood.

And black (also at times a mood).

And back to it, which I am.

(Because I had to play along.)

 

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.