bee creative

gently down the stream (or across the ocean)

 

The pieces were there...things happen. 

The purple cloth is holly hock, the blue is indigo, and the yellow is buddleia (butterfly bush).

And once again, the lily pollen/coffee moon or sun.

It could be either and I like that.

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.

this morning

Finding shapes in paper scraps...finding shapes in clouds.

funny little (well relatively) cloud

On yesterday's walk I noticed the funniest cloud.  I am stitching one sort of like it on my Peace and Plenty quilt. 

I think it's a cumulus.

This week's On Being podcast of choice, Ann Hamilton, titled "Making and the Spaces that we Share."

"And that we grow up or we’re educated in a world that ascribes a lot of value to those things that we can say or name. But they’re all these hundreds of ways that we know things, through our skin, which is the largest organ of our body. And, so, you know, my first hand is that textile hand, and text and textiles are woven always, experientially for me. And then, I think that when I first started making things out of cloth, it was like it was another skin. So I was thinking about it as an animate surface, and thinking about it as something that both covers and reveals."

I am finding a lot of value in daily posts right now.  Following a thought, research, noticing, making, gratitude...

 

not what I was going to post but good stuff because we need it

I am not able to post a picture this morning so for now want to share this link to a project called "Small Bells Ring" and Heather Peak and Ivan Morrison.  Found via the Toast podcast. 

A library on a boat is my idea of heaven... 

The idea they express about "social sculptures" fascinates me.  

Community, for me it isn't about similarity or agreement.  It's a group of people who gather, either by choice or not, to participate in living...

10 things about this weekend.

Deep breath. 

 

A picnic on the back porch.

Strawberry Jam.

I read on the porch for 2 hours.

There was sunshine and rain.

 

The fig is bigger.

Roses were picked to make rose water.

I watched the hummingbird stretch its body out, its tail feathers were illuminated by the light.

The indigo vat is still working.

I copied Wendell Berry’s poem “How to be a Poet” into a journal.

questions

I've been keeping a basket of paper scraps, pens, pencils, paints, glue and a sketchbook on the table.

This is something I've done before and then usually get distracted at some point.

I wonder how long it will continue this time?

Sometimes I write notes from things that I am listening to.  This morning, Feedback Friday with Zak Foster inspired a note.

A couple weeks ago, it was Ada Limon on The Ezra Klein Show.  (During that conversation I discovered The Slowdown where Ada Limon reads and discusses a poem each week day.)

"Poetry has the breath built into it because of its line breaks, its stanza breaks, its caesuras. Any part of its prosody is really telling you, as the reader or the listener, when to pause, when to break. And it actually has a moment in which you are supposed to breathe." Ada Limon

Question, where else to we put spaces for breaks, to breathe?

 

 

 

choosing

I've been spending a lot of time sorting and reorganizing.

Use it up, give it away, and decide what I really want.

How I want to spend my time.

What do I enjoy the most?

One thing I know I love...color.

This is the dresser I have by my bed.

The drawers were a bit of a mish-mash of things. 

Now one drawer is full of journal materials.

Another full of thread, needles, a few scraps of fabric.

The rest projects that I can pull out and work on for a little bit and then put away easily...insomnia projects.

Similar decisions are being made in the garden.

What can I care for, what will thrive on it's own?

Very excited to find the fig is alive.

 

primrose

Random fact, or maybe not so random... when there is light chickens lay eggs.  For chickens to lay eggs in the middle of winter they need artificial light if they live where the day is short.

The local chickens are laying without additional light now. 

I got these at the farmer's market yesterday.

They reminded me of something I had in my stash...

She has a name and the beginnings of a hair-do.

A new hair-do can do a lot for a person.

Her name is Primrose.

They are hardy and cheerful.

There is of course the primrose path...

but that's another story.

 

Today's digital collage.

3 layers/2 filters.

My mother first gave me a camera to take photos with when I was around nine. If I remember right it only used black and white film.

This is a copy of a photo that I took around that time, looking up into the canopy of a redwood tree. I remember having to be so careful with film. How different it is now with digital.

How many possibilities there are to tell a story...