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

 

growing season

From my journal today:

April 23, 7:03 AM

I was up at 4 AM but then back to sleep…now just waking up to a world that seems to have tipped green overnight. All the leaves just beginning to bud on the deciduous trees. Maybe that little bit of warmth yesterday afternoon, almost 60 degrees? It’s rained and there are little droplets suspended from the branches adding to the beauty of the morning.

I love how this blurred. 

I started reading Enchantment, Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May.   Hazel mentioned it and I thought I'd just read a bit of it last night...Katherine May is such a beautiful writer.

She writes, "Not all that we know is verbal."  

I am thinking about that.

 

Paper that caught the drips of dye while undoing fabric bundles... I don't remember what with though + lake pigment made with onion skin.

I will still be sharing my experiments with pigments and mark making regularly.  I am doing something daily and suspect that it is a habit now.

#88 back to basics (but maybe a fancier version)

It's amazing what a difference a little extra time to make dinner makes.

Mac and cheese (I love orecchiette shaped pasta the very best.)

and kale rabe.

The rabe was blanched in the pasta cooking water and then added to onions that I had cooked in olive oil.  I also used some of the pasta water to soak some dried peppers and added that to the mix too. 

Yum.

One of my experiments today.

Then it became this.

And then this.

Listening to Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America.  Thinking about specialization and the effect it has had our society. 

#79 seasons are a circle

I found the flower between the pages of a book and decided it needed a home.

 

This one is layered & altered

and "bettyandisabel come dancing." e.e. cummings

 

#66 layers

I started this one yesterday.  The tree has three layers of ink and a bit of pencil.

After looking at something else (playing with the idea of stars and clouds), I saw a bird beak. 

It needed more color so I added two other layers and a filter to blend the colors more.

Also...a layer of books:

Thinking about layers in the garden.

It's cold today and the snow is low on the hills but there are more signs of spring everyday...

 

#61 more practice

Inspired by sunrise and sunset, the layers of color.

It's going to take a lot of practice I think.

In this one I've used a pencil, a dropper, a card and a paintbrush to apply the ink. 

Also wanted to share a book I found at the local bookstore.

Earlier this year I found another book that is poetry, watercolors and a field guide around flowers. 

I have another for birds. 

I love books like this. 

And this is a lovely conversation, Jane Hirschfield and Ezra Klein.

"So poems hold this physical love of the world, affection for the world. And, again, we will not save this Earth and all the beings upon it because it’s a good idea. We will save this Earth and its beings because we love it. We love them. We love life. We love being alive for the moment or two that we are in the immense span of time." Jane Hirschfield

Thinking about the definition of practice.

#46 duck, duck...goose?

Trying again for a swan but I didn't get enough bend in the neck.

Thinking about the story of The Six Swans where a sister has to make shirts to turn her brothers from swans to humans after they have been cursed. 

#3 rethinking plus some other things

Originally I was thinking..."anything for ten minutes" but I have decided to narrow it down a bit.  Ten minutes of painting, doodling, collage or drawing; preferably with the inks or paints I've made.

I want to play.

 

Cooking:  I do still want to post about food every Sunday though... that's another goal.

I've been craving polenta.  I use my stockpot and a mixing bowl to make a double boiler which makes cooking easy. 

Then I fried it in olive oil until it was crisp and ate it with the last of the purple sprouting broccoli I had from the last farmer's market.  Plus onions, parmesan and a bit of tomato sauce.  So good!

Reading:  I've finished reading Ways of Being by James Bridle.  A couple of the chapters get a little technical, but overall it's full of interesting stories and thought provoking ideas. He covers a lot and I am still processing what I think about it all.

Next up on the reading/listening pile is Foxfire, Wolfskin and other tales of Shape Shifting Women by Sharon Blackie. She's a new to me author that I stumbled upon while listening podcasts. The podcast is here at Knitted Heart and her  web site is here.  There is a beautiful video on the home page that Marti found. Sharon Blackie has written a lot on mythology, in particular women in mythology. 

Learning: what I want to learn this year, basket making and paper making.

I am sure there will be other things too...

 

on the table

I've spent a lot of the weekend rearranging things...

When I paused to look at what was stacked on my table I had to shake my head...pigment making supplies and pigments, dye supplies, the baby indigo vat, sewing projects, paper projects, books, drawing supplies, a water color set, yarn, gifts from friends, the occasional cat and an iron that I rarely use.

So many things that I am interested in. 

So many things that I am or want to be.

And a kind of chaos.

Looking closer,

There was also lunch:

Toppings: pears, smoked cheese, walnuts and radicchio.

And dye experiments.

The fabric on the left and middle were dyed in the baby vat, two dips for the cotton and one dip for the wool.  The wool on the right was dyed in the ice water dye bath. 

And that brings me to my reading...

One of the concepts that I find so validating in  Ways of Being is the idea that it isn't about either/or.  On a personal, small level for me, there is comfort in all the examples that Bridle gives. When I look at my table there is very little either/or. There are possibilities.  Why identify as one kind of maker?

And then there is a discussion on the importance of randomness. I am thinking about how that relates to creativity, how we define creativity. 

More thinking...in this week's newsletter Krista Tippet links to a podcast by Kevin Kelly.  The discussion is about technology, what it is and how it is shaping our world.  It's a great conversation, I especially like this:

So we have this world where, basically, answers have become cheap and ubiquitous and pervasive, and they’re everywhere, and so what’s much scarcer are good questions. And good questions are kind of like a discovery. They’re kind of like a way of exploring “what if?”

What if... :)

books and soup

Woke up to just a bit of snow....

Still more cold weather in the forecast.

Soup weather:  squash + water + tomato chutney topped with paneer and pumpkin seeds cooked in olive oil and paprika spice mix.

I finished reading another chapter of Ways of Being. One of the things I've loved about the pigment class I took was that there were reading materials.  At least two books mentioned in Ways of Being were also recommended reading for the class (Braiding Sweetgrass and Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta). 

And then, another connection... he uses a short story by Ursula Le Guin as an example, one that I was familiar with.  I pulled out my old yellow paged copy of The Compass Rose, bought when I was probably 13 or 14, read the story and remembered yet again why I love Ursula Le Guin's writing so much...

"The first geolinguist, who, ignoring the delicate, transient lyrics of the lichen, will read beneath it the still less communicative, still more passive, wholly atemporal, cold, volcanic poetry of the rocks:  each one a word spoken, how long ago, by the earth itself, in the immense solitude, the immenser community, of space."  From The Author of the Acacia Seeds