artistic process

Pull the Tab for Your Reality Show

What if we were to be able to open our perspective as easily as opening a can of tomatoes? There, instead of the wilted basil leaf, grainy juice and slick flesh, was a new way of seeing?

The inspiration for this piece came from The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron. She speaks about enlarging our perspective through the practice of meditation, of looking deeply and precisely at ourselves with gentleness and then letting go of what comes up. She says this can help us take the black sack off our heads to see that we’re standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. I would like to take the sack off my head and be awake to something as wide and deep as the ocean.

You have to open a lot of cans to be awake in this saucy life. The practice begins with showing up, just as you are, and looking inside. Many times, it will be like an episode of the reality cooking show Chopped – how can you possibly live a life with a syrup of resentment, a jar of cowardice and a sarcasm cake? Those ingredients also contain your empathy, your resilience and your humor. To transform, you have to see and use what you have inside.

This piece sits beside me as I write this, reminding me to open up, to look inside, and stir the bubbling ocean of juiciness.

A Dim Capacity for Wings

Detail of base

Detail of base

Apologies to Emily Dickinson for using a line from one of her poems, but it pretty much sums up the ache I have when I haven’t had a project to find myself lost in.  Each time I sit in my little corner studio, Bach on Pandora, brushes clean and waiting, paint tubes all lined up, I hope this will be the day when I catch the breeze and fly.  Sometimes, as with the quince or with the seed pods, it is just practice and preparation for the day when my wings unfurl.

Detail of base facade

Detail of base facade

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The Tart Taste of Fertility

Quince

Quince

I painted a picture I took of a quince as a way to keep creating.  We have a huge quince bush in our back yard — it blooms a delicate salmon-pink flower in the spring and then ripens about ten fruit in the summer that are so tart the squirrels won’t eat them.  Not much excited me about the subject as I sketched it, or kept me in a sweet flow as I painted.  Unlike the seed pods, it wasn’t a tortured process, but it felt like practice. Come to the canvas, mix the colors, listen to music, and fill a brush with paint.  Repeat.

But the universe was talking to me, I just wasn’t listening. As I became bored with painting, I grabbed one of my favorite books, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper (Thames and Hudson, 1979), and looked up “quince” on a whim. The quince is an ancient Greek symbol of fertility, the food of brides and sacred to Venus.  Like ancient Sarah, I audibly snorked  and chuckled when I read this — what a strange sign! I am now fifty, so my baby making days are well behind me.  I’m in a phase of my life where I see my children ripening into adulthood.

I put the book down and returned to the canvas  — a verdant sea of green.  As I played with hues and shapes and shades, I realized that the sign for me was that my life is fertile ground, not my body.

That is the lesson of yoga as well.  Asana (poses) is what most people think of as yoga, but it is only one limb of an eight limbed practice.  There are also the ethical disciplines of the yamas and niyamas, the appropriate use of the life force in pranayama, and the abiding in silence and cultivating stillness to deepen an awareness of our connection to true self.

The practice of yoga is a tool to help us till the fertile ground of our being.  Once we have prepared this ground, we can fully bloom.

To Do, Be OR The Challenge of the Empty Laundry Basket

A way to say goodbye

A way to say goodbye

At my goodbye party at Iona, I explained through a very ugly cry, that I was leaving because of my yoga practice. This life on the mat has helped me understand that challenges are at the very root of growth and development. Challenge helps us question, discover strengths and quiet the internal dialogue that binds us. I had grown comfortable at Iona and had lost my beginner’s eyes. While I could have stayed for many more years because I loved the work and the people, I knew comfort wasn’t good for me or the organization. I took a position at First Book on July 22 and I have beginner’s eyes, hands, mouth and feet. I remind myself every evening that just like headstand, this is the challenge I need and I will learn.

As I was leaving Iona, I decided to do a project for the teams I worked with. As a conceptual artist with a laundry basket full of 3.5 ” cubes of wood, I decided to do a block for each of the 12 individuals that would form a whole.

Block Puzzle

Block Puzzle

I started with the facade of the bouquet — since I thought of each person bringing a unique beauty to the whole — the sum being more beautiful than the parts. This facade took a long time, and to tell the truth, I was disappointed that it looks like a mundane painting on a china vase.

And, the process would be too long to produce the project by the time I left. On the other facades, I painted the Lao Tzu quote that was going through my mind about Iona’s strategic planning process and my own thinking about my own future journey.

The other is a white foreground with black lettering:

Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu

The last facade was more opportunistic. Ben sent me an incredible picture of his time at Ocean City. I loved the shimmer and the mystery of this new place. Fourth facade done.

Oppportunistic inspiration

Opportunistic inspiration

By this time, it was my last week. I had to step up the pace to complete the process. Interestingly, these are the images I’m the most happy with. I had to move fast, and to riff on the outer facades. So the words “bloom” or “flower,” the images of a shell, a bird in flight, then a feather flowed onto the wood. I began to use the wood as part of the design rather than to cover it up. I had to stop capturing reality and move to flowing creatively. I love that these are the images that are the “inside” the reality. Fitting for a team or an individual thinking about the future. According to Keith Sawyer in his new book on creativity, Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, a good way to bubble up ideas around a problem or question is to give yourself a deadline or a boundary so that you can’t get stuck with one idea. Another way to bubble up ideas is to “topple,” to help your mind create ideas by association. For example: I didn’t like the picture I painted of the bouquet, but I really liked the idea of “blooming,” so I concentrated on a quick painting of the opening of a day lily. Then thinking of yoga, I used the stylized lotus to imagine the same bloom. Then I got realistic about what it was I wanted to say and I “said” it with image and word. Three blocks down in an evening, instead of in a week.

Toppled ideas

Toppled ideas

The last creative idea was to think about the how the individuals I know and love would make their own mark at Iona. I created a space for them to do this, using chalkboard paint.

It’s three weeks later than the day I left Iona. I spent yesterday tying a bow on the project, literally and figuratively.

I spent time thinking of the gifts I had received from these people in the six years I had worked at Iona and thanking them in writing, choosing the very right piece of the puzzle for them and wrapping it up. I wonder if they’ll have time to put the puzzle together?

Everybody gets chalk to make their mark

Everybody gets chalk to make their mark