The conception and unfolding of a piece of art

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“Enlightenment is not separate from washing dishes or growing lettuce. To learn how to live each moment of our daily life in deep mindfulness and concentration is the practice. The conception and unfolding of a piece of art takes place exactly in these moments of our daily life. The time when you begin to write down the music or the poems is only the time of delivering the baby. The baby has to be in you already in order for you to deliver it. But if the baby is not in you, even if you sit for hours and hours at your desk, there’s nothing to deliver, and you cannot produce anything. Your insight, your compassion, and your ability to write in a way that will move the other person’s heart are flowers that bloom on your tree of practice. We should make good use of every moment of our daily life in order to allow this insight and compassion to bloom.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh

When I read this quote, I feel that anything is possible if we are mindful of the present everyday moments in our lives. It is those moments that enrich our lives and make our creative expression deep in meaning and spirit.

Studio Wednesday – Art Projects

Apr9

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A Spring nest of yarn.

With these 2 luscious skeins, I’m knitting a “Ripple” scarf, a pattern I purchased from Spincycle Yarns. The yarn in the nest is the Berroco “Seduce’ yarn I was talking about last week. Yum…

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I love the contrast in textures between the linen/silk yarn and the mohair-y wool yarn. I find myself being deeply drawn to pale blue these days.

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With this wonderful pattern, I’m learning all about “yarn overs” and how they can create a fabulous see-thru lacy look. I’m also being drawn to lacy, flowy designs.

More work on my free-form bracelet. It will be ready for the clasp very soon.

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For the past several months, I’ve been gessoing the pages of an old datebook, preparing it for transformation into an art journal. I walk by it everyday and feel its call to add color and images and words and doodles. I daydream about what I will do. Yet, I do nothing. A couple of days ago, I stumbled across the most wonderful blog called Caspiana and posts about Soul Journaling, a 22 day step by step guide to creating a soul journal. Hoo-ray! It was just what I needed to inspire and guide me to sit down with my art journal once again.

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I’ve glued down my ripped up dictionary pages and am ready to write using the prompt “Today I feel…” I’ll do that tonight. Next will be gessoing over my words and doodling my name all over the first page with colored pencils and markers.

I am joyously taking the first steps in my art journaling experience.

I stopped by the library on the way home from work and have a new pile of books to snuggle up in bed with tonight.

Opening each book and sifting through its words. That pleasure and a steaming cup of herbal tea to guide me toward sweet dreams.

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Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. ~William Hazlitt

Studio Wednesday

Mar19

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In the time I have between my physical therapy treatment and my favorite tv show “LOST”, I’d like to share with you what I’ve been working on this week.

With the limited range of motion in my frozen right shoulder, I haven’t been able to do a creative activity that I absolutely love: mixing colors in polymer clay. Cranking the pasta machine is torture on my shoulder. I solved that problem by treating myself to a motor and foot pedal for my P.M. What a difference! This has opened up a whole new world for me.

I love my new motor.

My first color mixing project was to mix up some muted neutral colors for a cane I wanted to try out from the new Donna Kato book I picked up from the library. It’s called “The Art of Polymer Clay Millefiore Techniques: Projects and Inspiration for Creative Canework”.

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There’s a lot of cool cane ideas in this great book. Now that I’ve returned it to the library, I’m even considering adding it to my library permanently. The cane slices above were created with a rolled Skinner Blend plug, wrapped and squished and rearranged. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not really into creating canes because I like a more organic look to my work instead of geometric precision. That being said, there are some fun organic cane patterns to play with.

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I had some fun with the cane ends I sliced off and rolled around. Here’s a scrap cane that ended up looking like crescent moons from another world.

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Ever since I received a small piece of plexiglas in a goody bag from the first Klay Karma retreat 4 years ago, I love making swirly lentil beads with cane scraps. The larger one with the cane slice bail will be used as a pendant in a necklace. The smaller one could be used for a freeform bracelet. That would be fun to incorporate some polymer clay beads in my freeform work.

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I thought that I’d do something different for the swirly pendant necklace. Using a very thin gauge black wire and some bronze colored size 11 seed beads, I made several lengths of chain stitch. The wire was a bit tricky to work with at first because there is no “give” as there is with fiber. It takes time to figure out how much wire to wrap around your crochet hook to allow you to be able to pull the wire through the loop. I found that working looser rather than tighter is best.

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I made some more chain stitch lengths using bronze wire and black seed beads.

This weekend I’ll work on putting my necklace together.

“Once there were two color kittens with green eyes, Brush and Hush. They liked to mix and make colors by splashing one color into another. They had buckets and buckets and buckets and buckets of color to splash around with., Out of these colors they would make all the colors in the world.”

~from “The Color Kittens” by Margaret Wise Brown

Saturday Morning Tea

Mar7

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This past week was my first week back to full-time work. I keep telling myself that this is a good thing, giving me the ability to work towards my dream of owning my own home. Still, there has been some sadness associated with things I’ve had to let go of. Time for my art, especially.

As I prepared for my morning tea today I realized that I haven’t had many reviews about herbal tea. Or infusions, I should say, because herbals are not really tea. I apologize to any caffeine sensitive readers who are interested in exploring herbal options. I will strive to be more balanced in my tea choices and if there’s anything – tea or herbal – that you want to hear more about, please do let me know.

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This morning I am enjoying a cup of Honeybush Vanilla, a delightful herbal with Bourbon vanilla pieces and dried marigold petals. Mountain Honeybush, Cyclopia intermedia, is a bush that grows wild on the slopes of the Kouga mountains in South Africa. The leaves of this bush are harvested and processed much like the tea plant, camellia sinensis. It gets its name from the scent of its flowers.

Can you imagine wandering through a field of blooming honeybush and experiencing that sweet scent filling the air?

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This herbal is very smooth so you can steep the leaves for awhile without worrying about it turning bitter like oversteeped tea. I boiled my water and let it cool a short while before steeping the honeybush for 8-10 minutes.

The aroma is of sweet vanilla without being cloying or overpowering. The beautiful pink amber infusion tastes smooth and sweet with fruit and flower underlying the vanilla taste.

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I have filled this beautiful china cup, a gift from a dear friend who knows how much I love new tea “equipage”.

Every week I usually stop by the library to pick up books that I have put on my online queue. However, this week drew me back to my own bookshelf to a book I had picked up about 3 years ago at the bookstore. I remember reading it at that time and enjoying it but this time I can feel each word penetrating my psyche on a deeper level. Perhaps it is because of all of the changes I’ve experienced this past year and also the ones I am facing in the year to come. Called “The Courage to be Yourself” by Sue Patton Thoele, it is about finding an expanded vision of yourself and getting in touch with any self limiting fears that can get in the way of that expansion. Sue’s writing style is wonderfully down to earth and I feel like we’re sitting down in a cozy place having a cup of tea together while she shares the wisdom of her own personal journey.

She has 2 affirmations that she lives by.

I choose to live my life fully.

I will never give myself away again.

A truly wonderful book. Have a marvelous week.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was

oftentimes filled with your tears

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,

The more joy you can contain.

~Kahil Gibran

Studio Wednesday

Feb11

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Today brought a warm breeze and 65 degree temperatures to tease us out of the winter doldrums. I definitely have spring in my thoughts as I create my glazed polymer clay pieces.

An egg sits on her nest dreaming of possibilities…

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I had used my Makin Clay extruder to create polymer clay spaghetti strands for my glazed heart. Then I started playing with the strands and created this little nest.

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And these balls of yarn. Just playing but in my play some ideas were born.

I’ve started doing some research on the sgraffito technique. Practiced in painting, wall decoration and ceramics, this technique produces a design by scratching through a top layer to reveal the layer underneath. I applied many layers of glaze to my egg and didn’t think that it was exactly what I had imagined in my mind. My carving tool was close by so I started carving into the glazing. I would like to explore this technique further.

I’ve also started a few new knitting projects this past week. Last week, I knit another pair of handwarmers for a friend/colleague at work. Since I had some of this positively yummy cream and pink yarn left over, I started a cozy neck cowl. I found a really cool pattern here at t does wool’s blog. You knit a 6 1/2″ x 20″ strip in an interesting ribbed pattern (what does knit 1 in st below mean anyway?) and then create a 2 button and loops clasp so you can secure it around your neck. I’ve never seen anything like this before but I discovered that it’s apparently very popular with knitters. It reminds me of my free-form bracelets with the buttons and loops clasp.

Hey, I just got another idea…

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My Mom sent me some “sock” yarn in autumn colors. As you knit, the variegation of the yarn creates stripes. How cool is that.

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Do you see the stripe of blue yarn? Well, the pattern I’m making (called “All That Jazz” textured socks from the book “Vogue Knitting On The Go: Socks Two”) called for knitting one round with “waste” yarn. I wasn’t really sure what they were talking about but I figured that it wasn’t the yarn I was using to knit the socks with. Hehe So I just grabbed some left over yarn and knit around. At some point, I will need to take that yarn out and transfer the stitches onto my needles. Sounds rather tricky. I’ll keep you posted.

I find myself jumping around from project to project these days. Polymer clay. Knitting. Art journaling. My acupuncturist told me that people are starting to feel spring energy already. That restless, jumping around, things ready to be born and burst type of energy.

I’ve got to prioritize my projects here…