I M Perfect lady

Category: Art & Quilts

  • In The Eye of the Beholder…

    I went to the Beach House to do a Photoshoot with my quilts.  I was struck by the image of the Ladies on the Beach….and recalled the volumes of time I spent there healing my inner body…striving to be whole, again.  To feel something other than sorrow and confusion…soaking up the sun, lulled by the sounds of the waves, breathing in the fresh water air…a retreat space from the world.

    Seeing my Ladies on the shore and me walking around…it was surreal.


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    Going back in time or forward into the future.  The Beach hadn't changed, but the woman who was walking her shores had come along way.

    It is no wonder why I love to do Beach Scenes…and to have images of women who are bold, bright, passionate…courageous. 

    I am so grateful for all the days and hours spent along this shore.


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    Writing myself back into power…in nature.  

    In one of my quilts, I depicted a log that resembles one along this beach, with its broken limbs.  You can't see it in this picture, but it is a close match, down to the rocky shore…


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    The quilts seemed to be at home on this shore, like me.  A homecoming of sorts…a familiar feeling, with the world slipping away, and all that was remaining was this shore.


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    Maybe more like a reunion, as Art and Nature mixed.

    And, the empty quiet unused Beach House sat…remembering when…laughter, kids…books, games…endless days of play, now waiting.


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    Just as we use to come and flop upon its porch, my quilts now rested there. Kayaks waiting, benches posed…


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    Instead of beach towels, my quilts were hung…

    The bright colors….bringing life.


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    Where woman and nature dance together in harmony…The days of being a beach bum fondly remembered…and recalling its healing balm when I needed it the most. The days spent writing, doing yoga, watching the sunrise, the loons…

    I believe nature and places are there and it is up to us to see and feel them…it always feels like a mutual emotion of gratitude, between me and the Beach House. 

    I thought I went to the beach house to use her as a backdrop, but instead it seems she was the focal point and the quilts secondary…or as one puts it eye candy.  Her presence is so large to me…an overwhelming feeling.

    Is it the past memories?  

    Or good bye…

    Like revisiting a wise old woman…

    Time and changes stand between us.

    I wonder if her and I will spend time together in our future….

    Will her shores enlighten another?  Will she be a refuge from the world?  

    Her beauty is indeed, in the eye of the beholder…


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  • Hide my truth…

    On the Ex-Toots Blog, someone commented about praying for the children in the FALC, that they would be spared abuse.  When I commented back, the children don't need our prayers, but we need to pray for the adults. 

    We need to ask for courage to stand alone…and the strength to walk out of relationships with abuse.  To make healthy boundaries and draw the hard lines.  

    Our children need strong adults to change the legacy in their family and do things differently.  Praying for the children without asking adults to change is meaningless. Skipping what the adults are doing is where the trouble lies. 

    Schooling them in good touch bad touch, again, meaningless if the adults in their worlds don't display boundaries about good relationships and bad.

    Most of the abuse education is directed at children, like this is where the change needs to occurr to end abuse. What about the adults? Why are they not being asked to change?  

    In looking back at my mother's life, I could see, that in order for abuse to change, I could not be my mother.  I had to do things differently.  I had to be stronger and try harder, and exit any relationship where they were abusive or supported abuse…the change began and ended with me.  I was leading my children….just as she had.

    I could also see how some of my siblings responses were of children and not of being an adult, where they made choices based on being a son or daughter, but not in being a mother or a dad.

    If I responded as a daughter, my response may have been different, if I had not seen and felt the eyes of my children upon me.  How was I going to act with sexual abuse in my family of origin?  What I did shows them an alternative compared to what others in my family did.  The affects are not something you will see in a few weeks or months, it will be years before the actual affects are seen.

    In the early stages of change it appears all negative, like you have lost so much…and you are, you are losing the pattern of abuse…called dysfunctional family or toxic relationships or secrets that are harmful to little souls.

    It is my belief, that the outcome of my walking will be felt upon the lives of my grandchildren, for I am being the parent I would have wanted.  It is my soul's knowing, that I did what I had to do, to stop the chain of abuse. I had to walk away from where it lived…no cell of abuse, would I tolerate, in order to change what is acceptable in relationships of love.

    It isn't so much about abuse, as it is about love.  

    Abusing means, "To use wrongly or misuse, improperly, to mal-treat or ill-use."

    I see abuse meaning how we are in relationships or perhaps how we act.

    Acting wrongly or improperly within any relationship is the key to dysfunction.  

    It is only as good as the two people in the relationship.

    If someone lies, and the other doesn't address it or set a boundary against it, they are partners in building a dysfunctional relationship.

    The less real you can be, the less real the relationship.  And, to be truthful, for those who don't want to face their own truths, will be very happy in relationships full of pretend and leaking boundaries.

    The more truthful you become with yourself, the more truth you will gather around you.

    I would rather be alone in an honest relationship with myself, than be in relationships where I had to hide my truth.


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    ( a work in progress, like me.) 


     

     

     

  • Write them Beautifully…

    In "Good Prose" The Art of Nonfiction.…about Memoirs.

    "The desire to tell the truth haunts the serious memoirist, and so it should. But there is a step beyond truth.  For the writer, the ultimate reward of memoir may be to produce a work in which the facts are preserved but the experience is transformed."

    "In "A Fortunate Man, a meditation on the working life of an English country doctor, John Berger writes: "Perhaps this is the true attraction of autobiography: all events over which you had no control are at last subject to your decision." Writers in all genres are attracted to the promise of control over past events – if by "control" one means creating form or finding patterns in a life or a mind or the world, and, in the case of memoir, finding a road through the wilderness of one's past."

    "Some memoirs cry out for this kind of control, as in the case of a young man with a painful past who had a powerful story to tell, but was uncertain about whether to tell it.  His name is Pacifiquel.  He grew up in an African country beset by civil war. His parents, farmers and herders – were virtually illiterate and yet they valued education, and Pacifique managed to attend grade school, often in peril from trigger-happy soldiers. He did well.  His test scores were among the countries highest and earned him a secondary school education. Then, at nineteen, through a series of improbable accidents and charitable acts, he was brought to the United States, where he spent a year at the private secondary school Deerfield Academy."

    "English was still strange to him and he arrived. (He was fluent in French as well as in his native language.) He had never read a great novel or poem, but as a child he had conceived a fondness for the kinds of stories that elders had traditionally told -mixtures of fact and fiction that the elders always claimed were true, with complicated structures leading invariably to a moral."

    "A frequent lesson of the elder's stories was the importance of discretion. Pacifique came from a culture that values silence, and so by training he was disinclined to tell his new schoolmates much about his past. Moreover, he worried that American students and teachers would be afraid of him if they knew about the violence in which he had grown up. They might think that it had left him violent too. But as he learned more English, he began to set down some of his experiences. When his teacher told him that some of what he ahd written was "Damn near pulishable," Pacifique said he only wanted to improve his English. They very idea of making his stories public seemed to frighten him. He worried that his stories were unfit even for his teachers to read because they contained so much horror. His teacher tried to reassure him , telling him that art had the great power to transform the experience of suffering and injustice into something beautiful. This idea made a strong impression on Pacifique."

    "In one story he wrote- he called it "The Color of a Sound" – Pacifique begins with a glass breaking in the dining hall at Deerfield. The sound triggers a memory. His native village is being attacked – on "one of the days my mother apologized to my brother and me for having given birth to us." The family's house is burned down.  He and his mother and brother spend the night hiding in the forest. In the morning, standing near a clearing, Pacifique witnesses the killing of a young school mate named Patrick. The boy has been tricked into approaching a rebel soldier. The soldier is holding a glass. The soldier drops it on purpose, and the glass shatters. Pacifique explains a superstition in his country, that if you drop something you are eating or drinking, you may blame a person near you for wanting it. The soldier accuses Patrick of having wanted his drink, then orders him to pick up the shards of glass and put them in his mouth. the soldier forces Patrick to chew, then shoots him in the forehead. The story ends this way:

    "Because I had seen many killings, and would see ones even more horrifying, I thought I would forget Patrick's, but eleven years later, when I arrived at Deerfield Academy, Patrick returned. In the dining hall whenever I heard a glass shatter, I did not think of the superstition.  I thought of Patrick's mouth full of glass and would see him trying to bite. My mouth would be full of food and I could not take a bite. It was as if the food in my mouth had become pieces of glass."

    "When my fellow students heard a sound of a glass breaking they knew someone dropped a glass and they would laugh at that person's clumsiness. When I heard the sound of glass breaking, I would not laugh. I would see a red color instead. The color of blood in Patrick's mouth. A color no one else could see."

    "During his first year in America, involuntary memories were an important problem for Pacifique – the dreadful things he could not banish from his mind, gusts of memory that could come at any time.  Two years later, he felt that something important had changed. While writing, he said, he had discovered a partial defense against his memories: "That's how it started. I wrote a story and I felt relieved. I could control it. In the head, I could not. It's as if you had your hands on it and you could control it and make it beautiful. So instead of haivng power on you, you had power on it. When it comes as a memory, it dictates to you, it controls you. After I wrote that story about the breaking glass, I would hear a glass breaking but it never came back that way.  I mean, I would remember what happened, but it was never as before.  I would think of making some modifications in the story, to make the story better. Then if a memory woke me up, I could get back to sleep by writing it down, thinking I could turn it into something beautifully written. I mean, that's what I wish."

    "He didn't show his stories to other students. He still wasn't  eager to make his past public, but he wasn't afraid of that anymore. He was afraid that other students would tell him the storiers weren't well made, and because their command of English was superior to his, he would be obliged to believe them. Most writers are vulnerable to criticism. It is hard to imagine one more vulnerable than Pacifique. Writing had been a great discovery for him, a defense against the invasions of memory, a way to get to sleep. But when he wrote stories that included the horrors of his past, he had to believe that the stories were well made or could be remade until they were. Otherwise, memory would regain its hold. "If it isn't well written," he said, "it is as if it comes back into you."

    "Many writers have spoken about memoir as a way to "objectify" experience, to get clarifying "distance" between oneself and one's past. But that is not precisely what Pacifique intended when he spoke of having power over his memories, nor is it the highest use of memoir. One can also use memoir to get closer to the past."

    "The memories that surface suddenly – merely unpleasant for most people, horrifying for Pacifique – are bolts from a bigger storm, capricious, even random. If you can go back to the source and see your memories whole, you can create truer versions of what you remember. You tell the stories as accurately and artfully as your abilities allow. If you succeed, you replace the fragments of memory with something htat has its own shape and meaning, a separate thing that has value in itself. The past becomes an assertion that your life is of the present and the future."

    "Taking the undifferentiated materials left by the past and giving them pattern and form can be – more of a solace- a source of great pleasure. The delight that memoir can offer is like the delight a woodpecker may feel when putting the finishing touches on a beautiful desk. The desk is different from the wood forever. And the good memoir is different from the memories behind it, not a violation of them but different, and different of course from the actual experience that gave birth to momory and memoir." Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd


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    I love how Pacifique wrote down horrific things and wished to write them beautifully.

  • Without Your Self


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    Krishnamurti writes about "Art, Beauty and Creation", in his book "Education and the Significance to Life."

    "Most of us are constantly trying to escape from ourselves; and as art offers a respectable and easy means to doing so, it plays a significant part in the lives of many people.  In the desire for self-forgetfulness, some turn to art, others take to drink, while still others follow mysterious and fanciful religious doctrines."

    "When, consciously or unconsciously, we use something to escape from ourselves, we become addicted to it.  To depend on a person, a poem, or what you will, as a means of release from our worries and anxieties, though momentarily enriching, only creates further conflict and contradiction in our lives."

    "The state of creativeness cannot exist where there is conflict, and the right kind of education should therefore help the individual to face his problems and not glorify the ways to escape; it should help him to understand and eliminate conflict, for only then can this state of creativeness come into being."

    "Art divorced from life has no great significance. When art is separated from our daily living, where there is a gap between our instinctual life and our efforts on canvas, in marble or in words, then art becomes merely an expression of our superficial desire to escape from the reality of what is. To bridge this gap is very arduous, especially for those who are gifted and technically proficient; but it is only when the gap is bridged that our life becomes integrated and art an integral expression of ourselves."

    "Mind has the power to create illusions; and without understanding its ways, to seek inspiration is to invite self-deception. Inspiration comes when we are open to it, now when we are courting it. To attempt to gain inspiration through any form of stimulation leads to all kinds of delusions."

    "Unless one is aware of the significance of existence, capacity or gift gives emphasis and importance to the self and its cravings.  It tends to make the individual self-centered and separative; he feels himself to be an entity apart, a superior being, all of which breeds many evils and causes ceaseless strife and pain. The self is a bundle of many entities, each opposed to the others.  It is a battlefield of conflicting desires, a center of constant struggle between the "mine" and the "not-mine"; and as long as we give importance to the self, to the "me" and the "mine", there will be increasing conflict within ourselves and in the world."

    "A true artist is beyond the vanity of the self and its ambitions. To have the power of brilliant expression, and yet be caught in wordly ways, makes for a life of contradiction and strife. Praise and adulation, when taken to heart, inflate the ego and destroy receptivity, and the worship of success in any field is obviously detrimental to intelligence."

    "Any tendency or talent which makes for isolation, any form of self-identification, however stimulating, dissorts the expression of sensitivity and brings about insensitivity. Sensitivity is dulled when gift becomes personal, when importance is given to the "me" and the "mine" – I paint, I write, I invent. It is only when we are aware of every movement of our own thought and feeling in our relationship with people, with things and with nature, that the mind is open, pliable, not tethered to self-protective demands and pursuits; and only then is there sensitivity to the ugly and the beautiful, unhindered by the self."

    Sensitivity to beauty and to ugliness does not come about through attachment; to comes with love, when there are no self-created conflicts. When we are inwardly poor, we indulge in every form of outward show, in wealth, in power, and possessions. When our hearts are empty, we collect things. If we can afford it, we surround ourselves with objects that we consider beautiful, and because we attach enormous importance to them, we are responsibile for much misery and destruction."

    "The acquisitive spirit is not the love of beauty; it arises from the desire for security, and to be secure is to be insensitive. The desire to be secure creates fear; it sets going a process of isolation which builds walls of resistance around us, and these walls prevent all sensitivity. However beautiful an object may be, it soon loses its appeal for us; we get used to it, and that which was joy becomes empty and dull. Beauty is still there, but we are no longer open to it, and it has been absorbed into our monotonous daily existence."

    "Since our hearts are withered and we have forgotten how to be kindly, how to look at the stars, at the trees, at the reflections on water, we require stimulation of pictures and jewels, ob books and endless amusements. We are constantly seeking new excitements, new thrills, we crave an ever-increasing variety of sensations. It is this craving and its satisfaction that make the mind and heart weary and dull. As long as we are seeking sensation, the things that we call beautiful and ugly have but a very superficial significance. There is lasting joy only when we are capable of approaching all things afresh – which is not possible as long as we are bound up in our desires. The craving for sensation and gratification prevents the experiencing of that which is always new. Sensations can be bought, but not the love of beauty."

    "When we are aware of the emptiness of our own minds and hearts without running away from it into any kind of stimulation or sensation, when we are completely open, highly sensitive, only then can there be creation, only then shall we find creative joy. To cultivate the outer without understanding the inner must inevitably build up those values that lead men to destruction and sorrow."

    "Learning a technique may provide us with a job, but it will not make us creative; whereas, if there is joy, if there is the creative fire, it will find a way to express itself, one need not study a method of expression. When one really wants to write a poem, one writes it, and if one has the technique, so much the better; but why stress what is but a means of communication if one has nothing to say? When there is love in our hearts, we do not search for a way of putting words together."

    "Great artists and great writers may be creators, but we are not, we are mere spectators. We must read vast numbers of books, listen to magnificent musci, look at works of art, but we never directly experience the sublime; our experience is always through a poem, through a picture, through the personality of the saint. To sing we must have a song in our hearts; but having lost the song, we pursue the singer. Without an intermediary we feel lost; but we must be lost before we can discover anything. Discovery is the begining of creativeness; and without creativeness, do what we may, there can be no peace or happiness for man."

    "We thing that we shall be able to live happily, creatively, if we learn a method, a technique, a style; but creative happiness comes only when there is inward richness, it can never be attained through any system.  Self-improvement, which is another way of assuring the security of the "me" and the "mine," is not creative, nor is it love of beauty. Creativeness comes into being when there is constant awareness of the ways of the mind, and of the hinderance it has built for itself."

    "The freedom to create comes with self-knowledge; but self-knowledge is not a gift. One can be creative without having any particular talent. Creativeness is a state of being in which the conflicts and sorrow of the self are absent, a state in which the mind is not caught up in the demands and pursuits of desire."

    "To be creative is not merely to produce poems, or statues, or children; it is to be in a state in which truth can come into being. Truth comes into being when there is a complete cessation of thought; and thought ceases only when the self is absent, when the mind has ceased to create, that is, when it is no longer caught in its own pursuits. When the mind is utterly still without being forced or trained into quiecence, when it is silent because the self is inactive, then there is creation."

    "The love of beauty may express itself in a song, in a smile, or in silence; but most of us have no inclination to be silent. We have not the time to observe the birds, the passing clouds, because we are too busy with out pursuits and pleasures. When there is no beauty in our hearts, how can we help children to be alert and sensitive? We try to be sensitive to beauty while avoiding the ugly; but avoidance of the ugly makes for insensitivity. If we would develop sensitivity in the young, we ourselves must be sensitive to beauty and to ugliness, and must take every opportunity to awaken in them the joy there is in seeing, not only the beauty that man has created, but also the beauty of nature."  Krishnamurti

    There is so much in this short section about the complex and simple place where beauty, art and creativity is born, it is born when we lose our self and our desires or what he calls pursuits. 

    How interesting for me, that my art flourished while my world fell apart.  Now it appears that it is truly the only place it can, when there is no me frantically needing and doing things that make up the Me world.

    It leads me to wonder about the WIND, the women in new directions. Is it possible to create your self into the empowered state, OR do you first have to investigate you and destroy the you that needs or desires things, due to being empty inside?  Do the women come empty to WIND, and will they be able to create since they have lost themselves?  Will the pursuit of creativity lead to the discovery of self?

    Is it like the quesiton of the chicken or the egg?

    From what he writes, he is saying true beauty and truth….and creativity comes when you are full inside, when you heart is full and there is no need for anything, when the mind isn't seeking…a space is there that  allows inspiration to flow.


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    And, are you in fact, the most creative when you are in the midst of great change, when you don't know who you are.  When your life and self you thought you knew is left lifeless on the ground….is it then, that you are most open?

    Interesting for me to note.  

    Being creative is best done without your self.



  • Injects the word fear.

    Here is a interesting writing on Fear….or perhaps what fear stands in front of, by J.Krishnamurti in his book, "Commentaries on Living, 2nd Series"

    "Why do you engage in welfare or in any other kind of work?"

    "I suppose it is just to carry on.  One must live and act, and my conditioning has been to act as decently as possible.  I have never before questioned why I do these things, and now I must find out.  But, before we go any further, let me say that I am a solitary person, though I see many people, I am alone and I like it.  There is something exhilerating in being alone."

    "To be alone, in the highest sense, is essential; but the aloneness of withdrawal gives a sense of power, a strength, of invulnerability. Such aloneness is isolation, it is an escape, a refuge.  But isn't it important to find out why you have never asked yourself the reason for all your supposedly good activities? Shouldn't you inquire into that?"

    "Yes, let us do so.  I think it is fear of inner solitude that has made me do all these things."

    "Why do you use the word 'fear' with regard to inner solitude?  Outwardly you don't mind being alone, but from inner solitude you turn away. Why? Fear is not an abstraction, it exits only in relationship to something. Fear does not exist by itself; it exists as a word, but it is felt only in contact with something else.  What is it that you are afraid of?"

     "Of this inner solitude."

    "There is fear of inner solitude only in relationship to something else. You cannot be afraid of inner solitude, because you have never looked at it; you are measuring it now with whay you already know. You know your worth, if one may put it that way, as a social worker, as a mother, as a capable and efficient person, and so on; you know the worth of your outer solitude. So it is in relation to all this that you measure your outer solitude.  So it is in relation to all this that you measure or approach inner solitude; you know what has been, but you don't know what is.  The known looking at the unknown brings about fear; it is this activity that causes fear."

    "Yes, that is perfectly true.  I am comparing the inner solitude with the things I know through experience. It is these experiences that are causing fear of something I have really not experienced at all."

    "So your fear is really not of the inner solitude, but the past is afraid of something it does not know, has not experienced.  The past wants to absorb the new, make of it an experience. But can the past, which is you, experience the new, the unknown? The know can experience only that which is of itself, it can never experience the new, the unknown. By giving the unknown a name, by calling it inner solitude, you have only recognized it verbally, and the word is taking the place of experiencing; for the word is the screen of fear. The term 'inner solitude' is covering the fact, the what is, and the very word is creating fear."

    "But somehow I don't seem to be able to look at it."

    "Let us first understand why we are not capable of looking at the fact, and what is preventing our being passively watchful of it. Don't attempt to look at it now, but please listen quietly to what is being said."

    "The known, past experience, is trying to absorb what it calls the inner solitude; but it cannot experience it, for it does not know what it is; it knows the term, but not what is behind the term. The unknown cannot be experienced. You may think or speculate about the unknown, or be afraid of it; but thought cannot comprehend it, for thought is the outcome of the known, of experience. As thought cannot know the unknown, it is afraid of it. There will be fear as long as thought desires to experience, to understand the unknown."

    "Then what…?"

    "Please listen.  If you listen rightly, the truth of all this will be seen, and then truth will be the only action. Whatever thought does with the regard to inner solitude is an escape, an avoidance of what is.  In avoiding what is, thought creates its own conditioning which prevents the experiencing of new, the unknown.  Fear is the only response of thought to the unknown; though you may call it by different terms, but still it is fear.  Just see that thought cannot operate upon the unknown, upon what is behind the erm 'inner solitude'. Only then does what is unfold itself, and it is inexhaustible."

    "Now, if one may suggest, leave it alone; you have heard, and let that work as it will. To be still after tilling and sowing is to give birth to creation."  J.Krishnamurti 

    My knowing knows this is right. That somehow we have used fear to stop doing what we can't know before hand, what we can't fully understand, we place fear before it.

    If you instead use the word Unknown, about something and wait to experience it, I am sure we would do much more.  

    Imagine, Fear is a thought that steps in when it can't know.

    It, the mind, seems to be standing in the way of many unknown thrilling experiences…instead of letting us experience many different unknowns, it and our past, because it has no experiences of what would be new experiences for us, put the word fear to cover up the unknown.

    What I have found is to become friendly with the unknown….to dare to step into the unknown, regardless of the thoughts in my mind. Now, I know…when the mind doesn't know the unknown, it injects the word fear.


  • What we want

    As I have watched nature showing itself as Flooding, I watched the changing transformation….how it expanded and now how it is contracting, receding back into its normal size.

    I have thought how it is a metaphor for life.  How we will have moments or events that will overflow, create difficulty in life.  We traverse them, grow, gain confidence, wisdom and then they too recede into our past.  A memory.

    I was delighted yesterday morning to see the evidence of the river level dropping.


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    The snow banks are gone, and the chair stands…


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    This is the corner where the river found its exit….and it is still coming out, but much much slower.  And, further up the road there is a place where the river flows back in…like it is testing land for a bit…or perhaps Me.


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    What my jeep looks like after a rough day on the Spring roads.  I actually had to use my four- wheel drive to get out of the mud. But, on my way home yesterday, through the water, it washed the wheels.  A good under body flush while the river was up! 


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    See how green everything is beginning to turn…there are buds on the trees, but very small…a bit of warm weather and another transformation begins.

    I guess what we love are pretty transformations, the ones that seem to require nothing of us, just our admiration upon completion.  But, the transformations that tear apart your insides, demand changes in behavior, etc we deem as 'bad'.

    However, they are the ones who develop us.  Those transformations oddly are course corrections, they are taking away all that isn't our soul's purpose or what is right for us.  

    Most of what I lost were toxic or dysfunctional or abusive.  I didn't lose love, peace and joy….it was through the transformation that I found them.

    And how would we appreciate dry dusty roads, if we didn't have a foot of water to compare them to?  The contrasts of life gives us meaning, helps us navigate into what we want. 

  • Winter Art

    Winter's Art is not finished…even though many are ready for Spring like pictures to appear, I love what I seen today as I drove to work.


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    What a great shot…

    I believe the chair was there to stop people from driving and making their driveway muddy….but with a layer of fresh fallen snow, it becomes Art.


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    Further down the road….by the little bridge, this view appeared.


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    This is where the slews flow into the river…a few ducks have been hanging around here…


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    And, the mailman road had more water….today.


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    And, there still is plenty of snow to add to this flooding road!

    There are signs of Spring….see the buds beneath the snow?


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    It may be the last of Winter Art.

  • As Art

    I have experienced creativity at a deep level, a healing level, but I could not have pinpointed what it healed, why or how. I just knew that Art Quilting was key in making me feel better…I can see how it had its hand in helping me become more wholehearted…or perhaps to hold my heart, while my life was falling apart…and continued on expressing me.

    In reading "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brene Brown, she talks about Wholehearted people and what role creativity plays.

    "Let me sum up what I've learned about creativity from the world of Wholehearted living and loving:

    1. "I'm not very creative" doesn't work. There's no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don't.  Unused creativity doesn't just disappear. It lives within us until it's expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.
    2. The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity. 
    3. If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing -it doesn't matter. As long as we're creating, we're cultivating meaning.

    "I also realized that much of what I do in my work is creative work.  Writer William Plomer describes creativity as "the power to connect the seemingly unconnected."  My work is all about making connections, so part of my transformation was owning and celebrating my existing creativity."

    "Letting go of comparison is not a to-do list item.  For most of us, it's something that requires constant awareness.  It's so easy to take our eyes off our path to check out what others are doing and if they're ahead or behind us. Creativity, which is the expression of our originality, helps us stay mindful that what we bring to the world is completely original and cannot be compared. And, without comparison, concepts like ahead or behind, or best or worst lose their meaning." 

    "If creativity is seen as a luxury or something we do when we have spare time, it will never be cultivated.  I carve out time each week to take and process photographs, make movies, and do art projects with the kids. When I make creating a priority, everything in my life works better."  Brene 

    I know being creative or continuing to quilt when my life was falling apart was crucial, but what I couldn't articulate was why.  It brought meaning, expression and a familiar place I could be me without judgment or ridicule and anger.

    Most folks have a hard time presenting their Art, for they fear the critics.  My critics were in my personal life, like it itself was a work of art, open to criticism…and my quilted art was ignored.

    I was more expressive and controversial in my daily living life and it was totally reflected in my art….yet my life was actually leading the charge.

    The harshest critics I have faced are related to me…

    To live wholehearted, to be vulnerable, open and expressive of your emotions and feelings, you will be living, loving wholeheartedly.  

    I don't know what I thought wholehearted living was in the past, perhaps a pure, kind and nice person…maybe embracing of all things, accepting without limits.

    Now, I view it totally different.  I see it as being honest and sparing no feelings, not yours and certainly not theirs.  To live with your whole heart means to go where it is uncomfortable and to erect boundaries, to walk away with your whole heart instead of allowing others to rip it apart.

    Wholehearted living is a work of art itself…it will cause controversary, it will not be easy, and yet it will bring back into yourself your whole heart.  

    While I was bringing my heart back to me…I would return to quilting where my free and open heart could play without fear of rejection.  Creativity was a safe place to express me….to be me. 

    “Here's what is truly at the heart of wholeheartedness: Worthy now, not if, not when, we're worthy of love and belonging now. Right this minute. As is.” 

    When I was rejected on the outside, I was welcomed in my Art.

    It didn't care about the tough choices I was making in my real life, it didn't want or need me to be different than I was, it accepted me as I am.  And, through creativity I accepted me as Art.


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  • Day at the Beach

    Oblivious to the beautiful sunshine, melting the snow, 
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    I was in the basement adding finishing touches on my latest Beach Lady.


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    Perspective is hard to create, knowing the size in comparison, but maybe content trumps perspective.


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    Or color, expression…push exact composition aside.  I love the energy and 

    image of summer relaxation.  The pink/white fabric was a perfect finish…and actually I had this spotted before I started on the inside, once I knew how the border looked, I could add other mismatched colors on the inside.


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    These were taken in the shade, but in order to see the quilting, sunshine is needed….


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    All in all, she was a fun day at the beach.  

     

  • Another Quilt taking form…

    I wanted to finish a novel I was listening to in the mail jeep, so I brought the last CD in the house, went downstairs to listen and began playing with a quilt I had started awhile ago.  

    I first played with the water….using tulle.  It gives it great texture.  I may still add other threads…


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    I have done this once before and I like the dimension it gives off.


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    And then I began to play with a lady, I went from a dress to a bikini….in the water and out of the water.  Who knows what will end up in the water!


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    I like her hair…and even her bikini top….and the sun.  The border fabrics are much more compatible in real life.  It seems murky or off color in the picture.


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    It was a pleasant way to spend this evening, wind howling outside, and a storm brewing, a novel completed and another quilt taking form…