London

I’m back from a 9 day trip to London. It was primarily a family visit, but I enjoyed being a tourist in the city where I spent many childhood summers. Later, when my mom moved there, I’d visit 2-3 times a year until she died.

The cultural highlights of my time there were: the Tate Modern, housed in an old power station on the  Thames: 4 of  Emily Young’s  angel heads, mounted on pillars outside of St.Paul’s cathedral; the Royal College of Music Museum of Old instruments; and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The Tate is everything a contemporary art museum/gallery should be: exciting, full  but not crowded, educational, provocative, fun, aesthetic, engaged/engaging, challenging visually and conceptually, in short- an experience. Everywhere were clusters of school aged kids  sitting talking, looking, involved. There were interactive stations placed on each floor; and the free exhibitions were arranged in novel ways, juxtaposing different artists to help make certain connections one wouldn’t have thought of at first.

Emily’s sculptures slayed me as usual, and I stood in the middle of the large square outside St.Paul’s, communing with them the best way I know how- by drawing them.  It was an amazing interlude in the middle of busy noisy London to bask in the eternal stillness that these sculptures radiate- I can still feel it. If you read her statement on her site, you’ll see that she is very conscious of this aspect of her work.

I’m not a museum person, but the V&A was so constantly recommended that I finally just went. It is anything but stuffy, musty old things. It, too, is a vibrant space, almost holy, enshrining and keeping alive craft, contemporary as well as historical, at its highest expression. Out of curiosity I visited the jewelry halls and it was literally dazzling- the most exquisite necklaces, earrings, rings, crowns and gems were displayed against a backdrop of black velvet in lit cases within a dimly lit  hall, beautifully arranged in a gallery with a  plexiglass spiral staircase in its middle. 

I also loved the Chinese and Japanese galleries, dark and mysterious with perfectly placed simple forms of ancient pots, jade circles, knives, and other artifacts subtly lit in glass cases.

The building itself is a wonder, high arching ceilings, stained glass, ceramic staircases encrusted with gold and mosaics and reliefs and sculptures, and inscribed stone. It was like being in a wonderland with new sights at every turn. I went back twice, and would have returned more if there’d been more time.

 

Space

For 2 months, this harpsichord (spinnet virginal, replica of a 17th century instrument) has lived on my work table while I painted the sound board. Normally this isn’t a problem, but recently I’ve had several commissions coming in at once, and I’ve been going crazy.  In the studio I also have a light table and another drawing board, but they were taken up with office and drafting work, so all the other projects  got spread out on the floor or the bed.

I am organising a workshop, and I’ve literally felt that I couldn’t think straight with all the clutter around, and without a clear area to just spread things out to look at.

Well, it all changed this morning. The instrument was picked up at 11:00 AM and I have Space.

Space, I just sit there looking at what seems to be endless acres of fresh, virgin potential.  I fantasize spreading out all my workshop plans on that empty white table, being able to see for the first time the structure of the day and how the exercises lead into each other.  After that is cleared up then I can draw, cut and assemble my craft kits, (soon to be available through my webshop). Oh what a luxury to have everything at hand, all on one table, and pile and stack things according to progress made. And to see in a glimpse what has been done and what still needs doing.

Having my table back has shown me how much my well being and ability to think and organise are dependent on space, space to move and space to think.

 The Dutch have a saying,’ A clean house, a clean spirit’.  That’s sure how it feels today.

Art Healing Network awards 2009

I have been given the privilege of being able to give a workshop I’ve been dreaming of for years. It is a mix of enchantment, making objects of personal power, using art techniques to create meaning and healing in one’s life, creating room for creative wishes and dreams, and just plain having fun with wonderful materials.   This is the place I feel the most connected and useful and inspired.

I wish I had the words to express what art and creativity mean in my life, and how much it means to me to share this.  For years I wanted to go into the healing professions, but it never felt entirely right to have to choose between that and my art. And now, approaching 60, I see they are not at all separated.

Many times in this blog I’ve been trying to express what it is about the new subcultures in art that inspires me in the way conventional channels for making and selling art don’t.    Tonight I received the latest Art Healing Network Newsletter with their 2009 awards. The approach to art as a transformative  and healing tool is perfectly expressed in this year’s winners. Here is a link to Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang, two of the award winners.  What they are doing, their sensibilities, their stature as artists and  aesthetic quality perfectly express what it is about the new art that so entirely captures my imagination.

I am just so grateful that my life seems to be opening out into ways to share this way of seeing with others and participate in my own way in this holistic and engaged art.

Anne Michaels, writing that matters

We have a beautiful modern library in Groningen (NL). The extensive English novel collection has sustained me in my 24 years here.

Reading occupies a large place in Rende’s and my lives, partly because we don’t have a TV.

Every week I go to the Groningen library and search for new books. I walk through the stacked shelves talking to the authors of each book that I pull out. I say, ‘Matter! Write something that matters to you so it can matter to me’. 

I get attracted to titles and colours and covers, but 99% of the books I pull out, I put back. It is such a gamble, spending 200 or more pages with someone, in their head, in the world they have created. Where will they take you? To old grudges of theirs revisited? To a vision of hopelessness? or to a new world of hope and magic.

I’m looking for light and meaning…. and love. And Anne Michaels writes because she cares. What matters to her is the world,  so intensely, it edges on pain:

‘on a table graced with stillness and smells, the wild order of plums’.

 Flat on my back, I dug a hole in the sky. I inhaled the sea until I was light-headed, and floated above the island.
Alone, in space, I imagined the Antarctic auroras, billowing designs of celestial calligraphy, our small portion of the sky like the corner of an illuminated manuscript’.

‘On Zakynthos I tended a garden of lemon balm and basil in a square of light on the floor.’

These quotes are from Fugitive Pieces.

I’m reading Winter Vault  now.  I hesitate to quote from it. All I can say is that each word is charged with meaning and purpose. The language is so beautiful, the sensibilities intense and eloquent. Reading it is like praying.

ok one tiny quote:

‘ Avery leaned overboard, dipped his teacup into the river, then set the circle of water next to him’.

The books I love most leave me in a state of constant gratitude;  thank you Anne Michaels for this,  ’a circle of water’.

Yes we can

I was thinking of the overuse of Obama’s campaign slogan; I just saw it as a heading on an article about creativity. It is , like the happy face, starting to get tiresome.

But no matter what anyone says about this man, he has done something miraculous, he’s rekindled hope.

So many of us, and not just my generation (babyboomer) have been hurt by life and have become cynical.  I was 13 when JFK was shot. My youth was also shadowed by the assasinations of Bobby and Martin Luther King.  And later, much later, like us all, I witnessed the horror of planes intentionally slamming into downtown New York’s buildings.

We’ve had our hopes dashed again and again by corrupted politicians. All of us have wanted to believe in a better world; I left my secure life and good career in the states to spend 6 years living in an international spiritual community, so high was my idealism. Especially my generation of idealists and new agers sincerely believed we could make a difference. ‘Yes we could’. And of course we’ve been disillusioned.

I have somehow found my way back to my early openhearted beliefs in an ensoulled caring world, albeit older and wiser. Granted,  I daren’t believe too much, too hard, too openly, that Obama is who he seems to be. But as he says, he is not going to save anyone, we all have to do it together.

One first step is to start daring to believe again and dropping our protective cynicism.

And I find that creativity is often the means to become engaged again, hopeful, playful and connected to the things that really matter.

LATER: I loved this synchronicity, a friend just mailed me this link to a speech Paul Hawken gave to University of Portland 2009 graduation class.  It is every bit as good as any Ted talk. I know Paul from my Findhorn days and he walks his talk.

Eric Maisel’s ‘The van Gogh Blues’ 2

Continued from Eric Maisel’s The van Gogh Blues 1

If I were asked to single out the one most important piece of advice in this book, it would be that creatives need to take action in service of their creative work.

Anxiety and indecision keep us procrastinating when we could act. Maisel says that if on a day we take one tiny step toward a creative project, then we can count that day as successful.

He emphasizes how we have to do this even when we don’t feel like it!! ( A big one for me). In my own experience, just showing up at the page, or the harpsichord, or the computer even when I feel dull and empty of inspiration, almost always helps.  Maisel says that taking an action, no matter how small, is the one most proactive healing thing we can do for ourselves. And that it will protect us from falling into a downward spiral that can end in depression and creative paralysis.

He also suggests that we know very well when we are procrastinating/just keeping busy, and when we are doing something in service of our art. For example, clearing out old files can be a way to waste time, or it can be the preparation for a new creative cycle. Only you know which one you are engaged in.

Paraphrasing from the book:

You have to risk unleashing your passion even with the possibility you will be disappointed. Creative people can’t resign themselves to postmodern meaninglessness. They always come back to the belief that a meaningful life can be led and they are obliged to at least try.

You decide every day to matter. You decide every day to live authentically, reckon with the facts of existence, and doing so your  truth becomes more eloquent.

Creating, as a life’s commitment, is hard; it is your heroic work. 

When we are not true to ourselves we suffer.
When we are true to ourselves we suffer.

I do my creative work anyway.

Showing up

When my life is busy, I tend to avoid the computer. So I’m showing up on the page here to keep some continuity going.

At the moment I have a lot going on. My large worktable is completely taken over by a small harpsichord (or spinnet) waiting to be painted;  I have a small business identity to design; there is a large art health event coming up in the beginning of October and I’ve done two in the last week; and there is my first ‘Re-enchantment’ workshop coming up.

The last is the fulfilment of a long-held dream to combine consciousness-raising with creativity. There is so much to say about it I will save it for another post. But basically it is about ensouling one’s life through creative expression.

I’m also working on my book about creativity and dementia care, and am finishing up the third article in a series of 3  on the same subject for the Journal of Dementia Care.

All this is so welcome after months of no incoming work. Yet it is also demanding patience from me since I was aiming to get my webshop launched in August and have to postpone that for awhile.

More on my new products in a later post.

Hi to all. Wishing you an inspired and creative autumn.

Tending the soul life

Continued from previous post (Re-Enchantment of art)

And  few quotes from Thomas Moore:

A re-enchanted art would once again use materials and craft as a way of housing spirits that go beyond just the artist’s intellectual or emotional life or ideas and ideologies.

‘In this context it isn’t difficult to see a role for the artist in tending the soul life of a community by giving it powerful images of needed spirit in music, dance, food, painting and architecture- in all the arts.
We might also expand our notion of therapy and see that in presenting objects full of certain spirit for a community’s absorption and consideration, the artist is a therapist and a magus…….

Through a magical, spiritual use of images, the arts nourish the soul creating a richly varied atmosphere, an environment that is not only practical, but spiritually nutritious. In this way, the arts also might enjoy a central role in the life of a community and would not be made marginal, as is the case almost by definition in a disenchanted culture’.

Re-enchanted art

Further musings about why art as product, represented and marketed within the gallery art world is not my begin and end all.  Sure, it is a part of what I do, but not a particularly meaningful one.  It is a bit of an identity problem, though. I make art and enjoy selling it too, but my context is different.

Especially in the  company of other artists who are singularly focused on the business of their art, it is hard to communicate what I stand for. And why I don’t make an all out effort to trawl the gallery venues and events and make a name for myself so my work will sell better.

I’ve run across some quotes from Thomas Moore’s,  ’The Re enchantment of Everyday Life’,   that reflect the aspect of art that really gets my bells ringing and my lights blinking.  It has to do with replenishing our spiritually parched souls, building community, re-enchanting everyday life. And yes, it can go hand in hand with selling one’s work as a product….or can it? Where is there any evidence that NOT selling one’s art  might be a reasonable stance?

Here are a few relevant quotes from a fable I loved by Keith Miller, ‘The Book of Flying’.

‘What do you do with the paintings you complete’?

‘I give them away or keep them if I’m fond of them. Sold art corrupts.
You are a poet, could you sell a poem?’

‘Never’, said  Pico, ‘It would be like selling a child’.

‘Precisely’.

Later  in the book:

Often he wished for the loneliness of the forest, the loneliness that allowed him to place valuable words on paper. He had sold his poems for comfort and he was afraid to enter again the trials of solitude. So he wrote poems that lacked heart, written from outside his skin, written in snatches between ale swilling and lovemaking, and he did not allow them to steep, to cure, but read them at once to his friends for the applause they engendered.

Memory bundles

Last weekend I cycled to a favorite spot of mine on the northern sea coast of Holland. It is not far from where we live, and I don’t know why it holds such a fascination for me. I think part of it might be that it reminds me of the inner Hebrides in Scotland. There are always sheep walking on the sea dike, there are no trees and there’s loads of sky and space;  it’s a lot like Erraid and Iona.

I wanted to somehow bring back part of the feeling of peace I find there, so collected some grasses, a feather, and some( filthy) sheepswool.

I made the little memory bundle when I came back, a soothing activity in itself. It is about 4 inches long. The tiny calligraphed label notes the place, date and a few words about the experience.

The bundle on the left top was inspired by several things coming together.  When I am pruning in the garden, I always am attracted to colours and textures of the dried out flower stalks. Occasionally I keep them around as they are, but I never quite know what to do with them. 

Harry K, a friend from my online artist’s group mentioned an artist, Willem Boshoff whose work includes bundled twigs from various places. 

So I decided to make small bundles of various dried plant stalks from my garden, label and  and save them for awhile.

The one above is from a clematis with a tiny but fragrant flower. For weeks we’d get blasted by a cloud of vanilla perfume whenever we’d pass by it.  It’s official name is ‘Clematis x triternata ‘Rubromarginata’.