Let Your Goodness Blossom

Its been quite a while since I have posted on here, being swept up in the polarities of this season.  Trying to find balance btween them and find the center  of my own sense of peace and good will.

I have been receiving some wonderful inspiration from Lynn Jericho's Inner Christma s guide and website.  If you to have been longing to find balance and equilibrium seasonal needs for spiritual fulfillment and the material too muchness of this time of year I recommend her work heartily.  She offers a free pdf on her website of her inner Christmas Guide.

"  Reflecting the natural world, the soul seasons transform at solstices and equinoxes.  The light and the dark aspect of our inner lives move from attention to ourselves as earthly beings to attention to ourselves as spirituals beings and returns.  In summertime's light and warmth, our souls embrace our intense perceptions of the world.  But in the dark cold silence of early winter, our souls turn inward seeking the Spirit."

Many blessings to all... follow your instincts for goodness, let the magic happen.  Happy Solstice.

Still Working on Gratitude

The day after Thanksgiving my Women's Art Medicine Group met and we created gratitude scrolls.  This is what I created.

I added this to my gratitude blessing book which is an ongoing process for me.  I fall out of it and then life situations remind me to remember what I am grateful for and that being in a state of gratefulness is a form of prayer for me.

I have to keep reminding my self that it is my choice to choose happiness over struggle, no matter what circumstances I find myself in.  So, as usual the art making process helps me to

find balance amid lifes varying changes.

Something about this process,  engaging in my own art making and then sharing it with the world,

 is an integral part of the creative process for me.

 I am grateful as well for this venue.

May happiness 

fill in the cracks that form in your life 

as winter time reflections 

bring melancholy.

Time to revisit Gratitude....If the only .....

" If the only prayer you said in your whole life  was, "thank you" that would suffice."

Meister Eickert

And so here are some of the things I am grateful for...taken from my ongoing Blessing Book, or gratitude collage book..

I am grateful for...

All the love in my Life

S0 very Grateful for

ART

Art is a blessing tome

my body and my life...

Happy Week of Gratitude...

Engaging Day Exploring Encaustic

The small group of women who came to my encaustic class last weekend, were totally engaged and lost in the process.

 I love it when participants explore process deeply without attachment to outcome,

just diving in and seeing what the media can accomplish.

This is what happened

 everyone meshed

 and that wonderful

creative buzz

of focused,

yet playful

energy

filled

the studio.

Reconfiguring my Studio ~ Encaustic Group on Saturday

Today is all about cleaning up and reconfiguring my studio, since I am facilitating an encaustic day on Saturday.  Pulling out all the mixed media supplies, checking to make sure I have enough medium made,

cleaning brushes and more.

I haven't taught an encaustic group since late spring, and I am excited to be doing this again.
It always gets me going on a new piece and as of late I have been not cranking up the hot plates and producing.  So sharing is a way of getting me motivated.

Although my encaustic supplies are not in disarry, I have tables to move, electric cords to plug in and I need to make sure my extra hotplates are in the right areas of the studio.  Often times all that electricity blows a fuse or two, so heat guns and hot plates need to be placed strategically around the studio.

So enough of me messing around on the computer, which I have been doing all morning.  I have been creating holiday cards from my art on my zazzle site ( check it out if you are interested)  ArteEclectica
Time to open up the door to my studio and get going.
I will post images from the workshop after the fact.   Ciao...

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

- Sir Francis Bacon

A Few More Dolls - And my Inner Child

In my Friday Medicine Art Group we started the process of making  Spirit Dolls.   Since we meet for 3 hours and quite a few people were out last Friday, only a few folks  began.  They are in process and have great potential brewing.  Here are a few photos of  several of the dolls in their beginning stages.

II

In the group two weeks before this one, ( we meet alternating Fridays), we created  images honoring our inner child...(inner creative beings, which led to us creating the dolls in the next meeting.

This is mixed media collage of my inner child.   She looks a little moody, and I realized that I was a rather introverted child, due to having many health issues in my childhood.
She loved to make paper dolls and little people out of all kinds of supplies, so doing doll making with others definitely in a healing, and joyous salve to my inner little girl.

She also loved to do art with others, parallel imaginative, play, and I am so blessed to still be able to do this.  I have created my life work out of the longings of my inner child.

Speaking of being with others and making art as well as pushing my creative limits.  This weekend I am going to the Mendocino Art Center to  take a class in " Creating Stunning Abstracts" along with my friend and fellow art therapist, and partner in the Creative Arts Studio , Patricia Waters.  This class and its teacher, Mira M.White , have come highly recommended.  I am looking forward to doing something very different  from my normal creative focus.

Mendocino is one of my favorite places to go, and taking a class at the art center is a wonderful experience.  I will post images from the class and my trip next time I get around to posting.  Happy Art Making!!!

Spirit Doll Making Day @ my Studio

Yesterday I facilitated a day of creating Spirit Dolls at my studio.  I have been gathering with some old friends, colleagues from my days of teaching at the J.C every 4 months or so and leading art making days.  This time we created spirit dolls, using pre made stuffed muslin dolls, and transforming them into Spirit Dolls, with each individual letting a guide of some sort come through in the process. It was an engaging and fun day of expressive art making.  Again and again this brings me to the thought of somehow finding a way to focus on promoting Expressive Art Making Party Days for groups of women and their friends and families.  Here are some photos of the process and dolls that emerged.

After  molding and shaping faces out of sculpey, and putting them in the toaster over to bake, everyone began to focus on decorating their doll bodies.  
Some people painted the forms with watercolors or fabric paint, while others decorated the bodies with marker pens.  

When the faces were cool, they were painted as well as had hair or head pieces created for them.

Then  we were on to clothing them, as well as giving them chakras and any other healing attributes that added to their energy, and popped up out of the imagination.

They continued to evolve over the course of the day as each person played with the possibilities.  The imaginal world was in full bloom as each person's inner child had a field day with the doll making process.

This dolls carries a mask with it, to take on or put off as needed.

Tana's magical inner guide.

Gail created two dolls to give to her granddaughter Raven who is in the hospital with a serious health condition.  Although she had to leave early with her other grandbaby Katie, she is well on her way to completing the dolls, with the small one done, representing Katie and the large one' who will be Raven, having her face molded and ready to be added to the larger doll.  They will be given to Raven so she can play with and hold her baby sister while in the hospital, to keep her company and be a source of comfort as she continues her challenging health procedures.

I am so happy to have been able to facilitate this process for her and her dear grand mother and my friend Gail.

This day made me want to do this more often, what a magical, healing and playful day of artmaking.

Two more Encautics in my Bella Italia series - In Process

Here are two more new encaustics that I worked on yesterday for my Festa Italiana series...Bella Italia.    I plan on having a series of these to take to a big Italian Cultural Arts Fair that I will be selling jewelry at on Oct. 11th.  

Whether they are complete is the question, the first one is a photo transfer from an earlier mixed media encaustic that I did several years ago.  I plan on clarifying this one a bit and perhaps adding something on the right side.  We shall see.  Sometimes the dreamy quality of photo transfer adds to a piece other times it leaves something lacking. Which is it?...




This doorway was a bit more evocative in the original photo, but I still love it. I again am not sure where to go with it and if it needs something more or to be changed.

The good thing is that  I am back in the studio playing, and exploring with the hot wax.  Now that the weather has cooled quite a bit  here in Northern California, it is much more appealing to crank up the hot plates and heat gun.  

Since I am planning another Encaustic Class for the begining of November, getting back into the swing of things is good.  It seems I often need an external goal to get me moving, so at least I am moving forward.. More to come I am sure.  Perhaps one of these days I will show some of my jewelry here as well.  I have been making jewelry for years and years, having done Craft Fairs for ever.  I only start making jewelry these days close to the holiday season, since earrings always sell no matter what the economy.  Doing a fair is something I haven't done for a long long time, but since I was laid off from my faculty position last December I am revisiting it again.  The Italian Festa is a fun event, many Italians, which reminds me of my family, lots of good food...and it is short and sweet...11-6, is also a plus...not alot of hours to sit.

If you are in Santa Rosa on Sunday Oct. 11th, come on by to Festa Italiana at the Veterans Building and check it out!

Encaustic- Back in the Studio on a Hot day....yay

"

6"x6" on cradled clay hardboard

Here are two new encaustics that I did in the past two days....It was hot in the studio, but I was happy to finally get in there and crank up the hot wax and hot plate.  I am selling my jewelry at an Italian Festa on Oct. 11th and decided to do a few encaustics that somehow related to my Italian, sicilian heritage.

The Mandonna encaustic is from a photo I took in Sicily outside my zia Dora's house.  It was built into the stucco wall in the back yard.  These little nichio's or altare's are hidden in many backyards all over Sicily.  I wish I would have taken more photos of them when I was there.  Maybe next time..( hopefully) 

I loved the photo but never knew what to do with it.  I this piece is another addition to my nichio, madonna, goddess series.  The Sun is just a lovely old middle ages etching that I photo transfered onto an encaustic background.  I plan on writing Buon Giornio on it with carbon paper or?? not sure yet.  I have to say that I was excited to get back to my wax work after just not being motivated for quite a while.  I think its the fall that gets me going.   Blue and orange are colors that keep calling me these days.  I put beeswax on about 4 more small masonite panels as well, so we shall see where I go next with my Italia series.  Horray... I am having waxy joy buildup!

Intention - Affirmation Cards...

Intention- noun:  a thing intended; an aim or plan : she was full of good intentions • the action or fact of intending :  have (a course of action) as one's purpose or objecin\

• ( one's intentions) a person's designs,  plan that (something) function in a particular way :

2 Medicine the healing process of a wound. 

3design or destine (someone or something) for a particular purpose or end :

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French entencion, from Latin intentio(n-) ‘stretching, purpose,’ from intendere (see intend ).

While I was visiting in Mt. Shasta, I brought with me supplies to create more intention cards. 
I shared the process with my friends and once they started they couldn't stop making them. 
 Judy was up all night for 2 nights in a row, it was as if a storm of creativity broke free in her after being bottled up for years.  


So I am including some of the cards made by both my friends, Vicki and Judy as well as  some created by me, and a few  other's created in another seasonal women's art group.  


I love witnessing how this simple process allows one to be free and say what needs to be expressed in a visual way.


Perhaps it is the small format, or the freedom of collage that allows one's inner guidance to come through.


                                             Each card is both beautiful and evocative.





  This is just a sampling of the images that emerged.  I love this process and keep adding to my stack of cards as well.  With all the best intentions...!!!