The Way Back Machine (or falling through the looking glass)

This project that I am working on has required something that I haven't ever quite successfully undertaken before.  I am revisiting a piece.  March and April of 2011 consisted of me working on several pieces for a show at Townshend's Teahouse, working late at the poetHouse, with Battlestar Galactica in the background.  The product of that work was the show Feathers, Scales, and Shells.   One particular piece, The Medicine Show, was probably my favorite of all the pieces, but also the one that I felt was most incomplete.  I hung it up in my house, but never took official photos or scans of it.  It needed more time and attention, but I had moved on.  So it hung on my wall.

One of the hardest parts about the creative process is saying: done.  There are always passages of color or details that I look at, months later, and think "if only."  I often have to stop myself from grabbing the things off the wall.  But I don't come back. What's done is done, and I am in a different place.  Plus, unless it is on my own wall, it's quite rude to pull it down and say, "I'll be right back."

With this piece, the Medicine Show, I am in a dramatically different place psychically and artistically.  A good year and a half later, I'm glad to say that I've learned a bit more about my craft, and I've move on.  However, maybe with a groan, and through the urging of my sister (aka The Editrix)  I decided to grab it off the wall, to dig back into it, for the sake of problem solving  another project we have been working on (more later on that).  Oddly, it's been So Satisfying.  Stubborn and stuck at first, I gradually let myself be absorbed by the thing in front of me.

maybe I will do a before and after shot later. 

When I really dig in and get to work, that is what happens: I become absorbed.  It's like the piece I am working on is the looking glass that melts from solid to liquid, letting me pass through. This is when time falls away.  This is when the process becomes pleasure, when colors become scents and temperatures and tastes.  When I can revisit a time and place of initial creation with objectivity and patience and insight.  When all the attached stories find meaning, but then fall away with ease.

It matters to This starfish

There is a story, if you haven't heard, about a man walking on a beach.  The shoreline is full of beached starfish, as far as the eye can see.  He keeps walking along, and comes upon a little boy who is patiently grabbing one starfish at a time and throwing them back into the water.   The man stops the little boy and says something very adult- like. "How futile! You will never be able to save all these starfish, little boy! It doesn't matter!"  The little boy grins at him, picks up another starfish, and says "It matters to this one!" and tosses it back to its home.   

I didn't start out this piece with starfish on the shore.  It started with the figure in a shell dress, with the readings I've been doing lately for my yoga practice about the body as a home for your spirit, not something your spirit just wears and discards, so to speak.  Through my yoga teacher training in October, and through my yoga practice in general, I've been attempting to see every action as a little prayer, every mundane task such as doing dishes or tidying my space as a way to create a more sacred space.  Coming to the world with this attitude is a hopeful one.  This way, no act ever seems futile (especially facing the enormity of all the disaster in the world).  And not to be preachy, but it seems much more joyful to align myself with the little boy throwing starfish into the sea.  

sneak peak

furiously working...errr procrastinating

I am cutting and pasting, and the pieces keep getting tinier and tinier as the time goes more and more quickly.  I am showing at the Teahouse for April First Friday (also April Fools, by the way) and have been working on new collages, but it is slow going.  The title of the show is Feathers, Scales, and Shells.