3 things

There is so much that inspires and nourishes me. Picking 3 recent things from time to time helps to notice them and give some of them a place to be shared.

1. this Ted talk. I just listened to it this morning and I think perhaps it inspired me to sit down and write this little post. It's about the practice, all our practices, "What you practice GROWS!" love that and so true regardless of what it is. Listening to this tuned me in and gave me some space to wonder what am I practicing? and what do I want to grow?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkXA8rgqiss

2. I keep a list on my phone of things I over hear, fragments and bits of conversation.
This is one:

3. This beautiful picture book and I mean gorgeous color and paper and cut outs and yum.
The Forest  Written by Riccardo Bozzi Illustrated by Violeta Lopiz and Valerio Vidali.

 

amything goes sketchbook

When I spend time in one of my anything goes messy sketchbooks my day always feels better. This is not a sketchbook to sketch out specific ideas for specific projects, I have ones for that. This one is to make marks, scribble, paint, collage, write, move my hands freely, discover something. It really does feel like breathing, its necessary. I hope you give yourself some time today and every day to let yourself play with materials you have by your side.

Thanks to Carla and Steve Sonheim I have this video flip through of one of my messy anything goes sketchbooks from 2018. It has music too. Enjoy!

3 things

There is so much inspiration every where. In books, movies, overheard conversations.
Here are 3 things that I've enjoyed this month.

1. On Being Podcast, - Mary Oliver
2. Movie- Mustang
3. Book- Velocity of Being

Stepping into 2019

 

Stepping into this new year, I'm thinking about trusting what I like- MORE.

 Yeah I know that whole trust thing is over used. And what does it really mean? To trust our selves. 

 Trust our ability to say YES to what FEELs aligned with the vibe we are working to tune and create in our life constantly even if it doesn't make sense or seem practical.

I made this collage in my morning sketchbook the other day. Something about the suggestion of meaning and subtle absurdity I really like. The combination of drawing and words and imagery and color is saying YES to me. Ahead. A head. It doesn't have to make sense.

Oh and I love arrows. Going to draw more arrows. I even like the sound the word arrow makes when I say it over and over. Arrow Arrow, air row, hair grow.

Today I am noticing what I like. Acknowledging it. Giving it a tiny nod. 

It's more then saying YES to that which brings me joy, it's naming it and sharing it along the way.

And that like everything else is a practice.

Thank you

I have this tiny plastic bucket on my desk. Sometimes I pick it up and play with it. I like it's size and specificity, the little blue handle, the ridges around. It's like a thimble for imaginary waters.  I pretend filling it up and spilling it out. Why? I don't know. But I like this bucket.

Doing it All

I realized that I haven't posted here since the beginning of the Fall. Dang..it's really hard to do it all.
Here is a spread from my anything goes morning sketchbook. I suppose I have been spending more time feeding those pages then this blog. It's ok. This is what I tell myself. It's all ok. We do what we can do and that is enough.

the practice

   

                        (this is what i tell myself when i have trouble starting- writing that is)


This week I returned to a practice I've had but then often abandon. Not sure if abandon is the correct word more like get lazy and just don't do it. The practice I'm talking about is morning pages, from the Artist's Way book. 3 pages every morning write. Not every morning produces magical writing that I want to share or ever read again. 99% of it is random word associations, filling up lines with inky scribble script, watching the pen move just to move, but then sometimes like this morning the writing surprises me. It brings me to a place I didn't know I could go. It makes me feel. Yes Feel. When I was in graduate school for art, a professor who was a painter asked me, "What are you after?" My response then was, "I'm after not being after." Clever for the zen buddha in me but not completely accurate. Perhaps I did think that then. Yet now if i were to be asked that same question, it would be different. Actually I'm after something. And it's huge but tiny and invisible and lifts me by the armpits dangling feathers on my cheek. It's a fragment between seconds that almost slips by unnoticed.  It speaks a star spun language and gallops garden air on my tongue. It wants me to sit here and I want to sit with it wanting me to sit here.  Damn it...I am after something. It is real because I feel it. I feel it telling me in it's own feeling way, this is why I am here. I am after more then I can say I am after for I'm afraid it will sound too bold or kind of insane.  I am after the grace of one line, one mark, one image, one tiny action step leading to the next without my knowing what it is before I reach it. I am after the body that bows with thank you, this this this. I am after having what I am after every day to know, grow, and share. I am after filling what I am after into books and art and whatever shape makes me more awake to who I am and what I continue to be after.

Collage

Chomp Chomp. Sometimes I got nothing to say but I want to be saying something. This is like that. It's me making weird noises for the sake of making weird noises. Chomp Chomp.

(Random collage ink pic found on my phone.)

these 3 inspired me

 1. Watched this Nanette https://www.netflix.com/title/80233611 last night and was deeply moved. It is a stand up comedy hour but it really becomes something else, it felt necessary for her, like air, she needed to say what she said and she managed to do it in such a way that to me it seemed to create a new art form, one that merges as well as dissects, comedy, storytelling, philosphy, culture, art history, and deep deep awareness energy and TRUTH.
Hannah Gadsby says, “I don’t want to unite you with laughter or anger,” she says. “I just need my story heard.”

2. I have been a long time fan of the picture book maker Anne Herbauts. Last week I picked this one off my shelf and found myself pausing to touch all the beautiful textured pages. Love it!

 

 Yum!!!

3. In and of Itself: Saw this illusion show that plays with identity last weekend with my husband. Before you walk in there is a wall with hundreds of cards that all say I AM... You pick one.

move it move it move it

yeah this morning as I was heading home from my morning walk with my dog Rufus, I put music on my headphones and noticed how my body turned on instantly----to move---in a different way. It  became lit from within to move it groove it mooooove it. A little sway at first and then shoulders rolling hips too. And a bit later at home when I began to draw in my journal I was reminded that movement is necessary it is an expression it is creation. Mark making has an energy it's own. Like the body listening to music it wants to do it's own thing...so once again learning and giving space for that to happen.

Take a moment today, put on music, and let your body do what it wants with crayon marker paint in hand or just a wave to the paper may be enough to reignite that creative swirl inside you. 

melting buddha

 this sketch book page is from a brief drawing things from life practice...

my sister bought me these tiny votive buddha candles for the holidays

 and I love lighting them and watching the buddha head melt.
 it's true the deeper I focus the more I crave focus
which I feel lately is extra challenging.
need to bury my phone for a few days or months.

File Found

 I'm always finding scraps of paper with notes or drawings in a pile I forgot about. It's like Forest Gump instead of life is a box of chocolates, it's piles....life is a pile of papers....you never know what your gonna get. Found this file yesterday in a.. yes... smallish pile, with these three words on it (below). Hmmmm-not really sure what I was going for. Perhaps when I label my files next time I shall be more specific. This file sounds like giving birth...

Inside the file I found these:

and this little piece of paper....... 

                                            seems like a good way to spend a few minutes.

 enjoy the day!

These 3 inspired me

1. I don't remember how I discovered this weekly newsletter/ brain connection extraordinaire offering from the amazing Maria Popova in her labor of love called Brainpickings. But wow I'm glad I did. Last night I went to her Universe in Verse   , a poetry reading but oh so much more then a poetry reading, and left filled with such awe and inspiration how this woman connects poetry and science and philosophy and art and everything.
 I highly recommend signing up for Brainpickings and if you are in Brooklyn next year around earth day,  attend Universe in Verse and or listen to it live streamed.

Love Maria Popova's definition of creativity on her about page.
"The core ethos behind Brain Pickings is that creativity is a combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our mental pool of resources — knowledge, insight, information, inspiration, and all the fragments populating our minds — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways. In order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces and build new ideas."

2. This book, The Art of Asking, by Amanda Palmer I read awhile ago but was reminded of it last night because she read at the Universe in Verse and did this awesome rendition of Joni Mitchell's song Big Yellow Taxi.

3. Recently gobbled up this book by Daniel Handler also known as Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Maria Kalman. who also read at the Universe in Verse. 

 

Be amazed

Recently I spent a few hours for some reason researching humming birds. I don't know how it started but once I began looking at pictures and then drawing them I became completely amazed. These creatures are truly WOW material. Little facts: like a humming bird flaps its wings 70 times per second, its heart beats OVER 1,200 times per minute and it visits 1000 flowers A DAY. Awesome!!!

When feeling stuck, be amazed by something, it will align you once again with wonder.

from funk town

 

 soooo, I feel since January I have been in a bit of a funk creatively. And the more I thought about being in a funk the more I felt I'm in a funk and I will never get out. And the more I thought I will never get out the more I felt in a funk. Well, this was not and is not productive. However now that I feel I'm movin on from funk town, I think maybe it was more me thinking I was in a funk then really being in one and that combined with feeling I had to DO more. For all I wanted and seemed to be able to consistlently do the last few months was spend open time in my mornin' messy sketchbook and allow myself to write, scribble, paint, do whatever and then close it and be in a state of oh but I really SHOULD be completing this project and trying to sell this art and market my art and illustration and where do I fit in and .....You get it..

too much thinking which it seems I'm not that great at. 

How to get out of a funk that you may not even really be in.....accept that you are a bit crazy and then get moving again. Shake that winter energy. Move the body. Take a LONG walk and then Move those hands lady, move them, and make whatever, trust the ebb will lead into a flow, and that flow will move you to make what may or not be on your dream list to make, 

trust the order to unfold as it will. 

          enjoy the day you know how in tiny moments

and go MAKE SOMETHING even if it is a piece of toast with pink swirls of jelly!

Illustration- Always learning

I have signed up several times for Lilla Rogers Mats Bootcamp class. I really enjoy it because it encourages and challenges me to create images I definitely would not do on my own and sometimes like recently gives me the opportunity to learn about something or someone new to me. This last assignment was to draw a portrait of a woman from the Suffragist Movement. Mine was Carrie Chapmann Catt who I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know about which is crazy because she was awesome and is one of the main efforts behind the 19th amendment which gave women the RIGHT to VOTE. Reading about her was truly inspiring.She also had some amazing quotes "Service to a just cause rewards the worker with more real happiness and satisfaction than any other venture of life." and "Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex." Thank you Carrie Chapman Catt for all you did. WOW!

3 inspirations

1. Love podcasts and I have been recently listening to this one.
 https://onbeing.org/ 
Just listened to this one with Sylvia Earle.
https://onbeing.org/programs/sylvia-earle-her-deepness-feb2018

She made me want to learn how to go diving and or atleast draw some creatures from the deep ocean.Her story is inspiring and her passion for the ocean deeply apparent.

Sylvia Earle: That’s the joy of being a scientist and explorer. You do what little children do. You ask questions like: Who? What? Why? When? Where? How? [laughs] And you never stop, and you never cease being surprised. It’s just impossible to be bored.

these lines felt like a poem that flowed out of her-
"But the flash and sparkle and glow of bioluminescent creatures. There were corals that just grow in a single stretch, no branches, like giant bedsprings, from the ocean floor. And when I touched them, little rings of blue fire pulsed all the way down, from where I touched to the base of these spiraling creatures."

2. This movie- Maudie
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3721954/ 

3. This illustrated book I bought awhile ago but took it off the shelf again to be awed again.
Love these illustrations by Janice Nadeau  http://www.janicenadeau.com/books/harvey/ and the story by Herve Bouchard https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_Bouchard is a beautiful one about loss and being a child.

The What

I often make these quick marker notes on bits of scrap papers hanging around while I am working on something else. Perhaps the thing I am working on is really only a way for me to get to these notes. They are a form of leaving a path of crumbs so I know what I was thinking or feeling or understanding in a glimmer of a moment. It feels like an insight I need to hear for the present and a future me. This one is about "The What", the WHAT I am creating, the WHAT I want to create, the WHAT i feel swirl around my heart and brain trying to shape it's way into existence. I have often beat myself up, not literally, but energetically, in that I feel I don't have a defined one thing, one WHAT. My WHAT shifts and changes. It has been a re-occcuring sense of frustration that I am learning to embrace and accept and celebrate. My WHAT takes many forms. Some days it is clear My WHAT declares it's shape early, some days it feels like my WHAT is stomping through some thick knee high sludge with duck tape over it's mouth. Some days my WHAT has multiple arms gifting multiple gifts. Some days it is one, something simple like noticing the way the birds this morning took to the sky together like they had a glorious plan to surprise a tree. Some days, I have to re-discover my WHAT, sit it down on a chair, give it hands some markers and an hour or two to play with what it wants.
There is more in this WHAT attempt, more to clarify, and share, and define as I go but today this is the WHAT i got.

children's book illustration

I haven't posted or shared much about my pursuit to create children's books. I'm not really sure why. It is something I have been working on for many many many years. Did I say many, well it has been. But it is also something that I work on for months and then put away and take out again and then put away. I think it is really hard to go at it alone, to maintain momentum without an outside commitment. To think that I could write and draw picture books without the assistance and support of others was stubborn and a bit foolish. Last year I joined a writing workshop and that was incredibly helpful to receive feedback. I also really enjoyed helping others develop their stories. Sharing the process with other like minded people is essential, this I am learning again and again. I don't have to wait for some golden day to share some end point, I can share the bits and bits along the way. That is all to say that I am very grateful to have signed with a children's book agent from Red Fox literary. I look forward to collaborating and receiving the support and guidance I need to get some picture books out into the world....xoxoxo

One Minute Ink

 

These are one minute ink drawings with a found object. Pick an object, some paper, and ink, then set timer and go. I did these in the Fall but am really feeling like the first one at the moment.

 A bit of a push and pull tug of war struggle with myself.

Aaaaah.