MONDAY FUNDAY BLOG PROMPT #10 YOUR CREATION STORY

For our Funday Monday art this week we were ask to create our creation story. This is a story of my beginning but is not a story about me. This is the story of a woman who met a boy and at an age way too young, became a mother. Soon after another baby was born to them and a family of three grew into four. 

Times were hard back then with the country being in the middle of the great depression. Parts of the midwest and southwest were recovering from the dust bowl that devastated our breadbasket states causing families to leave their homes and migrate westward looking for a better life.

Families by the hundreds packed up their belongings and en masse migrated to the promising western states leaving behind a familiar world looking for that new life only to find the depression was taking it's toll on everyone everywhere. 

Soon this family of four became five but then broke apart as so many times happens when there is too much stress and not enough substance to sustain. A young mother is left to raise her three children by herself.

Then another baby comes into the world and because of conditions and circumstances she is not able to control this baby is left for another to raise leaving a deep hole in this young mother's heart. Never to heal completely and leaving her to try to fill that void her whole life

A new war starts, the army swells as men, long out of work, find a place to earn a living and soldiers from all over the country are sent to places they only dreamed about before. 

New relationships are formed and a young mother meets the love of her life. A young soldier, who only wanted to grow up and play baseball, falls in love and takes on a ready made family, both thinking this is what they had both been looking for. Together they have a child and with four children they are the  typical American family.

War and strife takes it's toll and this young mother, losing her childhood too early and now with scars that will not heal and chained to a life she is not prepared for spirals in and out of depression, drugs, deceit and despair. 

Over the course of years they travel, adopt two children, she trying to fill that empty place in her heart and he trying to make her happy. Their four children are grown now and they should be enjoying their time together but life has left too many wounds and the hurt will not go away even when, in their middle years and perhaps by accident, they have one more child together.

This young mother with so many dreams unfinished left this life behind many years ago still trying to find the missing piece and her soldier left to join her some few years back. Together again in eternity she will someday find the son she lost so many years ago and be at peace. 

In her honor

This is my mother, this is my beginning but not my ending. My story is still being written. 

FUNDAY MONDAY May 19, 2014...# 9 Visualization...

Looking at reading as visualization, perhaps a source for learning visualization. Have particular writers inspired you to visual expression? Ever had inspiration from reading to do something visual, in writing, or other art expression, music, movement? Self-help books, facebook, online, biographies, poetry, spiritual, fiction, children's books, magazines? How does one transfer an idea or insight gathered from one art form into another art form? I don't mean these particular questions to be answered, but an attempt to point to examples. Or does reading have no part at all in your art expression? Or sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

The paragraph above describes the Funday Monday prompt for this week on the Daily Creative Practice. I am on a hiatus from Facebook right now but Ruth has kindly offered to keep me up to date and post my blogs for each Monday's prompt.

I am a visual learner and since books are a huge part of my life in all ways I think they have definitely played a big part in how I have progressed as a person and as an artist. I can't name a particular writer or artist that has left permanent indent on my psyche though there are many I admire and often find myself trying to emulate.



"Visualizing Movement."

My most recent visualization is using The Wave dance to augment my exercise program. To add variety to a part of my day that I try to put off but can't ignore if I want to stay around a bit longer. It has added fun to my exercise and I thank Lee Russell for bringing it to my attention when I complained that, having two left feet I could not dance. She assured me that with this video and the quiet instructions given throughout any one can dance. She is right..if I can any one can. 








"Visualizing Spiritual."

 I recently realized I needed more direction on my life and remembered getting little tid bits of this book in my email each day but lost them when I changed addresses. I googled it as I do with most things I need to know and came up with The Secret which is the most interesting 'self help book I have read to date and has inspired me to become more than I thought I could ever be.





"Visualizing & Transferring ideas." 

I enjoy a challenge and when my grand son showed me this drawing he did I was immediately inspired to recreate it in 3d. Here you can see how I took this one dimensional drawing and turned it into a 3 dimensional assemblage by visualizing.










I prefer books to classes as I can reopen a book where as with a class, once you leave the class you better have good notes or a good memory.Books are always my 'go to'  for tutorials when I want to learn a new process or sometimes just to wake up my muse. I can create 'uniquely mine' clothing and accessories by seeing ideas in magazines and online...

Visualization. ...it is the way I create, the way I see and the way I live. Thank you Tj Worthington for this interesting prompt. I don't think I have done it justice but it is what it is and I did enjoy it.

FUNDAY MONDAY May 11, 2014 # 8

Back yard feeder

Why do we create art?

Take a minute today to get present to what is so for you in this question. You can do it right now - take a deep breath, relax. Let the answer come to you from the peacefulness of your inner being. Why do you create art? When an answer comes, keep asking. Don’t get settle in any specificity, keep inquiring, until you feel so inspired by your own findings that you get chills. Goose bumps. Feel in awe. The purpose of this exercise is to connect deeply to what moves, touches and inspires you.

Picasso once said “The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away”

I personally believe the act of creating, the creativity behind an artwork, is crucial for personal happiness and satisfaction. I paint because there’s nothing else I would rather do. I paint with my eyes, with my imagination, with my hands. I look for beauty all around me. The way the light drapes over my water cup. The way my daughter’s eyes squint a little in the morning right after she wakes up. The way a ray of sun feels on my arm. I love to observe. To look at something without judging, analyzing or dissecting it. Just notice. Observe. Wonder. I pick up the brush and take emotional notes of my observations on a surface. Painting is poetry on canvas. Ahh the moment the water is moving from wet to dry, the way the backwash slowly expands, tickling my soul with every wet area in which it spreads carrying color, with a life of it’s own.



When I was young I dabbled a little in art, mostly with drawing which I learned to love at an early age. I would take a picture and see how closely I could copy it and was told by many family members that I didn't draw it but traced it...that sent me into a world of not wanting anyone to see what I did for fear of criticism not realizing that their words meant to hurt and belittle were actually a compliment since it meant I was good...At least I was good at copying.

As a young mother I sewed but stopped drawing and took up oil painting and loved it but oil paint was pricey and we did not have the income to spend so I stopped and have since given all of my paintings away.

Work in progress

I kept sewing because the money spent was a benefit to the whole family in ways of making gifts and clothing but even then I had this need to be different so started doing my own thing with sewing. My sons had the coolest flared pants (disco period) and my daughters had beautiful maxi coats...I even made a rust colored corduroy sports jacket with plaid lining for my hubby which was my first attempt at tailoring. I made most of my own clothes...and they were all couture. So my youth up to my retirement years I spent most of my creative energy sewing with a short time in college where I learned how much I love black and white photography and writing. 

Newly installed outdoor studio sink

Then I met a cloth doll maker and my world changed.

I started making cloth dolls and was fascinated by the doll artist that could make life like dolls. I strived to be like them until one day, years after I retired, I discovered I did not care to make life like dolls at all but to make fun and artistically beautiful dolls. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some of my dolls are right down ugly or so I have been told. That pleased me. I felt like I had arrived.

Painted gourd

A long time ago a person I did not know but was going to become quite familiar with ask me why I wanted to make dolls. So why do I create art? Both are one and the same to me.

My calling cards describe me as "a collector and creator of stuff". My inspiration comes from the 'stuff I collect. Bottle caps, old used car parts, copper elements from my replaced air conditioner, corks and boxes.

Future art

Styrofoam packing pieces and wine bottles. Old jewelery, pieces of unique wood and rusty chicken wire. Fabric that feels good to the touch, coconut shells and rattle snake bones. Old cast off dolls, doll heads, doll body parts and let's not forget really cool pieces of cardboard. Gift wrapping paper, metal wine bottle toppers and candy wrappers made of foil. These are just a few of my favorite things....When I see, feel and think about the 'stuff' I collect I am in love and when I am in love I want to touch, play and have fun so I create. That is my ultimate fun.

Now in my old age I want to do it all. I want to draw, I want to paint and I want to mold clay into shapes that are pleasing to my eye. I want to take my old cast off parts and make beautiful art pieces. I want to make new books and alter the old ones. I want to learn watercolor painting and do more intuitive painting. I want to use torn paper for collages as well as torn fabric.  I want to sew but instead of following a pattern to the letter as in the old days of sewing when I was learning and conforming I now want to use the pattern to see how I can manipulate it to something that is 'mine'. Something different then anyone elses. I want to do everything and fret over the fact that there is not enough time to do it all.

My creative spirit comes in spurts. When I get the urge to start a piece of art in one medium or the other I can feel it in my fingertips, see it in my dreams and all my waking thoughts are spent working out the next step or the next piece. I am consumed with the working of it until it is called finished. When that time arrives I feel exalted and deflated all at the same time. That is when I read.

Reading is my first love. I use it for escapes, for inspirations for relaxation.  Now I am adding one more love to my life which is dancing. Brave intuitive dancing. A chance to move my body, free my spirit and find my soul. That is why I create!

SPRING HOUSECLEANING

Squirrel Nest

Today, yesterday and last week, I spent a huge amount of  hours on the computer and our cell phones trying to correct screw ups by others that I thought would go away if I ignored them, Sort of the Ostrich syndrome of sticking your head in a hole. Any way after so much frustration with internet and online stuff I decided to take a break from Facebook, the great consumer of time. 

Passion Vines

I need to get my life back in order, get away from online social and get more face to face social,  get some physical exercise and have more time to do some art which I have hardly done at all in the last couple of months..I have sewing projects to finished and even more projects to start...

Winter annuals

I need to pay closer attention to my health and to Bob's so this way I can get to bed early, get out of bed early and have lots of extra time to do all the things I want to do..Starting tomorrow I will get to bed early, out of bed early and be on my way to actually having the time and energy to accomplish something. And I need to get more walking in.

My street where my walks start

Hopefully my walks will be a little more than a stroll around my 

garden

Confederate Jasmine in full bloom