Touching Art

Making a Diva Bowl Parts 1 and 2

Would you like to see more about how I make art? Here are links How I do it, Part 1, and How I do it, Part 2. Feel free to comment, and if you like, share something about your creative process.

Two Days in Hope

Busy weekend. Saturday morning orgasmic shopping at the Farmer's Market, and afternoon messing around the house with laundry, email and I don't remember what. I worked in the garden and the woods, transplanting the eggplants, but first digging up another stone, as big as the heart stone, but this one decidedly masculine in energy. Not phallic but masculine all the same. Then wandering throughout my woods choosing sweat lodge saplings mostly alder and some young birch. One maple that insisted. Doing some magic. Doing. no just being out there works magic. and I stopped to smell the roses, literally. There is a wild white climbing rose that blooms clear to the top of a birch tree in the edge of the woods. I  stood there till I  was drunk.

Have you heard that Rose is the Fragrance of God? It is the highest vibration of any living thing on the planet. Do something with organic wild rose petal: rose tea: collect petals in a pitcher or jar and cover with water.  Set in the sun. Blend with green tea or fresh lemonade! Rose oil infusion. Rose and red clover: no cancer ever.

I am going out later to harvest rose. I have rose essential oil. It is powerful and extremely expensive. I digress, but thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten than I can bring rose into the house.

Dance Saturday really great music and fun. I ate ants.

Crunchy.

My friend brought stirred fried, smoky bacon tasting homemade fried ants from Guatemala. They taste better than raw slugs, but I did feel my snout grow long and pointy and my tongue get skinny and capable of spiralling down holes... I think I'll stop now.

Sunday I went with friends to pick organic strawberries I have never had such good strawberries since child hood and organic hadn't been invented then.

Then I worked my computer job and went crazy from being inside the computer. I spend a couple hours in the woods, planning to build the sweat lodge, but hornets had taken over the space. I have to move the lodge. Some lovely hard labor in the fog working up a sweat and an appetite. I was out there till nearly full dark. Coyotes and wood thrush, a strange chorus.

I came home to the house and it was still dark. Power out.

I took advantage of the hot water tank for a quick shower: have to wash off the ticks.

Then I build a fire in an old wok. Set it up safely on the porch -- pouring rain -- and cooked a fish stew: stock already made, just add fresh fish and some curry seasoning. Watched fire in the pot, and fireflies in the trees, and ate satisfying hot food while the rain dripped.

Then I went to bed. Early for a change.  I love it when the world goes dark and silent, for a little while.

Naked Coffee in the Garden

Here's what happens when I quietly take my coffee naked in the garden, sitting on my rock (cold!) bench. Pouring rain when I awoke, misty juiciness now.

Bumble bees making whoopie with the raspberry blossoms over my right shoulder.
A lone chirpy cricket somewhere in the mud.
Birds thrumming their wings purposefully as they each claim their favorite place for bug catching.
Back and forth, again and again. Hungry nestlings!
Snatches of song, strictly business. . .

Cedar waxwings untie the sweat lodge. Seems late for nest building, but maybe they need repairs, enlargements.

Someone is watching me.

Look down the lane, I am transfixed, held in the gaze of a doe.

Her smooth brown haunch as solid as earth, her strong stem of a neck alert.

White flag tail casually twitches at a fly.

We gaze and  gaze and gaze, until I feel her inside of me, tailbone to crown.
At that moment, she relaxes back into her browsing of raspberry canes on the ledge,
glancing at me occasionally.

She slowly walks to the east, through the raspberries, I see her glance up at me between chews. Then she presents her broad left flank to me as she crosses back west across the path.

My coffee cup is empty, my heart is full.

Melting Hugs

After my rant yesterday, I need a hug.

Not a butt in the air, no touching below the waste hug.

Not a one armed we used to be lovers, but I'm dating someone else now hug.

Not a quickie hug.

Not a bear hug,

Not even a heart to heart hug.

I want a melting hug.
And I am going out to find one today.

Which means I have to dare to give somebody a melting hug today.
Giving a melting hug means I dare to be uncomfortable until I melt.
More, it means I dare to be with the other persons discomfort till he or she melts.

We're uncomfortable melting into another person's presence, body, even our lovers
and certainly not other people, definitely not fully clothed in public places.

I am getting out of my comfort zone today.

People, our comfort zone is killing us!

Dare to be uncomfortable for a few seconds.
Give and receive a melting hug.

Sometime, soon.

Today would be good.

The Desert is a Woman

Sleeping Giantess--Mesa        36 in by 24 in                 $1500

The story of this painting begins in Colorado. My family and I were driving to Durango to ride the Durango and Silverton Railroad. We entered Colorado from Utah in the northwest corner and dropped down into Grand Junction via the backroads, some unpaved. The landscape was bony and golden. A road kill mountain lion was the only wildlife other than buzzards we saw. We detoured to Aspen and wound our way through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. It was my turn to drive as we topped Red Mountain Pass. The descent into Durango on US550 drops from gray rock and forested foothills into the golden bones again. Spectacular landscape and harrowing roads at every turn.

When I got home, I went to the studio  which I shared with other painters. The model was lying down  in the pose you see here. All I could see was the spectacular landscape I had just visited, so that is what I painted

Orgasmic Wealth

Listen to Nut Tmu-Ankh Butterfly Dreaming interviewed by Carla Sanders on

Orgasmic Wealth

Download orgasmic_wealth_may_21.mp3
This 1 hour audio is pure magick.

You may listen online or right click the link and download to listen anytime on your computer.

Listen often. Each time you will increase your awareness of your wealth and the way you express it in your daily life.

You have a choice:

buy into the feelings of worry, fear, and despair that most of the world has about wealth, or

Walk in  your true, real wealth that is joyful, playful, deep, divine and has the power to transform the world.

Share this page with everyone!

Remember! you were born to live orgasmically.

Peace Message from Beautiful Painted Arrow

One of my teachers is Grandfather Joseph Rael, Beautiful Painted Arrow. I wrote about being with him at Mystery School a few weeks ago. Every month he sends a Peace Message. Last month in May he predicted that the Earth's crust would shift powerfully in the month of May. A few days later, the massive earthquake in China occurred.

I received this peace message today:

After having predicted the earthquakes in May, Grandfather Joseph Rael sees hands — our hands — working to heal Mother Earth in June. He writes:


"Maa-neh" (hand) is the vibrational sound for "to manifest divine placement" on disturbed land.

The person's hands can be used on the earth in the garden areas and other places where the earth has seen hard use. Work can be done with one's hands to mend the devastation of earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, floods, and fires.

In the month of June, more and more people will go towards solar energy use at all levels. Individuals will begin small family-size gardening plots. More than ever before we will see reverence for Mother Earth and a return to the land as a basis for life. Renewal is in the beginning stages in June.

                                                                        Beautiful Painted Arrow

Joseph's Painting of the Metaphor of the Fault Lines

A Geologic Formation

The fault lines on the Earth's surface are a metaphor of how thinking faults separates us too. However, when thoughts are spoken that is when reconciliation can occur between two people in conflict.

Purple Iris Time

The purple Iris are blooming in the front of the house. For years I'd make at least one Iris painting. I always paint them outdoors still living on the stem. Maybe in the rain, maybe blowing in the wind, always with blackflies biting me and getting stuck in the wet oil paint. I hope to paint an iris again this season. Meanwhile, here are some Iris from years past.

Grande Iris   oil on canvas    22 in.  x 28 in.                    $1250





Iris in  Waterford Vase    oil on canvas  18 in x 18 in       $950

Look at this Beautiful Sweater!

My friend Nanney of Sea Colors has put my porcelain and glass mermaid button on a new sweater.

See how beautiful it is! Hand dyed wool and natural brown collar and trim. You can buy this sweater from Nanney for $350. Just go to her website, Getwool.com, and tell her Carla sent you to try on the new sweater with the Mermaid and Horse.

 

By the way, this is the farm that bred the sheep that gave the wool, that spun the yarn, that dyed the colors, and knitted the sweater, that now has a button that Carla made.

 

 

PMC Intensive

May 2-4 I was in Scarborough, Maine, taking a certification course in Precious Metal Clay, hosted at Warg Enamel and Tool. It was a three day intensive covering a range of techniques, tools, projects, and finishes, as well bucket loads of peripheral lore and advice from the other students and teacher, Tim McCreight. Tim is a consultant with Mitsubishi, who invented PMC, and he was behind the development of the PMC certificate program sponsored by Rio Grande Suppliers. I feel very fortunate that he lives in Maine and it was so easy for me to attend this course in my own neighborhood, practically. Appreciation to Pauline Warg and her husband Gary, who hosted the class. I loved the intense process of making and learning over the workshop time.

That wasn't enough for me however. I did not complete two of the pieces for my certification, so as I finished them the following week, I had a brainstorm. Why not redo the whole workshop at home, to make sure I learned it! Yes, a brilliant idea, to be sure. I wore myself out, trying to get all the work done in another three or four days, keeping to a self-imposed deadline.

Here is some of what I learned: how to repair a hole I poked in a bead while carving; how to mend a slip joint that keeps breaking; how to redo a design a dozen times till I like it; how to take an ugly disaster  of a project that I really screwed up and make it into something else completely different and rather interesting; how to patina with liver of sulpher, and unpatina with a torch; how to let go, because one project was just awful and I have no idea what went wrong!

The photographs at the right show a two sided lentil shaped bead about one inch in diameter. The bead has an earth landscape on one side and a galaxy on the other. The top pictures are the finished unfired bead. The middle pictures the the bead after firing and with a quick polish with the brass brush. The bottom two pictures show the hand polished and patinaed bead. By the way, this is the bead I poked a hole through.

My big challenge will be rings. I have a lot of trouble with rings! Now I want to keep making rings till I get it right.
Do I sound like I am having fun? I am ecstatically engaged in a creative learning process that is thrilling me to righteous joy! Can't wait to show you what I am making now, if it  turns out ok. I am trying something new, and what I learned last week is that anything can happen.

Sacred Travel

Since I fired that last kiln, I have been to New Mexico and Arizona. Then I entered an 8 day fasting cleanse. I was home, but in a slightly altered state. I am back, making art and feeling wonderful. Real spring in Maine helps.

My trip out west was to attend Mystery School with Grandfather Joseph Rael, Beautiful Painted Arrow. Three days of intense teaching. He really poured it on. He kept saying we still don't get it. He's right. I don't get it. I feel pretty sure that if I stop trying to get it, I'll have it. I am that close.

This was the last Mystery School. Joseph is now on silent retreat. He's setting us free. We have to get it now.

After mystery school I went to  Canyon de Chelly in Arizona and Navajo Nation. I visited with Spider Rock and hiked down into the canyon with Howard Smith, my host and guide, at Spider Rock Campground.

Some pictures from the road and Canyon de Chelly:

The Seven Peace Drums that are traveling around the world from Seven Circles in Australia. They were brought to Mystery School from the Peace Chamber in Brazil.

Shiprock, on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.

Spider Rock early in the Morning

Sliding House ruins where Anazasi people lived.