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.

The Medicine Wheel 9/11

THE EAST

 The World Trade Center, the double hub of my life wheel. It was the first place I went when I ran away to the City in 1977. Wearing Earth shoes and carrying an instamatic camera, I took the elevators to the observation deck, and took a photo survey of my new home, including the building two blocks away where I would soon be living and nursing my two little boys. 

 

THE SOUTH

My babies learned to walk in the plaza, played in the fountain. The endless construction and deconstruction inside them fed my children for years, as my husband the carpenter built office after office for the junk bond fueled Reaganomicans.

 

THE WEST

In dreams, I'd imagine the Towers as a great gleaming double hanging garden, the glass blown out, the people gone, and plants, vines, flowers, birds, animals of all kinds creating a new micro-ecology every ten floors or so. I figured if we moved out, it would take nature about 10 years to walk off with the Twin Towers.

 

THE NORTH

That's not how the WTC story ends, we know. I offer prayers to the four directions and the heart -- for those who died that day, for all our memories, for those who continually suffer the war, for those who can't make a decision, and for the rest of us who stand and pray sing dance cry for a vision.

 

THE CENTER

Love Medicine Video

Diva Carla talks about Love Medicine. Video by William Wheeler Anderson, of http://camdenpost.com

 

Art for Inner Peace, Power, and Pleasure

My art these days centers on making Magical Talismans commissioned by people wanting tangible support in their spiritual and erotic life. Some request art they can wear, others prefer a piece for an altar or medicine bag. I'd like to share this opportunity with you.

I am Diva Carla, Artist and healer. I make Sensual Art with Magical Powers. When people buy my art, they feel love and pleasure, and connect to an inner peace and power that supports them in their daily life. It helps them have more confidence, abundance, and joy in all they do.

Enjoy your visit to my Touching Art gallery at Etsy. You are sure to find something that is right for you or someone you love. If you don't see your piece, please send me a message.
My special talent is the creation of personal power art that supports you as you grow, heal, and blossom into your Power and Pleasure.

My beloved collectors say:
"When I hold your work I feel I am sharing in the essence of your craft......my fingertips trace yours and I'm suddenly art and artist with you. I will keep and treasure this piece always."    -- Nut Tmu-Ankh Butterfly

The talisman arrived on Thursday. I love it. And it was a great support to me as I prepared for, and experienced my radio interview yesterday! thank you. Thank you! --Barbara Buckley

"Precious and provocative. Peaceful and profound. My 'Woman In a Pot' lives somewhere between a classical Greek statue and the Venus of Willendorf. Holding it in the palm of my hand always makes me smile and brings about gentle waves of love and appreciation for all 'my' women...."  --John Milton Fogg

Please share you desires with me now, and we shall create some sensual magical art for you too.

Carla's Newest Art

Yesterday was the Kiln Opening for Jody Johnstone's May Firing of her anagama Kiln. These porcelain ritual bowls came out of the kiln exquisitely marked, colored and textured. Here's the first look.

 

Carla on the Radio Today!

Diva Carla Tweaks Your Vibrations Today!

Yes, I know, it's everyday! Today, I do it with Diva Valerie White, healer and all round magnificent radio diva. She'll be interviewing me on her radio show Tweaking Your Vibrations on the BlogTalk network.

Please tune in today, March 31, 2010, at 2 pm eastern time. You can listen via web, or call in from where ever you are, and you can post questions in a chat room. I'd love to connect with you live!

If you have a previous engagment, you can always listen to the recorded version later, and ask follow up questions through the blog comments here or at Orgasmic Alchemy.

Today's the day to tune in HERE.

I'm looking forward to it!

Sex Secrets of the Périgord Black Truffle - NYTimes.com

The black truffle of Périgord, the cynosure of every foodie’s dreams, is about to yield its most intimate secrets to a team of French and Italian researchers who have decoded its genome. Surely a great day for gastronomy and yet — truffle-lovers be advised — some of the new discoveries may reveal more than you really wanted to know.

via www.nytimes.com

Nature understands Orgasmic Alchemy perfectly: she originated it, after all. Sensual delicacies such as truffles, both the fungus and the chocolate kind, have a keen connection to our own sexual being. Chocolate satisfies the same brain receptor cells that orgasm does.

Enjoy your dinner.

First Big Bang Bank of the Universe

There is a game I play sometimes. Now and then, I buy a Powerball Lottery ticket, or somebody gives me one, just for fun. I’ve noticed how much fun I have spending the 2 million or 10 million or 200 million dollars, for those few hours before the numbers are drawn. It is so easy to spend my virtual, imaginary “bottomless” bank account, represented by a piece of paper with 7 numbers on it.

It’s easy to grasp that slick slip of paper and see the Peace Chamber completed, with the finest craftsmanship my artisan friends can deliver. Likewise, my old farmhouse takes a quantum leap back in time - with a complete restoration - and a quantum leap forward with the installation of 21st century technology for the greenest mechanical and electrical systems. It is the posterhouse for rejuvenating Maine’s venerable housing stock.

Simultaneously, I build my exquisite small Spiral House, with masonry stove, outdoor shower, heated patio floor, hot tub, sauna, and cherry cabinets milled from that tree that dropped last year. I acquire the abutting property and annex it to Hope Peace Ceremonies. The people, equipment, and sensitive improvements to turn this land into a permaculture farm side by side with ceremonial spaces are easy to obtain with a few strokes scribbled in my bottomless checkbook.

Visits to my grandchildren in Idaho are routine, and frequent. I can even fly first class, and have a place of my own in Idaho to stay nearby. Lots of friends in the virtual world are flesh and blood friends now, because I can travel easily when ever and where ever I want to. I have lots of space and ease for them to stay with me in Maine, too.

It would take all of my fingers and toes, and some of yours, to name the people, groups, and causes I will joyfully gift with money. Since there is no way I can imagine spending a quarter of a billion dollars, (not being the Federal Government), I shall promptly create a foundation to give the money away. I envision a community building matching grant program that empowers recipients to create the means to bring peace through creativity in their own patch of earth.

Which reminds me - Hope Peace Chamber would probably need to apply for one of those grants, because money doesn’t build a Peace Chamber. Only people joined together singing can do that.

Yes, I have fun dreaming of how I will indulge myself outrageously, yet consciously, with my lottery  windfall. But what happens to my visions the morning after I know I don’t have the winning ticket? Do my visions shrink to the size of my ordinary, and occasionally overdrawn, bank account? Well, yes, kind of.

Is it a true desire if it is not burning in me no matter what? If it is dependent for its juice on a pile of cash, real or imagined, is it really calling me? Why do I need a fantasy of a government sponsored lottery to fund my desires? What is the point of a bottomless pile of cash in a national bank somewhere, before I’ll even start letting my imagination run wild about the good things life brings me, and I bring to life?

What is it about a huge pile of money, like a powerball jackpot, that turns it into God?
There is nothing wrong with money. Money is wonderful! It’s just a way we humans invented to pay things forward, keep the energy moving. Paying money is the easiest and cheapest way to get stuff. It was invented cause it is easier to carry than a goat. Now money isn’t even physical, just packets of electrons, moving around the globe, changing digits in columns. But we have the idea that with sufficiently large numbers in those plus columns, we can do, be, or have anything we want. We can become as gods ourselves.

Crazy. Is it a symptom of a cultural disease that I think I need all that money to give me the power to do, or create what I want. Is it also a symptom of a cultural disease that I want all these fancy things, like technology, and houses, and foundations giving out money? Again, there is nothing wrong with any of these things, but they are optional. I don’t need all that to have a beneficial impact on the world. I already do that, just by being here.

My creativity, purpose, mission, and desires are fully funded. I have an account with the First Big Bang Bank of the Universe now. It’s a bottomless bank account available to fund any thing I can imagine. My relationship with this bank is so intimate and trusting that I don’t even need a checkbook, I just need a clear thought powered by feeling, in other words, my heart’s desire, and I can withdraw any amount I need to fund my next step.

Recently a friend expressed that she was tired of sufficiency, she wanted more than sufficiency. That got me thinking about what is sufficient. It is plenty! all I need right when I need it.

What do I need? I need fulfillment of my desires. What are my desires? They boil down to health, shelter, beauty, love, freedom, and community. Any specific intentions that support these desires are divinely inspired, and sufficiently--abundantly--

supplied by my account with the First Big Bang Bank of the Universe. Sufficiency is trusting that I am taken care of. Sufficiency is enough to share, and it doesn’t have to be millions to make a difference. Sufficiency is abundance without the headaches!

In his book, No Word for Time, Evan T. Pritchard writes about an Algonquin view of money:

“Money is like food, something to be spent (or not spent) in a way that nurtures the spirit and the body. To the traditional Micmac, money is like fish: you get a little every day and stay happy. You pile it up in a secret place and something starts to stink. You can’t hoard fish, but you know where to find it and how to get it when you need to.”


Pritchard continues:
“The modern person spends money for bodily and emotional comfort ... spends according to how much is in the bank, as opposed to finding what he or she really wants, and acquiring the means to get it, through trade, or exchange of money or perhaps, through ritual.
While the modern person worries about the future, the traditional elder only exists in the now... Some traditional elders don’t have bank accounts; their money is only in the now, too.”

In a society where there is no word for time, it is easy to let money be in the now. We modern people have too many words for time: including words like due date, late charge, mortgage, credit. I learned long ago that any perceived money problems were simply time problems. We have structured a culture built around the time/money continuum: money comes in every two weeks, and money goes out on due dates. We pay for this time/money continuum with our freedom.

I understand now why I feel so free at the prospect of a huge pile of cash at my disposal. It flattens out the time barrier, and gives the appearance of freedom.

Is it possible for this modern person to forget the word for time, to have money be in the now, to trust the abundance and efficiency of the First Big Bang Bank of the Universe, and get that I am already making miracles, right now, just as I am.

Help Haiti Blog Challenge SOLD

via www.etsy.com

After the earthquake in January, I joined the Help Haiti Blog Challenge to help raise money. I designated one piece as my Help Haiti Blog Challenge piece. Today, the piece sold off my Etsy site, to a local man. The purchase price will be paid to Doctors without Borders or Partners in Health. I am partial to Partners in Health after reviewing their websites, partly because PIH is based in Boston, and I know people who volunteer in the field with them. I'll let you know later today, after the transaction is completed in person! I am excited to be able to hand deliver the piece to the buyer.

Sending prayers to all the people who are in hardship, suffering and grief because of the earthquakes in Hait and Chile.

Marketing Smarts from Gwenn Seemel

Gwenn Seemel is Portland, Oregon, artist specializing in portraits. Her blog, Making Faces, chronicles her work and she generously shares what she's learned about being an artist and making a living as an artist.

She recently posted on Making a Living is Like Making a Painting. Links to past posts on particular topics give the article depth. What I like about this post is that it's creative and connected to being an artist. I didn't come away with a To Do list, more like a stretch of muscles I've already developed.

 So, dear readers of Touching Art, I suggest to step on over to Making Faces and read Ms. Seemel. Whether you are an artist or not, you'll find something you can use and enjoy.

Here's a picture of Gwenn at work on a portrait of Jeffrey Gitomer, who wrote Little Black Book of Connections. I have his Little Red Book of Sales somewhere around here, and it's good too.

Dreaming Woman framed by TouchingArt on Etsy

via www.etsy.com