Touching Art

My Maine Home

This week I've been looking at some older paintings. I still get a kick out of this one.

Look at this one for a while before you read on. What do you see?

The original drawing in my sketchbook came from a model session at the late Round Top Center for the Arts. I set up my easel and paper, and the model positioned herself. I was startled at first. The view of her vulva was unexpected, and I wondered if I ought to move.

I took it as a gift. I never get to see that view of a body, let alone draw it, so I drew it with abandon, and made a few paintings and sculpture inspired by the pose. Let me here honor once more the generosity of models who lend their beautiful bodies to artists.

This painting is a favorite among my fans. It amuses me that some people see the figure instantly, and some never do, even if I tell them. I have spilled the beans to you, but I want to share an inside joke. I made this landscape a puzzle of my neighborhood, where the mountains meet the sea, with lakes, coves, and rocky cliffs I can see on my drive to town. The houses are all Hope houses visible in my view, or on the road. I am amused to imagine the very conservative town fathers and mothers if they saw portraits of their old farm houses nestled in a woman's crotch, or on her knee. This painting also reminds me of the Baudelaire poem, Giantess. My Maine home on Mother Earth's Stupendous knee.

Oh it feels so good

I promised Nanney of SeaColors an extraordinary silver button for the Crafts at the Castle show in Boston this weekend.
My studio time has been derailed by Mama's death, so the week before the show, I haven't made the button. Upon returning home, it has been a week of holiday, unpacking, rearranging, and chaos rules in my house, more than usual.
Finally it is Tuesday, November 27, and I have to deliver a button by Wednesday evening or give it up.
Now I need to make this button. I hunger for it. I crave art making so much, I ache. Giving up is not an option. But I can't get started-- my engine just won't crank and I am getting crankier by the minute--weepy, frustrated, pissed! Then something happens. Don't ask me what. At 10:30 pm Tuesday night I sit down with the PMC, and I start making the button.

VROOOM! Just like my friend's Rambler, my engine rumbles to life, and I am in the Art Zone. The top picture is what the button looked like at two o'clock in the morning when I went to bed.

I got up early and worked some more. I left to go to my job for a few hours, and rushed home for final touch up of raw material, adding button loops and speed drying the piece to get it ready to fire. I fired fast, to maximum temperature for PMC 3 silver clay, 1650 degrees F. This is what the fired piece looked like before polishing. The oxidation is white like porcelain. But it isn't. It is 99.9 percent silver.

After a few minutes with a brass wire brush and a burnisher, the glory of this button shines.

Nanney just called from the road. She picked up a sweater from her knitter made with her Seacolors aqua yarn, with a seaweed colored shawl collar. I hope she gets a picture of it before it sells. Because somebody at the Castle is going to want this sweater with this button.

I know you are dying to see the back of this button too.

And me, my art engine is roaring along. VROOOM VROOOOM! Vroom VROOM

Did I mention HOW GOOD IT FEELS?

Abra Cadabra

Tonight I listened to an interview with Sandra Ingerman, shamanic healer and teacher. She spoke about the Power of the Word. This is not news for the ancestors have always known that words are form to creative Power. The Word creates the world. She tells that the magician's incantation Abracadabra has its origin in the Aramaic phrase Avra Kedabra, which means I will create as I speak. The power of the Word lies not merely in the vibration of the sounds, or the meaning in a given language. The Power truly lies in the energy of intent.  Knowing that thoughts, words and actions have energy, and it is the energy that carries the creative power.

When I am making sculpture or painting, I am putting all the powerful intent of the love I feel, for life, for my beloved, for myself, for the land. Whatever and whoever crosses my thoughts. When this is true, the work is extraordinary, and people are moved. When this is not true, the work crumbles and never sees the light.  That is what happened this week. Everything I made shattered in my hand. I understand that I was pushing. Not going with the flow. Upset about certain things, not accepting lovingly, with self-forgiveness, the way things are now. So I am glad the work collapsed. I would not want such pieces out in the world with anything other than perfect love, gratitude and appreciation feeding them.

This week, I will attend to my vibration carefully. The work will tell me where to go, and will entice from me the vibration it needs for its food. I will speak tender, loving, abundance, nurturing words to the clay and paint, and myself. I will create as I speak.

Creative Process

In a few minutes I go to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where I have some Love Charms exhibited in the Judith Gallery. Judith Olson has organized an artist panel on the Creative Process, and invited me to be one of the artists. This is a new step for me, one I am ready to take. I've been thinking about my creative process for a couple of weeks, and Judith gave us a preview of the questions she will be offering us. Here are my thoughts right now.
I am motivated to make art by an inner urge, which manifests as crankiness, ennui and a tendency to eat too much junk food if I am distracted from making art too long. I fart around for a few days, cleaning, mowing, being a pain in the butt, and then, something clicks into place, and I start making art. I have to follow the medium. I have to hear the call. I may think I want porcelain, but a painting is really wanting to be born. I may think I am making a Bowl with this figure, but that figure wants to come through. Maybe the whole thing blows apart in my hand, or is just ugly. I begin again. I sage I pray I sleep, and then, it clicks. I am in the zone.  I feel happy, connected, excited, exhausted, and amazed. I know who I am and why I came here. Good things happen. Being in the zone, when I am really making piece after piece or spending hours at work on art, I am completely turned on and depleted. When I stop, I just want to be fed and fucked, when things are really going well. It's blissful, it's wonderful work. Deadlines help, or maybe they hurt, and I don't want the spider to bite me again. I am inspired by the human body, my own body and the bodies of people I see, love, touch, draw. Other people's art inspires me especially if they also make art about the  body. Lovemaking inspires me, more than anything. Sacred ceremony inspires me, I get hints or flagrant instructions about imagery and direction. The land inspires me. This land, these stones, trees, sky I live with inspire me. I wonder if I could make art anywhere else.  With all this inspiration, I do not have creative blocks, though I do have creative traffic jams, with more ideas and desires than I have time to make, and I also have a habit of trying things I don't know how to do, which is fun and challenging, but hard. I sculpt in clay, and I paint with oils and acrylics.  I want to take my sculpture images big again, after working small a long time, and that means learning a new material, something architectural, and weather proof perhaps. I also want to see pieces in precious metals and gemstones. I want to paint more, bigger, again. I want always to see what happens next.  I want to collaborate with other artists and craftspeople. There is a big project incubating on my land, a Peace Sound Chamber, a sacred space, very beautiful. I see that building bringing many artists and just wonderful people together to move rock, build, decorate, create special art. That is where my creative process touches the world at large, because all my work is a sacred work, bursting into being with the creative power of orgasm, of birth, and the Peace Chamber is an ultimate expression of that creative energy. Making art is my Love Medicine. It is all about Love.

Love Medicine: Selected Short

Birthday Morning

Today is my birthday. I woke up as I have for the past month to frosty windows. The morning sun shining through the frost looks like I have opals instead of glass. Today I tried to capture what I see with the camera. Just barely hints at the beauty of it.
Today, I am also treated to ice flowers.

I spent all morning making new pieces with Precious Metal Clay. It is a new medium I began this week. Here is the kiln loaded for firing.

What I did this Week

I accomplished a lot this week, and I took pictures to prove it.

After my rant earlier about cutting wood being a major distraction, I had to keep doing it. Wish I had thought to take before pictures-- see here the result of my work:

  Notice the ice that flowed under the back barn door. That's what we are working with. Special thanks to Richard for sharpening the chain saw, Ian for helping fell and move more trees, and Nanney for the extra long heavy duty extension cord.

Wednesday before I went outside, I spent a few hours preparing almost finished Love Charms for firing. And I fired them, flawlessly!

   Gorgeous, aren't they? Next is glass and glazing.

All this effort was a lead up to the Full Moon Women's Sweat Lodge I hold every Month. This month the Full Moon rose over Maine in Eclipse, an extra powerful full moon, in Pisces Virgo. I am Pisces with Virgo moon, so I claim this eclipse for my very own. I was not able to take pictures but you can see magnificent pictures at the Spaceweather website gallery.

Friday, Maine received a huge blizzard, over a foot of blowing heavy wet snow and sleet. Saturday morning, I had just a few hours to dig a path through thigh-deep drifts, and dig out the lodge and fire pit. Thanks, Jen, for coming early to help with the massive digging and wood moving. And thanks to the other women who came to pray with us, in the great healing circle of women.

Thanks also to Grandmother Spider, who blessed me with another spider bite (she bit me last August too). Now what are you telling me, Grandmother? Am I to focus on my creative work, and make more art. OK, I will. I rested today, and tomorrow I will wake up to art, and nothing will stop me.

How I Do It, Part I

It has been a few weeks since I got muddy in the studio. Before I begin the new commissions, I decided to warm up with a simple breast bowl made of porcelain. I though you might like to see How I Do It. Click on each picture to see it bigger.

I start with  a ball of clay about the size of a walnut.

I give the clay the "idea" of a bowl with a little pinching.

I pinch the shape of a small open bowl. The clay is soft and moist so I support it in a small bowl.

I press the clay into the bowl until it is smooth and the thickness I want. The edge of the clay is higher than the supporting bowl. I trim the extra clay against the bowl rim with a cutting tool. It makes a nice edge to work from.

The trimmed clay came off as a lovely spiral. Hmmm. I didn't expect that! I am inspired to put it in the bottom of the bowl.

 Here the spiral has been attached with a modeling tool. Hmmm. That is nice all by itself. Is this bowl still a breast bowl? Let's see what happens.

Oh, I like that. Simple. Abstract. Very graphic. Shall I stop here?

Nah!!!

OH look what two strokes of my thumb will do! Very lively! Is this it?   Nah. Why stop now? 

 

Looks like I am going for the breast bowl! So far, other than the trim tool and the modeling tool for attaching the spiral, I have made this bowl using only my fingers.

  I am almost done. It is being supported in the porcelain bowl. The clay is still too soft to finish the edges and refine the surfaces. I'll let the clay harden just a bit while I take a walk in the very last light of this November day. Feels like Thanksgiving.

The bowl is now leather hard. In this state, I can carve any details, burnish surfaces, set the foot and finish the rim.  I take care with the rim because a wide open bowl shape like this is susceptible to cracking as the clay dries, and again during firing. I like to roll the rim up and inward a tiny bit to take some of the strain off. First, I set up the foot---

I let it get a little too dry, and I am having to very delicately scrape away the bottom to make a flat level surface for the bowl to sit on. This takes a while to get right. I have to feel my way through it and test it a lot. Finally I am satisfied, and I turn the bowl over to...

shape the rim--- oops.  I delicately smoothed the rim with moistened finger tips.  So delicate, like a fine buttery wafer cookie. A little bit broke off. I have to be so careful at this stage. The drying clay is very brittle.I think I can fix it.

See the fat bandage of clay I made at the top of the picture. I scored the clay and and wet it, then attached a small coil of wet clay.  I'll trim and smooth that, and it will look like the rest of the rim.

The bowl looks good. The rim broke again while I was fixing it. I just kept patching with wet clay and smoothing. I used some tools to help me out. I hope it will survive the stress created by shrinkage during drying and later in firing.

I finished the breast bowl with some carving to refine shapes and some burnishing for a smooth surface. Now I have to wait for the clay to dry to bone dry state before I fire it in the kiln. I think this breast bowl is beautiful . Thanks to the spiral it is different from any other I have made. I have about a dozen new ideas for bowls just from the process of making this bowl . I'll do well to make two or three, because the clay will have its own ideas about what to become, just like this bowl did.  In a few weeks, I show you the rest of the process--firing, glazing and firing some more. We have a way to go yet.

Another Goddess

This morning, I opened my Painter's Keys ezine from Robert Genn. He writes: "I admit it, every time I paint a picture--or write my twice-weekly letter--I'm thinking that something in what I do might bring value to another person. I believe that reaching out and connecting with others may just happen to be our highest calling."

I responded:

In my studio, it is all about me and never just about me. My art is a conversation between the material, the spirit, and me. I am working out my own stuff, both spiritually and aesthetically. I please myself first and if what I am working on is not turning me on, I stop. In fact, the work will stop me, cause it will fall apart in my hands, or split while drying. I learned!

Yet, I am aware that my art touches and moves people. It opens them up, helps them discover themselves, even heal themselves. My art is medicine. I know this because people tell me. It is medicine for me and medicine for someone else. The work is not really complete until it has been seen, touched, or claimed by another person. Part of the reason I made it is because of that person's desire. I don't have any control over any of this. That is between them, the work, and Spirit. Universal Love is present in the studio, and makes the magic. I just work here.

Image: Corn Mother, detail. Porcelain with glass

Long Dance Banner

This weekend I danced the Long Dance, on the land here in Hope. The Long Dance is an overnight vision quest dance. Before the dance, each dancer makes a banner to hang in the arbor, creating images about his or her past present and future. This is a photo of my banner, hanging in the arbor after the dance.

She is the Mer Queen, Mother of the Oceans, and Mother of the Galaxies. I have been making art about her for several months, porcelain sculpture mostly, and this painting takes me by surprise. What does she have to do with my past, present and future? All I know for sure is she is connected to the Peace Chamber. And while I was painting her, I felt this expansive kinship with her. She is singing the Galaxies into being, and from the fountain of her Love she creates life on the planet, and with her hands gives us the sacred ceremonies.