Athena Dreams Design

Places I Once Was .:. Sacred Life

I have been revisiting memories of some of the places I have lived, and Greece has been speaking to me loud and clear these past weeks. Maybe it is the changing of the seasons .:. spring into summer .:. maybe it is the blooming flowers and trees, or the clear blue skies, but I have often found myself these days, back in Greece.

I lived in Athens for a bit more than a year. Most people make a face as if to say "ick", and ask why I didn't live on an island. I did do that too, but Athens, I loved Athens. Each neighborhood a village unto itself, unique, individual and identifiable. I loved the white wash buildings, the noise of this particular city, and the sun, and the most of all the people.

I loved moving to a place where for a while I didn't understand the language at all. I could sit outside at a taverna, and hear voices but was not able to take in most anything that was being said. There was something freeing in it, something unnameable about it that I loved. I was there taking it all in, and yet, I was somehow just slightly removed, just slightly beside myself, not understanding, and allowing myself to revel in the non-understanding.

We take words in: bits of conversations overheard, the radio or television on in the background, conversations with all sorts of different people, all day long. My mind is constantly working on the words, the ideas, the thoughts. My mind never seemed to take a full rest from all these words until I moved to a place where the words I took in were only sounds. Melodic and beautiful sounds that formed a soundtrack for my first few months in Athens.

For more Sacred Sundays, visit here. And visit some photographs of Athens here.

New Eyes .:. New Perspectives

Sometimes it just takes sitting in a different chair at the kitchen table and drinking my morning cup of tea (or coffee). Sometimes it is just standing in a different spot to look at the hills just west of our house, to see the colours that have been there all week. Sometimes just being able to see the same things in a new way only takes stepping around and over the old perspective, tilting the head, maybe a little squint to create a nice blur, and suddenly, I have new eyes.

That, and painting, reading, listening - all day in my studio. No breaks to do the things I really "should". No distracting myself with other "stuff". I feel more complete, I feel more at peace inside, I feel more positive and I feel like I have more energy. Now, the real test is: how do I get myself to remember that the act of creating is what renews and energizes me, pulls me out of the doldrums, cleans the cobwebs out of my head. That is the hard part for me, I let myself forget what I really need.

I had several beautiful reminders this week, and want to pass them along to anyone who is interested:

This wonderful podcast from Marisa at Creative Thursday. A wonderfully candid and generous talk about making money as an artist, the risks, the perils and the joys and how it all came together for this artist.

This beautiful post about giving ourselves the gift of time to create.

This moment with an artist and her cello.

New artwork and exciting news about a forthcoming book from this artist.

This honest and heartfelt series of posts from one artist's perspective of the Artfest experience.

Spending more time reading instead of watching movies: I am really loving all of these reads just now...

And the painting, and working on a canvas instead of a monitor...

is pure joy. After days, and truth be told, weeks of feeling stuck and tired and completely uninterested in my own artwork, my own creativity, and then, just a small shift in perspective (very much helped by the list above) and the metaphorical faucet is opened.

The central piece on this canvas board is a photo I took of my sister (standing) when she was about 10 or 11, and I was 15 or 16, on a beautiful summers day at Cranes Beach, looking for shells and the ever elusive blue sea glass, and I remember the thrill of learning and mastering my grandfather's old Leica SLR, printing this photo in the darkroom and feeling so completely happy and compelled to keep creating more, every free moment I had. That is the perspective from which I want to live, from which I want to experience this life, this moment.

Calling all Altars

Some altars from around Flickr.

I've always had a fascination with personal altars or shrines. The altars that people create for any number of reasons or purposes: for prayer, for remembrance, for growth, for change, for beauty, for collecting precious items, for anything.

If anyone has a personal altar or personal "sacred space" or special spot to share, I would love to see photos of it. E-mail or by comments.

Altars Everywhere .:. sacred sunday

Do you have a spot where you have collected special trinkets? Do you have a spot where you pray or meditate or just think, where you have some sacred objects gathered? Do you collect things on walks .:. pine cones, rocks, a shell, some worn glass, a reflector light from a bike, a worn and scuffed Luke Skywalker action figure .:. bring them home and put them on a shelf or on a windowsill, together with other collected detritus and treasures?

I do. I have always had a fascination for collecting little "things" and I love to see the things other people collect and "arrange", whether for personal prayer, or personal amusement, or personal remembrances, or just because like a small child, or a beautiful ebony crow, we are distracted, beguiled and amused with shiny, precious, unusual, beautiful, pocket worthy objects.

I did not grow up in a deeply religious or worshipful family. My mother and my grandparents are Unitarian .:. on the the very philosophical, theoretical, humanitarian edge of Unitarianisim .:. not a lot of talk about God. Talk and thought about ideas, and feelings reigned. Energy put towards how we treat each other, what things we could do more for each other, and other beliefs that would probably be considered more Humanitarian than Spiritual in thought and motivation were the central ground of anything that could be thought of as spiritual. My mother's religion is her garden, my grandmother's was probably also her garden and her artwork, and my grandfather worshipped in his wood shop.

So, like many many others I have come to my own relationship with my own spirituality in a very hodge podge, step by step, and step away kind of fashion. God. Hmmm. Still don't feel cozy with the word or the image. Spirit. I can get much closer to that word, it has some curves and some mystery that I feel more comfortable with.

An alter: not something I think about in the context of a church, but more in the sense of what I value, what I gather, what things in my life fill me, ground me, bring me warmth and joy and remind me of my own humanity and relationship to a larger world.

Do you have any altars in your home? What kinds of things do you keep there? Do you have a designated mediation or prayer spot where you keep sacred and personal objects? What are your sacred objects?

Visit more Sacred Sunday posts here.

A Few Notes to Self .:. sacred life

"In the end there is no one ideal condition for creativity . . . The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself . . . To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit formng." - Twyla Tharp from The Creative Habit

Note to Self #1: "All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they impel you to get started." -Twyla Tharp

This weekend I took the advice of a very wise and experienced creative woman, and re-configured my work top spaces to make my studio more functional, more inspiring and more the place I want to be all the time.

Part of my on-going work towards this, is to clean up more, pick up and put away more, find more workable storage containers for those tools I use all the time, but in the meanwhile, I have a more usable space, with more of the work surfaces I need to get me motivated and jazzed about creating.

Note to Self #2: Just Do

So much of our every day work-a-day, live-a-day lives are about deadlines, about choosing harmony over what we really want; our time is more often about checking things off that never ending to-do list, and less about creating a time and space to just create. So to choose a moment - whether it is 20 minutes or 3 days or a month and a half - to just be our most true self, to just do those things that make our souls vibrate with joy, to remember who we truly are, deep down, underneath all the things we do for the work-a-day, live-a-day to do lists.

This weekend I chose my moment, and the re-energized soul, she is singing, with joy and peace, and gratitude for giving her the one true thing she wants: a space to create and the time to do it.

Hope all your sundays are full of sacred creating, in whatever form that may be.

Spring has a Way About Her .:. sacred sunday

Spring has a way of tip-toeing in
and spreading the contents
of its travelling trunk
full of surprises and wonders.

Three friends
on a sunny spring afternoon
having a talk
drinking some tea
feeling the warm breezes
on their uplifted and open faces.

Long flowing skirts
wide brimmed hats
and parasols
all set to go out
for a spring afternoon picnic.

Spreading a blanket in the warm sun
having a sip of lemonade
a sun warmed fig or two
and all the time in the world
to talk of all the thoughts

they have been saving up all winter long.

To live so completely at home
on the earth and in the sky
would that we all
could adopt the habits
and the mysterious ways
of the Magnolia
on an afternoon in spring.

Read more Sacred Sunday posts here.

Clutter .:. sacred life

I have been pondering my time in my studio. Wondering when inspiration will make a come back. Wondering why I can't seem to focus: wandering from computer to painting table to the piles of beads on my shelf, looking at my notebooks full of sketches and ideas. Starting something and then putting it down and picking something else up, and wandering back out into the kitchen, the living room, or out to the garden.

Yesterday I took out a book I bought as a present to myself around christmas time. It is called Foolsgold by Susan Woolridge .:. she also wrote an old favourite that many of you may know Poem Crazy. Instead of doing the studio/house wander, I took myself outside into a sunny day, and sat beneath a tree and began reading. She grabbed me immediately. In the third essay, or chapter, called Moving the Dishes, she brought me where I didn't know I needed to go.

I have so much Stuff. I have art supplies and paper, and canvas and boxes of found objects - man made and organic - I have books, bought for projects that didn't end up happening the way I had planned them, and books to learn a new skill. I have tools, and photos, and little odds and ends: stamps, letters, stones, shells, broken jewelery, picture frames, yarn, journals, magazines and sketch pads, and on and on and on. But where do I start something new when all around me, crowding my studio are bits and pieces from old projects, some that were used, some that I got because they charmed me, or because they made me feel something that perhaps one day I would translate into an art piece, or some writing, some "thing" might be born from this other thing.

Start new. Start clean.

"Moving the dishes, clean and empty, helped me sense that nourishment would come. Tea, wine, soups, a new way of being. The dishes, hidden in cupboards, were an invitation. For a time I needed emptiness to make room for a new start. How can the mysterious, redemptive creative force enter (and where does it come from anyhow?) when our houses or ourselves are crammed, busy, overfull? We need to let go of everything that gets in the way of what needs to enter." -Susan Woolridge

She asks me to notice what is "overfull in my world right now. Bookshelves? Your head?" Check. Yup. Okay. Some cleaning out needs to happen. So I spent my Sunday weeding out what I have not even looked at in a year or more. What things I moved with us when we moved into this house. Things that I have been given by friends because they thought I could use it in one of my shadow boxes, and I kept these things only because they were gifts from people I love. Paper. I have so much paper. Blank paper .:. by the ream, in boxes, in notebooks and journals. Articles torn out because they sparked an idea. Images from a magazine that I loved and wanted to remember.

Now the work remains to sort what I can really use, recycle the rest, and start the picture journals that I used to keep when I was in art school. Wire bound sketch pads filled with torn out pictures and words, accompanied my my own sketches and my own words. I used to call them My Books of Gems, and I named each one for a different stone .:. Amethyst .:. Peridot .:. Saphhire .:. kind of as I went, whichever stone moved me as I started to fill a new book. This will be good work, it will be work that will center me, work that will help me to remember who I am and what I do in my studio, work that will relieve the clutter and give me space to think and dream and breathe.

Making room for something new. That's all I really needed to do. Such a simple idea, and the last idea I would have thought of. This year has started all dark and cloudy, not only outside, but inside my heart and my mind. And so I begin the cleaning, making room for all that wants to make it's way in. I have boxes on the floor labeled "NO" "MAYBE" and definitely "YES"; I am filling them and will be carting things away .:. books donated to the library, art supplies and paper to the local elementary school art dept., many items to goodwill, and probably a few to the dump. Making room for all the things I don't know yet, all the things that have yet to enter.

For more Sacred Life Sunday, go here.

Dreaming in a Big Way

I did not get to NY to see The Gates, but a friend sent me an e-mail that HBO has a documentary coming out in a month or so about the creation and inspiration behind this amazing installation.

When I first read about The Gates project, I remembered his wrapping of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris. I was living there, going to school, when he (and a few hundred helpers) wrapped the most famous and oldest bridge in the city, and thousands and thousands of people came out to stroll across the bridge and look and talk and some, to laugh. It wasn't just the fact that there were acres of fabric wrapping every single piece and part of the bridge that made it so amazing, it was the sound and the sense it created. The wind blowing through the edges of fabric rippled and flapped, making it a much bigger sensory experience; and the sun hit the fabric and at sunset, the whole thing glowed like a moon stone. And when the lights were turned on at night they glowed mysteriously through the white fabric. We went over and over again to see it in all different lights, at different times of day, and when it had been up for a while and the crowds stopped coming, it was an amazingly peaceful spot in the middle of a large and loud city.

A few years later when I moved to the Bay Area, I took a drive out to West Marin with some friends to see the remains of a project Christo had done in the 70s called Running Fence.

There were still bits of the fluttering fence running though cattle fields, up and down hillsides, through small live oak groves and over rock piles and between shrubs. I could hear the wind fluttering and flapping in the fabric, and birds were perched on the tops, swaying and drifting in the wind off the ocean. It was like looking at bits and pieces of ribbon, fluttering against the land, hugging the land.

We stood on top of a hill and looked down at the meandering line of fence, wondered at how it curved and straightened, making it's way down the hill, to end abruptly, where it had been taken down. Who took it down we all wondered, and why were these pieces left behind. It seemed as though the pieces that were still standing were on open space land, and most of the sections that were gone were on ranch lands.

So, where does the Dreaming Big come in, I ask myself. It got me thinking about art, and the artist's experience of creating it, and the viewers experience visiting it. It also got me thinking about the static quality of a work that is painted, etched, photographed, etc, and what ways a more sensory experience could be created to fill out the piece.

Is it just about being able to touch? No. Christo's work makes me think about how a sound experience changes the way we might look and feel about art. His art creates it's own auditory experience, as well as a visual one, and I find that Fascinating (with a big letter "F").

I am not sure where I go with this, but it's a wonderful feeling .:. inspiration at the beginning of a new year .:. and ideas about how to approach my own work that have nothing to do with what I have done before. It feels like coming to the end of a road where there is another road crossing, and having to choose: do I turn right or do I turn left. Choices. And just when I was feeling that all this silence I had been listening to was never going to make sense.

The sound of fabric in the wind, has brought the silence to life.

It also makes me wonder, and want to know .:. where are you all in relation to the art/music/design that you create? Is anyone else sitting at a 3-way stop contemplating a right or a left turn?

Winter .:. sacred life sunday

Winter in the Bay area is a very different experience than in most other places I've lived. Things bloom in winter here. Irises start budding before Christmas in my yard, and are in full bloom by the end of January. Narcissus greens sprout up through the cold but unfrozen earth and bloom. The Hardenbergia vines bloom for a month in january and february. Many of the leafy trees never lose there leaves - they lose them and grow them back all year long. All these things felt like a miracle to me when I moved here.

Winters in other climates are harsh. The ground is frozen rock hard and if there is no snow on the ground, everything is shades of grey and brown. If there is snow, and the sun is out, some shades of blue are added to the grey tones. Granted, these are earthy colours that I love, but the eye is always looking for that spot of colour, that bright spot of life.

I was weeding out the grasses and clover today, trying to keep them at an even keel with the things I actually planted in the garden. [My mother who lives back east groans with envy when I tell her things like that.] And cutting back the rudbeckia and japanese anemone that I didn't get to in the fall, when I really should have done it, but didn't have time, and feeling the sun on my back and on the top of my head: warmth. It got me to thinking about how we shine our "light" or our energy on others and there is usually an instantaneous response, like flowers respond to the sun.

I was thinking two thoughts actually: First: wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to take the time and spend the energy to shine some attention on the people in our lives and around us, and do it on purpose. Not happenstance. Not accidently. But with purpose. To just randomly choose a few people every week, and give them a good dose of summer sun, in the depths of these short chilly days of winter. Acknowledge something that is wonderful in them, acknowledge something they they have done/created/begun that is meaningful or special. Shine some positive attention their way.

Secondly: wouldn't it be wonderful to do that for ourselves as well. I was reading the other day some of the Mondo Beyondo things that people have written, and so much of what was being written centered around feeling overwhelmed by That voice – whatever you may call it: the inner critic, the perfectionist, the id, the ogre, the nasty twin – and so many people wanting to push past that voice and take risks, do some of the things that they have been longing to do, but somehow didn't dare.

Is it an accident that we start our new year in mid winter, when days are short and the weather is cold and rainy or snowy? I don't think so. Winter is a time when we slow down, stay inside by the fire [though that changes as each decade goes by, with our lives that move so fast now, so let's pretend that we all still do these thing], we ponder, we make lists, we tell our wishes for the new year to ourselves and/or to those we love. And we think of the sun, and when it will come back around to give us the longer days, and the shadows that spread out so long before us.

I have been feeling stuck. In my thoughts, in my artwork, in my life, and though it is not freezing cold here –the way it is in so many places around the world at this time of year – I am still feeling the need for a little spot of sun, a moment of breaking through the soil, of blooming and softening the edges of my world, spread some greens and pinks and lavenders in amongst the browns and greys. So, I will try to learn to give my own self a little bit of light, a spot of sun, some warmth and good feelings. Maybe if I practice enough with others, I will figure out how to do it for myself. Maybe I just need to start practicing. It's all about practice, this life. Practicing, until you're just doing it without thinking/wondering/critiquing, just doing.

Word for the Year .:. Balance

It seems that so many things go into starting something new, including a year.
It's been a slow and quiet entry for me.
Listening.
Cleaning.
Thinking.
Walking.
Planning,
and listening some more.

I've thought a lot about the choosing of a word for 2008. And about all the mondo beyondo things I want to manifest for 2008.
About the secret things I wish for,
and how to pull them out :
a long string of pearls, each worn with touching and turning.

Balance: a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.

Doesn't sound all that exciting, but starting new endeavors makes me think of things that have gone by. Times in my life, people I have known, experiences that have passed. I realised that the last decade of my life has been about Work. Work that has been creative and fun and exasperating and energising and moving and exhausting. There has not been a whole lot of play in amongst all this work, and so my quest for 2008 is to find that balance between working and playing .:. going for it and lounging taking work that earns some money and working on my art that may not earn money, at least not right away.

Mum on a tricycle, playing with us...

When I looked up play in the dictionary, I found a diverse group of definitions: an exercise or activity for amusement or recreation .:. fun or jest, as opposed to seriousness .:. an attempt to accomplish something, often in a manner showing craft or calculation; maneuver. So, play is not all whimsy and spontaneity. The balance I seek between work and play, is more on the whimsy, spontaneous side of play.