5.09.2009

Art meets Time

Time is a sensory thing. I can't feel it passing like other people. I only know it by the sensory activity in which I'm engaged. Making art gives me complete suspension of any temporal movement. When I was on a sailboat, I only felt time by experiencing the moon. If we neared the shore this was marked by tides. This image, Time or Tide: What Moves You, is what time felt like at sea. Since living aboard a sailboat and returning to land, I was diagnosed with Meniere's Disease, impairing my balance and hearing. It amounts to being seasick on land. Or the feeling of falling out of a helicopter though your feet are still on the ground. Perplexing, and nauseating. Though after surgeries I can now walk again, the hearing impairment it caused is progressive. Episodes happen off and on, leaving me lying at a horizontal incline of between 16-45 degrees for several hours or up to a couple of days. When you cannot move, time is altered. It is how I began bead crochet for my reUse jewelry (artimentary.etsy.com). I was seeking a way to make art when I couldn't see because of nystagmus. I couldn't change the tilt of my head because of vertigo. Fighting with gravity for no reason is irrational, so surrender was a necessity. Like seasickness, your reasoning may tell you that you are safe in a bobbing vessel, but your body can still object all it wants to, behaving as if you are nothing but a cork about to be swept into oblivion. It's all about perception. Back to the time thing: when bedridden for a year, time becomes either a preoccupation or a nonsequetor. When my world was too full of discomfort, art gave beauty back through the texture of beads, which let me experience tiny passing moments, that turned to ropes, which pulled me eventually back upright. Once upright, this image of nighttime at sea emerged. It is my metaphor for when time was only measured in swells, and darkness was the deep indigo of a wet world. I share it with you in hopes that your time of depth will be as fruitful for you as mine was, and is, for me. Nothing is wasted. Time, however we experience it, moves like the tide.

5.03.2009

Art meets Egg


Spring brings everything back up out of the dark. The garden at Artimentary Studios beckons us outside...see the Redroom? Indoors, the internal landscape takes shape as we hold Eggamas (our Easter, Spring Equinox, and general family celebration). In our family, a loose and fluid term around here, each of us has very different imagery. We batik our eggs; they are not painted.
Traditional Pysansky tools and methods are used, but we adapt and expand designs from different sources. Ariel's work is exciting and modern, though she is very reverent of the historic craft. She comments "After 10 years I'm still only starting to get across some results I like in this medium. Maybe if I do this throughout my life, I might someday have a bit of the precision and delicate composition seen in the traditional artists. They do this each day for hours and there is no way to match that kind of discipline."
Marieke works like she draws; her pieces remind me of sufism. She works from her interior, and symbols seem to call to her on their own. Her rendering is always unique.







Jeff, as a sculptor, finds the boney surface of the eggs as a ground for the dyes to be unpredictable and somewhat frustrating. But check out the textural quality and impressionistic color! Sumptuous.
We get a great mood going, huddling around the dyes in the scent of natural beeswax candles. We heat our tools, dipping them into traditional wax, which is guided on to block out the design, applying each layer, alternating with dyes revealing a composition done in reverse. Conversation is leisurely and lively. Unexpected egg events occur throughout the process, from blowing them out, all the way to rubbing off the wax at the end to unveil the batiked patterns. The trick is to accept some Raku ("happy accident") along the way. The point is the doing, as in yoga. This one by Ariel actually looks like robin yoga.
Mine are always about praying with my hands, sinking my mind into nature, digging for beauty, composting suffering, planting gratitude. For me it's all about the big prayer, as Anthony Bloom (a greek orthodox bishop) calls it: "Thank you". So here is my namaste, Eggamaste, to you! What art calls to you this spring?

Art meets Tech: about Balance!


Tho an introvert, I'm friendly and curious, which is what makes art so compelling. I wander the world of matter with my hands and eyes (being a visual artist & jeweler). Musicians, you do this with hands and ears. Point being: I love to learn about SME and tech stuff to help me connect, but I have to be selective. The way electronic media work on my visual cortex impact me heavily. I am quite overstimulated, and have to use Timothy Adams' Handmadeology tips from his Etsysecrets course carefully, and sparingly. I have to explore, then soak in. Then make Art at it, to stay in balance. What guides your intersection of art-making with social media?