Art meets Parts

Art comes together piece by piece. I pulled some antique clockworks from bin in the studio last night, searching out elements to upcycle in the fabrication of a pin for a steampunk medal commission. It was the best excuse for playing with my Smith minitorch using oxyacetylene. With oxyacetylene gas, metal temperature moves from the solder point to fusing in a split second; it's really just too hot for most applications. But periodically, there is nothing like exploring the nature of such enormous heat in a fine-tipped, exquisite instrument like the Smith mini. I was part surgeon, part reckless adventurer. Thats an addictive place for a jeweler.

It is said you have to know the rules to break them. Flux is the layer of ground glass used to stop metal from oxidizing and preventing the union of one metal surface with another when soldering. There was plenty of excitement in fusing the clockworks to fashion a simple spring mechanism and soldering a steel flange into the jaws of a brass fitting for the catch. The surprise to me was in the finishing. I loved the combined patina of brass skin and flux. Under the high heat of this particular gas, the brass had accepted the flux, shading it like a burnished layer of enamel that captured the microscopic copper brought to the surface in the near molten metal during the process. Copper reacts to heat more quickly than the other metals, so it left its fingerprint in a most painterly way which the glass captured, melted into the thinest glaze of enamel, like a slide would what is under a microscope. Usually one cleans off the heatskin, filing, sanding, and polishing to reveal the shiny surface beneath. I could not bring myself to remove it everywhere because it fit the coloration and dimpling of a warm, autumnal planet, serving the thematic nature of the medal which captures a stormy moonlit night. It just FIT the piece. So I broke all the metalworker's rules, keeping this rough, worn, organic surface and using it as an artistic element. This is not to apologize. Why not break them in the service of this gleeful, natural magic?

I say, give me your poor (old clocks), your tired (steel coathangers) yearning to breathe free. I was in Halloween costume enjoying the treat of my amazing torch. Picture this silvery haired Deaf lady liberty: jewelers headset on, but bent over the work, the magnificence of a Smith minitorch in her grasp. Exhileration and freedom. Chemistry + art = metalwork, just like art + reUse = smart. That's the equation of this kind of liberty, to make of each piece something distinctive. A fun trick, too.

Here's my challenge: what new can you bring of your tired, poor or castoff lifestuff? Bring some liberty out of the parts and pieces. Make it count. Here's a mental medal for your efforts.

Art meets Incision

Art isn't precious. Fringing the edges of owl feathers, I ruthlessly incise and scrape at the paint with the attitude of this short earred owl rendered in reverse on a glass panel. It's a tiny fierce energy I recognize in other parts of my life. I circle noiselessly for a time, but once the target shows itself, swoop down, all knotty knuckles and tearing talons. I've eaten neurobehavioral and developmental books whole, in big gulps, remembering pages and citations in the same frozen detail of a digested carcass. Friends and colleagues email to ponder various cognitive, emotional and behavioral or developmental questions, asking me to exume these informational owl pellets from time to time. My mental archive of desicated cases reminds me of CSI Grissom's shelves of samples, without the jars.

I am rivetted by birds and their ways. I imitate their tool use (yes, tools) and habits unknowingly as I fuss with my own tools, razor blades, dental scrapers, paint and interference powders, deciding how to interpret seamless contours and defined articulation of feathers, beaks, birdfeet.


I realize I unknowingly married a bowerbird.


Sculpting as they do, he strewed my path with bright objects and led me to our home in the sticks, where we make and do.

Why birds? I am unexpectedly captivated by things of the air, being a creature whose motion has lost its grace and swiftness. Their alertness is the irrestible draw. Who could imagine? A bowerbird man brought a sawhet owl woman into the bower, where we faithfully serve our three masters, the cats. Here's one of the masters now, in the repose of his own bower. Today I have no questions. I indulge, revelling in the secret symbolism of birds which pull apart the mice of the mind, leaving a soft trail of feathers as evidence of incising carnage. There comes a time when the past goes where it lives. When the mice are finished. The meal complete. The present its own purpose. I study the Master. Life is good.

Art meets Language

Art is the language of my family. I finished up in my studio today and was joined by my oldest daughter and her crew. My daughter and I cooked while her husband and my grandson painted using the ancient paintbox of gouache colors I purchased back in my student days in Salzburg. Did I mention it's ancient? My daughter saw it and told six year old Kaiden, "Oh! That paintbox has been with Oma longer than I've been alive, Kai. I remember it from when I was little!" He was already settling in, at home with art materials all around him. The tradition continues.

This is how it works: give most people genuine art materials when they are young and they'll speak art throughout life, in one form or another. We paint, eat, live a handmade life, and set our own pace. Art is engrossing without being overstimulating. Our bodies love this. Art really IS our air. My question is how will people know this relief, this pace, unless they take several steps back from the virtual world? What is the value of art beyond the objects? How does creating it play a role in your relationship with the environment?

Art meets Shape

Art works it's way out of my backbrain. I am watching shapes. It occurred to me when the last owls were done, that they look like pansies in some night forest. The face discs of owls have a layered quality, which truly evokes the same kind of soft planes I notice in certain flowers. I didn't consciously realize this until I found myself digging in with my close-ups on this rose.

No sooner had I explored a series of shots and lighting trying to capture these soft but explicit layers, when an OBP special on raptors provided parallel imagery in the facial discs of owls. Here is the shot directly from the TV screen which captures these shapes as they change surface to coordinate sound with visual targeting. The feathery discs are actually acoustic amplifiers of the grey owl's unevenly set ears. The disc shape is constrained or expanded by subtle changes in facial muscles as the bird's eyes follow a target. This information, combined with the hearing data, gives the owl stereoscopic precision for locating and hunting prey. As I work with depicting these beloved things of nature, I am amazed at how my visual brain leads me into their physiology. Then into my own.

I am a raptor-like observer with a brain that doesn't easily turn off. This is a factor of physiology, my own human sensory system, which registers numerous sensory inputs all the time that I hardly reflect on until I've reached overload. I find it necessary to trust this encoded information, and to allow it a voice in visual expression. Otherwise I am too easily overwhelmed by the sheer volume of daily input, visual and movement stimulation, and become fatigued. How do you process and recycle the numerous shapes and images that surround you? Do you realize how overload can leave you exhausted, paralyze you with too many choices, for example in stores, so that you are get overwhelmed and manipulated by false 'targets' (food or other comfort items that don't meet your real need for relief from overstimulation)? The paralysis of too much!? Time to learn our own natures again.

Art meets Night

Art calls after midnight. Like some shadowed visitor I open the door to, compelled but uncertain. Of late the wee hours are more appealing than any other time of day. I'm turning into my subjects.

Owls are as irresistable to me now as they were when I was a small child. I have always been taken with the birdpeople. I struggle over how to capture their rapt attention without losing their complexity of gaze. It is the same with doing justice to cats and other predatory animals. Those with hunter anatomy and physiology, who can in a moment become the hunted. That's the edge; this dual instinct under the surface. Vulnerability has to be there, but may not be overworked.

As humans, we seem beset with projecting predatory qualities onto everything around us, then portray our own species as victimized but heroic. It is a dreadful lie, having taken over the terrain, food, and general environment of every living thing on the planet. Staring at the owls helps me be honest. What do you think?

Art meets Reverse

When it can't go forward, art goes backward.
I found my way back to reverse glass painting in honor of a former teacher. Joze Ciuha is a Slovenian artist of international acclaim who is known for his provocative, politcal and exquisite work in this technique. I remember studying in Salzburg with him in 1974, doing days and months of figural studies, while his show of impressively large oil & glass panels hung in one of the city's prestigious galleries. His topic was "generals" before the fall of Tito, when Yugoslavia was a still a Soviet satellite. The immense portraits featured chimpanzee faces in generals' attire with cyrillic inquiries, commanding and unforgettable.

When Art Media, Portland's cherished art supply store, announced a workshop, I lept at the chance to join Karin Boe-Hadley and immerse myself. Work is planned and executed in reverse, beginning with highlights and ending with background, which is often goldleaf (or similar metal leaf). It provides complete respite from other thoughts.

Fall has started off with this tiny portrait and relief to have another opportunity to reclaim glass, images, ideas, and fond memories of sketching with Joze at the Salzburg Zoo where a particularly clever monkey tricked me out of my pencil when I mistakenly thought he was aiming for my figs. Art can still trick me like that monkey. Sometimes I have to turn back, to move ahead. What reversals have brought unexpected gifts in your life?

Art meets Staycation

I've gone to the birds. Friends, I'm on staycation. I spend my days watching and sketching birds in the healing garden, planting the fall food crop, and deep learning ASL. Like a fish in a glass bowl, the hearing world is harder and harder to access, so I'm sinking into the visual and kinesthetic world where my senses still bring connection. I'll be back after filling my cup. Wishing you well in the interim! Namaste' and blessings, people!

Art meets Rhythm

Art has its own pace. Living a green life helps me appreciate the role of time. There is no rushing the way raw input gets composted down into the richer soil of my own images. Sometimes this means years before I address a certain subject, other times there is a more immediate translation. Our current culture does not recognize long intervals wherein something germinates in darkness for an undetermined period until converging factors call it forth. Underestimating this deep mystery we can miss an awful lot. Artists are often told to go look at others work, and feeling guilty, I knew I had to avoid this. I did not know why, I just knew my art worked better for me when I didn't overload with others' imagery. Now I know I was busy composting and didn't want all that heat dissipated.

I know of nothing so close to nature as this strange inherent thrum wherein deep calls to deep. At the Zumwalt Prairie in eastern Oregon several species were nearly eradicated until they designated the area as sanctuary. After just a few years left alone, the species had mysteriously restored themselves. Letting be is sometimes the greenest of all practices. Leave undisturbed. Buddha put it "Muddy water let stand becomes clear".

I somehow learned to count on the slow drip method of letting my own images emerge from experiences 20 or 30 years ago. Then I was only soaking in the sensory and trying to find my part in all that three-dimensional music of interaction. Now is when the highlights sort themselves out. I count on that now, relax into it, where I never could before. I am not concerned with where the next image will come from. I only wonder how things will look when my body translates them, surprised by what it wants to recall or recapture in another form. This is the essence of what the green movement does; allows us to recognize and appreciate how one thing, then another impacts life and how it is returned, restored, or reused to serve a larger cycle.

(Strait in the San Juans) refers to cherished time in the San Juan Islands of Washington. As a teen, I worked in art and dance at a camp run by Karlyn Kaiser, the granddaughter of industrialist, Henry Kaiser, where the graceful schooner, "The Martha", built in 1906 by Stone, took children from established families around the straits and harbors of Orcas and other islands. It was another world to me. What I connected with most was the motion of water, the current and thrust of waves which were translated into my feet as the huge boat beat its way through the Straits of Georgia at sunset. That's when sailing got into me, when water assumed its stature, becoming the force in my life that a piece of land becomes to most people and their families. I believe it is when the rhythm of my feet met winds of spirit in a new way, and I no longer felt like an island alone. When it became possible to trust the current, to see beyond controlling to navigating with the forces as they come. Water has its own ways. This element largely governs my art. Such a gentle and powerful force, it even penetrates stone, which is why I trust it to seep through and come out despite all the sediment of life. How it works is a trustworthy mystery. This is where I learned to accept and count on the next wave.

Art meets Angel

Art is angelic. This is no mild descriptor. I'm not talking about angels in the the popular way. My imagery is far from the greeting card cherubs with dimpled bottoms or church window baroque figures swathed in serenity. The historic texts about angels reveal them as disruptive, potent beings. Contact with them left the beholder shaken and amazed to the bone. Abraham was alarmed, preferring they not even visit his tent if instead they might please go bother someone else. I know the feeling. Art has its own vantage point. Whence it comes and where it goes is like a map that only makes sense of from the air, rather than on the ground where perspective is organized by your immediate take on the surrounds.

I armwrestle in my relationship with it and have since I was a child. It didn't always obey my mental intent. Dori Lohr, a painter turned enamelist who I knew in school told me early on, "Don't fuss about your art when you are young. Do your music first. You have to do it first because of the instrument. It has a more limited lifespan, the voice. Paint will always be there. Metal will always be there." I was perplexed and had no concept of what she meant. I did all forms, but took her advice and did the music while I could. Now that I am deaf, imagine my relief that the angel of visual art is not a jealous lover.


But as angels do, it brought omens. I found a gouache sketch I made in graduate school. I had always wondered why the figure wobbled on unsteady legs, why the legs and ears were both green. Now that I understand the link between hearing and balance, the mysterious double features directed by the eighth cranal nerve, I know and it takes my breath away. What surprises has the Archangel Art brought to you?

Art meets Green

Art is sneaky. It turns you green. Having dropped off the cliff of the hearing world into the ocean of non-silence that is my deaf world, I am the Siamese cat who howls this song in the stairwell to her internal orchestra while the rest of the world keeps on marching. I need now, more than ever, the music of my hands, as I recycle myself. I need art to convey the burden of purpose. The purpose? Halt the march. Art is the way I green my attitude towards change, and point others towards repurposing how they live and what they do.

A writer for a local newspaper interviewed me this week, a really nice gesture that comes at a poignant time. She asked about the word "reUse", and a curious discussion of art, eco art, recycling, upcycling and greener living ensued. A curator, Elizabeth Lamb, first framed it in words that rang true for me: "There's an automatic association between reUse and the roughhewn, worn or used up which is a barrier to reUse art being taken seriously in the Art World." I think it is even bigger than that. The zeitgeist of the Atomic Era seeped into our national mindset like so much plastic, leaving a contemporary construct that remains actively unchallenged. Commercials bathe us in a mental potion of manipulative language and imagery about 'new, better, improved' that has, literally and figuratively, poisonous consequences. We buy at our own risk. An endless addictive cycle of annui, thrill then disenchantment attends the proliferating and hungering for the most current (aka better) consumer goods. What is it about humanity that we are such suckers for novelty?

All this failed me during the interview. Words are not easy for me. I reached for my basket of feline fur and needlefelting, to show the simple process of felting the material for jewelry projects such as this Mandalacat Amulet which is made of 15mm glass beads, reclaimed sterling cable (or guitar string), upcycled leather, a vintage button and, my wool of choice, persian cat fur.


What I should have said was that most American children probably think felt grows in 12" square blocks on a colored felt tree at a craft megastore. Instead, I learned about felt yurts and shelters in Central Asia where my mother's people came from before immigrating to Germany. For millenia, people have been shearing goats, sheep and other animals, boiling and matting this versatile fibre for everything from walls and doors to coats, hats and shoes. I'm not innovating at all. I use what is at hand, as people have always done. Think of the unique Chinese gardens, where broken pieces of pottery are worked into mosaic amidst local stones. Examples are everywhere. Quilling in the work of Lakota artists, caribou tufting by the Dinendeh. An early mentor, calligrapher Inga Dubay, who restored the art of beautiful writing to Oregon's school system through the Getty-Dubay method, put it best: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without".

Back to the burden: I am stunned that greening life is considered a new idea. It is traditional. It is what people have done since time out of mind. Things which were made from the earth return to it and become grist for something else. Cities rise and fall and new cities are built atop the previous ones. In America, we forget this. This land was full of art and culture when Europeans came here and built over and against the active cultural traditions which were in progress. The neo-industrial world overshadows the agricultural proclaiming itself bigger and smarter. It's the same old story in new clothes. Since when is common sense an innovation?

Living greener is about returning. Trusting methods that were time-tested over generations. Being content to be temporary creatures of a time and a place, instead of having to be THE time and THE place in some grand sense. I feel the most important thing I can do, as an artist, is pass this tradition on to my loved ones and friends: take what is at hand, and let this become transformed by caring attention into a message of purpose and appreciation. To be greener, attend in a new way. To be an artist, listen inside and let your attention be drawn to a new mechansim of expression as your hands make music with the ordinary. Think, what else can this become? Or in life, what else can I make of what is at hand?

Art meets Ocean

Art is prophetic at times. The bodymind announces itself in pure form, as clearly as a gasp. The depth of the visual conversation with my own body, through art, stuns me. The emotional key is heard immediately, followed by a wake of thematic overtones and harmonics that ripple outward. The broad wake, a mental mirror that is as bright as the brass hardware of the moon in this mixed media piece, "Of the Ocean" (c 2008).

This week, recovery from surgery forced me back to the website at Johns Hopkins. I discovered the euphamism for Meniere's Disease is the "otolithic catastophe". Public opinion would appear to support this. The stares and vague disgust in others eyes when they watch my faltering gait and balance offers daily evidence. What do you do when you see an alert-eyed woman of 54 lurching like a broken stork, arms windmilling erraticly like a swimmer drowning on level cement? People think one thing: drunk. I lurch along slapping ashore to the nearest wall or other vertical surface, clinging to these rocks to stop me from being swept back out to sea. I ask people to speak slowly so I can lip read. Exhaustion. [Dunes Day with Silver Lining, c. 2008]


I look to art for comfort even as it strips away denial. At least I can remake the environment symbolically, reclaiming lost treasures from these depths. When pain and nausea stole sleep again in spite of fatigue, everpresent as a fog bank at sea, Of the Ocean unlocked to me the secret of its strange spacial duality. The spliced space has been somehow accurate and annoying. Like adjusting your eyes to see a page, while simultaneously looking through a magnifying glass at it. Bifocal. Though I knew what effect kept flattening the space, the haptic patterns, I could not account for why. Why did I need to splice depth and flatness together in one piece? It hit me. This evokes the moment when swimming, you survey the horizon, then eyes open, slip down beneath surface tension into the pressured underwater world. Water overtakes all sensation and perception, as you move through wet space like some astronaut in a skin suit. This the window into my daily Mystery, a personal icon. It's message broke through as I worked to manage acute pain and pressure from the new shunt in my mastoid. The puzzle connected in my body, letting me weep with relief as well as anguish. The duality now made sense, bringing comfort, though there is no exit. Life is not without pain, that's non-negotiable. Thus, which would you choose; pain without, or pain with meaning? Pain is. The meaning is of our choosing.

I will live as a zebra, striped with constrasts. ["Zebra" c. 1997, E.P. Whitlock] I'm stuck between the hearing and deaf worlds, the walking and the wheelchairs, 'normal' healthy and the disabled or differently abled, German but American, recovering but looking inebriated, the list goes on. After 26 years of being an Art Therapist and Consultant at the local and national levels working in research and clinical intervention for neuroatypical children and their families in the field of Fetal Alcohol, other Drug and most recently, Methamphetamine Effects, I am now the hard to diagnose and treat patient. The ad would say "sea-zebra under the waves seeks kin of Jacques Cousteau and other explorers to join navigational adventure into blue beyond. All activities to be conducted at 40 ft below the surface without equipment." What contrasts do you reconcile, and what meaning do you take away with you?

Art meets Object

Art is my Way. And my object. I promised I'd show you some good out of all the hairballs of my life in a previous blog. Okay, meet the felted nouveau Edelweiss!

There is this distinction in the arts, the Fine versus the Applied. The High and, then, ahem, the Low. Art (the rarified ballet slipper) and Craft (shoes cobbled by hand). As a lifelong maker-doer the whole dichotomy is objectionable. What is the hierarchy of making objects, save some qualities of origin or what passion asserts their arrival: when exactly do instinct and practice conceive art? Abstractions are imposed after the fact. Invalidation also. I hit the wall in every sense this week. I could not sit to ease my ache to work in larger pieces as my heart broke with fear. Don't diss my Edelweiss, world, I warn you. I mean what am I actually going to do, run down debilitation and gesticulate at it? well if I could...but I couldn't get my hands on a walker.

There is the devotion to making and doing, and then those who cannot or will not show up in their own lives enough to grab on and wring out of being alive whatever satisfaction they can, facing up to the endless losses and changes with at least some curiousity. I refuse to be in-valid. So, sobbing, I stab into the furballs, to slice, carve, do surgery on them. Make of the food for a vaccuum something one would reach to touch instead. I am not ready to be thrown away. How do I feel about powerlessness? Inability to push ahead my own mending from this last operation to my head? I used razor blades and big shears on those soft, round orbs, the hairball skulls.

I cannot enjoy being this disabled. After years as a professional helper I cannot help myself or force myself out of this disease that steals my life in chunks. I danced classical ballet 4 times a week, 3 hours a day from ages 5 to 14, then ethnic dance my entire life. I feel humiliated as I struggle to stand and windmill like a broken stork until I end up a plank on the floor. I performed music when my mother, a coloratura, stopped singing. Now I can't hear the most precious sounds, or even necessary ones; the doorbell or locks, having no indicator but cats dashing that something comes around. Fear, this is the worst part. What happens, the falling, the silence, these I can learn from. Edelweiss object to crippling fear.

Art is how a curious mind gives courage to hands. I venture into what I don't understand and use my eyes and hands to recycle fear into something else. To make some use of reactions that would otherwise paralyze or overwhelm me. I make and I calm down. This I learned as a little girl from the screams and sounds, being unable to make large people stop brutalizing those who weren't as big. Like I said, she stopped singing. Completely. Unless I sang descant to her melody, then she was not alone. Audible screaming had to be muffled or transposed into something. She sang until she couldn't. I may be pinned and unable to escape, but I leave visible proof that someone was there. Someone you should wonder about and search for. It may be as slight as the torn napkin flowers I left at the counters of the gas stations or cafes before he'd force us back into the car, moving again, to the next neighborhood where no one would stop him or call the police.


Art was always my bigger voice and strongest signal. It gives me rights. I am able. I am valid. I can express anything, everything, honestly, deeply or as bluntly as I will. If my challenge has always been to make something out of nothing, why not Edelweiss from hairballs? But now you know their pedigree. These are the fleshy cousins of those lost napkin flowers. Delicate species but a sturdy genus. They are my objects, my objections, aren't they? Who would know seeing them on a shoulder bag, or hat, and read their actual message? Would you have guessed? Now this: what was my mother's favorite song?

Art meets Unknown

Art has always been ahead of me. This dinner plate emerged out of a time of upheaval, as appearances fell away, doors closed, windows opened and simple fixtures of life were swept aside, including, ironically, my place at the table! The outside world was in flux, and my internal landscape was a moving mosaic.

After a divorce and 2 floods, my children and I moved back to land from 5 years of living aboard a 44' sailboat outside the Sauvie Island Wildlife Refuge. Our family was immersed in the ways of birds and animals on those woodsy banks. The flooding in some areas was a seasonal occurrence, but we actually faced 2 major disasters which left the world swollen with fouled water, contaminated by cow corpses and other stranded animals. Yet, unbelievably, the community rallied and by 10 months time, surroundings and people had largely recovered. In the beautiful times, there was nothing like living richly with wildlife, while sparsely with electricity and other resources, maintaining a handmade life aboard. It was an important period which left me and my daughters stripped down and grateful for essentials. We hit our cultural detox from typical American consumer mentality hard and early.

Once in a house that didn't move (boats are always in motion even at rest) visual art resumed its primary role. I salvaged fiberboard and test glass pours from a local art glass manufacturer. Their dumpster filled weekly, and they let me glean all manner of slabs. The moving mosaic of my interior life on the water was breaking itself out of me piece by piece as I made this large work freehand. Instead of using traditional methods of tesserae, which are highly uniform, I needed the freedom of varying glass shapes and sizes and working directly onto the board with adhesive, without sketching. We think of drama with seascape, but the river is a subtler world of contrasts. There was an immediate and panoramic intensity to those days on the water at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. The force of the river was fast each spring driving up through the bottoms of trees in the wash, while the boughs greened up and clouds stretched their wings. I was wrenched by leaving, and struggled to trust I would not be ultimately washed away in all the loss. And I was not.

Aboard a boat and in the sailing community, I maintained the ballast of my own identity through music and dance. 3 years after returning to land was when the diagnosis of Meniere's Disease was made. I brought the sea back in my body, always seasick and dizzy. Dance has been passed on to my daughters instead. Menieres has progressed so that I cannot tell when I will fall; some internal lighting strikes and spontaneous face plants occur out of nowhere. But, it has left my visual art which like this mosaic, still has it's own internal press. Art still leads, and now what I do with my hands reflects more and more my choice of how to navigate the rough waters of particular physical limits on a given day or over a period of time. I see music now. I see bird songs, breeze in trees, as deafness changes my senses. What helps me now is to enjoy this visual music and dance of my hands in the art. I recycle everything I can, from sensory input to my own physical being, moment by moment as if under the water about 40 feet. Each day is it's own and all I can handle. The inside story of the mosaic just means more now. The plate tells more than I knew at the time. I am facing an even bigger unknown within this body culture than any I have learned about before. I trust art to show me what comes next. Fortunately, I don't read it as I do it. I treat it more gently than I have my body, a hard lesson now. But more than ever before in life, it is how I will express my culture and share it with you. What leads you? What gives meaning to your unknown?

Art Meets Soul

Wool warms the soul. Especially when it comes from a true friend and fiber artist. After nearly 20 years, she found me again. Going back to the last time we'd visited, she told me her inspiration for this exceptional wool: "There you were at Christmastime, unravelling a present you'd made because you had to take the yarn back to the store for the money to keep the heat on. I swore I'd get my alpacas one day, and their first yarn would be yours. It's taken me this long, but here is my yarn for you!" Have you ever seen such lovely, finely spun, soft wool? Have you ever had such a friend?

As a serious, though amiable, introvert who worked long hours in some rough places, I tend to keep what I've seen close to the chest. It's not suitable for social hour or a direct answer to 'so, how was your day?' I find yarn able to handle any tangle of the soul like the woman who spun it. It brings a unique comfort in hard times. Only she would remember that challenging Christmastime which I had long forgotten. Her art form shows the same tender attention, a requirement for changing mounds of matted animal hair into delicate wool. Her work in fiber is a steadfast, sensory melody. I am so grateful she spun the straw of the past into the gold of years. She accomplished her dream and helps restore mine. How huge is that?

Now from the sublime to the ridiculous. My friend is as attached to her alpacas as I am to the originators of these fur balls. Most people see a cat like this and think Dyson-on-steroids. So, this is odd, and I know it. Getting through a few rounds of surgery can do this to you so I don't advise that particular route, BUT: I admit it! I needle-felt the fur of Zeebear & Stein (aka "the persian brothers legal defense team") and their feral hitgirl, Killer. They are a copious manufacturing concern, delivering early and often, providing fine quality silver chinchilla persian and himalayan feline wool.

Being couch-bound after surgeries makes one rethink the ordinary. Who needs expensive roving? Of course, I have yet to carve and sculpt these shapes. You'll get to see that another time. Oh, and please wish me and the surgeon in the upcoming round, sure hands and sharp knives. Too bad he won't get to decorate his work with tiny beads.


My question today is: What simple action helps you rethink your ordinary life? What art can you make of the stuff around you today without spending a dime, that will lift another's spirits while you green your life?

Art meets Fingers

Some of my best friends are fingers.When the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed must make her way to the mountain. People do what they must. I must do artwork. During times when being upright isn't in the cards, I have returned to my stash of techniques for fingers, learned when I was 6 yrs old. My American grandmother tatted and crochetted. My German mother knitted and embroidered. This is beside all the painting and drawing I did daily. To paraphrase my dear friend in the arts, Jo Gentry Haemer, about our era:

"Our parents taught us not to define ourselves by the culture we consume, but by the culture we create."

I don't define myself by the varying conditions of life. That IS life. When bad times come I am not a failure. In good times, I am not special. I am always grateful, period. I was privileged to have family members who helped me practise with my hands how to take hold of a life and make it my own. These were people who were used to making and doing for themselves, because they came from war and imprisonment, the Great Depression, and other hardships which taught them, along with their forebears how to handmake a life regardless of the terms. I include all sorts of vintage and found objects from long ago in my work as my nod to my teachers.


What can I show you? People look at the tiny bead crochet I employ within mixed media reUse jewelry designs, wondering "How do you have the patience!" My daughters have learned how to implement this technique, and true, you do have to stick with it. But here is what is so valuable about learning this and other manual skills. Only so much of living in a body comes from recognizing what to do (with the frontal lobe). Here's what I mean. You can see the dance the fingers do with the beads and thread, but there is no substitute for getting your own tactile and motor processes to dance this way!
When horizontal for prolonged periods, my hands are free to dance these beads along with mindful intention. I can still create the culture I inhabit, with purpose. What gives you purpose? How do you teach this to others?

Art meets Hope

Jeff Lindsey puts his hands on metal and it roars to life.

My first view of "Green Treefrog" was when he had me close my eyes, then open them to see it standing astride this italian motorcycle he gave me for Christmas a few years back. Unforgettable! The bike was phenomenal (a mint 1958 Gilera which had won the Motogiro D'Italia in 1991 and had the official seal to prove it), but more moving was the frog. (And not just because he's taller than I am). Honestly, I couldn't even believe the beauty of the sculpture. Jeff has these huge strong hands that make spirit soar out of anything with engines or wings. Look, do you think the guy can sculpt?

Emily Dickinson said "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all." When times got tough during my illness and it was clear Menieres would not let me on that bike, Jeff and I sold it. Still a contender, it has won the Motogiro De California now several years running. The frog gives me hope every day, leaping up, with such a fluid, expansive stretchiness. What Jeff doesn't know, because his hands just do this, is that the lithe nature he brings out of simple steel rod makes for a feeling of exuberance in the viewer. He touches my life the same way, bringing surprise and liveliness. He's the hare, full of large scale speed, as I am the tortoise, moving slowly, gradually, in my ongoing struggle with gravity. Like many artists, he won't get around to the discussion with galleries, even though he has accompanied me to my shows, openings, exhibits. So now you will find him on Artfire at Artimentary Studios, where you can place an order for his work.

This handsome frog is a reminder, as I proceed with more surgery tomorrow to save what's left of my hearing and ability to walk. Always upward, the stretch is what frees the soul. Even metal bends in the right hands, becomes something bigger. I place my life on a daily basis into The Largest Hands of all. But, here's one small but big thing to do for frogs: stop use of RoundUp and other 'green washed' household and garden products that truly endanger frogs and other amphibians. We can't all sculpt like Jeff Lindsey, but we can reduce chemicals that compromise their immune system, as well as leave habitat intact where they can hold on. We need frogs. I need frogs. What helps you hold on to hope?

Art meets Truth

Art doesn't lie. Unlike humans, with necessary defenses, art is not deceptive. What's there is there, for all to see. It is why I love it, but why it takes courage to make it. Especially at some turns of our lives. Art is like the mirror to the moon of Truth, as in this piece, Willamette Moon. I was struggling with details, but had to step back to see the compositional integrity. True also in the composition of my life, day to day. My challenge? to be mindful in the little things, yet wear Life as a loose garment. I know I am not alone in this. The artwork got it's space to breathe from the dialog between detail and the larger compositon. We have to weigh and work with these contrasts.

While making my own artwork, I have also worked for over 26 years as an art therapist. My population has been very young traumatized children who have seen the underbelly of a changing America (living in meth labs, suffering abuse from adult addiction, maltreatment, the works). When people ask I tell them these are resilient children; they live beyond the ugly things done to them, and have the courage to grow on and grow up every day in the hidden war zone of our country. Few people see their amazing successes. My colleagues and I find it hard and rewarding work.

A colleague stopped me yesterday, and gave me the gift of Truth. He came and sat a moment, confronting me with gentle, steady notice of my decline in ability to walk, crawling along the walls, life with Meniere's Disease. Its been my personal enemy. The bain I've fought, that slowly takes me further from the front lines where younger troups needed help to suit up and show up in this daily siege for renewing hope. He said simply: "We see you. You have not given up. But we see that you suffer. Antonia, you are disabled." It is true. I cannot walk for days at a time, or even sit up. After 8 years of this, trying everything to stay upright, I still cannot mentally or physically outrun the decline, the nausea, the hearing loss; surgeries that cut into both sides of my head to rebuild the balance chambers, special diets, physical rehabilitation, learning sign. I live like this found object sculpture, At Sea on Land.
Again what saves me is the Truth. I am disabled in my ability to overcome living in a broken body. But that's not the right job description. It comes to this: "If you wear out your skin house, where are you going to live?" The pace, the push, the American demand that people of skin and bones be replaceable as machines, under estimates what we do that machines don't. We feel, and we mitigate suffering by sharing it and diluting it down, like filtering the sediment from water that it may run clear again. We create out of everything, and nothing. As a therapist, "the trick is to metabolize pain as energy". Artists do this as a way of life. It is what has allowed me to stay in clinical work as long as I have. But art is about truth, always.

I see now that I am this bird, "Fast Bird". My mind reaches for flowers, and my frantic pace is halted, like the bird whose wings hover while suspended between panels. She's caught in the present. As am I. May West said some of us who cannot be a positive role model can at least be a terrible warning. Do not believe the current American myth. Do not believe that faster is better, or more right, or more worthy every time. Fast is an option, like deliberate is an option. Mindful is an option. And when it hurts, stopping has to be an option. Not necessarily a failure. Okay, I am disabled in my ability to move fast. And in my art, I can do anything. Except ignore the truth.
How do you face your truth?

Art meets Discipline

Art is a conversation with others and ourselves. A characteristic of my art is love of detail. Detailed ornamentation brings discipline. Practicing a visual-motor skill, or playing an instrument, gives relief through repetition. In this Gimme World of instant gratification (aka illusions) practice is metaphor about life; it takes time. There is no replacement for this element. If repetition is the language of love, loving the work to better our craft is to love our art. Being disciplined in art is a living process.

Discipline is not a dirty word. Take the world-class Japanese garden nearby. The visitor is surrounded by discipline pointing at nature, the Master. The garden works as a dialog of details; a conversation between the artist-gardener and Life. It's a painting but alive, slowly changing with each leaf on the path or splash that ripples the water. The details are planned to include what's spontaneous. Living art. I take this lesson to heart as a lover of the handmade life, making small homages in my own garden.

There is a place for spontenaity in all this practice. Steampunk art that nods to methods used a century ago lets me play with purpose. When you look closely at the watchworks and salvaged pieces, much of the fabrication and craftsmanship holds up handsomely over time. For those unfamiliar with some of the tools used, here is an engravers block, a common fixture of watchmakers, hand engravers and jewelers. I am actually amazed that these haven't changed in 30 years or more. My metalsmithing teacher was Max Nixon, trained in the American Arts & Crafts movement. He first introduced me to hand engraving. Max was a fixture (and feature) of the Fine & Applied Arts Department of the School of Architecture & Allied Arts at the University of Oregon. And once upon a time (gasp) in those dark ages, machine engraving had not yet totally replaced finely wrought hand engraving. I practiced the basics of making my own gravers, learning Copperplate and other scripts (both forward and in reverse for printing press use), and thought I'd blind myself working on lacertine patterns I fell for studying Celtic hand-illuminated gospels of the 9-11th centuries. (Speaking of practice, you did notice I said hand-illumination, the ultimate discipline of transcribing gospel texts letter by letter!) Lacertine patterns have since gained such popularity we see them in broad circulation on everything from metal to skin. Funny how all things old become new again!

Back to steampunk, discipline and time. Since I can't really feel time until it accumulates past all reason (there are people who can attest to this) the discipline of learning fastidious, nitpicky things takes hold of me hard. I'm older than dirt and still in love with persnickety processes while I play at the variety of things emerging from Artimentary Studios. Here is a Steampunk Medal underway for gothic musician "Luna's Ceiling" (see the moon with clouds of titanium slag?) We're naming it the "Cordon Black" as he also cooks. I'm still working on it so I'll let you know how it turns out.
A final point about art and discipline: don't let processes or details scare you off. Not everything comes overnight. In this madhouse of a Sudden-Success-Or-You're-Nothing culture, art still teaches us reason, devotion and discipline regardless of the direction expressed. Look, SOMETHING has to! So sweat away, loving the devil in the details of every exhaspirating or exhilerating moment of the handmade life.
Maybe its just what we do.

Art meets Vows

When you're ready to make your vows, why not make your rings? There are many methods available: jewelry artists who are trained as design jewelers can help when you have a theme in your heart even if you can't draw or picture the rings. This is not rocket science, it's applied art and craftsmanship! The key is finding jewelers who listen well (not coerce you into pre-existing patterns), who design, and who have experience using a variety of metalsmithing techniques. You want help to customize this visual story about your relationship. What you're looking for is to explore metal and stones beyond the typical diamond wedding set mentality. This is where a design jeweler can help you have the same comfort you would insist on if you were going to wear a second skin. It matters! Don't just go to the mall!

The bride and groom's family wanted to honor their determined relationship of 10 years by gathering family heirlooms to recycle the metal and stones, as well as the history behind them. The groom's ring features inlaid mokume gane, a Japanese technique of married metals, set in 18 karat white gold. Mokume gane is an exceptional delight to the eye, offering effects similar to woodgrain, or the play of ripples on water. It is also quite a statement about one metal next to another: contrast can be dramatic or subtle, depending on the metals used. (Not a bad metaphor for people getting married). We found special stock at Reactive Metals which suited the groom's purposes. He was guided through the construction of his ring from carving the wax for a lost wax vacuum casting, to soldering the inlay of mokume gane in place before final polishing of his sleek and very individual ring.

The bride had a deep connection to her great grandmother's 6 karat lavendar star sapphire. A high cut cabachon, it was originally set in a classic princess Di style surrounded with diamond pave. The ring went through a second incarnation when it was redesigned in 18 k yellow gold, highly architectural shape with channel set diamonds. For her own turn, the bride yearned for something organic, fluid, and graceful, with an Art Nouveau feel but strength that would still balance the considerable weight of the high stone to reduce rolling on her finger. She was leery of prongs due to activity and opted for a gypsy setting to afford protection and add to the fluidity of the design. Her sketches suggested floral stems and leaves which were loosely interpreted in white gold.


1. rough cast 18 karat white gold mounting






2. cleaned up casting with side mounted diamonds

















3. and the final center stone set and polished!

The rings figured prominantly in the overall handmade nature of this wedding. But best of all, the process of making them was as important as the symbols. If you are in the Pacific Northwest, and have not yet met Tim Green of Timothy W. Green Jewelers and Jo Gentry Haemer of Gentry Goldsmithing, check out their classes for design jewelery instruction extraordinaire. Care about the process, and enjoy the product even more. If we make vows, why not also invoke these promises as we marry intentions in the metal? Art, like relationships, is not just a thing, it IS a way. What could be a more wonderful way to celebrate a marriage?