At Home: Memory

I recently finished reading a book by a friend of mine, Jill Kelly, called Sober Truths: The Making of an Honest Woman. It is the story of one woman's struggle with addictive behaviors, a struggle I could definitely identify with.

In her book, Jill Kelly says:

"Memories are not necessarily the truth. But we tend to live with them as if they are. They create those stories, those beliefs that govern our decisions."

Anyone who has ever tried to fill an internal void by drinking or eating or shopping or any of a hundred other things has a story about that void and how it came to be there. The fears, the pain, the loneliness, the emptiness we are trying to blot out . . . and the memories that serve as our rationalization for how we choose to cope with it. Memories that grow sharper and yet more blurred around the edges the more emotional we are about them.

These memories are what I deal with in my art. Visual, visceral, emotional. And only true in the sense that I remember them and they have shaped me.

I stopped believing in absolute truths a long time ago. Truth is largely a product of time and perspective. It is almost impossible for a human being to report on an event objectively; we are hardwired to assign meaning to what we observe and experience. That said, I do my very best to be honest . . . and I find that it is an incredibly complicated thing far more frequently than I would like. Real life happens in the gray areas.

All of these thoughts have been jostling in my head as I've been thinking about the Mad/50 shrine installation over the past several weeks. Home. My memories of how it was and how I thought it should be, my longing for it, the empty place that was my lack of it, and all of the things I did to feel a sense of belonging, to feel at home, somewhere, with someone.

That sense of home and belonging is something I am only now - at 37 - beginning to feel on a regular basis, and it is still intermittent. Fleeting.

Studio Day

Ah, the glory of (almost) an entire day spent in the studio . . . I really need that kind of concentrated art time . . . Today, I experimented with printing plates made from pieces of foam rug gripper and friendly foam and even foam weather stripping. In other words, if it's even vaguely foamy, I'm experimenting with making a stamp/printing plate from it and printing it on fabric.

The Artmaking as Playful Prayer class finished on Monday, and I've got a Memory Jewelry class that starts tomorrow. And I've been cleaning up from the Secret Society Sale last Sunday, and prepping for the Dinnergrrls Holiday Bazaar this coming Sunday . . . It's a miracle I got in the studio for any personal work! But I need that time . . . especially after a Playful Prayer class ends. I need time to digest what's happened. Time to incubate. I got some really wonderful and thoughtful feedback about the class, about creating more meaningful transition times. And I've been digesting that, considering different ways that I might meet that need without sacrificing the structural looseness. All while I print little houses and little birds with nests on fabric. So soothing.

And yesterday's teaser? Old appliqued quilt blocks (from yet another quilt that is not to be) that I'm turning into pillows to sell at the Dinnergrrl's Holiday Bazaar this weekend . . .

Today, I'd Just Like to be Squirrel Girl

Either the one from Sweetie's online comic book, or the one that hangs upside down in the tree in my backyard in order to feed from the bird feeder. The first is sexy in a butch rodent kind of way, can kick butt and has a long fluffy tail. The other one is quite deliciously zaftig in a cuddly yet athletic way, can do 30 crunches while hanging upside down and has a long fluffy tail. (At first, Sweetie and I thought she might be pregnant, but we've been watching her for over a month now, and squirrels usually mate in December and June, with gestations in the 30-44 day range. So, unlikely.)

Today, I would like my mission to be simple: kick butt, eat seeds, fluff tail.

You notice blogging is not on the list.

You notice, too, that I resorted to listing seven random facts about myself yesterday instead of talking about any sort of creative enterprise. The creativity is definitely happening: I had a wonderful Playful Prayer class last night which resulted in a couple of great conversations about process, and how a piece will change as you work on it, how you can often spend a lifetime pursuing work that allows you to express a particular thing and still not quite get it, but revel in the process. I led the group in one of my favorite writing exercise (based on Pat Allen's Art is a Spiritual Path) where we engaged in a stream-of-consciousness dialog with our work. I also worked more on my fiber pieces about Nepal, and developed some new stamps using foam insulation tape that I can't wait to try out. Wonderful stuff.

In fact, that's been one of the great things about NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I commit to posting every day. My blog is about creativity. And guess what? There really is something to write about every single day that relates to my creative journey. My creative life really is that fully integrated with my everyday life. Woo-Hoo!

It's just that some days, I'd rather not write about my creative process or the things that inspire it or feed it or result from it. I'd rather be Squirrel Girl. And Squirrel Girl doesn't blog. She gorges on seeds, then hides some away in secret stashes for a cold day. She incubates. She mates in December. And maybe June. She kicks butt. She fluffs her tail.

And I'm just betting she watches Project Runway.

Time to Incubate . . .

Ok, after four classes at Art & Soul I hit total overwhelm . . . I needed a little time to absorb it all and let it marinate . . . My last class on Sunday was with Traci Bunkers. It was a very cool self-portrait class. We took a photograph of ourselves, cut it into four pieces, blew it up on a copier, and then used it essentially as an underpainting and built up layers of color, collage, and texture on top of it. The idea is to work on each piece of the image separately and then integrate them into a unified piece. I like fragmenting images, and I've used photocopies as underpainting before (I can get really lazy about drawing and love this kind of shorcut!). I used a fun, kind of sexy-sassy picture that my friend Michael Burton took of me (he also did the shot of me on this blog).
And while I like elements of each fragment, I ended up not liking the way the fragments come together . . . . Part of it is that I ended up working very opaque with acrylics and collage materials when I think a little more transparency would have served me well. I also didn't do much to integrate the pieces.



And I can be pretty stubborn - meaning I plan to work the piece until it comes to some kind of resolution.

And part of that for me is setting it down in my studio or somewhere else where I'll walk by it several times a day and keep my subconscious working on it. I may eventually just let it go - decide the piece itself isn't really interesting, and just take the idea and do other things with it. Or it may be like the painting I started ten years ago and still haven't finished. It's sitting there, and yet it's still engaging me. Come to think of it, that painting is also a portrait, and it's fragmented to a certain extent . . . themes.

The inspiration for this . . .

I've been thinking about doing this for a very long time. I love the idea of sharing what's going on in the world of my artmaking and creative life, and connecting to a whole community of other making-type people. But sometimes things just have to incubate. Stay warm in the shell before they break out. Now, I've finished grad school, and I'm moved into my new studio, and I've had a month off to start really making things again, and it's just time to come out my shell.

I went with a friend last night to watch the Vaux's swifts gather at sunset at the Chapman School chimney here in Portland. There were these wonderful gentle pulses - thousands of birds swooping in towards the chimney (where they all nest), then dispersing, then swooping in, a few spiraling funneling into the chimney, the rest dispersing out . . . So cool, and it went on for 45 minutes, like the chimney was gently breathing the swifts in and out, sucking a few more in with each breath. I've been doing so many things with images of birds lately that it really resonated with me . . . birds are all about freedom and home . . . lovely contradictions. I made this shrine, which I call "Stirred," from an actual barn swallow nest that a friend saved for me . . . I love how the little bird has two mugs of coffee (hard to tell they're mugs in the picture, and they could be tea, but let's say for the sake of argument that they're Stumptown coffee). It says so much to me about what I want home to be. And then I start thinking that I really don't want to analyze it that much! Anyway - if you want to see it in person, it'll be on display at the 100th Monkey Studio here in Portland as part of their October "Transitions" show. It's my first show in a very long time - I love that feeling of momentum.