OMG...did it finally work?

I tried to post this yesterday and I just could not get the pictures to turn out right.  I adjusted and adjusted and every time they came out divided down the center with only one half showing.  Lowered pixels, changed size, moved location, didn't solve the problem.  So I'm just going to put it up anyway.  If it works , YAY, If it doesn't - well, try to click on the picture itself and see if it comes up better in the slide show thing. Otherwise, it is all Bloggers fault....    Yes, when I clicked on them just now it went to slide show and full size.

This is what I've been up to lately in the studio.  Lots of fun !  I'm not religious nor even that particularly spiritual, but once that Catholic art thing gets in you - it's in you.  Many years of Latin choir singing ( listening) and all that beauty of the old churches, which is pretty much completely gone now is still a big influence to me.  This work is also very influenced by the Spanish Retablo, but in no way attempts to be authentic as I am not Spanish of course.  But I am drawn to their naive and elegant work. It is not, as well necessarily about Mary in a blessed way, although that's ok.  There's a lot there in the religious belief that is beyond my scope of plausibility, but I do say the Hail Mary to put myself to sleep at night - I leave out the bit about "fruit of thy .... ".  But just the thought of a woman in charge is comforting.

I work a lot in the art of collage - in a pretty refined sense, although I respect the randomness of other people's spontaneous way of using it.

I've collected cuttings for about 20 years - Have 25 boxes of them in various subjects.  It's actually the first art I did as a child, cutting out pictures from magazines especially if they were pictures of the Beatles.  Then I'd splash them all over my walls.  My family did not promote my hobby as it was deemed silly and revealed a leaning toward fantasy that was not welcomed in a house too filled with, well, other things. But now I get to do whatever I want to do, so ha! to all of that.
Anyway, this piece took about 2 months to complete from the initial concept to design to assemblage.  After design follows weeks of hunting through 25 boxes of collection - by theme - selecting (not an easy task),  reproducing, adjusting size, and color and then a whole lot of cutting and then pasting.  I enjoy the minute detail of cutting and it's a challenge to get even the tiniest aspect, fingers especially, cut without screwing it all up and having to start over, so if you get it right it's a really nice feeling.  This is 100% paper.  The back drop is paper painted to look like canvas - whoa - that was an exciting challenge.  It is also a challenge to know when a piece is done.  I think I'm done with this one.  It will have a trim around the outside edges just to make it feel clean to the eye. But essentially I am finished. I will do a series of them, six maybe eight.  My next will be an ethnic theme and I am really looking forward to doing that.  It's very difficult to find old art with good representations of Black, Asian or Indian women.  And by the way, I strive to use only images that are antique and therefore free of any copyright infringement - I apologize if I've failed, which is inevitable. I guess I've tooted my own horn here, but it's taken me almost three years to get back to doing art and I'm proud of myself for finding my way back in.

This piece is 48" by 24". I start out big but will go smaller as I relax into it.  Big gives courage. It has a tentative title of "Under Thy Protection" (because like I said, we're - women - really in charge) but just like the process of creating the work itself, giving a title is also a process.  My goal here was to speak to the sanctity of Women.  To say that all are divine in their wisdom, compassion and grace.  Obviously women are too often neglected as to the importance of their role and the gift that they bring. And I am also particularly influenced by these gifts as expressed by the women I read who write the blogs I love.  Thank you ladies.

I'm trying to give you close up of some of the details - but I have the worst two cameras in the world - never a good enough focus.  But, someday.

Oh yes, and I forgot to say - I'm not usually into much of anything that is symbolic, but in this one the pear at her neck does symbolize nobility and grace and the two oranges on the end of her sleeves symbolize courage and strength and of course the dogs are just dogs, utterly and heart filling saints.

Thanks.  I'm going to try to write more.  I think I can do that too.

Liv

Art show on a quiet afternoon

I tried to post this yesterday and I just could not get the pictures to turn out right.  I adjusted and adjusted and every time they came out divided down the center with only one half showing.  Lowered pixels, changed size, moved location, didn't solve the problem.  So I'm just going to put it up anyway.  If it works , YAY, If it doesn't - well, try to click on the picture itself and see if it comes up better in the slide show thing. Otherwise, it is all Bloggers fault....    Yes, when I clicked on them just now it went to slide show and full size.

This is what I've been up to lately in the studio.  Lots of fun !  I'm not religious nor even that particularly spiritual, but once that Catholic art thing gets in you - it's in you.  Many years of Latin choir singing ( listening) and all that beauty of the old churches, which is pretty much completely gone now is still a big influence to me.  This work is also very influenced by the Spanish Retablo, but in no way attempts to be authentic as I am not Spanish of course.  But I am drawn to their naive and elegant work. It is not, as well necessarily about Mary in a blessed way, although that's ok.  There's a lot there in the religious belief that is beyond my scope of plausibility, but I do say the Hail Mary to put myself to sleep at night - I leave out the bit about "fruit of thy .... ".  But just the thought of a woman in charge is comforting.

I work a lot in the art of collage - in a pretty refined sense, although I respect the randomness of other people's spontaneous way of using it.

I've collected cuttings for about 20 years - Have 25 boxes of them in various subjects.  It's actually the first art I did as a child, cutting out pictures from magazines especially if they were pictures of the Beatles.  Then I'd splash them all over my walls.  My family did not promote my hobby as it was deemed silly and revealed a leaning toward fantasy that was not welcomed in a house too filled with, well, other things. But now I get to do whatever I want to do, so ha! to all of that.
Anyway, this piece took about 2 months to complete from the initial concept to design to assemblage.  After design follows weeks of hunting through 25 boxes of collection - by theme - selecting (not an easy task),  reproducing, adjusting size, and color and then a whole lot of cutting and then pasting.  I enjoy the minute detail of cutting and it's a challenge to get even the tiniest aspect, fingers especially, cut without screwing it all up and having to start over, so if you get it right it's a really nice feeling.  This is 100% paper.  The back drop is paper painted to look like canvas - whoa - that was an exciting challenge.  It is also a challenge to know when a piece is done.  I think I'm done with this one.  It will have a trim around the outside edges just to make it feel clean to the eye. But essentially I am finished. I will do a series of them, six maybe eight.  My next will be an ethnic theme and I am really looking forward to doing that.  It's very difficult to find old art with good representations of Black, Asian or Indian women.  And by the way, I strive to use only images that are antique and therefore free of any copyright infringement - I apologize if I've failed, which is inevitable. I guess I've tooted my own horn here, but it's taken me almost three years to get back to doing art and I'm proud of myself for finding my way back in.

This piece is 48" by 24". I start out big but will go smaller as I relax into it.  Big gives courage. It has a tentative title of "Under Thy Protection" (because like I said, we're - women - really in charge) but just like the process of creating the work itself, giving a title is also a process.  My goal here was to speak to the sanctity of Women.  To say that all are divine in their wisdom, compassion and grace.  Obviously women are too often neglected as to the importance of their role and the gift that they bring. And I am also particularly influenced by these gifts as expressed by the women I read who write the blogs I love.  Thank you ladies.

I'm trying to give you close up of some of the details - but I have the worst two cameras in the world - never a good enough focus.  But, someday.

Thanks.  I'm going to try to write more.  I think I can do that too.

Liv

White Light

I look to the tree line
and see a pale grey cloud
being crushed by a dark grey cloud
holding back the chilling
white light of a Winter sky which threatens
to pierce my bones
should I not scurry from its sight
fast enough
©


Looking through some old papers, I found this little poem that I wrote about 10 years ago  --  Winter seems still to hold its sacred and threatening power

Such a little thing

                                                                    

I wasn't going to write about this, it's such a little thing.  But it's the little things that matter most sometimes.

I giggled on Sunday.

All my life I have envied people who could giggle.  I love that melodious trill of laughter like water over stones that erupts so effortlessly from some people.  No body would probably ever notice this about me but my laugh isn't mine.  I have had ptsd (I don't like to put it in caps) and bipolar disorder since I was very, very young.  Very young.  And when that happens you don't develop your own true personality.  You don't understand how the world works except through your unique prism - a complex prism of viewing the world.  So you imitate.  You watch other people do the common ordinary things of life, laughing and talking, working and loving and really, just living.  You try to pick the ones who seem to be doing it well and you imitate them. But it's never quite real - and you know it - and they don't.  Except sometimes someone with exceptional vision comes along and they get what's going on, but that's rare.

So I've done all the usual things that people normally do in life, worked, married, divorced, been a mother, an artist, ...etc. etc. and I've pulled it off pretty well.  And when I couldn't I've hidden away so that no one would know how tough it can get when you can't even imitate anymore and you are simply lost.  And through it all I've cried - a tremendous amount.  And laughed too, quite a bit.  But I never could get that just right.  My laugh was always very breathy and low and often didn't even have sound.  Just my mouth opening and the force of air being push from my lungs.  I've been embarrassed by it at times and worked really hard to make it sound right, because I can feel deep inside, the joy, the hilarity of life, but I can't quite get it out.  And to giggle?  Never.

So now, after years and years and years of not understanding why life works so awkwardly for me, so often painfully and disconnected, I've finally found a doctor who got it, got it.  She's about 12....not really, but lately it seems every medical professional I meet is bound to be a least a decade or two or even three younger than me.  Her name is Jennifer and she is a pyschiatric nurse practioner and she knows her stuff.  Finally!

Jennifer got me in the first twenty minutes - and in this 23 years long search of mine for someone who could figure this out, that is nothing short of a miracle.  I now take the itsyist, bitsyist tiny little pill that replaces in my amygdala that certain little something that has always been missing.  Not that it fixes it.  There's no fix.  But this is as good as it gets in terms of replacing what can never be replaced.

The changes are, frankly, inexplicable.  It's like waking up from a long, long sleep ( I say that kindly, what I really want to say is nightmare).  And this one little change that has happened, is that I giggled , really and for real....giggled.  It just erupted from my throat on Sunday morning while watching a program about Kevin Spacey - whom I adore a bit - and who is actually a very, very funny man.  I had that reaction that you have when you are engrossed in something and you suddenly think you hear a bell ringing, is that the phone?  the doorbell? a sound that nudges you......and it was me !  It was a genuine, authentic trill of laughter - water running over the stones - and I think I will remember that moment for the rest of my life.

Much, much credit goes to my own darling Elizabeth, my daughter who never gave up on believing that life could be more for me than the little corner I was locked in.  And another Elizabeth , whose own search for a better life for her daughter gave me more courage to fight my fight than she will probably ever know.

Isn't life an incredible thing?