It all started with small amounts of concrete leftover from larger projects. Stepping stones for the the yard. A bench. Learning to cast birdbaths or larger tabletops. I don't like to send anything to the landfill, including small amounts of leftover concrete. This was not an original idea, however at the time, I hadn't seen anyone else making these small concrete bowls. I also now mix concrete specifically to make bowls of different sizes, but starting with the little ones is so easy! The instructions below will cover the process for small ones and larger ones...there are only some small differences. Here we go: 1. A word about concrete. I have never worked with quick setting concrete. It might be a faster, easier way to get a finished product, but it's typically mixed with large pebbles and because it does set quickly, it wouldn't be amenable in terms of carving and shaping edges. I mix my own using 1 part Portland Cement to 3 parts sand. The ratio is not precise. You'll find recipes that are 1:2 and recipes that will contain additional materials. I use either play sand, which is very fine and leaves a smooth surface or all purpose sand, which may have slightly larger pebbles, but fine enough to still have a smooth surface. Mix with water until it's the consistency of thinnish icing. Again, this is not a thing to be fretted over. It needs to be thin enough to not hold air pockets that would leave a lumpy surface and not so thin that a ton of water rises to the top. A little water rising to the top after it's poured into the mold is fine. 2. Spray the inside of the larger plastic bowl with cooking oil or a mold release product and the outside of the smaller one. Plastic, not glass. A glass bowl or other mold, even sprayed, will almost never release the concrete. 3. Pour the mixed concrete into the bowl, leaving enough room for displacement when the interior mold is pushed in. 4. Using either a water balloon for a small bowl or a slightly smaller plastic bowl for a smooth exterior bowl, sprayed with same cooking oil or release agent on the outside, make sure it's centered and push into the concrete. (I have had success, once, using a glass bowl as an interior mold. I tried it because of the design in the glass. I sprayed the heck out of it and miraculously was able to remove it with a minimal...uh, moderate...amount of cursing. The design was perfect and it looked amazing. Once it was cured and stained, a friend wanted to buy it. I carried it to my car one morning on my way to work so I could meet her that afternoon. Having my arms full, I set it on top of my car while I loaded in my gym bag, lunch bag, stack of work things and purse. I then got in my car...having that nagging feeling that should never, ever be ignored, and drove away. I realized about half way to work that the vague weird noise I'd heard several minutes back was the bowl sliding off the roof and onto the street. Damn. Damn. Damn.) 5. Small bowls may not need weighting in the top bowl, but medium or larger bowls will. Any balanced weight will work...a can of soup, a container filled with water, or (weirdly) free weights you may have laying around...something like that. Sand and rocks can also work but are messier. 6. Don't touch anything for 24 hours. Really. Nothing catastrophic-probably-will happen if you do, but just don't. 7. OK, now take the interior part (bowl or balloon or whatever you've used) out and look at it. Not really because you need to, mostly because you'll really, really want to. 8. Either put the interior mold right back where you took it from or fill up the interior area with water. You need to keep it wet and leave it alone for two more days. Trust me. Concrete cures better and stronger if it's kept soaking wet for at least 3 days. 9. Three days after the initial pour, you can unmold it. Carefully. It won't take much work at this point to crack or break it completely. If the mold is stubborn in terms of letting it go, just gently pull on opposite sides of the bowl, rotating around several times. It will eventually let you push it out from the bottom. 10. If you want to smooth off the top or carve a design, now is the time. However, this stage will somewhat surprisingly last for a few days depending on the size of your project...the more concrete involved, the more slowly it will become too cured to carve. I always smooth off the top and dull the edges a bit. I use an old wood chisel. I've learned over time that sharp edges on small bowls are likely to chip with regular use. (If you want to carve, use fine sand in mix. Even small pebbles will pop out and make your carving less precise.) 11. Now we're back to leaving it alone. Let it completely dry. Concrete continues to cure forever really, but will do that majority of curing in the first 30 days. So leave it alone for 30 days if you can. At least 3 weeks. Time passes... Next, think about color. There are concrete dyes that can be used in the first step, when mixing a batch of concrete. My experience with dyes is that while they do change the color of the concrete, they don't result in crisp color. This makes sense when you consider that the base color being changed is gray. Black dye results in darker gray and reddish/terra cotta dye resulted, for me, in a muted, if not muddy, mauve color. Meh. My preferred method of coloring the bowls is acid etching dyes. I've always loved the look of acid etched concrete floors. My concern initially was thinking that I'd have to buy a gallon of each color I wanted to try. I started looking around online and discovered a couple of companies offer sample packs...usually 8-12 colors in 4 oz bottles for about $35. Here are three links: www.directcolors.com, www.concretecoatingsinc.com or www.fabcrete.com (which is still $25 for 12 samples!). Each bottle will dye many, many bowls so your money will go a long way. The concrete needs to have cured for 30 days. I'm fairly certain this has to do with the concrete being at the correct Ph for the chemical interaction with the stain. Since the stains are designed to result in particular colors, it's important for the chemical reaction to be correct. Having said that, I will also confess that I've experimented with staining at 3 weeks and it's been fine. I tend not to be a hard core ruler follower, but if you are, wait 30 days. The process is simple...brush on a color and let it sit overnight or at least 8 hours. Then wash the bowl in a baking soda and water bath to neutralize the dye. When the bowl completely dries again, you're ready to seal it. Unless you want to play around with more colors...they can be layered for a deeper color. The concrete will continue to react to subsequent applications of the dye. Just remember that the color, once sealed, will look like it did when the piece was wet. There are many concrete sealers available and you can use any of them that don't say for exterior use only. They come in different finishes, much like paint. I like a glossy finish, but have discovered that some are glossier than others. I end up applying two or three coats. There are also some food safe waxes and coatings available but I'm not familiar with those specifically. If you try your hand at this, I'd love to see pictures!
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My brother died last week. It's way too fresh to write the specifics of his death. And, that's a part of his story that isn't mine to tell. Our family is only at the beginning of peeling the layers of how and why he's gone and the dozens of ways it leaves each of us feeling. I can only tell my part of that story.
We weren't that close, my brother and me. We lived a 12 hour drive apart, had very different lives, and were different in personality and perspective on some things. That doesn't mean, of course, that I didn't love him. Of course I did. I hadn't seen him in years...that's a complicated story...but we did talk on the phone. About three times a year. We caught up on our lives, our kids, and said I love you. Every winter in recent years I thought about making a plan to visit in the Spring. Every Spring there were circumstances, his or mine, that kept me from doing more than think about it. I knew that someday there might be regret attached to that inaction. That someday is now. I've spent the past several days thinking about him. About a hundred times a day. Remembering things. I visited him and his family a couple of times, years ago. I remember how perfectly manicured he kept the yard and how ridiculously clean he kept his truck. I remember eating around the dining room table and hanging out in front of the tv. I remember gracious hospitality and the fun times. Most of my memories though are from when we were kids. Simple things like running around outside together, playing Gilligan's Island or hide and seek. Him and my other brother tickling me until I couldn't breathe. (I hated to be tickled and still do. I remember mom finally saying, "honey, I can tell them to stop, but I think this is one you'll have to handle yourself". Shortly after, I caught each of them alone and sat on them while I tickled them until they couldn't breathe. They stopped tickling me.) Watching him listen to music with his eyes closed for hours. Elvis. He loved listening to Elvis. Running down the hill from our rental cabin in Colorado Springs to play games at the Arcade. Riding waxed boards down the dunes at White Sands (that was still allowed when we were kids). By high school we were in our own worlds, as often happens with adolescent siblings. When he graduated, he was at loose ends...didn't quite know what to do. I don't know where the idea came from, but he ended up living with my grandparents for a while to help around their place and also worked a little at near by stables. He loved being out in the country and he loved horses. His enthusiasm for mucking stalls and being around horses far outweighed his enthusiasm for the general farm chores at my grandparents, so after a while he was living at the stables and working there exclusively. He was also riding. He was happy I think. But this wasn't a forever thing. He needed to decide on a next chapter. When I was in my senior year at Indiana University, doing student teaching on the Navajo Reservation in Aneth, Utah, one day I got a phone call. I think it was my mother, calling to tell me that he had decided to enlist in the Army and would be gone before I got back home. I don't know why exactly, but I cried. I think I wasn't convinced this would be a good decision...that he wouldn't be successful. I was wrong. He was very successful. He didn't re-enlist after four years and soon thereafter landed in Florida. Worked at some family owned stables. As I recall, the owners got a divorce so the job went away. He ended up working at a State run psychiatric hospital, where, as the expression goes, he met a girl. She had a young son and then they had a son together. The four made a family. Many years passed and there were a lot of ups and downs. The sons grew into amazing men. Strong. Successful. The closest of brothers. I have such admiration for them. The girl he met was his life partner, for better and worse. I think some of the best times were 4 wheeling with the boys and camping as a family. When my sons and I visited a couple of times over Spring Breaks, I remember a lot of good natured verbal sparring between her and my brother and a real sense of affectionate partnership. There were definitely worse times and eventually those times took over and the official partnership ended. But the truth is that she never left him. And by giving him more of herself than she ever could've been expected to, she saved him. Over and over and over. Until he was gone and couldn't be saved again. My debt to her and my gratitude are boundless. It's difficult to write a few paragraphs about losing him that explains it all. How many things I wish were different. The questions I have about why some people have demons that run roughshod over them and others are able to overcome and why his were the former. Why the Universe doesn't grant siblings automatic emotion bonding that survives the miles and fundamental differences. Why we can't save each other. Why we can't protect a mother from ever, ever, ever having to bury a child. I am certain that I won't find a peaceful, lasting answer to these questions, but I am certain of a few things. My brother loved us. His sons and his partner and his mother most of all. Of all the good and bad that we will both remember and forget, we will not forget that. Friend: What did you do this weekend? (it had rained nonstop all weekend) Me: Rearranged the back room and built a desk across the window wall. Pretty simple. I needed a place for my computer, printer, and lightbox to live. Just trying to get organized. Friend: You are organized. Me: Oh. It was a good weekend to make the desk because of the rain. It's a project I've been wanting to do. It's that serial project thing. Friend: yeah. This brief exchange felt a little like a confessional to me. As if having an valid reason for the project made it more like what anyone would do, not like something I did because projects are what I do. I felt like I was calling myself out. Which is really weird when I think about it. I've been a serial project person my entire life. Everyone who knows me knows this. It's regular conversation..."so, what are you working on now?" It's a normal question because the answer will always be about what I'm working on and never, "oh, nothing". So, although the picture shows the desk, this musing is not really about the desk.* It's about the whole serial project thing. It's the jumpy, wandering brain and the motivation to pursue several ideas at once or work on them with a kind of pressured successive execution. There are always lists and ideas that are left unattended, either in my head or described in a short narrative or bad sketch in a notebook or journal. I perpetually wish I could create more time. It isn't that I think always having ideas emerging and refining is a bad thing, it's that the urgency I feel to create and produce can be a problem. A balancing-my-life problem. That's why I'm a little sheepish in my confession. Life balance (although those two words do invite a slight eye roll) is a thing. A good thing. Just ask anybody. I've never been drawn to self help books, but that doesn't mean there isn't a reason at least four million them have been written on the balanced life. I'm not going to get deep in the weeds about it in these paragraphs. I'm simply calling it out. The joy of production and accomplishment and learning should be balanced with the joy of sitting still and thinking and listening. I think. So, I'll keep working on it. I would love to read other stories about how you balance your life. *This truly was a good project. I had everything I needed to complete it, which is always a plus. A linen cabinet got turned on it's side to make a bench seat for the opposite wall. The door to the cabinet is now the desk top, painted turquoise. (The open shelving of the linen cabinet now holds large baskets for my biking clothes and gear, since my bike hangs on the wall above it.) The two ends of the desk are very simple to construct shelving units, made from 2x4s and leftover planks from other projects. I painted the shelves gray to match the wall color and used an already stained red board leftover from a different shelf project. I'm having the best time working from there with a view of Spring in my back yard.
There's a long history in meditative practice that includes walking. There are guided walking meditations that provide a structure for focusing on the walk and books written about it from many different spiritual traditions. One google search of "walking meditation" will lead to a gazillion resources. These next paragraphs aren't a lofty discussion of the hows and whys of meditation, but of why a long walk down the beach brings me clarity and makes me happy. Walking for me is usually part of exercise and most often done (outside of walking to get from location A to location B) as an interval when I'm trying to fall back in love with running. It was the only exercise available for a number of weeks last Fall when I broke my wrist. Those walks were long enough for me to get acquainted with a quiet brain hum that occurs after a certain distance. About a mile into the walk, I feel a rhythm and start to realize that the walking has begun to take over the thinking. Thoughts come...and then go. For short periods, there are no fully formed thoughts at all. I've learned this can also happen with treadmill walking, if I just walk and don't watch the attached tv or listen to music. Sometimes I'll walk on a treadmill at the climbing gym and watch people climb. Even that lends itself to a quiet brain. I think it's the observation of the external that facilitates the calm. It's information that I don't have to do anything with...just see it. Whatever I'm observing doesn't need anything from me. No input, no advice, no judgment. Walking meditation for me right now is beach meditation. It's walking that is meditative, and I'm at the beach...the gold standard of walking locations as far as I'm concerned. There's an energy to the sand and the water that invites walking. It feels easy to walk for a long time. The ocean is both peaceful and mesmerizing. It feels like "let's be in this moment watching this wave roll out on this sand" and in the same moment "this water has been here since the beginning of time and god almighty, the stories it could tell!" By the time my calves ache a little and more sunscreen is in order, I feel calm. I feel happy. And later, when I don't, I'm pretty sure...beach or not...I can walk my way back to it. A year ago I met a woman. She's a little younger than my sons, and so could theoretically be my daughter. She was a little reserved when I first met her, as our meeting had to do with business. I needed landscaping help, so she came over to talk about that. During the next few months it turned out that a couple of times we were able to work in my yard together. While we worked, we talked...about plants, our neighborhood, politics, my sons, her girlfriend. Easy conversation that doesn't always happen across a 30 year gap.
The idea of having a daughter had been terrifying to me when I was having babies. I felt much more intuitively a boys' mom and so was crazy grateful when I was gifted with boys. Over the years it would strike me when a young woman would come into my life who I knew I would've been honored to have as a daughter...Julia, Rachel... Getting to know this woman gave me that feeling. When she was getting ready to leave from my house one day, I told her this. That she is someone who I would've been proud to have as a daughter. She's so talented and smart and funny and honest...true to who she is. I find her so admirable. Sometimes I blurt things out, so I hoped that wasn't just a weird thing to say. She told me later that she was touched. I went to her wedding last weekend. Powerfully moved by knowing that this marriage, which had not always been available to her, was the thing that she wanted most...she was so wildly happy on this day. I'm not a crier, but there I was, all teary from beginning to end of the ceremony. There was also an undercurrent of something going on somewhere inside my head and heart that I couldn't figure out. Then I realized that her mother wasn't there. It's that growing sense of dread that happens when you feel like you know the truth behind something that's happening but you try and tell yourself it must be something else. It wasn't something else. It was that her mother wasn't there because she chose not to be there. Now honestly, I don't know the whole story. But the whole story might make me more angry and numb than I already ended up feeling. What I do know is what I was able to say when I could find my voice...that if I was her mother, I'd be so proud. Because even as not-her-mother-but-would-be-honored-to-be-if-I-was, I felt so happy. So proud. So damn happy and proud. ________________________________________ Love and judgment and religion and the universe. I think about these things a lot and they get tangled in my head. Sometimes I get a little clarity and sometimes I make myself crazy pondering it all. I wonder about a lot of things and I believe in some things. I believe in a force larger than me. I do think of this force as god, present in the universe, available in ways that I can see or hear and ways that I cannot. I believe that judgment, when used to determine the value of another human, is destructive as hell. I believe that while judgment comes way too naturally for most of us, our hearts should save little room for it. I believe that no matter how I choose to practice spirituality...follow god...listen to the universe...it challenges me to love more and judge less. I believe in love. I believe we get to be who we are and love who we love. And I believe the universe sometimes guides people into each other's paths as a gift. _______________________________________ Joy, you are a gift. _______________________________________ The tribute:A year and a half ago, my friends and next door neighbors and I had to have a hackberry tree taken down. It had developed root rot which looks like crunchy black foam at the base of the tree, and means over time the tree becomes unstable from the inside out in its root structure. A big wind could find the entire tree coming down. This tree was big enough to do damage to both of our houses and could've easily crashed into the upstairs bedrooms of each. Even though hackberrys are the Spring and Fall home to aphids and aphid poop showers down on anything and everything under the tree...cars, mailboxes, sidewalks, plants in the yard...creating a sticky gross coating, I have to confess I was a little sad to see it go. It was my disaster survival warrior tree. In 1992, after several hard rains, turning the ground into mush, there was another crazy storm with high winds that pulled a second tree in my front yard out by its roots and laid it neatly across the front yard. So I didn't notice right away that the hackberry had also been lifted out of the ground, about nine inches, and pushed about 25-30 degrees toward our houses. My across the street neighbor told me later that he was watching the storm on his front porch and saw when the wind caught my trees. He watched the first one fall and the hackberry get lifted and pushed. Said he knew he was going to see it get thrown on both houses, but all of a sudden the wind settled down and the tree stopped moving. We quickly had it dramatically pruned to take weight out at the top and after a while, it settled back in. It survived a crazy ice storm two years later that many lesser trees did not and in 1998, it was one of the few huge trees on the block that survived Nashville's tornado. That's when I forgave it for all prior and future aphid poop and figured we were destined to be together forever. Had it fallen that day, the damage to my house could've been catastrophic as opposed to only significant. And yet, even disaster survival warrior trees can get root rot. The ironic end to the story is that after 20 years of resilience, she had to come down under the power of chainsaws and ropes and a stump grinder. (A side note: Stump grinders are amazing. I learned there are different kinds. After the tornado, I got used to seeing the ones that basically fit around the stump and then a blade shaves around and around and around, lower and lower. I'm thinking now, although don't really know for sure, that kind of grinder may be for smaller stumps. The hackberry left a stump more than 3' across and the grinder was an impressive piece of equipment with a human driver. It still took several hours and did not look like a good time for the human. When the stump was even with the ground, the remaining 'mulch' pile was a mound big enough to be spread over my entire front yard and then some.) The legacy: This process took a toll on the border between the two front yards. It was lumpy and ill defined, having ruined a section of their beautiful grass. I removed my not beautiful bermuda grass several years ago and went with a landscaped/mulched/hardscape design. (The truth is that removing bermuda grass is an aspiration, not a real thing. It can't be eradicated...I'm not kidding. When I told my mom that I was taking it all out to get control of my front yard, she looked at me dead pan and said something to the effect of "it's cute that you think you can get rid of it." True. So true.) I digress.... Although having confessed to the truth of not being a patient person (scroll down to see previous blog story), I have learned over the years that the best way for me to approach the solution to a problem is to look at it often, run several dozen possible solutions through my head, live with it for whatever amount of time it will take for the right solution to emerge, and 95% of the time, it will emerge. This obviously doesn't work for urgent or immediate issue, but definitely works for "how do I fix that earring?" or "how can I clean up the border between two yards?" Among the rejected ideas were: 1) Put in a new flower border. Rejected because of grass invasion and the maintenance felt too high after spending all last summer simplifying the overall landscaping. 2) Straighten up the edge, installing railroad ties or landscape timbers. Got a nod for simplification, but the final vote was no...too boring. 3) Build a really cool seating area, seats facing both ways, flanked with planter boxes. Got a nod for design and cool factor. Final vote no because, do I always have to make the project more elaborate than it really needs to be? Winning idea: planter box for herbs with simple seating for maintenance and harvesting. Elements of each losing idea...pretty border, clean up the edge, not be boring, not be over the top, have seating. Voila! I accomplished this a few days ago with 26 six foot cedar boards, nails and screws, 10 hours of time (which included a trip to Home Depot for 3 more boards and 10 two cubic bags of garden soil). Such happiness. In another week or two, my lovely friend/next door neighbor and I will fill it. There will be basil, rosemary, lemon basil, thyme, sage, cinnamon basil, chives, parsley, cilantro and who knows what else. More kinds of basil if I can find them. And then it will be open to the neighborhood. My neighborhood is the best. Good, kind, giving, friendly, funny, talented people. They deserve fresh herbs. I don't know if the neighborhood herb box will ever earn the same tribute as my warrior strong hackberry, but I'm hoping it'll make stories of its own. I've never been the most patient artist....mom...person. I admire patient people and the result of their patience...carefully conceived and meticulously detailed art, quiet conversation, thoughtful approach to problem solving, and just being in the world. None of that has ever come to me naturally though. I'm more a what-is-the-most-efficient-path-to-get-where-I-want-to-be person. I know there's room for all of us on the planet, but I suspect that the happiest are those who experience joy at both ends of this continuum. Specific to the creative process, patience can be the difference between a stellar outcome and mediocrity... Stellar bringing joy; mediocrity, not so much. Several years ago, after learning basic skills to lay floor tile, I became enamored with mosaic. Small mosaic doesn't require enormous patience. Yay. I've made some pretty cool mosaic tile garden pavers. I've also made some lazy girl tiled pieces. After a series of decently executed but largely uninspired tile work, I decided it was time for an exercise in patience and skill building...a patience project. Another expression of my impatience is that it's difficult to keep myself in a seat for very long. My job finds me in a few half day or full day meetings every month. One strategy to stay in the seat is doodling. I can fill a page with intricate designs and keep favored pens in my purse for that sole purpose. I wouldn't call it great art, but the doodles inspired the design for my patience project. And winter inspired its timing. Tennessee winters are gray and cold. I always need a big project to get me through to Spring. That year I decided the project would be to design and execute a detailed mosaic on the closed fireplace in the front room of my house. I lifted a handful of doodles from a page of doodles that I had done during several long meetings and sketched them onto the fireplace, filling in the empty spaces with other images as needed for balance. I ordered small stained glass tiles from an ebay store that I liked and a good pair of tile nippers. This is what happened. I found that I could work for about 4 hours on a good day with several stretching breaks. Since this was a direct application, I sat cross legged on the floor with a sheet draped over my lap to catch the tiny glass shavings that happen when nipping glass tiles. I didn't always work that long, but also learned that it went better if I worked long enough to get in the zone. There's a rhythm that emerges between hands and brain after a while that makes for better flow. I don't know what the science behind that phenomenon is, but every artist knows exactly what I'm talking about. Though not perfect, this project did help me learn the art of patiently attending to detail. I also turned into a glass tile nipping wizard...sometimes I felt like I could tell the tile what I needed and it would break perfectly under the pressure of the nipper. I honed my design skills by spending time playing around with scale and placement of the elements. There are a couple of finished elements that I've never been happy with, but I won't repeat the mistakes that I made in their execution either. I can honestly, and gratefully, report that this project has had a longstanding influence on my ability to access the patience within. I would love to say that I have learned to be so very patient that it feels natural to me now. It doesn't. It's very much something I have to consciously practice. But I can also report that it's easier now than it used to be and its practice brings me joy. I am driven from within. I think some people are driven from external forces; the demands of a job or things that seem required or initiated by friends or family. I have no judgment about which kind of motivation is better, but I suspect the happiest people are those who have excellent balance between the two. That's not me. I depend on that thing inside that pushes me, makes me feel driven. I call it my edge and while sometimes, if not often times, it makes me a little crazy with urgency and anxiety, the truth is that without it I'm lost. Lost might be a little dramatic, but not much. Aimless for sure.
For people who know what I'm talking about, no explanation is required. I have an idea that this internal motivation or drive, might be more present in creative/artistic types...part of the right brain phenomenon. And it's a little more than an internal motivation, it's also relying on intuition, the feeling about how to proceed and learning over time how important it is to listen to that. For people who don't instinctively know what I'm talking about, I'll attempt to describe it. The internal motivation is more like a force or an urgency mixed with ideas and thoughts. This motivation is there whether it's focused or not and I've learned that's ok. Focus will emerge from it, even if not right away. It's like an energy, but not something disorganized or vague, it has presence. Not exactly the voice that sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear, but definitely an active, creative, confident sense of self that's two or three steps ahead, calling me to follow. The fascinating and frustrating thing about it, that I don't really understand, is why it all but disappears sometimes. The way I move through my life probably looks generally the same to the people that I work with and see regularly, but in my head, something is missing. It's very weird. I run through a checklist of sorts...am I too tired? Too stressed about something? Have I gotten lazy? Oh, dear god, is this an age thing?? What if it doesn't come back? Or is there a more elusive reason? Am I out of balance somehow, not listening? Sigh. Not a surprise that since I'm writing about it, I feel like this now. Been a few weeks or longer. Feel a little off. My brain isn't scrambling with a hundred things and I'm not driven to get twenty more things accomplished than humanly possible in one afternoon. That probably sounds like I'm finally becoming a grown up, establishing a firm footing in the land reason. I hope not. I like living with the edge. This is a recent 100 (or so) word story that I published on medium.com. I've been writing 100 words every day to learn to push past waiting to be inspired and then trying to craft perfect sentences. I'm enjoying it like crazy.
I’m a metalsmith and jewelry maker. I like the design process as much as the execution, but my approach is more get-an-idea, make-a-quick-sketch, begin execution. I’m not drawn to precision or perfect balance. My sketches are guides; often the materials end up speaking for themselves. Take today for instance. I took a nap. A Sunday habit from childhood. I woke up with a simple earring design in my head. Brass circle laminated with partial copper circle, laminated with partial sterling silver circle. Dome. Polish. Done. Pretty! This is what happened. This blog is not for politics, so I won't be going down that road. This blog is for talking about being a creative; an artistic soul. I've been surprised how unexpectedly these two things...politics and creativity...are linked inside of me at some very fundamental, elemental, core place. I've spent a lot of time these past few weeks thinking about politics. How surreal life in general feels with this new President. How it's left me feeling unbalanced. I think it has a lot to do with energy...the finite amount of it that I have as one single person in the course of each single day.
It seems that politics and creativity are in battle for energy and attention, like war inside me. The creative, happy me battling the reluctant-yet-angry activist me. This political season has made me question the value of my craft. I've wondered if time spent making earrings or writing 100 word stories would be better spent making more calls to lawmakers and crafting better emails and showing up to more protests and marches? I find life a bit difficult to balance in the best of times, so lately I feel anxious, a little sideways. It's the classic push me, pull you (picture small cartoon like images of my conscience on each shoulder)..."this is who I am, I'm an artisan, I need to do this work", "you won't be able to do anything if your civil liberties erode even further, if public education goes to hell, freedom of speech and religion become a relics of a time that used to be..." I don't know how it works for you, but sometimes I simply have to live with a conflict and stew about it periodically until it begins to sort itself out. Extreme reactions start to fall away as I think, read, ask questions, listen to my friends and listen to the universe. These are my conclusions (as of this moment in time):
Although not a lengthy post, I left and came back to this many times over many days. Although it's first words are that this blog is not for politics, clearly I was not able to stay completely away from my particular views. I decided to finish it and post it because this battle has nearly consumed me lately and writing about it helps me get to a better place. I'm still searching for a clear and focused point of view for this blog, but I do know is that it will always have to be about creative presence and expression and it will have to be an honest, if not raw, glimpse of me. |
Hi, I'm Donna. Long time artisan/creative. Full time work in nonprofit world. Mother of two adult sons. Currently, also mother of two cats. Recent PostsThe patience project. Because patience is a virtue. And a creative challenge.
Don't mess with imperfection. How copper and heat speak for themselves. Politics and Art wage war inside me Write 100 words, take a nap and share your mantra Tile and wood floor...this year's winter project...kitchen renovation Archives
September 2018
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