"The voice that passionately seeks life's purpose."

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. . .
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."

It doesn't interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied,
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

~ Oriah

From Oriah's book THE INVITATION (c) 1999. Published by HarperONE, San Francisco. All rights reserved. Presented with permission of the author. www.oriah.org

I hope you remember to dream

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. - L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz)

One of my felted wool penny rugs.

Best thing about spring? Nature wears her bling.

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden. ~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666

My fabulous daughter, Adeline, wandered around the yard and captured these beauties. How do these colors, and these shapes, with their attendant dizzying fragrances come to exist?

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. ~Audra Foveo

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet

It looks like a Van Gogh painting

"Fire in Montana" from pixdaus.com

My Penny Pocket Dolls

"A FRIEND TO TAKE WITH YOU WHEREVER YOU GO"

Sewing Pockets

Here is another thing I like to make - the Sewing Pocket. Some call it a Sewing Fold-Over. Some call it a Sewing Roll-Up; in fact that's what I call it, although I rarely make one that actually does roll up.

When you open one up it has a pincushion as part of the inside, and a pocket. I generally include a nice pair of stainless steel folding scissors in the pocket, just for fun.

I love my personal roll-up. It is so handy to take with, whether I'm headed for the family room, a friend's house, or the local coffee shop. It holds pins, needles, extra thread, scissors, and some buttons. Fantastic for travel. What more do I need?

Pinkeeps

Here are some of the pinkeeps I've made with my recycled, felted wool. They are about 2.5 - 3.5 inches across. I enjoy making these. They are just a perfect size to hold in the palm of your hand. And lots of fun to look at - - I have some hanging as "art" instead of using them to hold sewing pins!

I love antique buttons . . . do you?

Just relax for a minute. You'll feel better.

My three-column blog!

You may notice my blog looks different - I now have three columns instead of two. I could never have done this without help from The Blogger Guide. Blogging guru Ishan de Silva provides very clear step-by-step instructions for any number of things you might want to do to modify the look of your blog. He is also very responsive to additional questions, which he answers in the comments section so everyone gets to benefit from the additional information. You can communicate with him through e-mail, too. As a result of Ishan's help, I now feel comfortable going into the HTML code and tweaking it on my own. Cool! Thank you Ishan!

Back in the olden days

Back before I started playing with textiles, I painted. I just ran across this photo of an early attempt, so I thought I'd share it.

"I find these comments appalling ... " -Barack Obama

I swore I wouldn't get political here, even though I do enjoy following the campaigns and researching the issues. So, I'll just dip my toe in the political waters, because today Barack Obama cut loose Rev. Wright and I know everyone will hear the sound bites on the news, but it is so much more fulfilling to hear the entire statement. So, here it is for those of you who want to be educated - something the press seems to fall short of helping with in recent years. It's not too long and I do think it is worth watching. That's all - I won't get on a soap box! Just this itty bitty viddy.

The Question

Does anyone ever ask you, "How much time did it take you to make that?" And do you have an answer? I don't! I have no idea how long it takes me to make something. I've always made things, and I used to dream about making things that might actually appeal to the public and could be sold in a store. I remember making some dolls, years ago, and thinking they were good enough for that. I was showing them to a friend, in the elementary school parking lot, when a very nice woman stopped and oohed and aahed over them. Then she asked The Question. It took me by surprise, and I tried to give an accurate answer. What came out of my mouth was, "It took me my whole life." I knew what I was talking about: every step, every attempt, every daydream, had led me to finally make those three dolls. Unfortunately, the woman looked at me like I was demented, and went on her way.

Why do people ask that particular question? I actually got to the point where I believed I had to be able to give an accurate answer. I put a kitchen timer in my work(play) room. I kept track of when I started and when I stopped and how many .25 hours I had spent on a particular piece. It wasn't easy to do. I don't work in a linear fashion and I always have many irons in the fire. All my pieces started sporting little pinned on pieces of paper, stating how much time had been recorded so far. I kept screwing up the system. I'd find myself poring over my button collection, lost in the desire to select the perfect little circle of hand-carved mother-of-pearl. Then I'd wonder, should I count that in the time record? Does time spent choosing count? Or I'd leave a project to go rummaging for some material, and then come across some other project I had forgotten all about; then I'd wander off on a wonderful tangent, completely forgetting to record when I had stopped working on the previous project. And then, too, I'd wonder if I should record the time spent searching for raw material at yard sales and the Goodwill store. Oh! Don't forget the time spent turning the sweaters to felt: the sorting, cutting, repeated washings, more cutting, pressing, and so on.

This business of keeping track of time was doomed. Because there is no start and stop. It's an organic process and this time-keeping scared off my muse and just about crushed my artistic spirit. Come back, Muse! I'm sorry, Spirit.

I'd really like to never hear The Question again. If I do, I'll only be able to give answers like, "a very long time" or "not too terribly long." Here are some possible alternatives, if anyone is interested. These are questions that make sense to me:

• How did you feel while you were making that?
• After you make a piece, is it easy or difficult for you to let it go?
• Do you know before starting, what the finished product will be?
  
• What are your feelings about this piece?

Here's a piece I made several years ago. I carried it around for two or three years, adding a stitch here, and a button there. How long did it take? Just exactly the right amount of time to get from the beginning to the end.

Cirque du Soleil - Kooza

Just back from a Cirque du Soleil performance of Kooza. It was wonderful. Truly wonderful. All of us in the audience were thrilled and by the end of the show we were on our feet cheering and applauding and smiling. It's my second experience with Cirque du Soleil and I hope to have many more. It is one of life's grand experiences. The show we saw is called Kooza. My favorite act was the Wheel of Death; Doug's favorites were Balancing on Chairs and the Contortionists.

Earth Day 2008

Chris Jordan has been traveling with National Geographic as their international Eco-ambassador for Earth Day 2008. I first heard of him from Whitney at Wool & Tea. He has been interviewed by Bill Moyers, on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal, as well as by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report (Comedy Central). His photography, much of it about our consumer driven society, is simply amazing. Here is a photo from Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait. It is titled Cans Seurat and it depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

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Katrine K

I've found the most wonderful artist - Katrine K, a Norwegian illustrator and artist. I just love the soul in her artwork.

I immediately fell in love with I do not know you (left), and I had to have it. Katrine's description of this painting: "This is a scene from a dream I could have dreamt ..." That makes me swoon.

Well, it has arrived from Norway and I am so happy with it. It is a 7" x 10" pencil drawing, colored with acrylic painting on brown paper. It is even better in person and I love looking at it.

Katrine sells her artwork at Etsy and she also has a heavenly blog. If you live near Hollywood, CA, you can see a show of her work currently at the Tinlark Gallery.

Get Warholized!

This is fun! You just upload a picture and the shadowfire Warholizer converts it to an Andy Warhol style work of art!

Here is a picture of Doug back when he rowed for Cornell, in it's original as well as its Warholized form.

How cool is that? Now, an untouched and a Warholized picture of our daughter, Adeline.

She's so CUTE! Here's one of my penny rugs. It really gets WILD!

And here's one of ME!Go try it out for yourself and let me know how you did!

Sacred Spiral, Heavenly Helix

I love spirals, although I know that technically, what I love is a helix. A spiral is flat, like a drawing on a piece of paper. If it is three-dimensional, then it is a helix. These photos of spiral staircases are from Pixdaus. If you want to see an amazing collection of spiral photos, go to this spiral photo gallery. It is well worth the visit..

You might also pay a visit to Spiralzoom where you can learn all about spirals: how they form in nature as well as a history of their presence in art and myth since the early days of human culture.

Seductive Structure

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Frank O. Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Isn't it gorgeous? The photo (from Pixdaus) is so perfect that I can live with not seeing it in person - maybe helped by the fact that I did get a great Gehry "fix" when I went and saw the Bard College Performing Arts Center. Ahhhhh. Beautiful.

The Steinway Piano

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This is a picture I made of Doug's antique Steinway piano, which we sold on eBay. We were ready to say good-bye to the piano, which had traveled with us across the country and back. I'm glad, though, that I have the photos because it was such a thing of beauty. In fact, neither of us could actually play the piano, we just enjoyed looking at it.

The Steinway piano - with its beauty and power - is the perfect medium for expressing the performer's art, drama and poetry. -Van Cliburn

Star Birds

When I started making things from felted wool (which I process from recycled sweaters and blankets), about 12 or so years ago, I made lots and lots of bags. I don't have many good photos of them - it was pre-digital camera time for me.

I do have some nice shots of this more recent bag I made - with my favorite motifs of birds and stars. This was a custom order, made for someone whose last name actually is Starbird. How's that for a perfect coincidence? I had a lot of fun making this bag. I hope you enjoy it too.

Above is what I think of as the front of the bag and to the right (below) is the back. It is made entirely from my felted wool and hand stitched with wool tapestry thread. The drawstrings are also from wool yarn, which I first knit into a cylindrical cord, and then felt along with the sweaters.

Speaking of Star Birds, you just must go see Einstein, The Amazing Talking Parrot. He's a kick, and he's pretty much guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Accidental Early Leak of Election Results

OMG - - I'm ROFLing. Or is it that I'm screaming with fear? Check it out for yourself - click HERE.

The Magic of Healing

A friend forwarded an e-mail to me yesterday, and it contained the special story I am posting today. It was written by a man named Jeff Guidry, who works at the Sarvey Wildlife Center in Arlington, Washington. Here is his story about an Eagle named Freedom.

Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer. She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings. Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery, it was broken in 4 places. She's my baby.

When Freedom came in she could not stand. Both wings were broken, her left wing in four places. She was emaciated and covered in lice. We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the vet's office. From then on, I was always around her. We had her in a huge dog carrier with the top off, and it was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to lie in. We had to tube feed her for weeks. I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight. She would lie there looking at me with those big brown eyes.

This went on for about five weeks, and by then she still couldn't stand. It got to the point where the decision was made to euthanize her if she couldn't stand in a week. You know you don't want to cross that line between torture and rehabilitation, and it looked like death was winning. She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in on that Thursday afternoon. I didn't want to go to the center that Thursday, because I couldn't bear the thought of her being euthanized; but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear to ear. I went immediately back to her cage and there she was: standing on her own, a big beautiful eagle. She was ready to live. I was just about in tears by then. That was a very good day.

We knew she could never fly, so the director asked me to glove train her. I got her used to the glove, and then to jesses (ankle straps), and we started doing educational programs for schools in western Washington. We wound up in the newspapers, radio, and some TV. Miracle Pets even did a show about us.

In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I was Stage 3, which is not good (one major organ plus everywhere), so I wound up doing eight months of chemo. Lost the hair - the whole bit. I missed a lot of work. When I felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would also come to me in my dreams and help me fight the cancer. This happened time and time again.

Fast forward to November 2000, the day after Thanksgiving, I went in for my last checkup. I was told that if the cancer was not all gone after eight rounds of chemo, then my last option was a stem cell transplant. Anyway, they did the tests; and I had to come back Monday for the results. I went in Monday, and I was told that all the cancer was gone. Yahoo!

The first thing I did was go to Sarvey and take the big girl out for a walk. It was misty and cold. I jessed her up, and we went out front to the top of the hill. I hadn't said a word to Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me and wrapped both her wings around me to where I could feel them pressing in on my back. I was engulfed in eagle wings, and she touched my nose with her beak and stared into my eyes, and we just stood there like that for I don't know how long. That was a magic moment. We have been soul mates ever since she came in. This is a very special bird.

On a side note: I have had people who were sick come up to us when we are out, and Freedom has some kind of hold on them. Once, a guy with terminal cancer came up to us and I let him hold her. His knees just about buckled and he swore he could feel her power course through his body. I have many stories like that.

I never forget the honor I have of being so close to such a magnificent spirit as Freedom's. Hope you enjoy this.
Jeff

Don Cadoret - Story Painter

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To the right is a detail of one of my favorite Don Cadoret paintings - which I just happen to be fortunate enough to own. And below is a photo of the entire "story" painting. If you click on the picture, you will get a nice enlargement (you may have to try this two or three times before it actually works - I don't know why).

This painting, which is acrylic on masonite, is titled In Search of All Seasons (although, I can't help it, I always think of it as The Four Seasons of Man). To me, this touching, tender painting tells a life story.

The top left square is Spring. A young boy plays with his puppy on the spring grass and birds show up, looking for a good home, which they find in the young, bare tree.

The top right square is Summer. Now the boy is a young man whose fancy has turned to love. The tree has grown full and verdant, loaded with apples, and the young man has carved a heart with initials into it's trunk. The puppy is now a dog and the bird sits as witness to this new season in the young man's life.

Next comes autumn. The apple tree is fully ripe, the man now has a young son of his own, and his beloved dog is now an angel in the sky. But the bird still keeps his home in that tree, and the carved heart, though faded, still shows on the trunk of the tree - which, if you'll notice, becomes bigger and thicker with each life stage (kind of like my waist, but that's another story).

What's left but Winter? The man is alone. The ghost of his dog stands nearby: his only company. The tree is barren, and the man waves goodbye to what? To life? To his son? To his memories? Can it possibly be that he only waves goodbye to the bird who now leaves him for warmer climes? I think not.

Now, I never have fully figured out the role of the moon. The moon is in the Summer, and there is the wonderful middle square with that special moon face observing, and smiling at it all. That moon is spirit.
That moon has seen those seasons, those life stories, since before the beginning of time. That moon knows the truth. And whatever the truth is, it is fine by the light of the moon.

"Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth." - Joseph Addison

Cadoret, who lives in Rhode Island with his his wife, Johanna, paints every day looking out over the stone wall toward the saltwater bay that provides him with the solitude and inspiration necessary to create his whimsical, visual "stories."

Cadoret has been telling his stories in paint for over 30 years. His paintings are a part of many prestigious public and private collections in the United States, Canada and Europe. They also have been exhibited in many galleries and public spaces including the White House, the Frank Miele Gallery in New York City, Gallery Americana in Houston, and Le Musee d'Art Naif in Montreal.

Cadoret is currently working on a children's picture book - One Blue Cat - and a series of paintings based on the classic fairy tales of childhood.

Cadoret will be showing his work in May, at The Great Goose Egg Auction, a biennial event which features the work of nationally-recognized artists on goose, duck and ostrich eggs. The proceeds from the auction benefit Open Fields School, Thetford Hill, Vermont.