Winner winner chicken dinner

I really am not sure where that phrase comes from, but oh well...

I really love the story of the German who got the street sign in the mail! How wonderful a package, and I doubt it fit in your post box.
I would love to send you a set of my cards,  Anonymous Street Name Person, will you send me an email with your information?

As for the rest of you, thanks for humoring me!

Greetings and Salutations

Just put up in my etsy store two sets of cards for your letter writing pleasure!
Help save the postal service!

What is the best thing you have ever received in the mail?  Tell me about it and I may choose you, one lucky reader, to get a free set of ALL the cards shown above.  I love a good story.  But you have to leave a comment.  I will let you know who wins on Mother's Day.  

the flower-eaters

"When the war started, he began to eat flowers stolen from the florists. When he was arrested he said that he was eating flowers to bring peace to the world. That if everybody ate flowers peace would come to the world." Anais Nin, Ladders to Fire (Cities of the Interior).

I started reading this book almost four years ago. I underlined and dog-eared this quote back then, and I intended to create a collage from it. The piece I started became something else, it begged for a different direction. It became "go and find the people that you know," a figure dressed in maps, with an intense gaze and one hand raised in maybe a wave, maybe not.

I picked the book back up this winter, rereading it cover to cover. I chuckled at the passages I had underlined, wondered what some of the margin notes meant, and time traveled a bit with some pages.

When I reread the quoted passage, I knew it was time to create these two collages. It took several discussions and suggestions from friends and fellows to decide which flowers the characters in the collages should be eating, because I knew that would create a dynamic subplot that could easily weigh them down. I wanted to add another level of meaning, but still remember the original intent.

The decision to use the dandelion came first. It's not a weed, it's a lovely cheerful flower. It is edible, it is medicinal, and it brings wishes.
The second, the poppy, correlates both with the idea of ending war and bringing peace, as it is a flower of memorial. It is also one of dreaminess: Dorothy in the land of Oz, or the more sinister haziness of opiates.

A wish for peace, and a dream for peace.

The New Space

Kelty and I just walked to our new studio.  If I walk the long way, I go by Boneyard and Crux.  If I walk the short way, I reach the Old Ironworks District slightly quicker, and can wave in the window of Sparrow Bakery.  Either way, the walk is pleasant, with a view of the Cascades and plenty of people that I know along the way.

I am pretty much ecstatic about having a studio space out in the community again.  I enjoyed working from home the last two years, and I feel like I got a lot done, but I miss the camaraderie that I felt at the PoetHouse, at Evergreen Studios, and in my good ole college days.  And what a community am I about to be submerged in! The space is technically called Studio 3.  Started by Tambi Lane Photography, it is in the building right next to Cinder Cone Clay Co-Op (where my dear friend Jacob just moved in- I posted about him a while back).  Cinder Cone is right next to The Workhouse, where my friend Alicia of Howl has her sewing studio, as well as my friend Karen Eland has her painting space. The Workhouse is right next to Stuart's of Bend (I wrote an article about Stuart for the Source a few years ago, he's an awesome jewelry maker and one of the masterminds behind the Workhouse).  All these creative spaces, along with the fore mentioned Sparrow Bakery, surround a common patio area complete with fire pits, where I will be singing with the Rural Demons for the district's Last Saturday celebration this month.

More photos will come when I get all moved in, but until then...

exciting things!

Later today! After I take kelt  on this Walk!

flowereaters

Kingdom of the Animals

A Southern Girl, A Child of the Plains

it's not about the man, it's about the rope

I finally got some images of the last two works that were completed in February and hung at the Oxford Hotel in March.  Both are large- forty by thirty inches, and thirty by forty inches.  I want to say a huge thank you to Sarah McMurray for photographing them for me! And, once again, thank you to my photo references:  Katie Daisy and her beautiful mom for the photo of said mom on buffaloback back in the day, and Uli Kestere for the use of her photograph as inspiration and reference.  I have lots to say about these pieces, but there is a third that goes with them that I haven't started yet, and I'm feeling quiet today. Soon. 

A Calendar of Tales

I adore Collaboration, the exchange of ideas, the pop pop pop that happens in my brain when storming with others, how ideas can build into skyscrapers or go on tangents so wild that maps are necessary to get back.

The thing that I really enjoy about Technology, is that it is allowing collaboration to happen in an instant, and all over, and between anyone.

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors.  A couple weeks ago, over the course of the day, he started asking questions on Twitter  about each month.   The format of Twitter only allows a blurb of a response, allowing for potent, concise answers to questions like "Where would you spend the perfect June?" and "What would you burn in November, if you could?" (I answered, "I'd gladly burn my fingers on my lil travel iron that I use when collaging.")  He got thousands upon thousands of answers, and used twelve of them as little embers of inspiration for twelve short stories.  The next step, was to ask his readers for artwork (including video) for each story, that can then be uploaded and shared on a website (full disclosure, Blackberry is hosting this event, which hey, if you can trick a big tech company into hosting a huge collaborative creative event...you are pretty brilliant).

The added bonus to all this:  listening to Neil Gaiman read stories for an hour.

So, this afternoon- what are you planning on doing?  I shall be listening, and working on collage.  Hopefully, only burning my fingers a little bit.

"We will never die from dreaming."

"We will never die from dreaming."  ~Dr. Tererai Trent, MUSE conference 2013.

This was the favorite thing that I heard yesterday.  Well, actually, it was all my favorite.

The Tower Theatre in Bend was full to the brim of eager and passionate women yesterday.  It's impossible to paraphrase what all was said, all the thoughts and ideas conjured, but if the goal of this weekend's conference was to inspire, it worked, at least with me.

Some tidbits:

Naseem Rahka, author of The Crying Tree, spoke about the power of forgiveness.  Freshly arrived from a residency in the Grand Canyon,  her description of what healing can happen in the presence of the great timeline that is that place- how realizing your own insignificance can release such power and hope- reminded me of my own trip to the Alvord Desert a couple years back.  Time to get my backpack out, I think.

Jensine Larsen spoke about the power of connecting women (especially those in countries where they are trafficked and marginalized) in the world.  She is the mastermind behind World Pulse.  This could be the vehicle to Mountain Moving Day.  Go. Join. Now.

And Dr. Terarai Trent finished the day, telling her story and advocating for the power of Dreaming.  She literally buried her dream to educate herself, written on a piece of paper, under a rock near her home in Zimbabwe.  "Mother Earth will always remind you of your dreams," she said. And so, a woman who was married off at the age of eleven (a typical cycle that she HAD to break) eventually got her Doctorate.  Now she builds schools, and inspires people.  Simple stuff.  Brilliant stuff.

And then there was the stuff in between.  The women from this wonderful community in Bend that introduced, and spoke, and inspired, and held space.
And now, to integrate all these things.

Mountain Moving Day

Yosano Akiko

“Mountain moving day has come”.

is what I say. But no one believes it.

Mountains were just sleeping for a while.

Earlier they had moved with fire.

But you do not have to believe it.

O people! You’d better believe it!

All the sleeping women move

Now that they awaken.

From Hamil and Gibson, River of Stars: the Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko

March

March comes in like a lion, they say.  This go round, March comes in like a buffalo and a Friesian at the Ox, what some locals call the Oxford Hotel.  I am hanging a couple new pieces there, as well as a few older ones.  It's a special First Friday, because some dear, lovely, amazing ladies that I am lucky to know are putting on the first annual MUSE Conference here in Bend, and the art walk is kind of the kick off for that.

Here is a peak at the detail of one of the pieces, as you can see I resolved the question posed in my last post.