Heat
detail of sculpture, ceramic
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Cathy has MS (or whatever it is..)
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She is irritable.
50,000 tourists descend on her town in the Summer.
They wear khaki shorts and spanking new cowboy hats to keep off the sun.
They are good because they buy things.
But there are too many.
And it is HOT here!
100 degrees some days.
This makes Cathy very weak.
It is best to leave her alone when she gets this way.
Tomorrow will be coming and that is a good thing.
Convention Center
“RENAISSANCE”, 2008, 10′ x 3′ x 3′, earth,wood
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This large sculpture stands in the center of an outdoor courtyard on the main floor of our local Santa Fe Community Center.
Upstairs on the roof terrace there are 15 more smaller versions of this peeking out amidst gorgeous landscaping of feather grasses.
These were the last works-in-form I completed.
These upcoming weeks are high season in our town.
Many, many people from all over the world will be here for INDIAN MARKET and various other events.
I am proud to be represented so publicly.
And I miss the hands-on work that goes into creating large sculpture.
My body has just moved into different territory.
I try not to hanker after what was but really, IT WAS GREAT WHILE IT LASTED!
And an important piece of me I am proud of.
Onward ..onward we go into territory unseen and calling us to the mystery whether we like it or not.
God, please make it just as interesting and satisfying as it used to be.
White
“WHITE SANDS”, 2008, each piece = 14″ x 14′ X 7″, gypsum, wood
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Yesterday, I pulled a sage green sweater from my closet and put it on.
I went about my morning and noticed I was getting really irritated and depressed.
There was a pile of clothes on the floor and I watched myself keep looking at a violet shirt I had worn the previous day.
It wouldn’t let me go.
Finally, I realized the green of the thing I had on was NOT WORKING FOR MY WELL BEING.
I tore it off and put on the violet shirt.
Immediately, I began to feel more myself and as the day progressed I lost all memory of the depression.
SO…….. WHAT HAPPENED THERE?
If you look in my closet you will see a lot of black, white and variations on red.
I seem to be particularly sensitive to color on my body.
I have learned which ones let the essence of me shine through without their own overlay of agenda.
Doesn’t this sound very ‘Santa Fe’?
But really… color affects me deeply and I think, all of us to varying degrees.
It is a powerful tool.
Just watch women in the political realms staking their claim to power.
They wear a horrible shade of orange-red suit.
Someone told them red is a power color.
And they take that to the bank without a modicum of finesse.
What SHADE of red works for me?
IS RED EVEN A POWER COLOR FOR ME?
How do I know?
All very good questions, indeed.
For me, WHITE happens to serve me best when I want and need all my ducks in a row. It is a power color for me.
BLACK is purely neutral in my case and I understand why I have so much of it in my closet.
On my way toward discovering my authentic self I could have nothing that distracted me from my task. The vibe of bright yellow, for instance, might’ve sent me to the loony bin.
Yesterday, I was heading in that direction but caught myself in time.
I love sanity.
And knowing some tools to keep me there.
Crossing
untitled, 1992, 30″ x 22″, monoprint
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Cross is a strange word.
It is a religious symbol, yes.
And used differently it can mean sourness as in: “I am cross with you.”
You can cross over or into.
Cross one mushroom with another and get a third.
Cross out a whole sentence.
Or cross paths with another.
The gist seems to be a meeting point where one thing joins another or pretty much obliterates what was happening previously.
I heard someone on the radio speaking about the symbology of the cross in Christianity.
He described it like this: The horizontal line is representative of our very humanness.
We traverse these waters and have our various experiences, good and not so good.
The generator is our WILL.
We will ourselves forward and shoulder the very heavy HORIZONTALNESS (my word..) which certainly can be peppered with adventure, intrigue and golden things.
If we are fortunate, the luggage gets too heavy and we put it down to rest a bit and see a street sign still dripping with fresh paint with only the word “OTHER.”
We are so damn tired of the road and the weight and the willing of it all that we haven’t the strength to keep to our plan and so we leave the bags at the corner and make the turn.
The only thing we take with us is surrender.
And the turn opens to us and keeps opening and we fall in love with the question mark.
‘Till we get scared and need our favorite shirt from the left behind luggage and we retrace our steps back to the crossing.
But now the beloved shirt has a moth hole.
So we leave it at the side of the road and make the turn once again…
…and again..
..and again.
Chaos and Order
“BEACH SANDS”, 2007, sand,wood
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This piece is made from sand collected from many beaches.
I have always liked the juxtaposition of chaos and order.
In this case, the idea of tiny grains of sand from various places; tossed in the waves for God knows how many eons and then introducing the geometry on top of that.
It soothes me, somehow.
And so, I wonder how this thread of order and not which shows up in my work so often makes itsself known in my life?
Well, the chaos part is pretty self-evident.
It starts with an M and ends with an S.
The order is the interesting element because I seem to fight it in many ways but see that it is essential for a sense of wholeness for me.
I’m feeling too vulnerable this morning to list all the areas out of order in my life at the moment but suffice it to say they are there.
…and there..
…and there…
What I am drawing attention to this morning is the solace that seems to come from the presence of the two.
Together, they are life-supporting. Chaos and order.
I’m going to wobble over there and clean up my desk…
How to Pray
ceramic, steel, 1997, 28″ x 4″
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.
.
HOW TO PRAY
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First, get out of the way.
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Stay low to the ground and take
.
No thing for granted.
.
.
CA 2010
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Mystery
textile design on silk, 1987
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I have the oddest feeling a new life is waiting in the wings for me.
I have certainly had many, many incarnations lived out in just this present lifetime.
And so, it seems another is just around the bend.
There is not too much fear.. some, truth be told, but the pull toward this new thing, whatever it is wins out over trepidation.
In the transition I don’t trust myself in the world.
My fuse is short and my tolerance level low.
I was meandering through my favorite bookstore yesterday looking for solace and a gorgeous amazonian black
woman sat at a small table with a sign offering intuitive readings.
I seldom choose ‘in-store’ guidance givers but I was drawn to sit with her and after all was said and done I left with the knowledge I needn’t look anywhere other than the avenues I now depend on for way-showing.
Illness fosters drawing at straws when answers aren’t forthcoming.
And always, I am asked to return to home base..
Close my eyes and go inside and ask for what I need.
Have the where-with-all to tolerate the stillness it takes to STOP.
Weirdly, this is so challenging for me.. the curtailing of incessant ‘going out there’ for answers.
We all seem to be heading fast and furiously away from stillness what with all the bells and whistles in our techno-age.
Where is our tolerance for silence?
Our ability to sit soaking in the unknown trusting it’s innate intelligence?
Knowing that we don’t know and that has to be ok sometimes even if it makes us wiggle and squirm.
Unbecoming Behavior
untitled, 30″ x 30″, 1999, m/m
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The process of getting well is fraught with bumps in the road.
For me, healing is a process affecting my emotional, spiritual, mental, psychic and physical selves.
Each change I make in one area shifts the others in some way.
Sometimes I am literally flattened and I don’t know why.
The thing I DO know is the more I let go of who I thought I was, the more I become uninterested in becoming.
It has been a life of pushing toward achievement for this girl.
Like a good and true American entity, I TRIED to go for the gold.
But in my art career “IT” eluded me.
Sure.. I made money sometimes and have magazines galore with beautiful spreads on my work.
A resume’ that tells the tale of decades of TRYING.
But is that it?
Is that the gold?
Truth be told, there was always a big MISSING in the life I led of creating art in my studio alone and driving it over to the gallery and sometimes getting a check in the mail.
I seldom knew the names of who took my work home to their living room or how they felt about it or what moved them enough to shell out the cash.
BUT I WAS AN ARTIST!!
With a genuine and shiny identity in my pocket.
And who is this girl who is getting out of bed at noon because her body is in revolt today and she doesn’t know why and can’t find the energy to care?
Instead of being in the process of BECOMING I am UN- BECOMING…
That artist girl is certainly still in here but she’s resting and healing from a lifetime of YEARNING for some damn thing that seems to be closer in to her these days, even as she lies still in the un-doing of it all..
Jonah’s Pool
If I were forced to choose a time in my life that I hold most dear it would be my high school years at Cranbrook.
In truth, my name was called each morning in classes across the lake at KINGSWOOD, the girl’s school part of the educational community.
But I likely was not there to answer.
I was given the gift of an education at Cranbrook by my grandmother.
A number of my ancestors names were carved (legally) in the halls of both schools upon graduation.
The Cranbrook Community is a rarified piece of real estate; both of the mind and the earthen kind.
I will write more about my time there another day but I woke this morning thinking about Jonah’s Pool.
The pack I ran with were boys, mostly.
Smart and sassy, irreverent and intense.
I loved them. Love them still.
They saved me but they likely don’t know that.
We laughed and cut class and smoked pot and walked around the grounds at Cranbrook in the process of becoming the men and women we are today.
We just looked around at things.. life.. and took note. We were too high to put the pieces together back then but later on in life we did.
It was the finest backstory you could ever imagine.
Jonah’s Pool was dark. And surrounded on all sides by green. And BIG! And in off hours, private.
It served as a swimming pool for the boarding students, teachers and all those associated with Cranbrook.
It felt like a secret place as you walked through the glade and the big, black water opened up in front of you.
I was too depressed most of the time in high school.
That pool gave me freedom as I crept through the green gates of hedge in the half light of Michigan evenings.
I scanned the still water and if I found no one there, I left my clothes on the bank and dove into the dark.
I never quite knew what was under that water.
Could have been anything.
But the mystery and surrender of the dive called me and I kept listening over the years.
It was medicine, that water.
A private reverie.
A grand erasure.
And I was new.
And I was new.
Today, so many years past, here in the desert, I remember.
Voting
detail of ceramic sculpture, 2002
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I have food issues.
My body is very sensitive to certain things and I try to avoid wheat, dairy, corn, sugar, grains, soy, alcohol and there are probably more I’ve forgotten.
I have experienced myself move into and out of malnutrition as I : 1. Try to eat in a way that supports my healing and 2. Fill up an insistent empty hole in me (both stomach-wise and the psychological kind) by polishing off a dessert or something else known to affect my weakness level.
Back and forth..
Back and forth.
I am hungry.
I feel deprived.
I ate that ganache’ and I’m unable to lift myself out of this chair.
I really have most of the information I need at this point to eat a diet that is fully supportive of my healing but watch myself falling off the wagon just like an alcoholic.
I AM HUNGRY AND I WANT THAT CHEESE!
NO! YOU MAY NOT HAVE IT!
Well, watch THIS! I’M EATING IT ANYWAY.
Does this sound like a well-balanced woman? No, it does not.
There’s a little girl in here that is hungry and she wins out sometimes and when she does, I can’t walk.
So, I talk myself into VOTING FOR MYSELF once again…
The big ‘S’ in Self.
And I try to find other ways to take care of the hungry girl in me..
The point is, I’m still trying to find ways to walk away from crackers and relish the access I get to muscular strength.
You’d think it’s a no-brainer..
But I ain’t got it down as yet..
And back I go to the voting booth.