Soul Food Cafe Art Room

Some new additions on my website, have a look

2006-11-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

Please use either of these links:

Seasonal Animations

Animations Just for Fun

home

2006-08-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

Here are a few views of the room where I spent most of my day: the living room. A few views are from the vantage point of lying on the couch. The rest are of the art that made its way up to the land of the living...the living room, that is. We're an undomestic couple with a very domestic living room that is avoided like the plague unless it's freezing cold and we're drawn to the fireplace.

steph

New Bugs!!!

2006-07-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

I made new bugs. Happiness!

I haven't done any wirework stuff in a while. A cousin requested to have one commissioned for a friend and I couldn't say no even though my neck and arm is not recovered yet so I made...

Antfly

After I finished all my chores I went on to make...

White Ant and...

Mookie G!

Princess Antela

I just can't stop making these critters. That's why I haven't made any in a while. I wont' be able to stop until my arm and hand hurts. Oh, well. I'll risk it. I need the creative fix and the members of my previous bug menagerie are now with their new charges so I could use new guardians.

New Visual Journal Pages

2006-07-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.

Here are some of the new pages I've been working on during my sick leave.

This is the frontispiece of my current journal. I made this right after I've seen Mirror mask several times during the day. I was quite inspired by the cathedral shaped like the key and made these houses with adjoining stairs that goes up to the sky.

This is the right half of the frontispiece. I drew this while waiting at the social security office and at the doctor's waiting hall.

This is the title page.

The table of contents.

Here's a self-portrait where I used the sonograpm print out. There's a text page that's a bit dramatic for general consumption, I think. This one's mostly part of the process of acceptance and healing.

Here's another one of those healing process pages again. I made this 3 weeks after the hysto.

The more recent is this one on rotten baggages.

Paintings for a Newly Married Couple

2006-06-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

My niece, Brooke was married this weekend, these are paintings which are her wedding present. It started with the sentence I read in a book long ago (in German) "Ich bin geheirated um nimmer mehr allein zu früschtükken". (spelling may be off here, my German is a bit rusty) which means "I got married so I'd never have to eat breakfast alone again"

Playing with Matt

2006-05-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

Matt is one of my best friends, favourite playmates, and baby brother. Did I say baby? He is 42 years old, 6 foot 1, and near 300 pounds (15 stone).

Anywhoo, our friendship has its roots in our childhood, such as it was. Matt was born with severe asthma and at least once a month we were in the emergency room because he was in so much distress he was turning faintly blue.

Back in the 60's asthma was treated with injections of Adrenaline and Sussferin(a 24-hour fight or flight reaction) and then Tedral tablets for maintenance.

So of course Matt would be wound up like the proverbial eight-day clock, while Mum and Jim slept, Matt and I (the born night owl) would be awake; playing so quietly in the living room.

Matt has always loved sports of all kinds, and especially statistics, so we would play the sports board games. Our two favourites were baseball and boxing, we had such fits of the giggles over 'the killer instinct' that was figured in when a boxer was cut and started to bleed.

That is how our friendship has remained, how we play has changed very little in feel, and expression as well. We will make a 'Music Store Raid' and buy 2 different CD's, then a pair of bottles of imported beers, settle into his room and listen to the CD's, pausing often to point out some background vocals or instrument. We watch Discovery Channel, History Channel, Animal Planet, oh, and Comedy Central and babble back and forth during the commercials.

The other night we were watching a one-hour programme on 'Evil'. They were talking about devils, satanists, and the number 666. As an illustration they showed this comical little red imp. Matt asked what it was and I told him it was an imp.

He nearly fell of his bed laughing, there were tears standing in his eyes he was that undone by mirth. When he finally calmed he started singing this doggerell as an ode to busy imps.

"Running here,
Running there.
Running everywhere.
Gotta find me someone
And poke 'em somewhere.
O Hell Yeah!"

I could not leave it there, so I wandered about the 'Net searching for appropriate images. Once I had found and saved them I 'played' with them, making them into a sort of collage with the words interspersed through the images. Below is the image as it stands for the moment.

I like clouds

2006-05-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

How ironic it is that someone who is fascinated by clouds, and enjoys thunder-and-snow-storms should live in a state where it is said that "The sun shines 360 days a year.". I have long been in the habit of taking my camera with me wherever I go, and take pictures of all sorts of clouds regularly. Perhaps one day I will make a collage of storm clouds... if I can make it work the way I wish!!

When storms do reach the desert, especially the 'Monsoons' they arrive in violent glory. Winds hiss through the palo verde leaves and swirl bougainvillea blossoms
into miniature deep rose coloured dust devils. The clouds come, grumbling amongst themselves across the flat expanse of the 'Real Desert', dropping and darkening to near black as they come. Between explosive snarls of thunder and lightning that cuts the sky into jagged wedges the winds gain force and direction.

2006-03-30T22:23:00.000-08:00

I've been painting this weekend. I finished doing chores. Did my best to keep away from the computer. I can't resist uploading this. I'm so happy to have finally finished these. Happily, painting doesn't hurt my shoulders as typing this does. Bursitis is not something I welcome in my life. It’s disruptive and painful.

This is Mantie. Its one of those really cheap balsa wook puzzles I bought in a Christmas bazarre last December. I wish I'd bought more. They're addictive to put together and fun to paint.

This is Antsie.

This is Billy Bee.

This is the Butterfly.

This is Mookie.

Monster

2006-03-13T18:32:00.000-08:00

The harder I struggle the more the ropes seem to tighten, and yet I have to. After what seems like hours the chafing on my wrists has delivered rivulets of scarlet blood which I can feel making their way down my hands to my fingertips where the warm thick liquid drips in heavy drops to the gnarled roots of this old tree.

I cannot clearly see what lies ahead of me, but I can sense that it is dark and consuming. I can smell the decaying underbrush which lightly fogs the paths around the trees now that the day is turning colder, it is a strangely comforting smell, the smell of life coming and going, just as it should, just as it always has. Just the same I have no desire to become part of this great compost heap, not at all. So I struggle again against the binding ropes. Why? Let's just agree that for me this is also a natural state, I fight the inevitable, it is my way, it is who I am.

As awkward as it is to be tied up with my arms outstretched and bound around the tree's broad trunk I do manage to find a degree of comfort now and again. There is the one position with my butt pressed against the trunk and the weight of my upper body pulled forward and my head dropped.. I can even nod off in this odd position. The other is pulling my entire body forward pressing my weight into the soles of my feet. Either way my wrists are taking most of the punishment.

I am thrilled that whatever lurks out there has chosen not to finish me off just yet. I sense at times that it, whatever "it" is has gone, there is a murky smell both disgusting and sweet that hangs around, when it come close enough I can also hear breathing. Slightly laboured breathing. What the creature is doing and what it's intentions are I have no idea. I know that when I try to think about it a tear of panic pours down my face, i've bitten my lip raw concentrating on the struggle to break free. I'd have bitten through the ropes of my wrists if the position would have allowed it. I cannot bite anything, at least not anything useful.

Wrestling with wanting to scream, but if I do it might set off a series of events very much unwanted. Perhaps it would be best if I remain quiet, and perhaps he will forget, or escape and leave me, or even grow fond of me and let me live. So I don't scream even when it's smell disgusts me and feeling it's breath on my skin raises goose bumps from head to foot, I gag very quietly, and in my mind it repeat, "please, please, leave".

It was daylight still, when I found myself here, tied up, among these great old trees. I've no idea where I am, even less how I got here. Nothing I see or smell or hear is anything familiar. These are not even the bird sounds I am accustomed to. My last memory was of going to bed. I must not have actually got into bed, because I am still dressed in my jeans and a shirt, no shoes, but for me that is not unusual, I dislike footwear at home. I am disinclined to wearing even socks at home unless it is very cold. It was not cold that night. The night I last remember before waking here.

Nothing remarkable in my memories of that night. I did a little reading and washed out a few clothes which I hung to dry. I sat watching television with my favourite cat on my lap. That is my last memory, being home, with my cat.

I feel as though my arms have stretched beyond their ability and yet they do not come apart. It helps to envision my situation, a way to avoid the actual experience, which I assure you is painful, and terribly frightening.

I cringe because the ground shakes a little, and I assume the creature, whatever it is must be near. If I could just see the thing and make eye contact, then I could read if it is reasonable, and I could bargain for my life. If it is not reasonable, then, then...i could scream. I feel my hunger and wonder if I can hold the urine long enough that I will be found without added embarrassment. Does that make any sense? Why should I care that I pee my pants? Then again what if it makes the creature irate, or amorous? That's typical of me, making jokes when there really is nothing funny. It made a few seconds more bearable.

I try to think of positive outcomes. The creature might die and leave me here untouched other than by insects crawling up my pants leg. In the dark shadows I swear I can see the reaper, calmly, patiently waiting. It makes me angry, terribly angry. The reaper could take me now, why does he just stand there? Perhaps he is not even there. Hours have passed and it would not be strange right now to be seeing things.

On inspecting my legs and what I can see of myself there has not been any damage done, no blood stains no torn clothing. Small mercies. Somehow it matter that I leave a fairly nice looking body behind. Thoughts right now just happen, pulled from the ether, mostly as amusements to pass time, and more time, and ---please can something just happen? The boredom on it's own is deadly. Unrelenting pain and boredom. I found myself thinking of all possible endings to this story of mine, unlikely rescues, or I might wake up, or be eaten alive by some creature. A werewolf maybe?

Again I chuckled. A werewolf? Ha! No, my luck it is a mindless bumbling but hairy woodsman with a penchant for collecting city women with intent to have them trained as his housekeeper. Ok, also bizarre and unlikely. Somehow all of my endings were benign and I found some temporary solace there. It was very dark now and I could see nothing at all. Probably a starless sky tonight. The fog was creeping higher and higher. I was so cold that I stopped feeling pain.

The cold was killing me, one pain replaced by another. I could not even fight the ropes any more.. The presence of what I thought my be the reaper was now a comfort, and I made eye contact and was no longer afraid of the reaper. I was fighting for remaining awake. Obviously comfort was not a requirement for falling asleep, or out of consciousness. by now I was too tired to fight. Whatever the outcome of this life altering event would be, I would not know it. I took a last glance around. Just as my grip on this world was letting go I spotted an enormous claw, and without having a moment to react, or do a proper review of my life, I was gone.

All wound up --- what?

2006-03-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

Having an inability to sit still and do nothing, and too little energy to do something large (away from my recliner) I struggle to find enough to do with ever declining visual and sensory limitations.

I bought a small bag full of crystal hearts, not sure what to do with them, but thought I'd string them into this and that. Well, turns out they did not have a hole drilled through them for stringing. So using some steel wire I cam up with this "all wound up in love" personal collection of beadwork. I stand back sometimes and gasp, "why?"

I like these best:

Clearly it is time for a better camera with a macro lens. Some day.

Barter with the Reaper - part 1

2006-03-05T03:20:00.000-08:00

I've taken to deal with the reaper directly, forget the middleman. No intercession of the Saints, or even the creator, they are busy with far more pressing matters. My problem is simple and I ought to be able to deal with it. It came with utter simplicity from my trusted doctor's mouth "You have Shy-Drager, the specialist concluded in his report". My reply with equally simple, "It's fatal", he replied with great solemnity "Always."

I sat in silence with him for some considerable time. Neither of us fidgeted, we barely breathed. I was surprisingly calm but noted that my doctor was not. He was flushed and looked a little shaky. It was most certainly not the first time that he had to break such news. Probably exactly why he had chosen psychiatry and not one of the more physical specialities, it was the least bloody and least likely to deal in long palliative support. At least that's what I thought, since I saw him shaking. I felt I had to break the silence.

"What can I do?"
To which he answered, "live carefully."

That was the day I first met the reaper, my reaper, head on. The reaper is now my constant companion, I cannot be made unaware of him/her. Waiting for me to slip up, to have a careless day, the day caution is not maintained. That day, now some years ago, I did not know how to acknowledge the reaper, or whether or not I should. While walking home that day I decided to be very aware of the reaper, to be cautious, and re-arrange as I must so living carefully would not come to mean, living without any excitement or quality. The reaper does not have all the power, as Sheherezade also had power over her execution I have power over the end of my days.

I am taking my sweet time, I have armed myself with all the knowledge I could. My body and spirit are nourished with mindful breathing and nourishing foods. I have learned to say no and mean it to all those people and activities that would unwittingly push me to the edge. Perhaps most important, I waste no time to the dying of the light, I simply burn more candles. My days are filled with activity, my days continue to be productive, if different than had I remained in good health.

The great irony of all this has been that a couple of years ago, the same doctor who told me to "live carefully" died, he did not expect to. He'd experienced bouts of sudden low blood pressure, his last email to me concerned getting a blood stain out of his carpet (no stain will ever defeat me). He had hit his head when collapsing during one of these episodes. A couple of weeks later he died, athletically in great shape for his sixty or so years. I miss him, he was a great doctor. Part of his legacy to me, is that I am still alive, because I am mindful of what I have to do and what not, the other is that I am productive, because to be otherwise would be the death of me, I think literally.

"Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them. " -- Abraham Maslow

"Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour." -- Stephen Butler Leacock (1869-1944), Canadian economist, humorous writer, "Literary Lapses"

no saving grace

2006-03-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

My latest papier mache sculpture measures approximately 8" by 18" and is painted in chameleon gold acrylic. I took photographs from a few different angles looking for the best pose for her. Near as I can figure, the Fates have done me a good turn and presented me with a Creative that doesn't have a bad side.

"No Saving Grace" ("I'm not saving grace / I use it all the time")

Steph
www.worthworks.com

Been playin' with my camera

2006-03-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

I've been 'playing' with my camera, seeing what the real limits of the little rascal are. I've started taking 'textural pictures' the image was taken to capture a texture of some sort.

I am more impressed with my last-years-model-make-room-for-new sale digital camera than when I bought it a year and a half ago. It has great focus for evertything but extreme closeups.

The shots that surprise me over and over are the distance shots, and action shots, the images are far sharper than a non-digital camera. Because of the clarity of the image some very good pictures can emerge.

A couple of days ago I helped my brother fix the plumbing, my help consisted of standing next to the spigot to the whole house, and turh the water onn or off, depending on what Matt was doing. I carried my cell phone, with caller ID and when Matt would call me I would change the status of the water. Since I didn't answer the call neither of us were charged any minutes.

It was a typical warm, monsoonal early spring day in Apache Junction, a thinking-about-being-cool breeze that wished for moisture lifting the hair from my temples. I looked at the sky and my Muse whispered "Camera..." Being often obedient of my Muse (I think her name is MizzNEP), I fetched my camera and took pictures of clouds, bushes, mountains, and assorted flowers, with a shot or two of Oleander seeds tumbling out of the seed-pod.

Manhole Cover Project - Stage One

2006-02-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

Through the arteries to the world within
Now to figure out how to do the plates to attach to the CD

Metamorphoses of sorts...

2006-02-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

I guess I don't feel much like landscapes, too cold, too harsh and besides that, something else is pushing it's way forward from my subconscious. No time for fairy tales until I've allowed it entrance into this three dimensional world, and somehow tame it to two dimensions. The work is far from finished, I've barely begun, but I do think the heart of it has made contact with me.

I really hope my energies hold, past the banal housekeeping tasks that will no longer stay on hold. I've dedicate the rest of me, whatever there is of me to this work and to the exclusion of all other projects. I will get the housework under control and make sure the lavender continues to weather the end of this winter, as they have so bravely come this far. The sun is up another hour or so, enough to cover them and add a little compost. Considering the season the balcony is still quite green.

Well, enough rambling, just so you don't find me rude because the replies to your emails are long in coming, or when they do they seem overly brief, please understand, I am not as I once was, there is a great reduction in just how much I can accomplish in one day, one week, one month. I am as always lately painfully aware that there is only so much I can likely accomplish, so I set out to nevertheless accomplish ten times that. with any luck St. Jude has a little time left for me.

Greetings

2005-12-19T17:27:00.000-08:00

T'is the Season

2005-12-13T01:08:00.000-08:00

...to run yourself ragged.

I've been going full tilt on my latest project, The Twelve Days of Christmas. I've also managed to set up a full fledge website with all commercial privileges. Lots of work getting it set up again. Those of you wanting a peek : www.aletta.org

Phew, now back to an ordinary day tomorrow. Dismal level of housekeeping around here lately. Kudos on the calendar, Heather. It's a real joy, a warm place to spend some me-time.

I've a few more seasonal items to post on my site, last year's little kiddie book and the past five years worth of Christmas cards I'd illustrated. Found it an interesting journey backwards for myself, hope others enjoy it too.

The Feast of St. Nicholas (December 6th)

2005-12-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

St. Nicholas lives in Spain with his steadfast companion, Black Piet. Every December for as long as anyone can remember, the old bishop and his friend take their boat to the Netherlands.

During the long trip preparations are made. Letters are written, gifts wrapped, and rows of burlap bags full of candy are stored in the cargo hold. Black Piet brushes the beautiful white horse, and the Saint checks one more time, who gets gifts and who gets a lump of coal.

After the long trip they finally see the Dutch shore. It is much colder here than in Spain and the Saint and the Moor pull on warm woolly underthings. His horse gets a warm blanket, and an extra thick layer of hay.

For several days they make stops all along the shores of towns in the Netherlands where cheering children have gathered to welcome the Saint.

Black Piet throws handfuls of candy and traditional pepernoten into crowds of delighted little children. Children have the chance to see and speak with the Saint and ask special favors. Black Piet can sometimes be talked into performing magic.

From one town to another the Saint travels, hearing the songs of children. Before you know it it is the Eve of St. Nicholas day, the feast that honors the Saint for being the patron of all little children everywhere.

This is the night the Saint, with the help of his good friend Black Piet and his faithful horse, travel from house to house leaving gifts and candies to good children and lumps of coal to bad children. He moves so fast he cannot be seen except if you are lucky a brief flash of his gown, his horse's tail maybe?

All in one night, from town, to village, to farms and apartments, they travel as can only be explained by magic, to each and every child's home. Where a treat has been left alongside a waiting shoe, a shoe is filled with goodies or a lump of coal. Sometimes the Saint leaves a letter asking for improvement, or remarking that good effort has been made, and other comments he wishes to make.

The snacks, suck as carrots, cookies, apples and warm milk, are much appreciated, as they work the long night at magic speed so no child shall be disappointed. Even the poorest child shall have some chocolates, and maybe a new pair of socks or small toy in the morning.

As Children everywhere delight in finding gifts in their shoes that morning, the Saint is already arriving back in spain for a well deserved break on the day that bears his name.

His gift is knowing that there are children who, thanks to his efforts, are just a little happier this day.

Mindful

2005-12-01T23:19:00.000-08:00

Spirits in the ether
mix, though never have they met,
perhaps never will.

Of importance is the moment,
this moment, and every
contact in either or blood, alters.

Spirits in ether, seeming nothingness
touch, move by, and through,
intentful and thoughtful.

The spirit moves about
on particles created through the energy of one soul,
moved to react by having touched the other.

Demonstrations of affections,
endearment, are every bit as real
as those our primitive senses would witness.

All is not made of flesh,
all does not need flesh,
spirit is eternal, sentient.

Spirit makes us players,
in the eternal theatre of this universe
delicately balanced, the good, the bad.

Nothing we do, or intend,
no thoughts, emotions are
ever inert.

In this universe, each spirit
holds the same power, and responsibility
as the hand of the divine.

Juxtaposed

2005-11-21T23:19:00.000-08:00

This milky haze pulls together the discordant vision of the trees and the transformer towers in such a hauntingly beautiful way.

One can almost forget that the towers are not organic, but one will not forget which is the Creator's work.

"climbing the walls"

2005-11-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd share a few quick peeks around my studio so you can see what I've been up to lately.

Steph

Fog Lurks

2005-11-19T20:17:00.000-08:00

Adding a dimension to the otherwise everyday sights of this wrecked little crackhouse and a park where dealers do business while others walking their dogs in the same park. Suddenly the sound has damped and the world slows to a crawl. God gives permission to see the world a little differently, hazed and not quite real.

Sparow Girl Drawings

2005-11-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

Halloween and All Soul's Night Greetings

2005-10-30T03:20:00.000-08:00

To mark All Soul's Night I took a ride with Baba, in her black swan, to the Isle of the Dead and met the Queen of the Serpents who guards the entrance to the underworld. I took a small vile of pure Castalian Water, collected at Delphi and we drank to creativity. The Serpent has blessed all travellers on the Soul Food Silk Way.

While Travellers celebrate Halloween and All Soul's Night le Enchanteur wanders deeper into the Serpent Queen's Cave, on the Isle of the Dead, to see her world. She is dazzled by the beauty of the Queen and her Treasury. The Queen has secrets to share.

A Halloween Tale...

2005-10-29T22:33:00.000-07:00

Or, how little children should mind their elders.

The laughter of children echoed through the pastoral valley. Life here in a community too small to have it's own name ran at a pace all it's own. If it was not for the inhabitants growing old and the occasional birth of a baby one would swear life stood absolutely still. You could think that, but you would be wrong.

Days were spent tilling the soil, looking after animals and keeping house. There was but one road going both in and out of the valley. No crimes had ever been committed here, and though a few of its inhabitants had moved out, they were few in number. It was by all accounts a life of pleasant routine.

Not too many people had ever lived here, judging from the graveyard there were more than 300 souls gone to the afterlife from here. Roughly that’s one citizen for every year of the valley’s 300 year life. No-one remembered who founded the settlement or in what year but the first death was recorded in 1706 a Bryce Sand, no indication if it was a male or female Bryce Sand nor what this person did for a living. A life with as little to make it remarkable as each passing day here.

So it came as a great shock that grey October day that three little boys, two brothers and their friend, went missing. October days were slow and lazy, the harvest was already put away and shared with neighbours. The children were all home schooled together at Miss Miller’s house, all twelve of them, just as they had been since Miss Miller was about twenty and she'd be nearly eighty now. The great love of her life had died in one of the great wars and she was unable to commit herself to any other man. Instead she vowed to educate every child born in this valley to be upright and peaceful so there would be no more wars. She was bent over, heavy with the knowledge of all the wars that had come since making the great promise to herself. Still she should be proud of herself, for in the valley itself life had gone without any fights, without any incident whatever.

The citizen’s in the valley had counted themselves out of every census in living memory, no wars were funded by this valley and they had no need for federal services, they could look perfectly well after themselves. There was no police, no jail, no court.

They should have been in school that day, that John and Jack and their friend Luke. Somewhere between Miss Miller’s and home the boys had gone missing. Miss Miller had assumed the boys had taken ill with the cold or flue and since the valley had no telephone it was no immediately checked on. No one could have thought it would be anything else.

It was something else. That morning the three had met up as usual. Luke had shared some of his cake with the other two. They had chatted about the new foal at the Miller’s. White horses were born only very rarely in the valley. God seemed to favour brown for horses.

They were nearly halfway to the old schoolhouse when all three heard something. None of them knew what it was exactly, only that no one they knew had a voice anything like it. Still, whatever of whoever it was, was asking for help and the all three knew what needed to be done. They needed to go and see if they could help and if they could not they should fetch someone who could.

There was a small patch of forest where the voice emanated from. A little forests on the east side of the valley before the river. A small brook ran through it and the boys knew there were caves in this forest up against the hillside which were dangerous. The caves were from a long, long time ago, before the families had moved here, when other strange people had lived here. Inside the caves there were paintings of large cat life animals and lizards such as no one had seen ever in real life. Those were stories of course, in modern times no-one had dared go into the caves because they knew it was dangerous and everyone was quite happy without having any danger in their lives.

The boys ran into the forest, convinced that there was hero business to be done. They had long talked of being like super heroes, able to fly, to save the innocent from harm. Maybe this was their day to become heroes. That was a far as they had thought it out. They ran from one direction to the other as the voice seemed to change a great deal. At last they were exhausted and could not run any longer.

John had blisters on his feet and was complaining a lot. Luke was hungry and had started his lunch sitting on a large rock by what might have been an opening to a cave.. Jack had not quite run out of energy and paced up and down the path kicking stones. He kicked one rather hard and it went flying. They heard a small scream, it cam from right over Luke's head. It was a very good thing that the three had used the bathroom before leaving home or all three would have been standing there in wet pants.

There sitting perched on an old stump, over the cave opening, was the strangest creature. It wasn't very big but it was very odd looking. It had very large lizard-like eyes, and it's skin was a little scaly like a fish. It's hands or where one would have expected to see hands were talons like covered to the nails with small feathers. Feathers, I kid you not. They would have gasped or screamed for sure, but they had no breath at all, not for that moment. They scarcely caught one breath before the next fright.

Just behind the three, standing on another stump, stood another just like it. This one was a bit larger with a very round belly. They struggled to scream. They were starting to turn a little bluish from not breathing. Finally breath came and they let out a blood curdling scream which was met by another as the two strange looking creatures screamed too.

The earth shook a little and they were silent. "oh no." said the sitting creature. "Oh no," echoed the second creature. "What, what, WHAT?" screamed the three boys, no longer sure what they should fear more and their feet still frozen to the forest floor. They shot glances between the two creatures and each other. The booming continued, the earth shook and there was a thunderous sound coming form everywhere at once. The little grey creatures with the big eyes were no less frightened than the boys, actually they seemed more afraid and were turning strangely pale.

The sun seemed to appear and disappear and a twirling whooshing sound was overhead they dared look, they might as well, they were no able to run and screaming had not made anything go away. What they saw was beyond belief. Meaning that if they told this story to anyone they would be laughed at for making up ridiculous lies. Still there it was, a large flying reptile with wings and eyes a fiery orange colour, it had a split long tongue which flitted before them, and talons with long brown nails.

One of the little grey creatures looked up clasping it's hands, well whatever passed for hands, and pleaded, "let us go, we meant no harm". A booming voice came from the great lizard, or it might have been a dragon if you don't consider fire breathing important. "Get away from the humans, or you will have to deal with me. The two ran away into the cave. The dragon, to call it something for the sake of argument a dragon will do, perched above the cave opening, he shook his head and mumbled, "halloweenies."

Now he gazed straight at the boys who had just found their feet and were bouncing around a bit trying to figure out where to run to. "Get out of my forest, the lot of you." The boys ran and clamoured all the way up the hill to where the graveyard stood but the dragon followed them out. No matter where they ran the beast was not far behind. "Climb into this tree", yelled Jack. Which is where they were headed to, the biggest tree in the valley. Unfortunately, just as they were nearly there they were caught except for Jack as the dragon swooped down and caught them with his brow talon nails.

The dragon had miscalculated and a wing clipped into the old oak and all four of them tumbled down back to front and front to back and out they fell right in front of Miss Miller's one room school house. Well the boys thought they were safe. Miss Miller was not scared of anything they knew that and surely she would come out of the house running with her cane and thump the dragon on his scaly behind too.

Miss Miller did not. She stayed in and did not even open the door for them. The dragon righted himself and lumbered over them. His talon reached out and the boys cringed. Well they thought they were dragon kibble right about then. They were too tired to scream or cry.

"Never," said the dragon poking Luke with his talon, "never go into the forest without an adult, those halloweenies play tricks on you, and since you'd eaten all your goodies already you'd have had nothing to pay your way out with. I am getting too old to keep saving lost children from halloweenies, sprained ankles and sick stomachs from eating the wrong mushrooms." He stood up and looked his most fearsome. "If I see you in the forest again I will let the halloweenies have you." and with that he rose up, flapped his wings and flew off back to his forest.

"Did you see that miss Miller, did you see the dragon?"
"No, didn't have my glasses on. No one else saw it because school is out and they are all gone home. Besides," said Miss Miller, "there is no such thing as dragons and no-one will believe you. Next you'll ask me to believe there are creatures called halloweenies in the forest who tricked you? No boys, you were loafing off in the forest where it is dangerous, now go home and stay on the path."

They did stay on the path and never did they see the dragon or the halloweenies again. That was on October the 31st, coincidence?

Never Forgotten

2005-10-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

Song of Eternity: Circles in the Sun

(With Love, For Megan)

2005-10-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished my paintings for Megan.
This first one is a little bit dark,
but there is color and sweetness in the darkness,
which is the way of it, I suppose.

Song of Life: Sweetness and Thorns

Gnomes and Goosebumps

2005-10-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

There was a good lot of squabbling out on my balcony last night. Yet, every time I was out there trying to find the source of disgruntlement I could find no one. I slept fitfully, my subconscious still trying to work out who might be jabbering out there and why.

Finally at about seven I could take no more. This time they were caught. Three unclothed gnomes with goose-bumps complaining about the night and "when are we getting those clothes we were promised anyway?" I was ten past tired and not willing to get into it right then right there. I would do something about it.

After grabbing another couple of hours of "lie down" and rest up, i grabbed the three naked gnomes and the one suited up and planted them inside where it was quite warm. Before I could paint them the goose-bumps would have to disappear.

I am in some part to blame for having ignored the balcony pretty much since the weather got colder. The continued blooming of the flowers, however kept me from thinking about impending winter. It really is quite amazing how much is still in full bloom and it is almost November.

After taking the dog for a walk I took out my paints. Gwendolyn had been the most vocal about being cold, something to the effect of "I'm freezing my tits off". In keeping with her temperament I dressed her in red. She practically jumped up and down with excitement when I held the mirror up so she could see. "Can I have red flowers in my hair? Pretty please." Well, how could I refuse, and off course shoes to match were next. Red was absolutely right for her. A white furry colour would keep her "tits" from freezing off.

Missy wanted a blue dress and purple fur trim. I was about to paint a matching set of blue shoes when she screamed at me "Stop, Aletta, mine should be red shoes too, I've always wanted red shoes." I could understand that, I've never met a girl or woman who did not want one pair of sparkling red shoes "just because". We rarely get them as little girls because red does not match enough of our daily wardrobes, it is frivolous and parents favour the sensible brown, navy or even white shoe. So Missy had her red shoes even though she hasn't any red clothes on. Her bright green hat is now trimmed in lilac fur to match the dress coat.

Paully had waited patiently for the girls to be dressed. He and Petey were enjoying the view of the two ladies dressing up. The girls seemed to appreciate the attention and it certainly wasn't rude so I kept myself to task and did not bring it up. "I like the white, could I keep the white hat?" I did my best to please and gave him what might best be described as a blend of reverse Santa and classic "commedia del arte" clowns. Looking bright eyed and warm he asked, "White shoes please." "No problem Paully."

"Ready to go back outside now?" All four replied in chorus "yes, please." Gnomes are very polite. I carried the four outside and sprayed them with a warm coat of glossy finish. "now you are rainproof as well." The little sparrows who live on my balcony chirped their admiration for the new duds. Not wanting to leave them behind in my attentions I remarked that their winter feathers were looking beautiful and extra fluffy this year.

I took another look a little while ago, their little shiny faces looked very happy and not one of them had goose bumps any more. "You won't be making noisy conversation tonight will you?" There was giggling and a resounding "No marm." So now I can contently put up my feet and know that I have not neglected those who depend on me.

Pregnant With Possiblity

2005-10-24T05:50:00.000-07:00

The Amazon Queen takes her place on the Golden Chair, expectant, filled with a sense of creative possibility.

A Fairy for Brigitte

2005-10-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

This is my niece's fairy, as I'd painted one for each of her two sisters. Brigitte was very happy with her fairy. The fairy looks a little like her, purely intentional and by some happy coincidence yellow is Brigitte's favourite colour. Her next older sister Phoebe remarked that now I will have to paint a pixie for her brother, he cannot be left out. She darted into her room and brought me a book which showed pixies (somehow she sensed I had not a clue what might be3 the male counterpart of a fairy). She kindly offered to lend me the book until the painting was finished

Plans,

2005-10-24T01:41:00.000-07:00

Unable to sleep last night I finished a drawing/study for the sculpting I intend on doing next week. Even if it means booking off from other engagements. The base is rocklike because I intend for it to be an actual rock on which I will, using it as the base, sculpt in terra cotta clay with a wire frame for the figures. I will use metal to bond the two on the surface, probably in a dark patina.

Spirit Tree

2005-10-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

This tree spotted on my way to the pharmacy looked as though there were a person or maybe two trapped inside.

Dejected

2005-10-20T01:09:00.000-07:00

Feeling aittle worse for wear.

Dolly dreams

2005-10-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

Obviously hosting animated gifs myself won't work because I have insufficient bndwidth, but imageshack will host up to 1MB gifs no problem. so now you know. I used the animation feature in Jasc Paint Schop Pro 7.0 to make the gifs I post here.

My cat Stimpson, missing his favourite hug-dolly Jamaica to take naps with, is having dolly dreams.

aletta

Photojournal

2005-09-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

While out walking the dog. (http://helperpets.blogspot.com)

aletta

My Photojournal,

2005-09-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

corner Commerical and Broadway, Vancouver, BC

aletta

Last Two Sketches

2005-09-27T05:06:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if anyone else found the Amazon Queen's Alchemy table at the Sunday Market. I was sitting opposite, watching her, captivated as people came and went with her spells and potions. I had heard she was here but this is the first time that we managed to catch up with one another. We have been friends for a very long time but she can be elusive and is much quieter and shyer than most people expect.

You all know Sibyl! She is never one to be coy and shy and loves to make a grand entrance at a party. Personally I think she is wild as tonight. Not sure what she has been sipping in the tea rooms but I most certainly want some of what she is having.

Photowork Trees

2005-09-27T01:53:00.000-07:00

Just admiring nature's best work with my little camera, while walking around enjoying the day.

aletta

morning warmups

2005-09-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

It was one of those beautiful mornings. In order to warm my hands and gently set about moving I reached for my sketchbook and pencils set by the bed. Often sketching is the last thing I do at night and the first thing I do in the morning. I was having a bit of a problem coming up with ideas for "what to draw". Staring out the window, the pencil did it's work for me. I stopped thinking and ran with what the pencil wanted and the next and the next. Soon enough the drawing was complete and I found myself working on another.

I was transported to a moment many years ago, walking with my little daughter, about the same age as my grand daughter is now. Private moments on a moist Toronto autumn day so long ago. My hands kept changing pencils and hungrily moved on to another drawing .

The three trees I passed as a child on Sunday walks with my parents. The trees were set exactly at the edge of the dijke.

Old trees, most probably they had been there when Rembrandt walked that stretch in his lifetime. That thought was too daunting, still, as long as I don't compare, leaving Rembrandt out of it.

Back to productivity

2005-09-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

My former psychiatrist (former by death) always opened a session with one question "have you been productive". He knew well that it was the cornestone of my well-being. If I cannot be productive happiness is simply out of the question. Unfortunately when bedridden because illness overwhelms even my desire to be upright the lack of productivity just compounds stress. I was finally, after a couple of weeks able to be a bit productive. I could scan in some of the illustration sketches for the kiddie books that are far behind in the schedule I had set for myself, and some other little drawings I was playing around with while propped up in bed.
Now the illustrations are in the computer I will have to find it in me to get back to the business of writing little stories to go with them. The one tentatively title "Dutch House Rules" is almost half done. I had planned to have the Flash version functional by now and posted on my website.
It feels wonderful to look at my day and be able to state firmly that, yes, I have been productive.

aletta

a little painting

2005-08-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

Learning to deal with odd sightedness and paint on smaller canvases than I am used to. Major factor here being one of cost, these small canvases (10x8) were found at the dollar store. I had done the sketches for these over the last few weeks spent mostly in bed. finally yesterday I had it in me to be upright long enough and with amazig burst of passion and frenzy painted for five hours straight. I am actually pleased, unusual feeling for me, I normally have to work at not pitching the lot ito a corner to awauit recycling into soemthing else whenever I can next face what I have done. These, however, are allowed display on my wall. Pehaps because I am just so damned happy to be painting at all.

Today I painted these two wooden boxes. The one on the left is for my mam's birthday and has thefour seasons as a theme. The second box is a flurry of colours my garden now displays as seen with my altered eyesight.

aletta

ps. where is everyone, on holiday?

Fun with Fences

2005-08-19T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have a preoccupation with fences. Lately I also have a strong liking for pastel effects, maybe because so often my own eyesight warps what I see much like this, and I've come to emjoy the alternate vision.

This fence is outside a dilapidated old house near Commercial Drive in Vancouver, all the plantlife is wild and unplanned, gorgeous.

A little further on the same side street a modest post-war bungalow painted white and accented with a very mediterranean turqoise puctuated with a brilliant display of hydrangea, blooms the size of cabbages.

Little sweet Maya looking over the fence at what will soon be a pumpkin patch.

Ain't life grand.

photoplay with snap

2005-08-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

this photo is of my grand daughter, resulting from my playfulness playing with sepia tone and pastel effects, Paint Shop Pro 7

Well, Short Vacations

2005-08-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

Memories have a way of butting in. Lazy ummer days in Toronto's High Park when I still had two small kids whose favourite Sunday consisted of feeding ducks and an ice cream. This is just one of those painting that happen, nothing planned. That day is now over twenty years ago, about time I repeat the day with my grand daughter.

A Vacation from the Human Form

2005-08-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

What I intend as the first in a series of landscapes and stil-lifes. We'll see how long I can do without the human form.

2005-08-05T00:59:00.000-07:00

Season Circle

2005-08-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

The window shade my best friend Larkin made. It is made of fabric and all hand stitched.

2005-08-04T04:27:00.000-07:00

My painting "Mountain Spirit" which Larkin used as a base for her window shade.

Double Haiku - My Scarf Made By Megan

2005-08-04T03:17:00.000-07:00

Birds must have dreamed it
For it seemed not made by hands
Swirling, soft, scarlet

Delicate feathers
Song of ruby ‘round my throat
I am clothed in wings

Megan, I loved seeing your bags here! They are almost as beautiful as my scarf!

Matisse

2005-07-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

blue fish on a
red plate, a slice of lemon -
primary hunger

Progress - G-Nome Project

2005-07-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

A sudden fit of inspiration seized me the other day, while staring at my three faceless, terra cotta gnomes.

First, there was the whitewash, out of which just naturally, without even trying to make it happen, some very diverse personalities emerge. Bit, by bit, they were neither faceless nor shapeless.

From there personalities came to the surface quite quickly. The lady, the sad clown, the hippie-chick.

It was a warm day and I did not have the heart to paint their clothes on. No reason a gnome needs to have clothes on. I don't think decency laws apply here. From there they went a little wild. I took some snappies of the goings on. appears some gnomes can be quite wild, hedonistic.

First they took to the beach
playing with bubbles
getting quite chummy

Now to get on to the more serious writing of the actual story, which I will post once it is done and polished a bit. Somehow it is all making sense as a larger story with plenty of moral existential lessons and I've had just so much fun doing it. I will probably finish the whole series completely, and start again from the beginning posting each section as I complete it.

Having such fun doing this, did I mention that?

aletta

2005-07-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

amulet bag

Getting Ready for Second Grandchild (January '06)

2005-07-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

Modelled by my 42 year olf doll Keesie and my Bear Bart, the pink hat is for my nearly 2 year old granddaughter, the rest for my daughter Koszima's mystery baby #2.

2005-07-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

the finished bag

2005-07-17T04:01:00.000-07:00

the lining

2005-07-17T04:00:00.000-07:00

finished knitting

2005-07-17T03:55:00.000-07:00

I thought I would share my latest accomplishment with you.

A couple of months ago I taught myself to knit, bored with knitting
scarves and beanies, I thought I would try my hand at something different.

The pictures attached to this email are the results of my latest project.
A knitted bag. I think I'll try my hand at another one now.

The photo's however do not do the bag justice. It is knitted from a wool called
rockery - it is a rust brown with, bright colourful knobbly bits.

Saturn

2005-07-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the present

According to my mother, my first visit to a museum happened on the very day I was released form hospital a few days after birth. My father triumphantly carried me fro room to room through the Rijksmuseum. Rarely did a week pass by that we were not in one great museum or another. One of the perks to being an Amsterdammer.

My father had inherited the painting gene in his family. He did for a time when I was about three try supporting us on the sales of his paintings. He had also luckily inherited the sales and marketing abilities which had long kept generations from having to pursue "real" jobs. Collecting rent is a long cry from a real job. It must have been a crushing brush with reality, washing bottles and lab equipment at Shell Oil's laboratories. both my parents had been cheated of a high school education, both were just 17 when WWII ended. Dad took night school and worked to bring himself up to where he could attend University, nothing was handed him. My mother either, she worked as a nanny and private nurse to underwrite her nursing studies.

On this particular day I was the daughter of the Artist. I had no notion, no idea if we were rich or poor. I knew I was loved and cared for. My parents took a great deal of time to point out the wonders and beauty of the world around me. I hung on every word, I was a sponge. I loved everything about my parents' interests, it was our bond. I shared painting with dad, opera with mother. I studied every stitch my mother performed with her patient and talented hands. I sat excitedly by father as he painted, I can see them still if I close my eyes. It explains, perhaps why my paintings, without any intent, look so much like his work.

The museum, in particular Boyman van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam,was and always will be my favourite place on this earth, my holy place, it is in my heart even when I cannot get there myself. That is where my tiny hand touched the bronze foot of Degas' ballet dancer. It is where, in my opinion, the most beautiful clocks ever made, tick harmoniously now as in centuries past. These are the survivors, valuable enough that war and fires did not destroy them. Nothing chronicles history as well as paintings do. There for me to see in one room the Armada fights at sea, and in another, Bosch's Tower of Babel's staggering detail (the painting is barely a square foot in size) speaks of an artist sparing no amount of his very spirit to put on canvas (actually I believe it is on wood) all of what one moment in time could possibly mean. Within the one story of the painting there are dozens of smaller stories. I've spent hours with this painting and still have not fully taken it all in.

Of course little girls cannot keep up with adults, their legs will get tired. This day there were paintings on loan from another gallery -- the specifics I do not know, just that it was very special -- with a great deal of excitement my parents had gone room to room. When I became tired the first time I was allowed to lie on a bench in the grandfather clock room. My parents could then spend some time in the adjoining room which had remarkable seascapes. My father's and also my mother's family had been in the shipbuilding business for centuries, it follows they had some considerable knowledge and interest in the subject. At age four or so the details of one ship versus another are not terribly interesting. It was by far my favourite place in the world to take a nap, watched by the timeless timepieces, hearing them tick tock with a sense of the infinite.

On the second floor in the room with the blue walls I did my best to show how tired I had again become. Why? Because I still did not like mandrills, and in this room there was an intimidatingly large painting of a mandril by Kokoschka. Daddy picked me up, while he admired the Kokoschka I looked out of the window, where below in the courtyard large zaftig bronzes looked pensively at each other. The window was a welcome view, I did not like blue walls, I still don't. The next room had green walls. Some very nice landscapes.

I lay down on the bench in the green room I imagined myself walking through each of the landscapes. I was very tired, there had been a lot of walking, my shoes pinched. I sat up to look for mom and dad. I was alarmed when I could not find them. Maybe they had gone for another look in the blue room, being how fond they were of those awful mandrills. I turned my little groggy head around. There, directly behind me was the most ghastly nightmarish sight I gasped, gurgled choked by the fear of what faced me. I let out a scream.

I think I had everyone's attention. My dad swept me up, my mother grabbed me. An apparent lapse in parental judgment had put me down for a nap facing away from Goya's "Saturn Eating One of His Children." I loathe that painting, even more than a mandril. How could a father eat his child, or any child. What monsters were there in my world? I held on very tightly to my mommy. That was the very last time that I ever took a nap anywhere at Boymans other than the clock room.

2005-07-07T00:40:00.000-07:00

Who is just the spookiest?
Goya! Goya!
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Who is possessed with such finesse?
Goya! Goya!
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Obsess, transgress, but ne’er suppress,
Distressed from the darkest recess express,
Depress excess infests noblesse!
Goya! Goya!
Yes! Yes! Yes!

Cheerleading. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.
You know, I really love Goya. It is, however, my job to keep your bodily functions lively.
You know, ‘The Leaning Tower” ~ “The owl cries twice . . .”

Goya's Devouring Monster

2005-07-06T03:51:00.000-07:00

The Mystery of Goya's Saturn

The painting known as 'Saturn Devouring One of His Sons', by Francisco Goya, presents us with a terrifying cannibal god, Kronos, whom he depicts as a wild, revolting figure, consuming his offspring. The ancient deity looks crazed, his eyes are atrocious and the painting is one of those which imprints itself on the psyche of those who examine it closely.

'Saturn Devouring One of His Sons' springing from the Kronos myth, was a part of Goya's 'Black Painting' series when Goya 'carved his fates and inscribed his nighmares directly onto plaster.'

The earliest version of the Kronos myth--Saturn is the later Roman name--was written down by Hesiod in his Theogony, around the eighth century, B.C.E.

First comes Chaos; then Earth/Gaia; Tartarus in the bowels of Earth; and finally Eros. Earth gives birth to Heaven, also known as Ouranos, and then bears twelve of his children, the last, "most terrible of sons/The crooked-scheming Kronos." Earth and Ouranos have three more sons, so fearsome and mighty that Ouranos forces them back inside their mother, burying them alive. She forms a sickle, and asks her other sons to use it against their father, "For it was he/Who first began devising shameful acts." All are afraid, except Kronos. She gives him the sickle, hides him in her, and he castrates his father, preventing him from having more children, then assumes power among the Titans. But fear lives in his heart; a usurper himself, he learns that one of his own children will usurp him, and he devours them at birth:

As each child issued from the holy womb
And lay upon its mother's knees, each one
Was seized by mighty Kronos, and gulped down.

Through a ruse by his mother, the last born, Zeus, survives, leads a war against Kronos, and casts him down to Tartarus. Even gods cannot overcome Fate.

Reviewers have asked what it was that Goya recognized in himself that charged the work with such raw, wounding power? Jason Scott Morgan, for example, alludes to the traditional father and son narrative which has been presented in, amongst other documents, the Bible.

Maybe Goya was painting this narrative but I suspect not. Before he began the Black Paintings, Goya survived a near fatal illness, documented in his Self-portrait with Dr. Arrieta. Goya depicts himself as a "pained and weary artist, surrounded by dark, phantasmal faces." It is plausible that Saturn was painted as a way to express the lonely terror of mortality. Since my husband's body has been ravaged by a third round of bowel cancer, and we have faced the lonely terror of mortality, I have every reason to think that this is likely. If I could paint I would paint Atrophe, towering like a giant, scissors in hand, tormenting us with the reality that she has the power to cut the thread at any moment. Goya's Saturn touches me deeply because it expresses shared pain and his Atropos paints the dark dreams that haunt me.

So what charged Goya's painting of Saturn? As his health declined, as he stared creative impotence in the eyes - Saturn's eyes, Atrophos's scissors his work gathered momentum and a dark force. It doesn't really matter if Goya threw away his pastels and used someone like Saturn as a metaphor to represent the terror of creative impotence. Who cares if Goya used Saturn as a metaphor to depict the 'black dog' that consumes artists offspring -- that hungrily devours work deemed, for whatever reason, not to be of any merit, not to fit the stereotypical mould. The main thing is that Goya went right outside the square and painted with force that speaks with passion today.

I imagine Goya must have smiled wryly when he realised that he had captured the demonic figure who had lived with him all his life. But most of all I am grateful that he has so powerfully captured the demon who lurks in my nightmares, for I know now that I am not alone.

Riding Giants

2005-07-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

I love watching surfing documentaries. And this one is outstanding. What could be better? Tropical setting, lotsa water, guys on a wave? Nice.

And then somehow during the last part of the movie, they begin to talk about faith. A 30 foot wave is out of your control. You can only bring your experience with how to deal with such an awesome, natural occurrence. And then during the take off of looking straight down a mountain of moving water there is faith that you will either jump off or stay with it. As Laird Hamilton said,” I can’t make it, unless I just stay on.” And that for me translates to anything you choose to do with life.

You cannot succeed unless you try. As I jokingly said to my husband “You have to enter to win.” We can hem and haw about all the responsibilities we have, but it’s in the pure dedication that things begin to take shape. You want to fulfill a dream? Don’t put it off. Make it happen. Or what I really mean to say is, what would happen or how would it be if you knew you would NOT fail? If you had the pure faith you would succeed.

These guys put their life on the line to experience oneness with the sea. It’s pure exhilaration. Although I don’t want to be a big wave surfer, I do want to be a working artist. And I can’t make it, unless I stick with it.

Jack and Luke - Our Brittany Spaniels

2005-07-05T00:14:00.000-07:00

I did this as a Father's Day present for my husband

There is more than even I gnome so far

2005-07-04T16:49:00.000-07:00

The pool of Buddy is becoming a well landscaped memorial to the fallen gnome.

My new gnome underwent a change, first whitewashed, appearing as a ghostly sight next to the pool of Buddy. Clearly I was being drawn in to help give this new gnome his face, his character. I felt humbled by the prospect.

After much thought the gnome became a small person, pardon me, gnome, with his very own personality.

Then, at dusk, more gnomes appeared. Three in all. Faceless. What do they want? Why are they here?

They are there still, night after night, gathered in eerie silence. Days pass, and all I can think is that they want faces too. Maybe I need to step in again, and find for each one their own face, clothes, and personalities. Or they will be there every night in stony silence waiting to evolve into full blown gnomes and not just another piece of terra cotta gardenware.

Maybe then they will move on, to homes and reflecting pools of their own.

aletta

2005-07-02T21:45:00.000-07:00

CAT - After Warhol

SCRAMBLED!

2005-06-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

Feather-Stone Woman: Lit From Within

2005-06-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

2005-06-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

Mermaid and Dryad

Cherita Fitz - A Bit of Frothy Nonsense

2005-06-24T00:49:00.000-07:00

CHERITA FITZGERALD
(Seed Line: From fish of the seas and birds on the wing)

From fish of the seas and birds on the wing

Dryads and mermaids come to dance and to sing
An earth deep dance washed with bright salt sting

Flaming with autumn, while remembering spring
This wet double reel filled with each kind of thing
That seething sea or stable shore, hand in hand, will bring

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-06-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

Retrospective in Pink

2005-06-17T05:28:00.000-07:00

Dynamite of Melons

2005-06-17T05:27:00.000-07:00

Love, until his lips has turned to silver . . .
Love, admidst the shivering of knives and dynamite of melons.
(Federico Garcia Lorca -“Grito hacia Roma” Poeta en Nueva York)

2005-06-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

Green As I Would Have You Be

Verde que te quierro verde

2005-06-17T05:19:00.000-07:00

“Verde que te quierro verde
Green wind. Green boughs.
The boat on the sea.
Green as I would have you be”
(Federico Garcia Lorca - Romance Sonambulo)

“Sail, sail
Toward the army of uneven points . . .
There are ships that want to be seen in order to sink in peace . . .
Sail toward a pulverized
Landscape of ambush.
And the moon?/Y la luna . . .
The moon with a smoking glove
sitting by the doorway of it’s wreckage.”
(Federico Garcia Lorca - “Luna y Panorama de los Insectos” Poeta en Nueva York)

and your tears on the shores of a horse’s eyes
that never reaches the sea . . .
(Federico Garcia Lorca - “Niña ahogada en el pozo” Poeta en Nueva York)

Give me your moon glove,
Your other glove of grass, my love
(Federico Garcia Lorca - “Nocturno del hueco” Poeta en Nueva York)

. . . the bull has his orbit,
and the bullfighter has his,
and I must look at death with geometry, with measure
with the fundamental basis of a bulfight.
(Federico Garcia Lorca - In Search of Duende)

Angel - Muse - Duende

2005-06-17T04:16:00.000-07:00

Over recent days, as I have sat, reflecting and meditating during long hours at the hospital, I have had cause to ponder upon Duende, the creative force that propels our creative endeavour and fills our well with droplets of steel in times of need. Now I feel compelled to ask each of you to consider not only the angel and the muse but Duende.

Duende came in search of me once more when Winnie, in a pensive, philosophical mood, asked me how I teach writing. I admitted that I do not really teach writing but I encourage people to put their hands in the loam and experience duende. I encourage people to grope and feel duende for it is only when duende is present that writing becomes authentic.

Read the following article by Frederico Garcia Lorca and talk about your views on the 'life force' that drives creativity, the mead we each seek.

The Duende: Theory and Divertissement
by Frederico Garcia Lorca

Whoever inhabits that bull's hide stretched between the Jucar, the Gaudelete, the Sil or the Pisuerga - no need to mention the streams joining those lion-coloured waves churned up by the Plata - has heard it said with a certain frequency: "Now that has real duende !" It was in this spirit that Manuel Torres, the great artist of the Andalusian people, once remarked to a singer: "You have a voice, you know all the styles, but you'll never bring it off because you have no duende."

In all Andalusia, from the rock of Jaen to the shell of Cádiz, people constantly speak of the duende and find it in everything that springs out of energetic instinct. That marvelous singer, "El Librijano," originator of the Debla, observed, "Whenever I am singing with duende, no one can come up to me"; and one day the old gypsy dancer, "La Malena," exclaimed while listening to Brailowski play a fragment of Bach: "Olé! That has duende !"- and remained bored by Gluck and Brahms and Darius Milhaud. And Manuel Torres, to my mind a man of exemplary blood culture, once uttered this splendid phrase while listening to Falla himself play his "Nocturno del Generalife": "Whatever has black sounds has duende." There is no greater truth.

These black sounds are the mystery, the roots that probe through the mire that we all know of, and do not understand, but which furnishes us with whatever is sustaining in art. Black sounds: so said the celebrated Spaniard, thereby concurring with Goethe, who, in effect, defined the duende when he said, speaking of Paganini: "A mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain."

The duende, then, is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old guitarist, a true virtuoso, remark, "The duende is not in the throat, the duende comes up from inside, up from the very soles of the feet." That is to say, it is not a question of aptitude, but of a true and viable style - of blood, in other words; of what is oldest in culture: of creation made act.

This "mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain," is, in sum, the earth-force, the same duende that fired the heart of Nietzsche, who sought it in its external forms on the Rialto Bridge, or in the music of Bizet, without ever finding it, or understanding that the duende he pursued had rebounded from the mystery-minded Greeks to the Dancers of Cádiz or the gored, Dionysian cry of Silverio's siguiriya.

So much for the duende; but I would not have you confuse the duende with the theological demon of doubt at whom Luther, on a Bacchic impulse, hurled an inkwell in Nuremberg, or with the Catholic devil, destructive, but short on intelligence, who disguised himself as a bitch to enter the convents, or with the talking monkey that Cervantes' mountebank carried in the comedy about jealousy and the forests of Andalusia.

No. The duende that I speak of, shadowy, palpitating, is a descendant of that benignest demon of Socrates, he of marble and salt, who scratched the master angrily the day he drank the hemlock; and of that melancholy imp of Descartes, little as an unripe almond, who, glutted with circles and lines, went out on the canals to hear the drunken sailors singing.

Any man - any artist, as Nietzsche would say - climbs the stairway in the tower of his perfection at the cost of a struggle with a duende - not with an angel, as some have maintained, or with his muse. This fundamental distinction must be kept in mind if the root of a work of art is to be grasped.

The angel guides and endows, like Saint Raphael, or prohibits and avoids like Saint Michael, or foretells, like Saint Gabriel.

The Angel dazzles; but he flies over men's heads and remains in mid-air, shedding his grace; and the man, without any effort whatever, realizes his work, or his fellow-feeling, or his dance. The angel on the road to Damascus, and he who entered the crevice of the little balcony of Assisi, or that other angel who followed in the footsteps of Heinrich Suso, commanded - and there was no resisting his radiance, for he waved his wings of steel in an atmosphere of predestination.

The Muse dictates and, in certain cases, prompts. There is relatively little she can do, for she keeps aloof and is so full of lassitude (I have seen her twice) that I myself have had to put half a heart of marble in her. The Poets of the Muse hear voices and do not know where they come from; but surely they are from the Muse, who encourages and at times devours them entirely. Such, for example, was the case of Apollinaire, that great poet ravaged by the horrible Muse with whom the divinely angelic Rousseau painted him. The Muse arouses the intellect, bearing landscapes of columns and the false taste of laurel; but intellect is oftentimes the foe of poetry because it imitates too much, it elevates the poet to a throne of acute angles and makes him forget that in time the ants can devour him, too, or that a great arsenical locust can fall on his head, against which the Muses who live inside monocles or the lukewarm lacquer roses of insignificant salons, are helpless.

Angel and Muse approach from without; the Angel sheds light and the Muse gives form (Hesiod learned of them). Gold leaf or chiton-folds: the poet finds his models in his laurel coppice. But the Duende, on the other hand, must come to life in the nethermost recesses of the blood.

And repel the Angel, too - kick out the Muse and conquer his awe of the fragrance of violets that breathe from the poetry of the eighteenth century, or of the great telescope in whose lenses the Muse dozes off, sick of limits.

The true struggle is with the Duende.

The paths leading to God are well known, from the barbaric way of the hermit, to the subtler modes of the mystic. With a tower, then, like Saint Theresa, or with three roads, like St. John of the Cross. And even if we must cry out in Isaiah's voice: "Truly, thou art the hidden God!" at the end at last, God sends to each seeker his first fiery thorns.

To seek out the Duende, however, neither map nor discipline is required. Enough to know that he kindles the blood like an irritant, that he exhausts, that he repulses, all the bland, geometrical assurances, that he smashes the styles; that he makes of a Goya, master of the grays, the silvers, the roses of the great English painters, a man painting with his knees and his fists in bituminous blacks; that he bares a Mosen Cinto Verdaguer to the cold of the Pyrenees or induces a Jorge Manrique to sweat out his death on the crags of Ocaña, or invests the delicate body of Rimbaud in the green domino of the saltimbanque, or fixes the dead fish-eyes on the Comte de Lautréamont in the early hours of the boulevard.

The great artists of southern Spain, both gypsies and flamenco, whether singing or dancing or playing their instruments, know that no emotion is possible without the mediation of the Duende. They may hoodwink the people, they may give the illusion of duende without really having it, just as writers and painters and literary fashion-mongers without duende cheat you daily; but it needs only a little care and the will to resist one's own indifference, to discover the imposture and put it and its crude artifice to flight.

Once the Andalusian singer, Pastora Pavon, "The Girl with the Combs," a sombre Hispanic genius whose capacity for fantasy equals Goya's or Raphael el Gallo's, was singing in a little tavern in Cádiz. She sparred with her voice - now shadowy, now like molten tin, now covered with moss; she tangled her voice in her long hair or drenched it in sherry or lost it in the darkest and furthermost bramble bushes. But nothing happened - useless, all of it! The hearers remained silent.

There stood Ignacio Espeleta, handsome as a Roman turtle, who was asked once why he never worked, and replied with a smile worthy of Argantonio: "How am I to work if I come from Cádiz?"

There, too, stood Héloise, the fiery aristocrat, whore of Seville, direct descendant of Soledad Vargas, who in the thirties refused to marry a Rothschild because he was not of equal blood. There were the Floridas, whom some people call butchers, but who are really millennial priests sacrificing bulls constantly to Geryon; and in a corner stood that imposing breeder of bulls, Don Pablo Murabe, with the air of a Cretan mask. Pastora Pavon finished singing in the midst of total silence. There was only a little man, one of those dancing mannikins who leap suddenly out of brandy bottles, who observed sarcastically in a very low voice: "Viva Paris!" As if to say: We are not interested in aptitude or techniques or virtuosity here. We are interested in something else.

Then the "Girl with the Combs" got up like a woman possessed, her face blasted like a medieval weeper, tossed off a great glass of Cazalla at a single draught, like a potion of fire, and settled down to singing - without a voice, without breath, without nuance, throat aflame - but with duende ! She had contrived to annihilate all that was nonessential in song and make way for an angry and incandescent Duende, friend of sand-laden winds, so that everyone listening tore at his clothing almost in the same rhythm with which the West Indian negroes in their rites rend away their clothes, huddled in heaps before the image of Saint Barbara.

The "Girl with the Combs" had to mangle her voice because she knew there were discriminating folk about who asked not for form, but for the marrow of form - pure music spare enough to keep itself in the air. She had to deny her faculties and her security; that is to say, to turn out her Muse and keep vulnerable, so that her Duende might come and vouchsafe the hand-to-hand struggle. And then how she sang! Her voice feinted no longer; it jetted up like blood, ennobled by sorrow and sincerity, it opened up like ten fingers of a hand around the nailed feet of a Christ by Juan de Juni - tempestuous!

The arrival of the Duende always presupposes a radical change in all the forms as they existed on the old plane. It gives a sense of refreshment unknown until then, together with that quality of the just-opening rose, of the miraculous, which comes and instils an almost religious transport.

In all Arabian music, in the dances, songs, elegies of Arabia, the coming of the Duende is greeted by fervent outcries of Allah! Allah! God! God!, so close to the Olé" Olé! of our bull rings that who is to say they are not actually the same; and in all the songs of southern Spain the appearance of the Duende is followed by heartfelt exclamations of God alive! - profound, human tender, the cry of communion with God through the medium of the five senses and the grace of the Duende that stirs the voice and the body of the dancer - a flight from this world, both real and poetic, pure as Pedro de Roja's over the seven gardens (that most curious poet of the seventeenth century), or Juan Calimacho's on the tremulous ladder of tears.

Naturally, when flight is achieved, all feel its effects: the initiate coming to see at last how style triumphs over inferior matter, and the unenlightened, through the I-don't-know-what of an authentic emotion. Some years ago, in a dancing contest at Jerez de la Frontera, an old lady of eighty, competing against beautiful women and young girls with waists as supple as water, carried off the prize merely by the act of raising her arms, throwing back her head, and stamping the little platform with a blow of her feet; but in the conclave of muses and angels foregathered there - beauties of form and beauties of smile - the dying duende triumphed as it had to, trailing the rusted knife blades of its wings along the ground.

All the arts are capable of duende, but it naturally achieves its widest play in the fields of music, dance and the spoken poem, since those require a living presence to interpret them, because they are forms which grow and decline perpetually and raise their contours on the precise present.

Often the Duende of the musician passes over into the Duende of the interpreter, and at other times, when the musician and poet are not matched, the Duende of the interpreter - this is interesting - creates a new marvel that retains the appearance - and the appearance only - of the originating form. Such was the case with the duende-ridden Duse who deliberately sought out failures in order to turn them into triumphs, thanks to her capacity for invention; or with Paganini who, as Goethe explained, could make one hear profoundest melody in out-and-out vulgarity; or with a delectable young lady from the port of Santa María whom I saw singing and dancing the horrendous Italian ditty, "O Marie!" with such rhythms, such pauses, and such conviction that she transformed an Italian geegaw into a hard serpent of raised gold. What happened, in effect, was that each in his own way found something new, something never before encountered, which put lifeblood and art into bodies void of expression.

In every country, death comes as a finality. It comes, and the curtain comes down. But not in Spain! In Spain the curtain goes up. Many people live out their lives between walls until the day they die and are brought out into the sun. In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country of the world: their profile wounds like the edge of a barbers razor. The quip about death and the silent contemplation of it are familiar to the Spanish. From the "Dream of the Skulls" of Quevedo, to the "Putrescent Bishop" of Valdés Leal; from La Marbella of the seventeenth century who, dying in childbirth on the highway, says:

The blood of my entrails
Covers the horse.
And the horse's hooves
Strike fire from the pitch

to a recent young man from Salamanca, killed by a bull who exclaimed:

My friends, I am dying.
My friends, it goes badly.
I've three handkerchiefs inside me,
And this I apply now makes four.

there is a balustrade of flowering nitre where hordes peer out, contemplating death, with verses from Jeremiah for the grimmer side or sweet-smelling cypress for the more lyrical - but in any case, a country where all that is most important has its final metallic valuation in death.

The knife and the cart wheel and the razor and the singing beard-points of the shepherds, the shorn moon and the fly, the damp lockers, the ruins and the lace-covered saints, the quicklime and the cutting line of eaves and balconies: in Spain, all bear little grass-blades of death, allusions and voices perceptible to the spiritually alert, that call to our memory with the corpse-cold air of our own passing. It is no accident that all Spanish art is bound to our soil, so full of thistles and definitive stone; the lamentations of Pleberio or the dances of the master Josef Maria de Valdivielso are not isolated instances, nor is it by chance that from all the balladry of Europe the Spanish inamorata disengages herself in this fashion:

"If you are my fine friend,
Tell me - why won't you look at me?"
"The eyes with which I look at you
I gave up to the shadow."
"If you are my fine friend
Tell me - why don't you kiss me?"
"The lips with which I kissed you
I gave up to the clay."
"If you are my fine friend
Tell me - why won't you embrace me?"
"The arms that embrace you
I have covered up with worms."

Nor is it strange to find that in the dawn of our lyricism, the following note is sounded:

Inside the garden
I shall surely die.
Inside the rosebush
They will kill me.
Mother, Mother,
I went out
Gathering roses,
But surely death will find me
In the Garden.
Mother, Mother,
I went out
Cutting roses,
But surely death will find me
In the rosebush.
Inside the garden
I shall surely die.
In the rosebush
They will kill me.

Those heads frozen by the moon that Zurbarán painted, the butter-yellows and the lightening-yellows of El Greco, the narrative of Father Sigüenza, all the work of Goya, the presbytery of the Church of the Escorial, all polychrome sculpture, the crypt of the ducal house of Osuna, the death with the guitar in the chapel of the Benavente in Medina de Río Seco - all equal, on the plane of cultivated art, the pilgrimages of San Andrés de Teixido where the dead have their place in the procession; they are one with the songs for the dead that the women of Asturias intone with flame-filled lamps in the November night, one with the song and dance of the Sibyl in the cathedrals of Mallorca and Toledo, with the obscure "In Recort" of Tortosa, and the innumerable rites of Good Friday that, with the arcane fiesta of the Bulls, epitomize the popular triumph of Spanish death. In all the world, Mexico alone can go hand-in-hand with my country.

When the Muse sees death on the way, she closes the door, or raises a plinth, or promenades an urn and inscribes an epitaph with a waxen hand, but in time she tears down her laurels again in a silence that wavers between two breezes. Under the truncated arch of the Ode, she joins with funereal meaning the exact flowers that the Italians of the fifteenth century depicted, with the identical cock of Lucretius, to frighten off an unforeseen darkness.

When the Angel sees death on the way, he flies in slow circles and weaves with tears of narcissus and ice the elegy we see trembling in the hands of Keats and Villasandino and Herrera and Becquer and Juan Ramón Jiménez. But imagine the terror of the Angel, should it feel a spider - even the tiniest - on its tender and roseate flesh!

The Duende, on the other hand, will not approach at all if he does not see the possibility of death, if he is not convinced he will circle death's house, if there is not every assurance he can rustle the branches borne aloft by us all, that neither have, nor may ever have, the power to console.

With idea, with sound, or with gesture, the Duende chooses the brim of the well for his open struggle with the creator. Angel and Muse escape in the violin or in musical measure, but the Duende draws blood, and in the healing of the wound that never quite closes, all that is unprecedented and invented in a man's work has its origin.

The magical virtue of poetry lies in the fact that it is always empowered with duende to baptize in dark water all those who behold it, because with duende, loving and understanding are simpler, there is always the certainty of being loved and being understood; and this struggle for expression and for the communication of expression acquires at times, in poetry, finite characters.

Recall the case of that paragon of the flamenco and daemonic way, Saint Teresa - flamenca not for her prowess in stopping an angry bull with three significant passes - though she did so - nor for her presumption in esteeming herself beautiful in the presence of Fray Juan de Miseria, nor for slapping the face of a papal nuncio; but rather for the simple circumstance that she was one of the rare ones whose Duende (not her Angel - the Angels never attack) pierced her with an arrow, hoping thereby to destroy her for having deprived him of his ultimate secret: the subtle bridge that links the five senses with the very center, the living flesh, living cloud, living sea, of Love emancipated from Time.

Most redoubtable conqueress of the Duende - and how utterly unlike the case of Philip of Austria who, longing to discover the Muse and the Angel in theology, found himself imprisoned by the Duende of cold ardors in that masterwork of the Escorial, where geometry abuts with a dream and the Duende wears the mask of the Muse for the eternal chastisement of the great king.

We have said that the Duende loves ledges and wounds, that he enters only those areas where form dissolves in a passion transcending any of its visible expressions.

In Spain (as in all Oriental countries where dance is a form of religious expression) the Duende has unlimited play in the bodies of the dancers of Cádiz, eulogized by Martial, in the breasts of the singers, eulogized by Juvenal, and in all the liturgy of the bulls - that authentic religious drama where, in the manner of the Mass, adoration and sacrifice are rendered a God.

It would seem that all the duende of the classical world is crowded into this matchless festival, epitomizing the culture and the noble sensibility of a people who discover in man his greatest rages, his greatest melancholies, his greatest lamentations. No one, I think, is amused by the dances or the bulls in Spain; the Duende has taken it on himself to make them suffer through the medium of drama, in living forms, and prepares the ladders for flight from encompassing reality.

The Duende works on the body of the dancer like the wind works on sand. With magical force, it converts a young girl into a lunar paralytic; or fills with adolescent blushes a ragged old man begging handouts in the wineshops; or suddenly discovers the smell of nocturnal ports in a head of hair, and moment for moment, works on the arms with an expressiveness which is the mother of the dance of all ages.

But it is impossible for him ever to repeat himself - this is interesting and must be underscored. The Duende never repeats himself, any more than the forms of the sea repeat themselves in a storm.

In the bullfight, the Duende achieves his most impressive advantage, for he must fight then with death who can destroy him, on one hand, and with geometry, with measure, the fundamental basis of the bullfight, on the other.

The Bull has his orbit, and the bullfighter has his, and between orbit and orbit is the point of risk where falls the vertex of the terrible byplay.

It is possible to hold a Muse with a muletta and an Angel with banderillas, and pass for a good bullfighter; but for the faena de capa, with the bull still unscarred by a wound, the help of the Duende is necessary at the moment of the kill, to drive home the blow of artistic truth.

The bullfighter who moves the public to terror in the plaza by his audacity does not fight the bull - that would be ludicrous in such a case - but, within the reach of each man, puts his life at stake; on the contrary, the fighter bitten by the Duende gives a lesson in Pythagorian music and induces all to forget how he constantly hurls his heart against the horns.

Lagartigo with his Roman duende, Joselito with his Jewish duende, Belmonte with his baroque duende, and Cagancho with his gypsy duende, from the twilight of the ring, teach poets, painters, and musicians four great ways of the Spanish tradition.

Spain is the only country where death is the national spectacle, where death blows long fanfares at the coming of each Spring, and its art is always governed by a shrewd duende that has given it its distinctive character and its quality of invention.

The Duende that, for the first time in sculpture, fills the cheeks of the saints of the master Mateo de Compostela with blood, is the same spirit that evokes the lamentations of St. John of the Cross or burns naked nymphs on the religious sonnets of Lope.

The Duende who raises the tower of Sahagun or tesselates hot brick in Calatayud or Teruel, is the same spirit that breaks open the clouds of El Greco and sends the constables of Quevedo and the chimaeras of Goya sprawling with a kick.

When it rains, he secretly brings out a duende-minded Velasquez, behind his monarchical grays; when it snows he sends Herrera out naked to prove that cold need not kill; when it burns, he casts Berruguette into the flames and lets him invent a new space for sculpture.

The music of Góngora and the Angel of Garcilaso must yield up the laurel wreath when the Duende of St. John of the Cross passes by, when

The wounded stag
peers over the hill.

The Muse of Góngora de Berceo and the Angel of the Archpriest of Hita must give way to the approaching Jorge Manrique when he comes, wounded to death, to the gates of the Castle of Belmonte. The Muse of Gregorio Hernandez and the Angel of José de Mora must retire, so that the Duende weeping blood-tears of Mena, and the Duende of Matinez Montañes with a head like an Assyrian bull's, may pass over, just as the melancholy Muse of Cataluña and the humid Angel of Galicia must watch, with loving terror, the Duende of Castile, far from the hot bread and the cow grazing mildly among forms of swept sky and parched earth.

The Duende of Quevedo and the Duende of Cervantes, one bearing phosphorescent green anemones and the other the plaster flowers of Ruidera, crown the alter-piece of the Duende of Spain.

Each art has, by nature, its distinctive Duende of style and form, but all roots join at the point where the black sounds of Manuel Torres issue forth - the ultimate stuff and the common basis, uncontrollable and tremulous, of wood and sound and canvas and word.

Black sounds: behind which there abide, in tenderest intimacy, the volcanoes, the ants, the zephyrs, and the enormous night straining its waist against the Milky Way.

Ladies and gentlemen: I have raised three arches, and with clumsy hand I have placed in them the Muse, the Angel and the Duende.

The Muse keeps silent; she may wear the tunic of little folds, or great cow-eyes gazing towards Pompeii, or the monstrous, four-featured nose with which her great painter, Picasso, has painted her. The Angel may be stirring the hair of Antonello da Messina, the tunic of Lippi, and the violin of Masolino or Rousseau.

But the Duende - where is the Duende ? Through the empty arch enters a mental air blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, seeking new landscapes and unfamiliar accents; an air bearing the odor of child's spittle, crushed grass, and the veil of Medusa announcing the unending baptism of all newly-created things.

Lorca 1930

2005-06-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

Memory in a Meadow

Mead Meadow Dance

2005-06-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

Mead made from meadows that bloom in my mind
At the top of tall mountains, whispered with wings
Where honied winds blow with sunshine entwined
And snow weeps down laughing in hundreds of springs
Witches Broom,
River Birch,
Bitter Brush
Burdock

Brew it in deep vats, seal it in sapphire
It will bloom in the darkness growing profound
Bubbling with impulse and sure to inspire
It will open vast vistas when we pass it around
Mountain Mahogany,
Lupine and Larkspur,
Chokecherry,
Currents
Of red

More than just drink, this mist of the mountain
Brings dreams that dance and transcend
Passed hand to hand, all baptized in it’s fountain
Company, fellowship, friends
Sagebrush and Blue Bells
Yarrow and Juniper
Columbine
Aspen
And
Pine

©Edwina Peterson Cross

WING-WOMEN

2005-06-13T04:47:00.000-07:00

"My Aunt who really was a Bush Pilot used to use the term "Wing Man" . . . that's someone who watches out for you. I thought you'd like that idea. The Abbey, I think, is full of Wing-Women." (Anita Marie Moscoso)

2005-06-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

A NEW DAWN

The Amazons Ride

2005-06-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

Descended from Strife and Symmetry
Warriors of ancient lore
To restore health and Harmony
The Amazon’s ride to War

The Martial Queen with her ivied shield
A strong memory of spiritual power
Leads her warriors into battle
At this essential echoed hour

She faces the foe with the weight of love
The blazing heart of a swan
From the strength of a circle of women
Comes the light of a glistening new dawn

©Edwina Peterson Cross
June 11, 2005

The Blue Dresser

2005-06-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

My Travails with Gnomes and Zen Gardening

2005-06-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, on one of my expeditions through the local dollar store I found myself drawn to this rosy cheeked face.

I don't like gnomes much. Never liked garden ornaments that looked like fantasy creatures. Often they looked creepy, or worse the kind of thing that really belongs in a graveyard for little souls. Those are such tragic places, calling it the "Angel's Garden" never helped me at all. I could sense only grief and weeping.

This little gnome with his all-knowing world-wise face, reminiscent of Buddy Hackett I could not turn down, not for a dollar. Eventually this odd little creature inspired a little woodland fantasy gardening of my own. Even spilling into other pots and boxes.

Of course all relationships come to an end, some suddenly. I had thought perhaps my large often clumsy dog might topple the plat pot and send Buddy tumbling. Not the dog, Buddy survived the dog. It was my granddaughter, Maya, visiting with me for mother's day

Maya was paying with the dog on the balcony. There was the sound of broken pottery on the pavement below. It was not the dog, he was by my side.

The gnome was missing. I picked bits of buddy from the pavement. The little hand that held the incense, his fat little belly, his scrunched up little face. the rest were almost dust and quickly put in the bin. Bits of Buddy were now resting in my desk drawer, I could not bear to toss all of him away. A teapot bunny was immediately put where Buddy was. But as lovely as that teapot might be, it was not Buddy, not even a little.

My daughter apologetically offered to find another gnome. I declined, told her it was just a cheap little gnome. Buddy was just that, an odd little dollar store gnome. My sister came by a few days later and while were out doing errands together, she bought me lovely daisies to put where buddy once stood. We could find no gnome worthy to replace Buddy.

My lovely and off-beat family, a large European style extended family, felt my pain, the very small emptiness now Buddy was gone. Some of course, could not help but remark unkindly that it was an ugly little gnome and Maya showed good taste by pitching it off the balcony. In my reasoned moments I knew they were right, but my heart knew no reason when it came to this stupid little gnome.

It was a mission to replace the gnome. After the daisies came this odd gnome, still nameless. How could you help but laugh on first seeing it?

I gave him a face and a crown of flowers, and hope he will, in time, mean as much to me as Buddy did. Without the face, well, I'm a single old woman, and people will talk.

aletta

Selfportraits, an exercise

2005-06-08T02:58:00.000-07:00

Self portraits are wonderfully cathartic, probably why van Gogh did so many of them, Rembrandt too. It is amazing how it affects the artist. This one I did in 2002, in a particularly nasty emotional state. I'd like to see how the rest of you see yourselves.

aletta

To price your art - a formula

2005-06-08T02:04:00.000-07:00

Nearly all artists start out painting portraits to make money, or these days find work in advertising artwork. Portraits were the one type of art where the topic is of a great deal of value to the purchaser and the artist doing the painting is hardly relevant at all as long as they are competent technically. Rembrandt and Hals both painted portraits door-to-door. Had to make a living, no arts grants those days, either find a patron or paint portraits. Hals employed a special colour of gesso so he could finish his portraits in a matter of an hour and move on to the next one. There were no photographers so this was the only way to have a picture of the folks or children. Miniatures made Holbein and others very wealthy men indeed.

There is a formula I was taught in art school (in the Netherlands, so I'm sure it is taught quite differently here). Base amount is what it cost you in materials including the rent of the atelier and the costs to advertise your existence (business cards, telephone number), add the hourly wage of a highly skilled crafts person (you could use a plumber or master carpenter as a guide) and multiply that by the number of years you have been shown in galleries, - years no one has shown your work do not count unless you have sold a work in that year.

so if:

It cost you $100.00 in materials, and took 10 hours to complete at $ 25. hourly making it total $350.00 and in your career you have been shown for 10 years (including any years you have sold a piece of art/commissions) you can charge 3,500 for a painting.

The same artist in her first year should charge 350 for the same painting and so on. This means the price should never be less than $350, and if you live to be 120 your painting will be priced at 35,000. If it is a gallery selling it they will take 50 to 70% of the price of the painting as a commission, bearing that in mind the artist in the first year should, if the painting is sold in a gallery, double the price if the commission is going to be 50% ($700.00) and so on in that fashion.

on the point of never dropping the price just to sell I agree, this is a frightful idea. I have sometimes dropped the price bartering for something I want from them, so in effect part cash part barter.

aletta

Gleaning Images

2005-05-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

The Croatan Treasury by Heather Blakey

I have never been known for my 'sketching abilities'. This is a skill had been well and truly hidden under my apron. A number of patrons have shared terrible experiences about people making scathing comments about their art. One story that is etched into my memory is from the person whose mother destroyed here Art Work because it was not appropriate

Well no one even bothered to be scathing about mine. I was deemed useless in this department so I have never attempted to express myself with a pencil or paint for that matter. My husband, Darryl in contrast is quite the artist and has drawn from time to time. About fifteen years ago when we were on holidays he was sketching and I had a mad burst and sketched people. Suddenly I realised that I could actually create something that resembled something, so long as I had something to guide me. But I never bothered to go on with it and have not sketched since.

Anita Marie Moscoso's stories have fascinated me mainly because I have never taken any interest in the twilight zone and horror. Then recently she sent me her story 'Going to Croatan' and I was intrigued by her idea and said that I could see what was happening and that I had a desire to sketch. When she pleaded with me to do a sketch I thought 'right'! Now I have gone and opened my mouth far too wide.

So I checked out the internet and found various images that matched what she was saying. I did feel rather ghoulish when I put corpses into the search engine but sure enough - up came some corpses. I pulled up odd images of doors and rooms and ghoulish votives and other weird stuff and then propped myself up in bed with my sharpened grey lead and eraser and well, what you see is the completed sketches, based on stuff she had written.

Darryl of course sees these images and thinks I have lost it completely. He sees Amazon parcels arriving with books like Dead Men Do Tell Tales and Ship Fever and my references about poisons and alchemy and shakes his head and looks disturbed. Interestingly enough it does not really disturb him too much and I half suspect he thinks it is all a bit intriguing.

It took some courage for me to actually put those images on the blog and I felt weird when Anita said her husband and family liked them, but it took even more courage to 'really' show them to anyone.

I should have known that the folks at Soul Food would be supportive.

Going to Croatan - The First Part of the Journey
by Anita Marie Moscosso
illustrations by Heather Blakey

Years ago, before they walked into oblivion someone turned back and left this message carved on a tree, " gone to Croatan ".

Now it's my turn, tonight I'm going to Croatan; I'm going to Croatan to avenge my own murder.

My name Is Livia Cotard and once I owned a little bookshop at the Marina on the Duwamish Bay.

Duwamish Bay by Heather Blakey

In the front of my shop you would find books sought after by collectors from all over the world. Rare first editions, bound sets, atlases, maps, and a variety of other books that were prized by collectors for their illustrations.

The front of my store is separated from the back by a large imposing oak door. Its hinges are leather and its locks and tumblers are made of wood.

The Imposing Oak Door by Heather Blakey

This is where my real store is; this is where I conduct my real trade.

The room behind this door is a very comfortable library. The walls lined ceiling to floor bookcases. One case has a glass door, the second had an iron gate and others were left open.

Each case held over 100 volumes.

The books were crafted by an unusual group of Authors and had been written for a very exotic group of clients. These were famous one of a kind horror stories among this group of readers and they would spare no expense in collecting them.

The Authors by Heather Blakey

This is how these little treasures were created.

If the Authors were to arrive at a home for a story they always came hours before a funeral and they were never turned away. After a small ceremony involving salt and scented oils they were left alone with the Dead and their work would begin. The Authors would take blank sheets of parchment; sometimes strips of linen or thin sheets of copper, gold and in later years paper and place them over the chest of a dead person. Then the Author would place their hand over the corpse's stilled heart and the story would be recorded.

Authors at Work by Heather Blakey

It was said you could hear the scratching sounds of what was assumed to be pen to parchment and that no matter how much you were tempted that you should never try to catch one of these Authors at work. Not unless you wanted to end up bound in one of those books too.

When they were finished what was recorded on these pages were all the sins and evil that the dead person ever committed. Page after page would hold horrible dark stories and horrific illustrations. Brought forward by the Author's skilled hand, images and words and flashes of smell and sound would be captured then interpreted by the Author and burned onto the pages.

The Authors always left a gift for the stories. Sometimes they left gold or jewels, potions in bottles and sometimes money.

The Croatan Treasury by Heather Blakey

After they left these homes the Authors would take these pages and bind them, and place them in libraries in homes not fit for human habitation.

To read the complete story go to http://gtcroatan.blogspot.com

A Mandala A Day

2005-05-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

Carl Jung made it a practice to colour a mandala every day. Follow his lead and use mandalas as a means to meditate. Thanks to Stephanie Hansen to providing links to wonderful, free, mandalas to colour. You will find the links to these mandalas in the side bar, easily accessible for those wanting to make mandala colouring a daily practice.

I am sure that there will be a surge in sales of Derwent Colouring Pencils after today.

Paper Doll Colouring Pages

2005-05-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

Sylvia Kleindinst has provided these links for colouring after a request from Gwen Myer for material for her mother to use with patients.

The one for the Paper Doll Studio News is:
http://www.opdag.com

A good one for an artist that does tons of characters from books and movie stars is Donald Hendriks—
http://www.paperdolls.com

This one has tons of links and is good for children:
http://marilee.us/paperdolls.html

This one is for art dolls:
http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/dolls.html

This one is for using dolls on the computer screen to dress:
http://www.dressupgames.com/kiss.html
http://www.dltk-kids.com/anime/msaturndoll.html

Templates and costumes for kids to print and cut out.
http://www.scholastic.com/dearamerica/myamerica/paperdolls.htm

Scholastic site has some paper dolls with historic themes.
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/Files/Melissa-dolls.htm

Pam Hastings has a site for paper art dolls and also this one is a good lesson plan
http://www.zippyweb.com/paperdoll/

Here is a dog to dress in many costumes. This idea could be used for girls and boys. Any animal with costumes might be

More appealing to boys with less stigma as a girl thing.
http://www.paperdollheaven.com/
Lots of paper dolls to dress here!
http://www.fancyephemera.com/

Who Is Hanging Out Here

2005-05-26T03:30:00.000-07:00

Take a leaf out of this Grade 2/3 class and find a way to visually depict yourself hanging out here in the Art Room.

dollar store artist

2005-05-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

That's me, the dollar store artist. :-) Found marvelous brushes from china in several sizes at an amazing 10 for 5 dollars with my sister (walk in the neighbourhood) this afternoon, so had to try them out tonight and using paper also from the dollar store and not the much preferred Italian watercolour paper produced these and am not at all displeased with it. That's something because I am not too terribly fond of watercolour. Now if I could come to grips with pastels...

I cannot think that nudes would offend here, but if this is a problem please do tell me, I am fairly oblivious to proprieties where it concerns art, but I do realize not everyone feels that way.

aletta

At Last, My Introduction

2005-05-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

Hullo Dears,
I am finally getting around to introducing myself!!! I know, I am a slowpoke, as well as a lousy journal writer. Despite being in the E.R. for my hand again and being in La-la Land from prescriptions added that night, here we go...

I'm Gwen M. Myers, and obviously a Professional Crazy Lady. Anywhoo, I'm supposed to tell a tale of how I came to the visual arts. There is not much to tell. Other than two unforgettable art instructors through middle and high school I am mostly self-taught. I developed my own standard according to what I liked. I was stunned by Salvador Dali's pencil of The Crucifixion, so that became the standard for my pencil work.

Unfortunately, despite wanting to paint badly, I cannot. Fortunately for my sanity I bought myself a digital camera about 6 months ago. I have been taking a lot of pictures, almost 1900. So... in lieu of 'new' artwork I shall submit some photos that are "Accidental Art"

17:Pye and Skye looking at the Wide, Wild World.
9: The hellcat in a pensive moment.
10:How the floor must see Pye's feet...
11:A good portrait of Pyewackitt P'Wacko Sneaky-Pants (aka Pye).
13: An almost perfect portrait of Sweet Lady Snowspryte Skye (aka Skye)

2005-05-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

Rita Blitt - Caught in Paint

Caught In Paint

2005-05-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

My daughter-in-love Laura gave me an incredible present for Mother’s Day. It is a framed, signed print by the artist Rita Blitt from an amazing artistic session that was captured in the short film “Caught in Paint.”
http://www.ritablitt.com/books_media/film_videos.shtml
This is a six minute video featuring Blitt painting on four by eight foot transparent surfaces while members of the David Parsons Dance Company are seen in mid-air, behind the transparent surface, imitating the dancing lines of Blitt's paint strokes. Actually, during the session, the creative impetus goes both ways. Part of the time Blitt paints and the dancers reproduce the lines, part of the time the dancers dance and Rita Blitt paints what she sees through the transparency. The photographer on the project was Lois Greenfield, and the collaboration of paint, dance and photography is really something fantastic. My Laura works for the Ashland Film Festival, which showcased “Caught in Paint.” She met Rita Blitt, told her that I had been ill and how much I would love her work, then asked where she could buy a print for me for Mother’s Day. Rita Blitt gave her the signed print, which she then had framed for me.

I have always loved collaborations between the arts. I taught dance using poetry, literature, art and music and taught poetry using dance, painting and music as well. The synergy on this particular project was really fascinating. I told Laura that now we just need to get ourselves some really big plexiglass and try it out ourselves!

Rita Blitt’s art is all interesting.
http://www.ritablitt.com/homepage.cfm
I found the sculpture that she does from her own single line drawings especially intriguing.

2005-05-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

China Colored Fae - After Warhol

2005-05-06T16:39:00.000-07:00

PINK MERMAID DELIRIUM DREAM - In anticipation of "The Magic Beach"

Magic Beach Project

2005-05-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

This semester I am presenting a unit of work on the 'Magic Beach' by Alison Lester to students ranging in age from Prep to Year Eight. We will be working to present a variety of art and multi media responses to the text. To learn more about 'Magic Beach' read this review by Dan Hurburgh. Hurburgh is Australian writer with a passion for maritime history.

A rhyming story line in a child's picture book seldom works well. They often seem so contrived and sometimes downright corny.

Not so in Alison Lester's 'Magic Beach'. This book deserves the status of a classic in contemporary children's literature. In fact, the book is regularly listed in the Best Seller lists in Australia, where the author resides. ...

All children love the freedom and fun of a trip to the beach. Alison transports us to one of the childhood's favourite playground, that place where the land meets the sea. The real joys of beachside fun are joined with pleasurable and harmless seaside fantasies.

On alternate pages, we are taken from beautiful realities to even more captivating fantasies. We go from a scene with a sparkling sea to an exciting world where we can ride waves pretending they are "wild white horses". We go from sandcastle building to a land of fire breathing dragons. We explore rock-pools and their magic world of starfish and crabs, and then go to an evenmore magic Kingdom where we can ride seahorses.

The beach is still magic when it's a cloudy and gray day, our imaginations will help us discovered a treasure chest. We can go boating in the safety of bay, and then let the wind and our fantasies take us to the "edge of the world".

We fish and laze on the jetty, and in our daydreams, we catch a monstrous shark.

It is now evening-time, we are toasting marshmallows around the glowing fire, and in the shadows, there may be smugglers hauling in crate-loads of booty.

It's time for bed, and to the sounds of the ocean, we drift off to sleep on the evening tide.

This is a fabulous book which has universal and popular appeal.

Here in the art room I figured that some people may be interested in creating art work along-side students. One of the projects I will be undertaking is 'Stories in Bottles', including ghostly stories to tell around the campfire. We will also be making a group quilt to depict elements of the story.

I plan to have a page set up at Soul Food so that you can view artwork and so that I can display work that participants contribute. On this page there will be an outline of the unit of study which covers the seven ways to learn. There will be Verbal, Mathematical, Visual/Spatial, Kinaesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal activities provided.

If you are interested in participating just send an email to me at heatherblakey@iprimus.com.au with the subject line 'Magic Beach Project'.

2005-05-04T01:05:00.000-07:00

Parrish - Daybreak

2005-05-04T01:01:00.001-07:00

Hughes - Midsummer

2005-05-04T01:01:00.000-07:00

Waterhouse - Destiny

2005-05-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

Leighton - Flaming June

2005-05-04T00:59:00.000-07:00

Monet - Nympheas

Astigmatism

2005-05-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

Everyone in my family loves the impressionists
They fight over the genius of Renoir and Monet
Sigh at the delicate blues and greens, saying words like "subtle" and "elusive"
I've always thought them very pretty too
Very pretty
Pastel
Puddles

I wanted the clear radiance of myth
Waterhouse's bite your lips blood red
Leighton's lusciously blooming sweet sunset orange
Hughes magic midsummer midnight green
Faery dusted with glitters of gold
I wanted the air castled unreality
Of an absolute, improbable sky
Drempt forever in
Maxfield Parrish Blue

In a museum in Italy
Standing in a long room full of Monet
after Monet after Monet
After Monet
I am struck to silence
I watch the paintings stretched into the distance
The fluid, graceful, liquid lines of watered greens and blues
And suddenly realize
I am the only person in my family
Without
Astigmatism

©Edwina Peterson Cross