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I have been at a loss as to what to post here lately. My personal artwork seems to be at a stand still, which to me is no big surprise with the events that are taking place in my life right now. This spring break has been about working outside, getting my garden ready for the tender shoots emerging from the earth.

I need this. Solitude. Time alone with my thoughts; nature around me.

I seem to also forget my many projects that I am involved in at work. Murals mainly. I will be starting my doctoral studies in September and two big interests of mine are technology and community-based art projects. I am starting somewhat small with this: a mural in the choir room of the high school I work at and also a community service project in our district at a local elementary school. Students have been working on this project for a year and can bank volunteer/community service hours. This is only one wall of four in the gym/lunchroom. There is so much more to show you.

Here is what it looked like before we started. A big thank you to True Value for donating over 500 quarts of free paint.

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Sometimes when the evening's young
The wind dies down, the setting sun
Crochets the clouds with yarn so fine
And fills the oceans with red wine

The trees, the sky, the forest fair
Bring a flavor to the air
I raise my glass and in a while
You answer with a secret smile

Hold on, hold on to me

An airborne leaf that landed near
Has carried Dionysus here
He'll slip away but only when
He sees our glasses filled again

"Secret Smile" Phish

To my Dad: 1942-2010. You and Ryan are together and that gives me peace. Tonight I raise my glass to you and toast your wild and crazy life.
Love, Michelle

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When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize it's own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

- DAVID WHYTE -

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Crunch time: Monday I go back. Don't get me wrong I love my job,but I savor the time to have PROJECTS. Maybe paint one day, organize closets on another, knit and watch movies, try and finish reading the two novels I have been neglecting. Sleeping more than 6 hours a night. The snow was my excuse to hunker down. Car troubles. Made me feel less guilty for wanting to be alone, nesting, getting to know my house again.


Looking forward to a new semester with new faces, personalities to teach and get to know. **double glup** A new perspective. Renewal. Creativity.

This fisherman's cap has been sitting on needles for months. MONTHS. These fingerless mitts were finished about a year ago. Post, yarn and pattern information is here and here.

New painting ideas have me thinking. Trying to decide a new direction educationally. In my heart I am thinking M.F.A. or M.A., but that takes courage, strategy, talent. More chance of rejection, apparently a day job is better not mentioned. Applied for the Doctorate program at NIU. I feel I have a better chance with that. Maybe...

Didn't sign up for any classes for this spring semester. Curious how I will structure my time. What I will do with the extra time and what will unfold. All the possibilities.

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Cookie exchange 2009
The cookies, white elephant gift, and this year we switched from ornaments to Christmas socks. Felt like a baking ninja tonight.

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There is nothing like painting under the gun. I have my last critique on Tuesday. Started this at about noon today and worked on and off throughout day. Definitely not finished, just the beginning stages, but I like working fast after festering in my last painting, which I feel needs more work. For now a break: I am moving on.

Back to work tomorrow.

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Still need to get my light source right. It should be coming from the lantern. Also need the two back figures in the shadows more and facial features right. Adjust the arm of the girl in the middle.

**Update 11-27-09: Decided the light source is coming from the sky as if they are leaving the darkness and heading into the light.

I will be painting over Thanksgiving break. And home during daylight hours so I can get a better picture.

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Looking forward to a day off work Wednesday and time to paint.

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The upcoming musical "Into the Woods" our high school will produce this spring has me going back to my deep seeded fascination with fairy tales. It has me enjoying creating art the way I did when I was little, sitting at the dining room table with one of those endless rolls of craft paper my aunt use to give me. I would illustrate my favorite stories, mainly romantic fairy tales.




This is the t-shirt design for the fall play. I love that they chose grey on black. Should fade nicely : )

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What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can’t

turn in any direction
but it’s there. I don’t mean

the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same—what shall I say—
moment.

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass and the weeds.
- Mary Oliver

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Once upon a time there was the beginning stages of a painting....

I enjoy how fairy tales use myth and superstition to reflect the human condition. How the woods in these stories play such a strong part in the unknown, the past, the future.

"It's the woods, what do you see?
In all the spooky shadows, in the forest of green....

It's a different story for you and for me
Go to the woods, go to the woods and see"
Dar Williams

How do we experience meaning without fooling ourselves? How to face our fears, regrets, our hopes, and dreams and where to find the answers....

A quest for a lifetime.

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View from The Modern Wing at The Art Institute of Chicago

What a balmy autumn day. What a rainy month of October. On record 22 days of rain. But it has been a beautiful fall.

It was also a continuous rainy day. We all were soaked and a cab splashed me and a student from head to toe with water from an enormous puddle. Lots of laughs, a little bit of art, and a Friday night of exhaustion but relief. Field trips are finished.

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I have been so busy lately with school projects. But I am so grateful to be a small part of my high school's theatre productions each semester. There is something about the collaboration between colleagues that is creative, inspiring; with ideas that bounce and grow..

I am in charge of the poster and t-shirt design. Also working on two different paintings that are far enough along to post the progress this weekend.

Sort of coming up for air at the end of this month. October is beautiful. The light is so very lovely and I am always in surprised awe at its beautiful decay. A melancholy beauty that stirs my soul.

Weekend forecast: our last field trip to Chicago and The Art Institute, my first Bob Dylan concert, and family.

Happy Halloween : )

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Even though I have a million things I should be doing...

Here I am pausing and remembering that not too long ago there was August; summer in my garden, lounging on the couch while watching good and both bad movies. Also, this heavenly soft yarn.

The free pattern to this shawl is here.

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Ideas are percolating and ready to paint again : )

Until then, look at this beauty of an upcoming movie. Can't wait, can't wait!

"Where the Wild Things Are" directed by Spike Jones

More about the movie here

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A Butterfly Nebula

To view more photos of the Hubble's new images of space go here

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To Begin With, the Sweet Grass


1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say–behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings of this gritty earth gift.

2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.

3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another.

4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.

And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.

5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same or we change.
Congratulations if you have changed.

6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some fabulous reason?

And if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—your life—
what would do for you?

7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements, though with difficulty

I mean the ones that are thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the ush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another).

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

~ Mary Oliver, from Evidence

57




I know change is a bad thing,
Breaks me down into a sorry sad thing,
Not some iridescent grateful butterfly.
I'll resist with defiance,
Not the valor of a mystic silence,
I will fight dizzy spiral of goodbye.

And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.

Please don't say you don't love me.
Never dangle any sword above me,
With the kind of change that severs me in two.
Give me amberizing glasses,
Could you slow it down like molasses,
As I salvage my old self away from you.

And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.

Because I have seen insane things,
All those grand, historic paintings.
Morning light on polished swords and burnished pride.
Anxious smiles encased in whalebone,
Spines of steel from head to tailbone,
Cannons posed to blast the turning of the tide.

It's a sad and a strange thing,
But it's time and I am changing,
Into something good or bad well that's your guess.
I'm my own sovereign nation,
Dedicated to a transformation,
Marching on with this target on my chest, oh yes,


And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.
And it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.

*Dar Williams*

to view the video please go here

56


'endless summer' hydrangea



midsummer flowers: purple cone, shasta 'becky' daisy, balloon, yarrow, coral bell, lavender, bee's balm, hysop, 'sweet dream' catmint, aster 'michaelmas daisy', coreopsis

I have been researching all morning my new hydrangea. Three weeks ago I bought it at Home Depot and it was 50% off. Unfortunately, for purchases like shrubs we have to be economical and sometimes sacrifice the quality and variety you are suppose to get with a local nursery. Pretty lucky, though. I have six nurseries in a two mile radius! Hope this will be a hardy plant and survives the winter. I am curious about the soil we have and how it will alter the color of the blooms. Sure is beautiful; delicate and strong.

55


Brooks Farm: Duet 50/50 Kid Mohair and Fine Wool

Self-Fringing Bias Shawl / Scarf
by Greta Dise
A free pattern: the link to the pdf is here

I started felting a pin for the shawl. I am running out of time! Two weeks and I am back at work. Next week I start a few tasks from home. Summer vacation is winding down...

This yarn is so lovely. A link to another project I completed using this yarn is here

A link to the Brooks Farm Website is here

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a fiber supplier : )




My Loot:
Heaven Sent Homespun Soap Vanilla and Sandalwood
3 piece ceramic wall hanging, Lena Wells, Woodstock, IL
Brooks Farm: Duet 50/50 Kid Mohair and Fine Wool
I am going to use their free pattern and make a shawl




angora bunnies
the white bunny was always on the move




Brooks Farm Yarn: Lancaster, Texas
Seems to be our favorite vendor for the last two years



Day Two: Went back with K for felting materials. We pooled our money together and split kits so that we had an amazing selection of color! Bag is full of roving for dry felting and in the front is merino fleece for wet felting. The possibilities are endless: I am going focus on some brooches first


It is hard to imagine a full year has passed since I began blogging. It all started at last year's fair and A inspiring me with her blog and the way blogging makes you think about daily rituals in a creative way. How documenting your life could make the process of living more meaningful, not necessarily by sharing it with everyone and getting feedback, but also slowing down and really appreciating the major and minor, what brings joy and inspiration, and finding a way to articulate and communicate it to yourself and others.

A link to my very first post is here

Today was a perfect day. Tonight is knitting, sitting around our fire pit, warming our fee

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Slow going, this painting

The museum last Friday was extremely busy and it was very difficult to concentrate with the traffic and comments: people taking pictures of me working behind my back, while I see them in the reflection of the glass case was extremely unnerving.

This complaining comes with the realization that The Field Museum is public and I am extremely happy and privileged to have this opportunity to draw inspiration from its collections.

While it is unnerving to work amongst so many people, I feel as a teacher I have learned to channel my concentration, to block out distraction for the most part, but still prefer to work in isolation, so I find it always a challenge to create surrounded by strangers offering opinions; compliments and criticisms.

I am going to finish up the weak areas today and hopefully post tonight the finished piece.

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"Verily all things move within your being in constant half-embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.

These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.

And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.

And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom."

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

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I didn't attend class this week. 3 million people expected in Chicago for the fireworks and Taste so I opted out of driving through that madness on Roosevelt and 90 and stayed home. Next week I will start a new canvas and new subject. I want to head in a different direction.

I remember an instructor once told me that Norman Rockwell wrote about the ugly stage. **(before going any further I am stating this as hearsay, from about 12 years ago, and I may even have the artist wrong, but I still believe it is good advice)** That an artist gets to the stage, a little more than halfway through, and loathes everything about what they are doing; the technique, concept or subject, and cannot seem to find the direction in which to go, to finish. He/or she cannot look with fresh eyes at the progress made.

Been away from this painting for about two days: still flat, colors muted and muddy, the feet are ridiculous, and I need more of a light source. I am a little more than halfway done.

I love to paint: the process, the layering of warm and cool colors, looking at everything semi-abstractly; breaking everything into simplified shapes and forms. Using juicy layers of paint: creating saturated, vibrating color.

Heavy body acrylics, gloss gel medium/varnish, on 20" x 24" stretched canvas.

I am hoping that posting this picture will allow me to really see the progress compared to the last photo. Plan on working on it today.

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My role teaching summer school officially ended yesterday.

I raise my glass: To summer vacation!

Today I enjoyed my day at the Field Museum. This is about three hours of painting. So much to explore and I will be moving on to new subjects and ideas. This class was just want I needed; a breath of fresh air, something to give me an excuse to make time for this.

I will post when I am finished and also include some of my thoughts on why I am drawn to black swans.