Some images to offer today, after the long hiatus since my last post in September. I was traveling for about a month in the southwestern U.S. and in Mexico, and there was much to take in and experience--hence, less time for creative outpouring.  I think of this site to as a place to share my creative self, not as a place to offer reports of what I've been doing on (hence my longing for a title better than "blog"...), and thus I have been silent. I've also had so many disparate experiences that I am processing many rich bits and pieces rather than a coherent whole. But I am feeling the pull to put forth some of those pieces, and reach out to at least touch you with the light they swim in.

I am thus sharing the eye candy of travelogue-type pictures. I know people do appreciate these, and that they are easy to take in. The photos are more  impressionistic than documentary, but they still convey a sense of some of what I was experiencing.The images have descriptive captions, so click on them if you want to see them full size and clearly identified.

Also, look for an additional post with totally unrelated content, also coming from my heart.

It's just a month since I posted here and I feel the urge to communicate. I've been busy with workshops and a wonderful creative outflow, so much that it's hard to settle on one thing to share. I've been spending a good deal of time organizing my materials (i.e., my crazy collections of pods, bones, etc.), updating records, and going through my older art pieces. All of this gives me a rich sense of how the art is evolving and what is coming through, and I expect I will describe that more in upcoming posts. Since I've been handling so many bones lately, what I want to impart today is some of the energy that I feel with them.  I am thus focusing on some of the recent pieces that incorporate bones. Note that the photos are working shots--not final documentary images--and in some cases they show not-quite-finished pieces. The urge to share some of what I'm playing with overrides the desire to wait for better images.
PLEASE-- if you have any kind of reaction to this work (how do they --or any one particular piece--make you feel? what do they make you think of? etc.), please do share with me. I am hungry for that kind of feedback about what the work brings to others.

TOUCHING SHARPNESS.  11" x 14" Dimensional collage, incorporating fish bone spines. (This piece can also be viewed upside down.)

AUTUMN MIGRATION.  12" square. Dimensional collage: Fish tails, fish bones, paint.   A friend looked at this and (without prompting about what I named it or thought about it) said it made her think of standing in the prairie grasses at just this time of year.

BIRD LEADING THE WAY. (2 versions). 8" square. Dimensional collage: Fish bones, snake bones, bobcat bones, mica, paint. 

THE HAUGHTY QUEEN. 12” high, 10” wide. Assemblage: Handmade paper, fish bones, tree fungus, fish scales, paper-covered stone (the last three materials are not visible on this side of the piece).

(click on the images for a full view.)
Left: THE ASPIRANT. 15" high. Assemblage: Fish bones and handmade paper are visible here. Since the photo was taken, kelp "arms" have been added.
Right: PATTERNING. 20" high. Assemblage: Deer (?) vertebrae, handmade paper, cotton thread.

CHURCH CHOIR. 5" high. Assemblage: deer bones covered with red-dyed gut; rose petal beads. In the final version of this piece, the figures are mounted on a tree fungus.

ANGEL CHORUS. 6" high, 12" wide. Assemblage: Tree cross section, deer (?) vertebrae, clay beads, snail shells. (Can't wait for a better photo of this one!)

FEELING THE COSMOS. 4" x 6"  Dimensional collage: Handmade paper, snake bones, fish bone, shell.

These are images of PRAISE SONG, the installation of nature-based art I created for the Earth Dance exhibit at the Farley Center (for Peace, Justice and Sustainability) in Verona, Wisconsin. It's installed in the Nature Path Sanctuary, a natural burial ground located in the woods. You can get some sense of scale from the photo of my grandson and I cavorting as we put it up.

This piece brings together different aspects of my connection with the natural world. The prayer sticks that send their songs (gratitudes) up to the spirit realm are made from cup plant stems, collected in previous seasons from nearby prairies. Their hollow stems are square and woody, and have long caught my imagination. They are wrapped in sheep’s wool that I spun into (rather uneven) yarn over 40 years ago, and dyed with natural materials such as bloodroot, goldenrod, calendula, parsley, thyme, iron, and fermented indigo. It is a pleasure to let these old dyeing experiments come see the light of day, and in such a praise-worthy setting.  I peeled the bark that contains the sticks from a just-cut tree, and as it dried, it curled itself into a heart shape. The purple stones are Baraboo quartzite, gathered one by one and treasured as reminders of our beautiful nearby hills.
 
The praises or prayers are held in the heart, and in the skin of the tree. The different colors, which come from different elements of the earth, call and bow to all forms of life.
 
 PRAISE SONG and the other installations that are part of Earth Dance will be on view until November, 2019.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other types of praise songs have come through in  other guises--in photo adventures, in work created by participants in some of my workshops, and in my own studio work.  I recently taught at the Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts, a really delightful place that seems out of another time (many of the buildings actually are) in Mineral Point. The gallery below includes images of some of creations that happened in my workshops, and photos (sometimes "enlightened") that I took in town. Remember that images will enlarge and captions will show up if you click on the image.

As indicated above, I've been sensing that I am in some sort of gestating phase right now--that there is something brewing. I am often feeling a little irritable, that not-here-nor-there quality. Some of the things that felt completely comfortable or home-like to me before seem much more bland or unsatisfying now. I'm impatient. I don't really like the restlessness, but I certainly understand that it's a natural phase we go through, perhaps even a necessary phase. The chrysalis time can't be easy. The typical image for the transformation or chyrsalis phase is the way the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, of course, but I've been much more focused on dragonflies, or more accurately, damselflies.  They are an integral part of my kayak time on the lake, and I've just so often marveled at that incredibly light touch as they land on my skin. Here's a musing about that:

      
                              The Light Damsel
 
The damselfly touches down, lands for a moment, and
I feel lightness, the whisper of wind and delicate form
 
Gossamer creatures, flying over the marsh,
hooking up and darting away, about-facing in the air, or
placing their tiny feet on my arm, the kayak lip, or the moving paddle.

Whatever they feel, in their elongated bodies,
they seem the epitome of living light
flitting off, air elementals, sky people.

Not always. The story starts before. 
Most of their lives they have no wings,
do not soar, sky dive and play with breezes.
No traversing the sky,
no wings.
Named nymphs, but not shimmery fairy folk
they move in density, weighted with water, crawling, breathing
through gills, slower, deliberate
and molting, they molt, over and over, maybe for years,
then crawl to land where
slowly, they change.
 
The gossamer grows, the sheath slips off, and yes yes--
two pairs of wings emerge, open,
and wait to dry.
Ready to rise, shimmer, take to the air,
zoom across the pond, four shimmering wings,
embodying light.

That lightness on my skin
hard-won, well-earned, finally,
rising to the sun, gleaming,
the light of freedom, the freedom of lightness,
the light damsel
that carries me away.
-------------

As regular readers may know, my art process is intuitive and usually without a preconceived idea about what will emerge. I do not set about to make representations of particular things or ideas; rather, I start with materials (e.g. bones, bark or other detritus; intriguing papers or fabric; or compelling pre-printed images), and see what "wants" to go with what (to be combined into something new)--what wants to emerge. I typically have a general form in mind--I would know I am working on a figural sculpture, for example, or a mask, or a piece that is part of a series relating to boats and crossings--vessels that take us from one place to another. Any given piece reveals itself in the process, however, and I m always having to I discover what feels right and where and how it should go.

Since the process is fluid, I am often unsure what the piece may be "about" until it is finished.  I have learned from the SoulCollage(R) process to let it speak to me --I ask it to tell me about itself, in its own voice. (In SoulCollage, we ask the finished collage to speak in the first person, to tell it who and what it is and what it wants us to know.) In the last five years or so I have begun to use this kind of inquiry with almost everything I make. It's a form of channeling.

The messages that emerge often repeat over and over, with persistent themes. They reflect back to me what I am dealing with or picking up on--sometimes my own issues, but even more what is going on in the broader energetic field in which we live. Last year I chronicled the way my own SoulCollage cards were tracking the return of the divine feminine. I had started making images about patriarchy and how it was oppressing both women and men, but realized that over time, the images showed that the divine feminine was getting stronger, even edging into a kind of gender-blending. (Now I am seeing this in the culture at large, with the whole non-binary gender phenomenon seeming to intensify by the day).  I documented much of this progression in my blog post of October 10, 2018, so please scroll down through the archives to review that if you are interested.

The same process seems to happen with all the things I make, whether it's two dimensional collage or three dimensional assemblage, or poetry, and it even extends to this blog itself, for my posts follow what feels like it "wants" to be shared at any given time.  It's fascinating to see how this all plays out.

I'll share a few examples today, and (especially if I get any positive feedback) will continue with some different themes in future posts. 

One of the themes that has been showing up for years now is the idea that there are emerging energetic changes that are changing our reality--even beyond the shifting balance away from patriarchy, we are moving into a very different consciousness.  Many of the images come forward with witnessing figures, who watch the changes; other figures serve as guardians who hold the space. Related images show something emerging, or new energies rising up. This kind of imagery may have first appeared in collage form, but it comes through in three dimensional guardians as well. I'll start with some of the collages (this is just a sampling--it's hard to know where to stop!) and share what they "said" about themselves. To get the message and the full photo, click on the image and look at the caption.

Poems that express this same idea have come through too, and again, it wasn't until after the fact that I realized how aligned these are with the images and their messages. (Remember, these appear over a many-year period). Two recent examples:

       The Waiting Ones
They watch closely, these figures,
at the ready, alert,
waiting for the signal, the gate to lower
and the knowing to rush in.
They are your familiars
attuned to the future
and the moment of release.
 
 
          Witnesses
They stand here, still,
awake and waiting.
They know what’s going on.
Holding presence, holding space,
solidifying energy and making it visible,
amplifiers, directing the sound
lining up the structures and
singing silently to the rising notes
of love.
 

Here are some examples of the guardians and witnesses that have emerged
in the three dimensional work.

I do hope readers will share their impressions and responses to this post--to individual pieces and to the whole concept of channeling the energetic field through this kind of art. It seems fairly unique. How does it make you feel? What elements matter most?Where else can I share this body of work (who is supposed to receive it)? What questions do you have? Please let me know. Thank you!