Last week before the big show!

October 23, 11:00 to 5:00pm, Pack Square, Asheville, NC

NC Ceramic Arts Festival

There is still SO much to do, and it is FUN! I have made the work, glazed the work, fired the work, managed the emotions, and here I am. One week left. I am a business person this week. Photographing, making an inventory system, promoting myself, packing, and planning for sales. Fortunately, I weirdly enjoy the left brain business stuff; I am “building a brand.” It feels strange to move a process that has been in place for me as a hobby and self care toward a “brand” and I know this is a way of sharing the work in the world.

Branding and marketing includes spending time on social media. What I understand, as a mental health professional is that spending time on social media may flood the brain with dopamine, making “regular everyday” tasks less exciting and lessening motivation for things like reading, drawing, making art. Social media is, apparently, required to be known in the art world, so dopamine flood it is!

I know that, after the show, I will take a break from it all, go backpacking with my friends off the grid and enjoy my screen time detox. This means spending time doing nothing, letting myself feel bored. In this boredom, the seeds of “what’s next” are planted. This is another thing I weirdly enjoy; boredom. I don’t allow this for myself that often, but when I do, I embrace it. Italians have the term “Dolce far niente” literally “sweet doing nothing.” This week will be exciting and a push and I look forward to next week when I can let myself enjoy the restful sweet nothing.

Glazing at night…

At least I am not alone! These sweet being keep me company while I am working after hours.

Preparing to show- being gentle with vulnerability

The process of creating inevitably and implicitly includes the eventual viewer. To have an audience is an essential part of the creative process. Art is communication, and communication is reciprocal. What an artist is communicating may be something of the essence of who they are and can speak to the places where words fall short. The showing and selling of art brings up feelings and vulnerability that can’t be skipped over, and can be the doorway to the magic of the creative process. Being seen accurately and with appreciation is a deeply human need, and it is vulnerable.

I haven’t really shown my art in my larger community. This community knows me as somatic social worker and therapist, but I have always been artist. How will I be met here? It is always an unknown until the moment of being there when someone sees something in a piece that speaks to them, witnessing another being moved and feeling moved myself. This moment is present even in the beginning of a new piece. Each piece holds a specific energy that has the potential to resonate with a viewer is a particular and unique way. For me, I want the energy to be playful, healing, hopeful, peaceful, and thought provoking. What do I want more of in my world? This is what I want to bring in my completed work.

You are invited to view my work in person at my first ever outdoor festival! I will be in Asheville, NC on Pack Square, October 23, 2021, 11:00am to 5pm, for the North Carolina Ceramic Arts Festival.

https://www.northcarolinaceramicartsfestival.com

Pocket Being…

This little being likes to be held and is the perfect size to meditate with.

Musings... What is Soul?

It is a whisper-like through leaves- of true love.

It is tender- a newly sprouted leaf- an unfurled root to anchor her.

It is old- as old as the ocean bed- memories unremembered stir in the current.

It rests comfortably inside the “I Don’t Know.” 

From here she can make a Difference.

pocket sized angel being

Inclinations

My mother who is an artist tells me, as we surface out of pandemic, that she is starting to feel Inclinations again. I can relate to this and can start to feel some relief as vaccination news continues to be hopeful. This week has been about moving toward a post pandemic life. I recognize that part of our inner work will be about integration. There can be no way to feel the death of 500,000 Americans, never mind the world...well over 2 million deaths. I am completing pieces that were started during lockdown and during the immediate aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

I have struggled with finishing these pieces in part, because the inner work required by them. The Mother piece came from the trauma of Goerge Floyd’s cry “Mama, I can’t breathe!” I am white and I don’t know how to process the awfulness of what I know my black brothers and sisters have been dealing with daily since the beginning of this country.

Inclinations. Emerging from pandemic means beginning to be able to hug family members and feel some relief there and it means beginning to feel feelings that have been too big to process.

Inclinations. Looking for ways to uplift black voices and to address the systemic white supremacy and racism where I see it, in myself and in my world.

Heritage

May you carry this place with you all your days,

the light and the shade of it, the rough and the gay

Deep roots to make a tree tall

the heart free that can never spend enough

And may you find in the wild forest somewhere

A nest of quail that never heard of cage

or fence or boundary,

feathering on you there

The Invisible Wings of this

heritage.

Howard Hanson, 11/6/1974

This poem was a gift from a childhood friend and mentor. I grew up on the edge of wilderness and from this wildness I came to know my strong self. The heritage is this connection with life.

Shining Rock Wilderness

creativity in a pandemic-

This is a piece that I started before pandemic world. The creative process is interesting now, it feels hard to “have the heart” to create. I very much want to, but I am struggling to focus and to stay with the process, I feel like my heart is empty. This piece is odd with the broken wing and floating faces, and I won’t make anything up about it in terms of meaning. Pieces often show a meaning after the fact, and the viewer, of course, brings their own meaning. Meanwhile, I pray for the motivation to keep at it.

“Broken Angel”

Written by Lee Parham on April 23, 2020;

The angel with the broken wing

An Angel sat silently in her quiet little garden staring sadly into the glimmering pond beside her. The wonders of Heaven, the majesty of her place in the universe, and the reassuring grace of her God, none of these could sway her sadness. For you see, she was the Angel with the broken wing.

It happened long ago, not long ago, the heroic moment of choice and reason, when an unselfish act cost her the use of her wing. Her angelic brothers and sisters descended to the Earth, retrieved her broken body, returned her to Heaven where she quickly healed. But as to an Angel’s wing, that takes time as only Heaven may measure.

And so too the nights, in her celestial rest, she dreamed of moments in flight, of soaring from Heaven in exalted grace and lighting so softly on Terran soil, commended to serve as a loving guardian to a helpless chosen mortal. And there in her slumber’s escape, the Angel laughed oh so happily.

But upon each time, she would invariably wake, seeing her reality as being trapped by her situation, bound by her circumstance, powerless to control the simplest of her daily objectives. And upon each time, alone in her garden, the Angel did so weep.

Then simply expected, yet at that moment unexpected, a hint of a breeze rustled gently through her garden and a whisper of a strong loving voice tickled softly on her angelic ears.

“You have forgotten yourself my angelic child, you have lost what I gave to you all from the start. In your desire for purpose, in your haste for achievement, in your longing to be needed, there my daughter, you have forgotten my loving arms and in that, you have lost your faith.”

The Angel stood before his presence, humbled in her stance of propriety, lovingly submissive to the words of her Lord, her anger and sadness quickly subsiding to questions of worth and purpose.

“Your dreams, they mislead you my perfect creation. In the faith of my spirit, in the faith of my love, you are so much more than what you think yourself to be. You cannot be trapped by any situation when all possible moments are those of my will. You can never be bound by the circumstances thrust upon you for the circumstances themselves collect each second and are always a bidding of my loving will. And indeed, you are not powerless to control your objectives when control is simply an illusion, you have power completely in trusting and believing that it is all of my will.”

The Angel reached for the light, embracing the spirit of all that was said, all that was shared, all that was given..

“Of this I know. You will fly when it is time for the moment as certain then as it is written for tomorrow’s today. Keep your heart full in all that is loving, worry about nothing if your actions are true, and simply believe in your knowing Father and his unconditional love for you.”

And there in her garden, as the breeze carried the whisper aloft, and without ever leaving the ground, the Angel with the broken wing, she flew high on the wings of glory and faith...

Seeking

This piece was an exercise in overcoming gravity. The weight is on one hip and leg. Making sure the balance was just right was a slow and careful process, seasoned with a sprinkle of luck.

The pose may be telling a story of grounding and searching. Her hand rests on her foot, supporting her body and possible preparing to get up. She is called “seeking”