Being in Touch

I made a collection of small leather bound journals for our recent Art Chics sale. The simple efforts of folding and tearing paper, cutting and stitching leather, tracing line, and threading needle; were each a healing action, a sacrament to the holiness of hands. I feel awe and gratitude for the many delicate and intricate things hands can do. Their complex motion (each finger moving and tensing seperately) and their finely calibrated sensitivity (from lightly brushing a moth wing to grasping and bending a metal rod) astound me. How lucky are we to have two of them!? Two mighty and responsive hands!

Handmade Journals

Why we cry

I am wrung out and tender this morning, as yesterday I had several epic cries. Not the pretty tears that one might disappear with a sleeve or the side of a hand, but great sobbing snotty affairs that left my face swollen and my sinuses raw. When I cry like this, which thankfully isn’t often, I am struck by how beyond my control, how involuntary it is. The veil that obscures my inner emotional world is dissolved by floods of salt water that pour from unmapped reservoirs. I am made see-through. Why and what for?
We seem to be the only species that cries tears in our hightened emotional states. There is surprisingly little scientific certainty around why we cry. A European theory from the 1600’s asserted that heightened emotions heated the heart which then produced water vapor to cool itself. The vapor rose into the head where it condensed and was released as tears. This theory fits nicely with the cartoon trope of the angry character with steam jutting from his ears. I suppose thats what happens if you lack tear ducts.
Further scientific inquiry has debunked this body-as-boiler theory but no absolute clarity as to why we cry has emerged. I like that mystery. It lends itself to the sensations that follow a good hard cry. I am emptied and wind blown, tired eyed and ragged like I’ve gone on and returned from some arduous, harrowing journey but I am uncertain just exactly where I went.

the curiosity muscle

I’ve been thinking a lot about curiosity lately. This special state of alert, ponderousness requires that all basic needs are being met, that one is essentially safe. It implies an amount of space; time for inquiries that meander, back track, or even peter off. Curiosity is comfortable, even intimate, with mistake making. Aside from the cat, curiosity conjures a contradictory collection of ideas. Imagine the pink cheeked attentive child investigating the anatomy of a daisy. The nosy, condemning, busy body of a neighbor peering and spittling behind a pair of binoculars. Revel at the stunningly productive curiosity of scientists like Einstein, but recall the role of curiosity in rationalizing inhumane and racist, scientific agendas across our human story (the heinous example of eugenics for one).
Curiosity is a privilege and a weapon. It is a high octane fuel that drives human ‘progress’ and innovation. It is neither benign nor evil, more like a slippery shimmering liquid mercury. Please handle your own tendency toward curiosity with the reverence, attention and care it deserves.

More time for tea

With so much less scurrying about, (no traveling to and from work, no picking up or dropping off my girls at school or sleep overs or social events, no going out with friends) I am finding such a bounty of time on my hands. I have time to clean out cupboards, time to try my hand at cello, time to teach our dog how to leap through a hula hoop, time to count geese flocks heading north along our river corridor, time for cooking experiments, time for two walks a day, and time to make a cup of tea in the middle of a work session! What a remarkable aspect of this thing we call freedom, that from within this tightening, this restriction of our social freedoms, emerges an unexpected proliferation of personal freedoms.

Kitchen Butterfly

I made this for work this morning, as an example for students, hoping to engage them with the experience of assembling a cohesive image from random household objects. Another teacher (thank you Puilan) initially put out the challenge of kitchen art and I will admit that I started this process more out of obligation (to that challenge and to building online content for my students) than for pure joy. I was surprised how quickly it shifted me into the flow state, placing items next to each other, gazing, rearranging, hunting in my cupboards which were suddenly transformed to an artist’s treasure trove of odd and beautiful shapes and colors. I really do recommend spending half an hour making your own assembled image. If you do, please share a photo. I’d love to see what you create.

Gazing through a window watching rain and sunshine, I notice...

How each rain drop, traveling downward at a speed to rapid for my eye to track, reflects the improbable sunlight streaming earthward at a speed to great for my mind to fathom.

How the wet rhododendron leaves glimmer and curl like little patent leather shoes.

How the infinite droplets gather on and release from the bright leaves, individuals collecting and collaborating to make shimmering robust bulbs of water that leap and jiggle from leaf to dark wet soil below. Two rhythms in a visual symphony; sky-to-leaf a seemingly unsynchronized, relentless patter, leaf-to-ground a steady liquid drip.

How two chickadees and a junco shelter in the woven branches, under the leaf roof, flitting, preening, wiggling their tail feathers, occasionally wrestling with a twig, for joy? for nest materials? in frustration? I wish I could inquire but I don’t know a word of chickadee.

A Place to Sit…

An unexpected joyous outcome of Social Distancing is the bounty of time I suddenly have at home, some of which I am getting to spend in my studio. This place has missed me and I have missed it. I love the light through the windows and skylight. I love the smell of the slightly talkative wooden floors. I love the table full of materials, waiting where I left them, and I love the chair I sit in at my sewing machine. It is a banged up old wooden chair with no nails or screws, all pegs and glue. It is small, curvy and upright with a nice butt shape to the seat. The chair is beautiful, practical, and patient. It has aged well. The chair possesses many qualities I admire and aspire to.