Zephyr
Soft gentle breeze blows
Takes me along
Disorganizes
Blows particles of thoughts
Dandelion puffs
In bird territory
Zephyr with no mind
No thought to enact
But air-borne sky-borne cloud-borne
In a great rush to gather
Assemble and sweep up
Stand up now and see
Where that spring zephyr has borne you
Don’t be afraid
Your gentle breeze will explain later
Garden Lady beckons with sunshine and dark fragrant soil
Lures the mind with visions of baskets overflowing
Prods with reminders that you must PLAN and PLOW and PLANT!
But caution advised!
Consult your fortune cooky first to gain perspective.
“Keep a level head.”
“Watch what you say (and think)”
“Wish upon a star tonight.”
(but watch what you wish tor)
And:
“You were right the first time!”
Caution advised. An excess of over planning can lead to under performing.
Have you been planning your spring vegetable garden? We have. Maybe you’ve got it all figured out. But our first spring here in the northwest we are scrambling to learn what to expect, pouring over books and taking online courses and staring at our garden plot wondering. . .how ambitious should we get?
Time to consult astrology, the iChing, Tarot cards, Celtic Runes, almanacs, and maybe even fortune cookies? Or just dive in, move the soil around, get the irrigation right, plant and see what grows!
The best way to attract creative energy to a new art studio is to invite The Muses to come and play! Luckily my sketch buddies were game to join me and even engage in a Muse-full afternoon of meditation, mixed media art play, writing, and sharing the results! The studio is just big enough for four of us to comfortably work together. No lessons needed for this group of artists who dove in with no reluctance that I could see!
We started with fluid acrylics and inks on a wet surface, squirted, brushed, scraped and rollered on with some gesso for more texture.
Spring has its goblins hidden among the blossoms
Their eyes are on YOU
They float banshee-like on gentle breezes
Fertilizing soil and seeds
Buds with time release nutrients
Blooms with no choice but to burst
Scatter to the ground too soon
Pink and white petal tears stoking passions
Aches of restless hearts
Goblins know all about fleeting beauty and its price.
And here’s a look at the others’ art!
Spring has now got a toehold in my studio, simultaneous with the draw of the spring garden through the windows. A sweet battle to engage with!
Thank you Muses!
I’m getting back to the mixed media expressive play I’ve practiced for the past 15-16 years, my Muse work. Sometimes if feels a bit like I’m Dumbledore, touching a wand to my head and drawing out images I didn’t know were there, and dropping them into the mist of the paper surface where I can begin to have an inkling of how I feel about “things” in my life.
More often what comes out is not “personal” so much as what I feel going on in the world at the time. Small wonder that cutting and pasting and painting of images accesses some preverbal level, and most recently brought me the war in Ukraine. But the personal image pops in as well. Here it’s the found blueprint of our beloved dining table with the view in Sebastopol! Putting them together as in a dream is an act of conjure.
Looking for a soft landing?
On the way down through danger lands
Flying fragments of previously ordered lives
Upended
Better to stay airborne (if possible)
Search for that dining table with the view
Bundle up that and other memories
To share when the storm dies down
If . . .
Spread arms like wings like blankets over the flames
the floods, the wars, the sorrows.
Bring the comfort of memories
Until the pieces knit together again.
Your world is not made to stay intact forever
So fly high, fly free with eyes open inward where
there is always a place of peace
And no binoculars needed.
laying an egg
a red earth one yet up high
where the view is better
freshly lain and soon to become
the offspring of a week of plunging
back into a well seasoned life
an invitation to do more hatching back
In the north country
where paints wait to be unpacked
birds to be watched
and a new world cracked open
Thank You Muses!
The postscript on the week in California – the piece I painted that day with the Muse Group. And as I harvested these words during our 5-minute free write, I was surprised by the timer going off just as I wrote the words “thank you Muses!” Indeed!
Now the paints are unpacked in the studio; today was a birdwatching day; and the charms of the north country are beguiling me once again.
As soon as I got back home to Olympia over a week ago I was able to move into the art studio that I have been waiting for with great anticipation for the good part of a year. I’ll be sharing some pictures of that soon. But I am now finally getting around to sharing the last chapter of my California visit: an in-person reunion with my beloved Muse Group in Sebastopol.
Since I moved away nine months ago, these ladies, dear friends all, have continued to meet and share their passion for creative expression through mixed media art making. When I said I was coming to town for a visit, they rented a space at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts so we could do a Muse lesson like I used to teach before Covid. It was a rare treat for us all, vaxed and boosted and careful as we all are, we shared time and space and summoned the Muse! I shared poetry and we meditated. Then we stood up and put the whole body into expressive mark making on big sheets of paper with sticks and brushes and fingers while listening to music.
This group no longer needs instruction for these techniques! We moved seamlessly into more painting and collage and then finished with a free write, harvesting words from the images which had come through us.
The day was a great gift to all of us. For me it bestowed blessings on a return to the mixed media Muse work I’d practically abandoned for the past months when my studio was under plastic in the garage. Now I can’t wait to get back to it as I unpack all the inks and acrylics and textures and papers and collage items! And this group will of course continue their rich creative collaboration with each other!
CREATE your dream sofa
and it’s got to be soft in all the right places, conforming
to the body that needs refuge in a mother’s
acceptance of all the natural
accumulated muscle throbs bone clashes sores weariness
one that naturally listens and accommodates
some evenings giving spine support and others
gobbling up the jutting sharpness of a day’s stress
tenderizing it without comment
without correction
without judgement
it’s time NOW for your dream sofa to hold
you with open arms open palms
soft fingers
Ahhhh!
I just watched the new movie Godzilla vs Kong with “the boys”. That might help understand how this art piece came about. Some of that creature action worked its way into my art. The image reads in the dream language of paint and paper to reveal aspects of my current state of affairs!
Toe tapping through the city
After Godzilla and Kong
Got done toppling
Here’s what’s left:
an egg rolling
and it’s got passengers
going somewhere
They don’t know where . . . yet
But it’s got promise
and a space needle
and bright gleaming places
And those toes keep tapping . . .
No earthquakes or tornadoes (or fires or any of the other dries) here where I am in sunny No. California. Not even a storm or even a drop of rain for a while. All’s quiet and familiar, but it’s getting to be time to move on to house hunting in the south of Seattle area. And along with this, there’s a silent and powerful kind of psychic dismantling and reimagining going on. Great for dream action!
One day a week ago the blazing fall colors were what occupied the art-mind-space, so I squirted fluid acrylics paints on the paper and started finger painting madly with them. Then let the piece incubate a few days and did some drawing with inks. Playing with the inks on another piece of scratch paper (the bee and flowers with white), I ended up cutting them out and collaging them to the painting. A rather riotous garden emerged, and then the words.
I doodle at my table
strewn with pencils,
pens, paints, papers
scissors. . .
bees doodle too
with pollen pastels
like this bug eyed one
whose trail I follow
to still the swirl of mind
susancornelis.wordpress.com 