The Beauty and Power that is U.S.

A little over two weeks ago I set out on an adventure with my two children. I had signed up for a workshop/retreat with Christine Kane who is an entrepreneurial coach - no, as she puts it she is a "mentor to women who are changing the world".

Yes'M. That'd be me. (There are some things that I know about courage and I think that it is about time I let loose with the secret.)


So, because the retreat was in North Carolina, and because of 47 other reasons, one of which being some excellent homeschooling opportunities on the way, I packed up my teens and headed out.

ROAD TRIP!

Yes, we drove. One of the educational opportunities taken by my daughter was to learn to play Navigator. She learned to read directions (TripTiks are great, but not all at once. She learned to ply me with only certain, shorthand amounts of information at a time), make sense of maps (red roads, blue roads and the like), and even use her pinkie to estimate distances. She's been awesome since the day she was born. 12 days of car and hotel room proximity were further proof.

Views of US: The Tappan Zee Bridge in New York.

I grew up near here, and am still delighted by its length, and math. The mid-river perspective of the banks of the Hudson are really too lovely to be appreciate while driving. Bummer.

Views of US: Virginia Highway
Views of US: The Virginia Mountains
It was a little hot and hazy in VA, so we couldn't see the mountains in the far distance, but as we got near I was thrilled. Up close and personal they were soul strengthening. Really beautiful.

Views of US: A Map of US c. 1774 (at Colonial Williamsburg)

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and New Jersey look much the way we expect to see them today, but you'll notice that Maine is a wee, squish of a thing, and New Hampshire and Vermont seem to not have come into the picture yet, perhaps on account of the map-drawer allotting an awful lot of pink to New York. Pennsylvania is only slightly misshapen form our modern maps and I am absolutely either amused or horrified by the straight lines, east to forever, for Virginia, The Carolinas, and Georgia.

"Hi, I'll take my portion straight across here."

Kinda tells us a lot about the mindset of the Europeans on this continent: 20,000 years of history on North America ... GONE. (And yes, I am completely aware that my great...grandparents, on both sides, were some of those Europeans.) They talk that way still -in Washington DC - that the history of this country began with a bunch of folk from across the Atlantic in the 1500's. I think that I keep dragging on about all this to somehow figure out if my children's Asian ancestors were on this continent before mine. I mean, they were. It is just that the history books keep forgetting to mention it.

Well, anyway, The Capitol of US captured all of our hearts and minds. For me, the thought that has gone into the beauty and symbolism of the architecture of Washington is stunning. I could look at it for a very long time.

Views of US: The Capitol Building in Washington DC

Views of US: Lady Freedom on top of The Capitol Building

I grew up near New York and Lady Liberty has long been a favorite of mine. Now I have a new friend.

Views of US: Cousin Barack's House

So, um, yes. Cousin Barack and I have mutual great...grandparents. My guess is that there are several million people with a relationship less multiplied and removed than mine, but hey, it makes our visit to WDC all the more personal. :)

Views of US: Hot in DC

Yeah, yeah, I've already mentioned that, but see? Even the panda thought so. (How cute are pandas??)

Views of US: Power and Beauty

So, since our road trip, my own journey to my own power and beauty has become more clear and more worthy. I still feel honored to have been able to spend those four days with Christine. There is a reason for all of this. It makes me work harder to be worthy of it all. To be worthy of my children. There is so much for us to learn. Homeschooling never stops.

Delight + Excitement

Yes!

By All That Is Good, Here I Am. For the last two weeks my kids and I have been out wandering the wide world.

It had occurred to me that I had somewhat come to a stop in my studio. I needed a great big, astounding infusion of Thrill and Inspiration. I knew it. Then I saw Christine Kane's invitation to work with her in Charlotte, North Carolina in July. I decided to go. My two teens worked it out with me that they would come along for the ride and we'd play "Tourists" on our way back home.

Flowers, indeed.

Christine is warm and sweet. She is also a powerhouse and had to keep restraining herself from "fire-hosing" (deluging) us with information. And this presence, this power, this wisdom is exactly what I needed.

So: SUNNE SPOT is getting a revamp.

New classes.

New books.

New embellished art quilts.

A brand new video and e-book package; well, actually, four of them.
And,

(I figured this out today while driving the last leg of the trip home,)

my logo up there is going to get a lovely new set of colors.

My kids and I saw a Momma deer and her two babies on our front lawn just before we left for our trip. Deer have been a beloved symbol for me since I was little. Read here. (Scroll down to what "Sherry" said.) I also kept seeing people with North Carolina license plates up here in Maine. I just took it all for good luck and blessings.

And it seems like it was, because the trip was some kinda wonderful stuff. A lovely time with my dear-ie-o's, a somewhat cosmic time with Christine and the other women who came to the retreat, and even the mess-up on following AAA's Trip-Tik directions and driving across the George Washington Bridge smack dab into New York City by mistake ... (AAAAAH!!!) (We were told by everyone to leave City driving to the New Yorkers and skirt to the north and west) ... well, it all worked out because I was born and raised north of the City and I ended up recognising the names of the highways and we made it out laughing at our fears of living large in the Big Apple. (O.K., O.K. We were there for all of about 10 minutes, but still...)

So: magic and delight are afoot. Sign up for my newsletter over there on the left and keep up on the "In" list.

I haven't had this much fun in ages.

Come to Paint Papers with me.

From May 2nd to May 23rd I am teaching a class at Five Towns Adult Ed, here in Rockport, all about lavishing brilliant acrylic paint on paper.

Here's the info:
http://fivetowns.maineadulted.org/courses/course/painted_papers_5211

Why paint on paper rather than on stretched canvases? Well, because it is less expensive, and thus gives us a lot more freedom to play. And this is the point of this class. Oh, sure: you'll get bunches of info to take to your next acrylic painted canvas, but the work we'll do layering color on paper will give you rich, fabulous papers with which you can collage, decorate, scrapbook, art journal and design. I will show you some simple bookbinding and card design to get you going.

There is still some room left. I am really looking forward to 4 weeks of pure play. (And you will have a ton of georgous papers to take home with you so that you can play on, and on, and on...!)

On Handmade Journal Making

Good morning. I have been away. Not so much physically, but emotionally. I think that I have been shifting gears. Laurie Adams, the once-potter and now paper artist, used to plan a come-down period after she'd take her pots to a big show. It just takes some time to shift from that "out" energy back to the inner focus of home and studio work.

I appreciate the time I spent in an outside-my-home teaching studio, but the timing wasn't quite correct, and now I am glad to be home with my excellent homeschooling teens. I have gotten our groove re-energized and the solidity that I feel there is spilling around.

Lately I have been getting some calls and emails about my studio work and here is a post about journal making, thank you to S from Alaska. :)

We always have questions about the sizing of our hand made journals. The answers are found in what we use them for, and what they are made of. The focus today is using brown paper grocery bags - the big ones. It is a sturdy paper and able to stand up to lots of paint, crumpling, collage and more. I love working with it.

So take a bag and cut off the edges of the two long sides of the bottom. Then slip your scissors inside and cut the two short sides.

(Sorry that this pic came out sideways!) This wierd little layered and folded piece can be saved to make a wierd little piece book:

Cut the circle of the bag open along the seam in back.

And you end up with a lovely, huge piece of art paper.

(Another crazy sideways pic - I don't know why the computer turns them and won't keep the corrective rotations that I do..)

Anyway, here are two journals that I made with brown paper pages. Both of them had covers - that I made first - from painted cereal boxes, so the size of the boxes determined the size of the journals. The brown paper didn't easily fold into the correct sizes and so I folded the bags in half twice, and then I bound pages that were too long for the covers making some of the pages into fold-out pages where needed to fit the pages into the covers. Check this post to get a few more photos.

Another thing that you can do with the bags is to NOT cut them, but bind them just as they are. Stack them bottom to top and then top to bottom. Fold the stack in half (this book uses 4 big bags) and stitch them together down the middle.

The flaps of the bottoms of the bags make secret hiding places for writing...

And the open end of the bag tops make huge pockets for extra pages, or storage of art materials.

Here is a bottom flap (sideways, grrr) taped up to make a shallow pocket for these three mini-tag-books.

Another brown paper and cereal box book:

Punch an odd number of holes through the center of each signature of paper as well as through the cardboard of the spine - sooo much easier if you make a template, use an awl, and use an old piece of "blueboard" (hardware store) as your surface. The binding here left a long tail of ribbon at the top and I sewed a running stitch down, and back up again. I rather like the hand binding. Thicker signatures are possible. But experiment with your heavy duty sewing machine and see what happens.

And notice how much space I left between the signatures: I am planning on adding many layers of ornamentation to these pages and the wider spine and signature spacing will give me all the room I need to not have the book bulge.

Here is a photo of the flaps that open the spread a little wider.

Another question to consider is whether to bind the book first or to paint the papers first. Here is a journal where all the painting happened before the binding. The journal looks a little neater but functions more like a book (content first) than like a journal (place, not perfection). It's just a choice. There are advantages both ways.

Notice on the yellow page the ripped, uneven edge, and the green paint showing from the other side of the page. When I bound this book I found that the pages kept sticking together and so bound it with paper in between each painted page that is very like tracing paper - that weight and texture. It does the trick.

And the "hand" of gessoed and painted, double sided, is just great, kinda cloth-like, like canvas.

In this pic you can see how widely spaced the signatures are. Clearly, I am not finished yet. :)

As for binding, (if I am not using the whole cereal box) I like, and use most of the time, a strip of cardboard for the spine. The spacing between the two covers and the spine makes the covers very easy to open. You can use a strip of cloth wide enough to span the edge of the two covers, the spaces and the spine in the middle. Glue the boards with gel medium, white glue or whatever you have. Alternatively, a couple of widths of duct tape will hold your book together. And check out the wonderful colors that duct tape comes in now.

Good luck Have fun, S, with your children. I love answering questions. Anyone is welcome to write with more.

Now I am off to quilt a boat. (Pictures to come.)

Crayon Papers Give-A-Way

Early in January there was a post on Facebook about how I could get a free piece of art from an artist friend of mine, Claire. I made the requisite comment to her post, re-posted the offer on my own facebook and got 7 replies. To these 7 people - and you know who you are - I now offer these images from my exhibit at the Rockport Library. Crazy, I know. But very fun to do.

So, you seven: First-Come-First-Choice: Comment here, or email me, or facebook me: give me your 1st and 2nd choices and I will send you an original piece of my art at the end of February when the show comes down. O.K.?

The names are on the left side, above the stitched and beaded papers.

Oh! and thanks for playing!
Yes: (goes to CW)True BlueSeashore (shown sideways)Sacred Journey (going to BJS)Meditation (this goes to AM)Garden Grow (this goes to GL)Daily Practice (claimed by CP)

Crayon Papers: The Exhibit!

After working on my crayon papers for months now I have been invited to exhibit them at the Rockport Library! Please come to the Open House on Wednesday the 26th from 4:00 - 6:00 PM to view them in person. (The detail is luscious.)

I will also be teaching a workshop on Saturday the 29th from 1:30 - 3:00PM. All materials provided. And it is easier than it looks: coloring brown paper with crayons. But then there are a few twists to make it interesting. (There's ironing and crumpling, embroidery, and embellishments with buttons, papers and beads...)

I am so looking forward to seeing you there!

Bible Studies...

Hokey, Dokey: I have a question for you all: What is a Christian?

Did I tell you that I am taking a Bible course? Well, as one might expect, I am getting more, not less, confused. The one that came up this week for me was this one about who - or what makes - a Christian.

I am only reading the Old Testament just now, and I will tell you that the prevalence of rape, and pillage, and murder in our world is no surprise when you read about the behaviors of YHWH. That is one violent god. (If you think that I am out of my mind: comment below and I will tell you how the New Oxford RSV translates it. I am totally shocked.)

So I got to wondering why there is this big story of a loving god. Well, YHWH sings his own odd little praises in Exodus, but... do Christians actually believe that about YHWH?

I started looking at all of the folks who call themselves Christians and I am just at a loss as to what the common ground is. I mean in New Mexico women pray to our Lady of Guadalupe, in New York prayers get sent to any number of saints, and in Georgia men pray to Jesus who is their personal savior. Now the Hindus and the Hopi have multiple divinities too, and I have no problem with that, but why is Christianity called a monotheistic religion? In any state there are Christians who either regularly or pretty much never go to church. In any city you could get a really good argument going over whether Jesus is or isn't a god (again: back to the monotheism question.) Inside the membership of many churches there are lots of different interpretations of the Bible including whether or not God, Moses or the J, E, P etc. sources wrote it. And no matter where you go there seems to be this ferverent urge to chit-chat about original sin and what a bunch of loosers we all are. Is that really the link: that the Christian notion of god is a guy who makes wrong people?

No. That cannot be it.

So I keep thinking about who call themselves a Christian. There is the lovliest minister at the church where I am taking this class. I love to hear him preach about how he brings various theology to bear as he walks through the lives of his community and his family. It is hard work to be a loving person and he doesn't shy from the hard tasks, nor from the delight he receives as he gets support from the god of his understanding. It is an inspiration to listen to him.

But then I looked up Hitler in the encyclopedia. He was a Christian. He actually thought a lot about how his murder campaign was doing "God's work". (You can read about YHWH's cleansing campaigns in Genesis either in the Noah story or in the Soddom and Gommorah story. Or various other stories.) And Robin Hood was a Christian. As was Richard the lionheart. Which is why they both went on crusades to cleanse Jerusalem of the Muslims.

Teresa, and my mother and my father were/are also Christians. So are most of my neighbors I think. So are Southern Baptists, the Amish, Episcopalians, and Catholics. So are the Quakers, who won't fight for religious reasons and GW Bush who started two wars and has the blood of hundres of thousands of Iraqi's, Afghani's, Europeans, Australians and Americans on his hands. And so far my list shows no glaring resemblances.

My big question this week was about whether Christians worship YHWH. Or did the notion of god change by the time Jesus was teaching? (And has god changed more in the last 2000 years? Is god different now?) Because YHWH kills in the OT. A lot and often. He threatens harm and disertion too. And don't even get me started on the cutting babies in exchange for stolen lands deal. Eeew. So how many Christians think that all of this murder and pillage is OK? These teachings seem to be taking their toll on our modern times. Ask Ms. Giffords.

Because I'd say that none of the folks at this class I attend kill or steal anything. They all work daily to be hard working and compassionate people. They sure are being kind to me as I stumble and throw-up my way through the Pentateuch.

Clearly, I have a point of view, but comment to me. What is a Christian? I will stand educated.

Moving

Hello Gentle Artists.

Well, I am here today to make an announcement: I am moving my studio back home. This studio on Route One was in many ways a dream come true. And yet, the timing isn't quite correct.

So here are some of my plans:

***To continue as an art party and retreat planner. Please call me (207-323-1629) and we will work out something wonderful for you.

***To continue teaching classes at community and retail venues in the area.

***To get back to writing books: craft how-to books.

***To re-engage my etsy.com presence.

***And certainly to keep blogging. :)

I liked working with all of you who came to the Studio very much. That was fun and something I hope to do again someday. The short answer is that I need my schedule to be dictated by my homeschooling demands. Blessed Be.