Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Day 37

This was another camping trip to The Chesapeake Bay, during which we took a day trip to the boardwalk at Virginia Beach. We found this magnificent sculpture of Poseidon, the God of the Sea. We enjoyed the juxtaposition of this beautiful octopus to my round pregnant belly.

My partners in everything, Ken and Jean-Baptiste.

Ken discovered this little fellah' off to the side, all by his lonesome.

Another little loner...

Day 36

I took these pictures while on a camping trip with my family at The Chesapeake Bay. It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen...well, in my waking hours at least. There were just dozen and dozens of jellyfish washed up on the shore. Many of them lay gathered in groups, dying under the hot sun, and others were cast far off by themselves, long since passed. I even went back to the beach that night, while my family was sleeping, and just walked the shore, finding more and more jellyfish the further I walked. I eventually sat down in the middle of a large cluster, and spend the rest of the night there, watching the sky and feeling blessedly small.







Day 35

"Do you know what I would answer to someone who asked me for a description of myself, in a hurry? This:

?? !!

For indeed my life is a perpetual question mark--my thirst for books, my observations of people, all tend to satisfy a great, overwhelming desire to know, to understand, to find an answer to a million questions. And gradually the answers are revealed, many things are explained, and above all, many things are given names and described, and my restlessness is subdued. Then I become and exclamatory person, clapping my hands to the immense surprises the world holds for me, and falling from one ecstasy into another. I have the habit of peeping and prying and listening and seeking--passionate curiosity and expectation. But I have also the habit of being surprised, the habit of being filled with wonder and satisfaction each time I stumble on some wondrous thing. The first habit could make me a philosopher or a cynic or perhaps a humorist. But the other habit destroys all the delicate foundations, and I find each day that I am still...only a Woman!"-Anais Nin



These are but a few of my tattoos, and these are masterpieces, indeed. All work pictured here was done by my dearest friend and creative genius, Nutchild.

Day 34

"Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them."     - Henry David Thoreau


I often get asked about my body modifications, and I never knew just what to say...it is something so deep and personal, that even if I could sum it up in some simple way, I am not sure I would want to tell. Stretching my earlobes is one way I have modified the substance of my body, and I am quite pleased with the results, both aesthetically, and spiritually. The lovely, hand-carved earrings, made from water buffalo tusk, were a gift from Jean-Baptiste.

Day 33

An impromptu, imagined tentacled friend, created with the help of my friend Heather, one beautiful day at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens with our children.

Day 32

A collaboration with my dear friend, the lovely Heather...my art, her artful hands. See her beautiful project here:  http://365daysofheather.blogspot.com/

Day 31

"We would be warm below the storm
In our little hideaway beneath the waves
Resting our head on the sea bed
In an octopus' garden near a cave

We would sing and dance around

because we know we can't be found
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade"


-The Beatles











I always loved that song when I was a child. Ken and Jean-Baptiste and I painted this while I was pregnant with Griffyn, and it has hung where he sleeps ever since.

Day 30

Collaboration without consent...
My partners have a way of throwing out perfectly good drawings, and I have a habit of saving them from the trash and hoarding them away in a box. This is one of Ken's discards, with a little addition of my own.

Day 29


"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions." - Leonardo da Vinci

Day 28

"If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson

Day 27

"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." - Jean-Paul Sartre


 

Day 26

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Camus


Day 25

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself." - Henry Miller




Day 24

"Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is - and still not caring." - Tom Robbins
I want to help you...

Day 23

"There are moments when even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of Hell."- Edgar Allan Poe

  
One look at that fantastic face...

Day 22

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to the affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."    -Albert Einstein




Some embracing tentacles, hand-molded in polymer clay.

Days 19, 20, & 21

"I look just like the girls next door...if you happen to live next door to an amusement park." -Dolly Parton

Amusement Park #1

Amusement Park #2

Amusement Park #3
These pieces are collage on wood plaques, with stains and inks.

Day 18

Just a quick sketch, while waiting for some banana muffins to bake...

This piece is just ink on paper...


"I sat there for three hours and did not feel the time or the boredom of our talk and its foolish disconnection. As long as I could hear his voice, I was quite lost, quite blind, quite outside my own self." - Anais Nin

Day 17

"What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements."    - Anais Nin



 This piece is made from a wooden box, stain, faux-copper, collage.

Day 15 & Day 16

"The mark of a wise person is being able to reach beyond the truth, to admit they can learn more than they already know. A wise person doesn't string together the beads of unrelated events into a necklace simply to have something they wish to see. A wise person sees the truth even if it is something unexpected. That is the most beautiful necklace to wear - the truth."   - Terry Goodkind




 I made these matching necklaces from collage, small panes of glass, and some copper.

Day 9 ----> Day 14

The Executioner
 In the images I create, I hope to weave stories...sometimes it is intentional, but more often it is not until I sit back and observe the finished piece that the characters and their stories fall into mind. When I search for images to use, it is always some little thing that catches my eye...the look of determination on the face of a child, or the way the leaves in a botanical print seem to sway on the page...I am able to store these images and the feelings they evoke in my mind, and then gradually, the more I shift these images in and out of focus in my mind's eye, arrange them and rearrange them, the idea slowly makes itself present.

What story do they tell you?


The Scientist


"But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner."   - John Donne








"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."    -Albert Einstein

The Tentacled Bust

The Anemone

The Explorer



 "We shall not cease from exploration and then end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started...and know the place for the first time."   - T.S. Eliot

A Dreamer
The above pieces are all collage on wooden plaques, with stains, paints, and inks.