Reflection & Illustration Friday: LEAP

[all images Googled] Oddly, happily, and synchronistically, as I've been writing this word over & over in my journal for the last week, it turned out to be the new Illustration Friday theme word. LEAP. When I was a gymnast, my favorite event was the balance beam, and I was the definition of the word fearless. I was fearless because I was haplessly, hopelessly, completely in love with that apparatus and my own self, on it, over it, elevated by it, in tune with it. I loved the feel of the wood, the smell of the wood, the line of the wood, the rounded edges of the beam, the sensation of elegant, lifted flight whenever I even looked at the beam. Oh, we had our differences. I often sported big ugly bruises, twisted ankles, dislocated shoulders, callouses ripped open on my feet and hands ... but it was love-work on a relationship that was deeply personal to me, my sense of myself, my sense of what I COULD do, COULD conceive of being. And it was lyrical -- movement, trust, grace, work, practice, detail, athleticism, exhaustion, commitment, magic, and, yes: LEAPS. Lots and lots and lots of LEAPS. I was 5'-8" tall in 7th grade ... unusually and unpopularly tall for a gymnast. But when I leapt, it could not be missed -- certainly not by anyone watching, and absolutely not internally.

I haven't leapt, in that same oneness-of-mind-body-spirit, in a long, long time. My connections to and with visual art have been very grounded, like twirling and bouncing but on the floor exercise mat ... music accompanies me but there is caution, still, inside me. However, the adventures my art has introduced me to have slowly infiltrated my life, & strengthened my leaper-spirit, in larger ways, and now that I have reached a place that requires me to make a professional leap, I realize I'm ready, if out of practice. I'm scared. I'll frankly admit it. Sometimes a comfort zone is really just a place of habit, a place of 'settling for' and 'putting up with' because there's some kind of pay-off. For me, my job the last 3 years has been both of those to the maximum. "Settling for" a neurotic and profoundly unnurturing environment, and "putting up" with it because for the first time in two decades, I was working only an 8 hour day, and absolutely no weekends, and for the most money I have ever earned in my career. In the construction industry [my field], this kind of schedule for an administration position is literally unheard of. Ten hour days and taking work home, working at least one day every weekend, and more often than not BOTH days - that was my life for 20 years. Read? Plan a family trip on a weekend? Make art? Let alone write at any length in my journal that wasn't just gripe gripe gripe about work? Please! Fantasy! Fiction! Didn't happen.

But "settling for" and "putting up" with never fail to become toxic, and I've been swallowing the toxins to the point that my reserves are wimpish and weakened: my reserves of self faith, self esteem, professional confidence, eagerness for challenge, innovative thinking, autonomous professional behavior -- all of which coincide with & would reflect my interior, my art, and my writing. None of that sort of thing is invited or welcome where I've been. I work in an environment of individuals whose idea of progress is that nothing change, not one minute detail of any single or combined element(s). Truly: a living death. And, inevitably, even a strong-minded, change-seeking, risk-taking individual such as myself forgets what a leap even is, let alone that she knows how to do one pretty darned well.

The Universe sent me my ULTIMATE SIGNAL this morning -- the details don't matter and wouldn't tell the story anyway, but you know: it was the proverbial 'choke chain & leash that dashed the winged leaper's heart to the ground one too many times'. Only this time the leaper who is me realized -- "Hey! Wait one second, here! I CAN fly and why in the world HAVEN'T I been flying and let me go dust those wings off and root them right back into my spine where they belong. It's time for take-off."

I'm a leaper. Never again will I miss the signals: if I am anywhere, or with anyone, where I doubt on a daily, minute-by-minute, or ever-increasing basis that my wings are welcome, it is time to LEAP ON OUTTA THERE!!! Those wings have intuitive little spines & feathers & tickly air-sniffers and circumstance-testers on them, so whether I'm 10 minutes into a job interview or a conversation, I can trust the information they're giving me, trust it enough to act on it. And I can attest to the fact that when you strip them off to accommodate anybody else's comfort level, they set to raising serious hell in the closet where you hang 'em. Mine have been flapping, fluttering, twitching and swatting -- trying to restore my normal sense of flight & lightheartedness into me, for 2 years now.

They're going with me to work on Monday, where certain words and time frames have to be declared. Wherever I am, from now on, it's going to be that balance beam and me again -- movement, trust, grace, work, practice, detail, athleticism, exhaustion, commitment, magic, and, yes: LEAPS. Leaps into the future, the unknown, the place where discoveries can be made!

Reflection - Life First

Tonight, my youngest male child has a basketball game. He hasn't been telling me about his games, and I finally pinned him down. Guess what? He felt like he'd be interrupting me in my studio, that I'd rather be making my art than go to a game. [It took 2, 821,977 carefully posed, casually asked questions, over a period of 6 weeks, to acquire this, the real, answer.] When I'd begun to sit stewing in my studio feeling sorry for myself thinking he was 'dissing' me because I'm not a hoop-star, like his Dad, like his brother, so he didn't want me there issuing my lame "Rah Rah Go Kevin's"!

REALITY CHECK.

So tonight I'm not reflecting at all. Instead, Double BB and I are swooping up My Lovely Mother and riding off to watch said youngest male child hoop-it-up. I'm taking the MuthaCam and attempting some action shots, but if it gets too distracting (for me, for others) or if I end up feeling too distanced cuz I'm behind the lens, I'm shutting it down and focusing on my Rah Rah Go Kevin's!

Art can't be made from a base of only isolation and art. Art needs that Intravenous Life Feed. And I don't want to be absent for my injections anymore!

Toodles.

Reflection - Living as Art - for Joe Debolske

I don't have any pictures for tonight's Reflection, only words. Only words, in a world culture hyped up on speed, abbreviations, acronyms, emoticons, & life in turbo in the guise of human communication. A world culture that, interestingly, reverts instantly, instinctively, to the primal fundamental wish to shift from turbo to REVERSE in the face of death, and then has nothing but words left. Words like 'Why?' And 'Oh, God!' And the wailing, prevailing 'NO'!

Pictures do NOT always speak 1,000 words. This has been that kind of week. Pictures of grisly bus crash wreckage in a cold, barren, dark canyon = too much information. Pictures of a perfectly alive young man, now dead = too little explanation. You see, it was words that gave me the truest sense of Joey DeBolske's life. Some words provided specifics: hockey, humor, and bonafide helpfulness. Other words provided the ongoing voice to my confusion, grief, and sense of impotence.

No, words are not enough. Not even close. Words are no substitute. Words are echoes of grasping, gasping hearts. But they communicate nonetheless! What I have known in Joe's mother, Peggy, and his Aunt Terrie, his cousins (my other sons) Aaron and Cory, I now know were living aspects within Joe. How glad I am to know that! And what I didn't know about Joe seems very small in the face of the testimonies of SO MANY, giving evidence to the imprint his life created, so indelibly. I want to remember for all of my own life this sensation I carry with me right now that Joey is everywhere, as opposed to 'just gone'! I want to tell everyone of my certainty that Joey is permanently breathing through the hearts of his parents, his brother and sisters, his aunts and uncles, his amazingly broad circle of family, friends, acquaintances, and hockey buds!

No, it's not enough. Not even close. Wouldn't we all take Joe back, instead, in one beat of those remembering hearts? Yes. Absolutely. I, personally, would love to actually see him hug his mom. Still, it's obvious from my words, your words, OUR words, that Joe took his moments, one by one, and created a personal art of living which is now his legacy. And I'm so glad for that, too.

Rest sweetly, young Joe. Rest quietly and at ease. Your life's imprint encompasses more than you might ever had had occasion to imagine, comfort both small and also magnificently large for those here to mourn, remember, & celebrate you, for those here who will keep your legacy alive.

Reflection - Listening

[All quotes & images used by permission of the artist.] Shhhhhh. Shhhhhh. Yes, that's it, shhhhhhhhhhhh. Art is ingenious at somehow silencing, however eventually, the raw, the coarse, the blunt negative voices that hover in our brains. Shhhhhh. You see? They're gone! But what do we do with our open mental meadows after the dark weeds retreat underground? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Shhhhhhh. It's all right to be still. It's good to be hushed and grateful for a moment. And then?
ASK YOUR ART: What do you want? Because it's not quite the same as asking yourself, "What do I want?" Strangely, our art is both ourselves, and not ourselves at all. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
The artist Vanessa Valencia was recently featured in the article entitled 'Paper Dancing' [Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Somerset Studio, pages 80-83]. No artist's work has struck me the way Ms. Valencia's beautifully elegant, dancing, and dressed paper-pieced women have. I wrote a list of words in my journal, in response, because individual words were all I could manage: silken. lilt. wistful. fragile. lace. breeze. sultry. womanly. airy. private. pirouette. multi-lingual. And those are just the first twelve of a list that went on for a page and a half in my comp book. Finally, I sent Ms. Valencia an email, asking if I could please [please! please!] use images from her blog for my own 'Reflection' series. Vanessa emailed me back almost instantly. "Oh Toni. You made my day, my week, my month, my year (hahahaha). That sounds positively perfect! Yes, you are given carte blanche to use what you wish from my blog for your little feature." And then I boldly asked for a quote, because while I loved the one in the article, I didn't want to steal from Somerset Studios. "Okay, let's seeeee ... How the paper dress girls came to be. One day I painted a girl ... and she swung so happily from a swing, but she felt incomplete to me. I always have papers and glue on hand. A thought popped into my mind! Paper dresses!!! And there you have it. I have not been able to stop since." Shhhhhh. Vanessa listened to her art. All of us have an artistic instinct which helps us sense when a piece needs more, or less, or when it's done. But LISTENING! ["What do you want?"] This allows the art to speak, to let us know, "I need a dress" -- when we might have believed it needed a kite and 2 birds. And when we've listened, we too might find ourselves unable to stop.

Reflection - Matters of Mojo

I spend a lot of time muttering to myself about My Mojo, singing woeful little ditties like, "Oh where, oh where has My Mojo gone? Oh where, oh where can she be?", and shooting fast-but-surreptitious glances over my shoulder in case My Mojo is ducking around behind me. Sometimes it seems like My Mojo packs up & jets to Orlando whenever I'm actually going to have time in my studio, like this upcoming 4-day weekend, or the one night in a month I don't have to drive either of my male children somewhere. This picture, though, of Miss Zoe Toes, suggested a truly dastardly thought which is going to require 12 years of psychoanalysis for Toni unless I reflect on it here. That thought was, "Eesh, blimey, & shite, maybe My Mojo is actually always around, somewhere in my close proximity, but skulking & keeping her distance because she feels like I'm taking her for granted." Zoe, for instance, is here sitting motionless by her scratching post because I just shoved her boom-boom off my studio desk, for the 3rd time, so I could write this blog. The way she's looking at me, it's daggers, Baby. She's silently reminding me, "Hey, what happened to wax-paper-wads on Friday nights? What happened to digging out all the bottle caps from under the fridge and your studio desk and us playing soccer and tag? Now it's just blog blog blog. Don't you love me anymore?" Oh, the guilt! === interruption to play wax-paper-wads with Zoe for 10 minutes. == I think I'm equally guilty of treating My Mojo in just such a blase way. Horrors! No wonder she disappears when I'm most in need of her. "NEENER!" quothe she. "Catch me if you can!!" Truth is, My Mojo (& yours, too) really wants to be caught. But if she can make a game out of it, all the better. She's probably just hiding in a new secret spot directly under my nose. Or knees. My Mojo (& yours, too) watches as I blog-surf, glance over my shoulder, peruse every back issue of every Stampington publication I own, trying to find her. My Mojo (& yours, too) watches in dumbfounded amazement at my continuing dumbfounded dumbness. But she's patient, she enjoys the game. She tootles & whistles every now and then, "Over here! Warm! Warmer! Cold, no really really ICE cold." When I start to give up, that's when My Mojo gives me a little help. "Hey there!" "HEY!!!" "I say, I say HEY!!!!!!!!" I have to confess, if my dumbfounded dumbness continues for too very long, My Mojo's claws come out. Her claws, followed closely by a spew of profound expressions, like, "I've been telling you for a month now to get out that origami paper, cuz I have an idea, but noooOOOooo, you don't want to 'go Asian' right now." Or suchlike. My Mojo don't tend to beat much around the creativity bush. And if I still don't listen? Eesh. Blimey. Shite. Ever had your mojo pop her head out, contorted into her 'ax-murderer' face, and shriek, "I SAID ORIGAMI PAPER! ORIGAMI PAPER!!" Or suchlike? I'm not only sewing impaired, it seems, I'm mojo-impaired. It wasn't until this very writing that I realized this about myself. That'll be another 12 years of psychoanalysis for Toni, thank you very much. Up until now [my moment of enlightenment], My Mojo (I don't know about yours) has just given up and emerged, muttering, "Pardon me, you blatherskite blond, while I just go GET the origami paper." Or some such. My Mojo (& yours, too) just wants to play. An apple green Sharpie, the sweet smell of Mod Podge, a metallic acrylic paint -- My Mojo is easy. The only critical criteria are a) my willingness to give her my undivided attention and b) my utter surrender of my compulsive need to commandeer the whole show. Zoe is easy, too -- wax-paper-wads, or else one of Double BB's flat, lukewarm bottles of Coors Light abandoned on my studio desktop. PLAY! ATTENTION! Then watch the creativity games begin! It's really that simple for My Mojo. Maybe yours, too.

Reflection - Storytime

Do you remember this? Safely tucked against someone warm, someone special, someone taking a long lingering evening to read you a story? Or holding still and breathless as you read a story to her for the first time?! How much this reminds me of everything good and pure in art, whatever its form. We are the tellers of the tales, via fabric, paint, beads, clay. Somewhere, someone sees our work and mentally climbs into our laps to hear more, to hear the rest, or to tell us the story she is experiencing because of her encounter with our art. Our humble little art!Mom and Ciera carefully sounded out and counted the letters in all of our names: D-a-d-d-y, T-o-n-i, C-i-e-r-a, B-o-b-b-y, U-n-c-l-e C-a-m, G-r-a-n-d-m-a. Every letter mattered; each was spoken with a whisper of emphasis and a matching reverent finger. We guess and second guess the most simple of elements in our art -- this word or that, which stitch, is this the best color? When our heart knows, usually right from the beginning.We erase & gesso-over & re-stitch, but why? Overrun with fear of result, forgetting the tale being told, not allowing ourselves to pause and enter our own story. To receive the story we are interpreting, and then giving forth. A-r-t. C-r-e-a-t-e. Instead worry, fretting, stress, tension, attempts at perfection. Oh but it's the story itself, the receiving of it, the making of it, like life, that transmits and communicates the art (& the heart), isn't it? Just like Mom, worrying that she would be too ugly in these photos for me to post them -- but have you ever seen anyone more beautiful? My mom, Ciera's Grandma, holding her granddaughter close and counting name letters, their hands and hearts meeting, touching, moving, moments not to be missed or done over, PERFECT IN THEIR MAKING. Every moment we give to our chosen art is equally valid, equally lovely, equally priceless. We must learn to see, to feel, to hold onto the depth of it and forget any labels, especially those like 'ugly'. Don't you make art out of sheer love? For the making, the idea, the challenge, the process, the play, the stillness, the excitement? Like a story, like storytelling, like nestling in the lap of our own beloved imagination and there is no judgment there, no fault-finding, just acceptance, curiosity, and letters to count with endless f-a-s-c-i-n-a-t-i-o-n.

Reflection - Gingerbread Houses

Today, my younger brothers (the twins) turned 41. Chris emailed early in the morning that at 11:30, he was going to visit Ciera's class and help them construct gingerbread houses. He thought it was cool that he would spend part of his day doing that. [I thought it was cool that HE thought it was cool!] After, he wrote: "I like this picture. The teacher was giving the class instructions and Ciera was thinking seriously how she was gonna decorate her house!" Isn't that just how it feels, inside? That silent contemplation, the quiet gestation of 'The Idea', as we sit at our studio desks or potter's wheels or sewing machines at the start of something? It's the most serious, yet exhilarating sensation to have: beginning! Arting, making messes, fiddling around, goofing off creatively -- all of this returns us to the low wide tables of our first grade classrooms, to the awe in which we held our teacher, the 'firstness' of each and every endeavor. When I received this email, I immediately dashed off an answer asking my mom if I had ever even made a gingerbread house - neither of us could recall such an event, but plenty of macaroni shell projects came to mind! Do you remember how engrossing the process was? The thrill of a puddle of glue and a mound of glitter? Back then we were smart enough to know, without knowing, that outcome, result, weren't the point. The thrill of DOING! Now that was it! The discovery of hands meeting material, shaping something, putting our signature colors and favorites on it. And wasn't it easy, then, to ask for help? To raise our hand, to watch the experienced mentor show us, explain again? The excitement we felt was too great to leave room for pride ... a wonderful benefit of being a kid, before the internal critic is ever internalized, before we somehow twist 'asking for help' into 'being weak.' I don't remember, when I was six, the thought of 'doing it wrong' crossing my mind, either. That hadn't come to me yet. A row of pink gummy fruits on the roof with orange glitter? A doorway framed in Good 'n'Plenty? Absolutely, no questions asked, no self-doubting. It seemed so easy to choose then; I was so much closer to an immediate awareness of 'what I wanted' -- what I wanted it to look like, the colors and gizmos and marks and spots of glue that would make it just so, the clarity of the vision. And all of this in spite of the fact that I might never have done a project like the one at hand before. Little children believe -- tell 'em they're going to take a paper plate full of oddball candies and a 4-wall slab of graham crackers frosted together and it will be a BEE-YOO-TI-FUL gingerbread house -- well, their faith is astonishing. And so, consequentyly, is their gingerbread house. Not to mention their excitement in what they've achieved. What we all do, today, as artists, in our adult heads, with our adult schedules and obligations and distractions and critical background voices, well -- can you see that, really, we're just making gingerbread houses again? Our internal 6-year-old is holding her hands out to us, to the glue-paint-brush-crayon-wax-fabric-canvas, with a big cheesy grin and telling us, with all her newfound confidence, "Here, I can show you." These pictures of Ciera reminded me of that. These pictures of Ciera reminded me to turn myself over, back, let the little Toni step up and teach me, show me, giggle with me, and pat ME on the back.

Reflection - Follow Up

I think I'm in love. That five minutes I promised myself last night for mirror-gazing turned into 10, then 15. What a slow dance with visual and memory input! What fun! I alternately smiled, frowned, pouted, then blew myself kisses, just to see what those expressions looked like. I remembered I have dimples. I discovered one errant curly eyebrow in my right eyebrow, and I left it there too! My eyes are almond shaped, with a dark-deep blue outer ring, and a gradually lightening baby blue going in toward my pupil. There are gold flecks in my otherwise very blond eyelashes. I have a chip in a lower tooth I didn't know was there, although my tongue did cuz it's always pressing into the wee little gap. I have fabulous sorta Scandinavian cheekbones, which Double BB has commented on since the day I met him but which I had ceased noticing. My hair is a much darker blond than how I usually picture it ... almost brown, although I did recently color it, some 'sandstone' color out of a box, so I'm not sure what's really what with that. I practiced raising and lowering my left eyebrow for myself -- VERY cool, can look alternately sassy or sarcastic. I know I use it both ways, too, but now I know what I look like doing it! I have little ears and they lay flat. My nose is almost but not quite my Grandpa Andy's nose, a nose I adored on a face I adored so I'm quite proud of that. When I look into my own eyes, I see -- first of all my Dad, because his eyes are a similar color, but I 'FEEL' (inside) the expressions I watch cross my Mom's face all the time. When I laugh, then my eyes remind me of all three of my brothers'. The best compliment I've ever received, delivered to me by a very sad man I'd dated but mostly been friends with, as he was departing, permanently, to live in the South: 'I could pick you out of a line of a million women, even if all your faces were covered except for the eyes. You are alive in your eyes. Nobody has eyes as expressive as yours.' Can you imagine? wow. I still get goose bumps remembering that. I do have a few wrinkles starting to take up permanent residence here and there, but you know? I really like them because they're smile lines. I want LOTS of those, no Botox for this babe.

I think once a week, after I take off my make-up, I'm going to have a bonding moment with myself, in the mirror. After, I felt utterly refreshed, enlightened too, and just -- happy! I liked what I saw, very very much! I liked all the family resemblances, the signs of experience/life mapping themselves out on my features and the impish light that never seemed to leave my eyes themselves. And most of all I liked the friendliness I saw in my own face!

Reflection

When was the last time you really looked at yourself? I mean really stopped! Held still, and peered at your own reflection? Not just for the seconds it takes to poof a flat part of your hair, or refresh your lipstick. But to actually and honestly SEE -- and see YOU? I haven't done that in so long that I don't recall when it last happened. Maybe that's why photos of myself always shock me. Do I look like that? Do I really look like that? We have no official 'dresser' in our bedroom, which is barely large enough for our bed and a makeshift night table on either side of it. The master bathroom, gorgeously redecorated by Double BB, has a mirror about 12" by 30", mounted so high that I have to stand on my tiptoes to see my eyeballs, and I'm a 5'-10" woman. [It's the perfect height, of course, for Double BB to peer at his loveliness without stooping OR stretching.] Because the decor in the bathroom is the most soothing (not to mentioned FINISHED) in the entire house, I will never complain about mirror heights. But that means I end up sitting on the toilet, lid down, to put on my makeup in the mornings, and I use a little compact mirror for that process. But what can I see of myself, in a compact mirror? Just parts, like small portions of a puzzle tended to one-by-one. An eye, the other eye, an eyebrow, lips, cheekbones. Not a cohesive FACE. Not 'moi', in all my glory. Of course, given that I'm not a Tiffany or Jimmy Choo fashionista kinda girl, you probably already guessed that I don't carry makeup in my big ass purse, either. Priorities, dontcha know: makeup? or journal? For me, it's a no-brainer. But that also means I'm never searching out the mirrors at the office or in fast food restaurants to freshen my face, or even check it. Mostly I pee, wash my hands and vamoose without ever even thinking about the proximity of a mirror. And since my hair is so short, I don't have to fuss with that either, although doubtless sometimes I probably should. Once upon a time, we had a $10 Wal-Mart version of a full length mirror nailed to the back of David's bedroom door. It might still be there, actually ... yes, it is, I checked: he's got family photos tucked around the sides of it. But I get ready for work at 5:00 a.m., just about the time he seems to be coming into the house... naw, I'm kidding, but most definitely my GQ-Must-Have-A-Mirror oldest male child is burrowed deep into his blankies at 5 a.m. -- and I'm just not interested enough in that image of myself to disturb him in order to get a gander at it. I'm suspicious of full length mirrors, actually. I've been to enough circuses, carnivals and fun fairs to be fully familiar with the distorted version of mirrors to be found in those places. Those are rather terrifying self-images to see, although once it was cool because I got to see myself actually SHORT. --- Still, it occurred to me that to SEE myself would be a useful exercise. And this occurred to me tonight because I sat down at my studio desk to do a self-portrait, how I feel about this lovely continuing rain we're enjoying here in the desert. But when I got to my face, I froze. I wear glasses, have worn the same frames for almost 3 years, but do you think I had even the slightest notion what shape or color they are? [kind of elongated rectangular, a beautiful bronzey-copper metal color] That boggled the blond side of my brain, it did!! And I only know the color of my eyes by rote, from years of telling everyone 'blue' or writing 'BL' on my driver's license or health insurance applications and such. What shade of blue? Any other colors in there? Almond shaped? Round? See what I mean? Astonishing, to be invisible to myself in such a completely thorough way. So tonight when I go into the bathroom to perform my secret feminine beauty regime, I'm taking 5 and gazing upon myself, to see what I can see, and to swap howdy's cuz obviously it's been way too long.