Dewey Goes Halloweening

Not strictly artistic, I know, but I couldn't resist putting a shot of Dewey in his Viking outfit on here. He does love posing and wearing this stuff. Really.

Soul Armour

My first soul journaling prompt, appearing on this blog completely out of order!  I stumbled across the directions for this one fortuitous day on sarah whitmire's blog and haven't looked back since.  I love that this armour was made for a woman.  She looked very strong and peaceful to me, and that's the way I like to feel, too.  The author of that quote is unknown (not me).

What's your Six-Word Memoir

From the book Not Quite What I Was Planning to Say by Larry Smith:

When Hemingway famously wrote, "For sale, baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words.  When the online storytelling magazine Smith asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way, too.  The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking and moving.

From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead") these terse true tales relate to the diversity of human experience in tasty, bite-size pieces.

What's your six-word memoir?  And what would the art look like to accompany it?  I'm thinking about mine now...

P.S.: My six word memoir is this: "Moving Day Tomorrow; No Forwarding Address." I think you would need to think about it for a while to understand. I'd love to hear more of yours.

The Other Side of the Door

I have a book that I've read and enjoyed "in its day" but is really no longer useful to me.   It has such a  really well-made cover, spine and pages that I decided I couldn't possibly part with it -- so I'm altering it instead and giving it a second go-round in life.  I remembered seeing an episode of the Carol Duvall show with a book that had a door set into the cover, so I looked up the episode and found the retailer in North Carolina who makes dollhouse miniature doors, doorknobs, mail slots etc.  Exciting!

After measuring and cutting an opening in the front cover of my book to accommodate the wooden door, I antiqued the cover area with black gesso, molding paste for texture and forest green acrylic paint.  I painted the door a rich, ruby red and then hot glued the door into the the opening. I cut a shallow niche in the pages just behind the door to accommodate its depth.  

I'm planning to include poems and essays inside my "Other Side of the Door" book about transitions and changes, anything that relates to the openings and closings of those metaphorical doors in our lives.  Jona's story (an earlier post, below) was actually the first thing I finished in the book, even before the cover was done.  She inspired me.

Altered Book - Jona's Page

Many thanks to Jona, who graciously allowed me to be inspired by her prose during her first weeks at a new school and to start my first altered book, 

"The Other Side of the Door."

This is the first artwork I've done that I can say I truly

love to look at and that seems finished artistically to me.

Jona, the picture isn't meant to "be" you, though I'm sure

 you understand the symbols in it.  I'm

so happy about it.

Healing Love

The third of my soul journal posts, Healing Love, is dedicated to my cousin MaryAnn.  Visiting her recently, I was sad to see that mental illness has taken her away from all of us,  even while she was sitting right in front of me.  She refuses to take the medicine that can help her because she doesn't believe she is sick and she doesn't trust anyone to tell her the truth.   She cannot be forced to do so because she has freedom of will (even if this freedom makes her a prisoner of her mind) so the best I can do right now is to send healing thoughts to her every day and to believe that one day these thoughts will make their way through the wavelengths of the universe to her imbalanced brain.   I have seen the effects of the power of intention. I know that believing something and asking God for it out loud is a powerful thing, and I do this for her today. xoxo

Soul Journal Lost and Found

Soul Journal Prompt:   Lost and Found

Things in my life I have lost are of course the things that are irreplaceable.   Mom and dad, lost to this world, my cousin who is here but gone to me now, and a piece of jewelry that I will never forget losing because it belonged to my mom from her mom.  What worse thing to lose than something that didn't belong to you in the first place, and how much she must have loved me not to be angry with me when I told her.

Things I have found are too many to mention, but among the best in my new life are finding Lou,  my altered career here in Manhattan, and my dear friend and business partner Melissa.  I am truly blessed.  

Soul Journal Instant Gratification

I created this page in response to the first prompt in our soul journal group on yahoo.  Kathryn antyr has kindly agree to head up this group and to write a weekly prompt for all of us after christy sobolewski got us started when she realized there were several of us crazy about a soul journal blog by an artist named sarah whitmire.  Sarah had hosted a 3-month art journal activity that she called soul journaling during the summer of 2008, and several of us discovered it during the fall of that same year -- after the project was over, but not too late for more than a few of us in our art techniques group to spot it online.  This kind of art combined traditional journaling:  writing about ones thoughts, experiences and ideas, with mixed media art -- magazines, paints, pencils, inks, etc. -- to create a personal kind of expression that allowed a multifacted expression of self, perfect for many of us that had more to say than we could fit into one medium or another.  And so was born the soul journalists, and I am happy to be among them in my own small way.