Housekeeping Update

I've been fabulously busy doing incredibly interesting things, like mopping the kitchen floor and loading the dishwasher every day.  Brushing our yellow Lab once a day is keeping the dust bunny/hippopotamus situation under control; and figuring out supper every night -- my, that's just oceans of fun.

Housekeeping, it turns out, is exactly as repetitive as I expected it to be.  (I'd like to say "as I remember it being" but apparently I stopped caring so long ago that memories have faded away.)  Nothing stays done, which is to say that if you mop, vacuum, cook, and clean today, by five o'clock tomorrow no evidence will remain of that effort. Which is why you might as well not bother.

I, however, am choosing to bother, for 365 days, some of which I've already used up, thankyoujesus.  Yesterday's  event was cleaning off the huge desk in the living room. I worked five hours, mostly making file folders and then putting pieces of paper into them. The desk needs another five hours of attention.  Not happening--

Quench not

I love the photos I took this spring, but I love them even more when I've captioned them.

Rise. Shine. Breathe.

I'm in love with this technique.  Wait, maybe the word is obsessed.

I made this just for you.

My photo.
My text.
I used picmonkey for the first time.
I'm liking it.

The Art of the Flower Garden

What do Pink Giggles, Bowl of Cream, Petite Elegance, and Sunburst have in common?  They're all varieties of peony.

I went a little overboard with the photos I took at the Peony Festival at Whitehall House & Gardens, which is part of the Historic Homes Foundation.  I took over 500 photos, which I've reduced now to a modest collection of 347, not counting the ones that I cropped. They aren't all peonies; I also have more iris and some hosta and a cat which seemed to live there and even the front of Whitehall and an outbuilding or two to show off.  This first group of photos is all peonies, though.

(Note:  The second set will have more flowers that are actually in bloom, the way we all like seeing them, but I was taken with the range of names and so wanted to share them.)

Petite Elegance

Pink Giggles

Coral and Gold

Coral and Gold close-up

Pink Kisses

Old Faithful

Sunburst

White Grace

Bowl of Cream

Stay tuned for updates in the coming days, or perhaps weeks, given the 347 photos, plus cropped photos . . .   You are going to love seeing these beauties as much as I did.

Natural Art: Iris

 Rather than braving Thunder over Louisville, I chose to shiver my way around the neighborhood photographing iris

 after iris

 after iris.

 Finally I understand what motivated Georgia O'Keefe.

 

Middle Bass Aerial View, 2005

Aerial view and key.  (Translation of key follows.)

In Belle Cartledge's hand-writing:
Middle Bass Island, Ohio   2005
1.  Lauber-Schnoor dock
2.  Bill Gross's Walleye
3.  Lonz Airfield - closed
4.  Lonz Marina - closed
5.  Jim Roesch's marina and family home
6.  Lonz Estate - overgrown brush, formerly vineyards

Hellloooo, 2012

2011 was capped off by my annual meeting with Dick Clark to welcome the new year.  He was on the television in my bedroom, where I was snug as a bug, keeping my right arm still and allowing the muscles and ligaments to recover.

While I was in South Carolina, I met my friend Brian for coffee, and we talked about the New Year's Eve we spent in Times Square with our friend Susan Malavet.  Cold?  Oh, Lordie, it was brutally cold.  We'd have frozen, no doubt, if not for Susan, who lived north of the city and was the veteran of numerous New Year's Eves in New York City.


The most amazing aspect of being there is the other-worldly / one-world feeling you get when you visit the Mona Lisa or when you see Charles Dickens' name inscribed in a visitors' log at Shakespeare's birthplace, both of which I've done.  It's equal parts awe -- I'm part of something so much larger than myself -- and also of connection -- not to the artist but to the millions who've joined in admiring the work. 

The next most amazing aspect was that within twenty minutes Susan, Brian, and I were the only people left on the street. I don't know where all of those people went, or how they got away so quickly.  If they'd all flowed to Grand Central Station, they'd all flowed out of it again by the time we arrived there to catch a train.  The night is a masterpiece of civic planning and foot-traffic flow.


And here we are with a whole new year,all bright and shiny, just waiting for us to pitch in and make something of it. 

I'm beginning a new series of large art pieces this year involving bridal gowns (and perhaps additional garments) and narrative. 


I'm also planning a number of smaller pieces.  Rather than making 365 pieces of art, though, as I did last year, I'm going to complete 52 pieces of art (painting, collage, quilt, fiber art, assemblage) in 2012.  Yep, that's one a week.  Twenty or so pieces are already off to a good start; at least a dozen more are right at being finished and just need me to push through that final "what the hell do I do now?" stage.

My other major art project for 2012 is to learn how to operate all of the bells and whistles on my Nikon camera.


And then there's that book project.  It's a very fine project, indeed, but I won't be working on it until the repetitive stress injury to my elbow heals.


Finally, I'm still researching preservation techniques and still working on Step One, which is to halt the damage to paper records, photographs, and ephemera from my parents' house.

For the record, the Year of the Rabbit continues until February 4, when the Year of the Dragon begins.  Other dragon years are 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, and 2000.  If any of those are your birth year, you can expect an especially propitious time of it.  The rest of us can expect the usual sun and rain falling on the just and unjust alike.

The Speed of Light

 November 2, 4:49 p. m.

 November 2, 4:50 p. m.

I never realized how quickly a sunset happens until I checked the time on this series of photos.

Reiki

The Saturday before Devin's graduation, I spent a day with Louisville Reiki master Mary Farmer learning the first elements in becoming a Reiki practitioner.

Reiki is a chakra-based modality for healing yourself, other people near and far, and, extended broadly, the world. Animals are said to benefit from Reiki, but I haven't tried it yet with Koko, who is aging and has the genetic joint problems common in Labrador retrievers.  Laramie isn't interested; she's got too much to do.

Michael fell asleep within moments of my beginning a Reiki treatment on him.  I myself fall asleep three chakras into a session when I'm doing a Reiki healing on myself.  And then there's the time I did it for Jennifer, while I was in North Carolina for the graduation.

Jennifer liked it so well that, when I finished, she dangled her right hand over my side and said, "Reiki my hand, Mama."

"Your hand isn't one of the chakras, Jenn," I said.  "I can't Reiki your hand."

"Sure, you can," she said dreamily.  "Go ahead, Mama.  Reiki my hand."

Turns out a hand can, indeed, be Reiki-ed.

This Saturday I'm taking Reiki 2, again with Mary Farmer.  I'm quite looking forward to it.  My friend Brian said, "Do you really believe in that kind of stuff?" and I said, "No, but I believe in the movement of energy, and I believe in love," and both of those things are essential to Reiki practice.They are the definition of the practice, actually.

It is also true that some time after the Reiki 1 class I noticed that I am happy where ever I am -- so happy, in fact, that I have to wrench myself away in order to leave.  In August I wrenched myself away from home to go visit my mother; and in September I wrenched myself away from home to go see my new great-niece Amy Belle and her sisters; and then I wrenched myself away from the joy of their company to return home.  It's a steady joyousness, an appreciation.  Not that I didn't have those feelings before, but now I've rearranged my life in such a way that I pass from one loving setting to another, and even the in-betweens are happy. Is it the Reiki energy realignment that Mary Farmer performed on each of us that was the source of this change? Is it Reiki practice? Is it my excellent therapist? Would I feel this way now even without the Reiki?

I don't know. I don't care. I just know that taking Reiki 2 is the right thing to do.

Be safe, be kind, be peace.

Off to Join the Circus

Back in March Michael, Laramie, and Koko decided to run away and join the circus. Here they are,practicing their act.

Don't quit your day jobs, kids.

Spirited Lines: water- wood- moon moments

My dear friend from Duke University -- Caroline Craig Proctor -- is now studying Chinese medicine in Asheville, North Carolina, and has written a beautiful blog post about it, and about choices, and about life.

The photos that accompany it are also lovely.

Enjoy.

Spirited Lines: water- wood- moon moments: "I last left these pages in October, writing about Fire. This afternoon we saw one, blazing across the seagrasses toward our view, lapp..."

Susan B Anthony across the years

Susan B Anthony
This concise biography of Susan B. Anthony on youtube includes a photo of Anthony with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

We so often see Anthony in her later years that I was pleased to find views of her as a younger woman.  I'm also interested in the cartoons, in which she is caricatured as the anti-woman, all angles and sour faced.  

365 . 42 Fibonacci. Jennifer's Amaryllis

1    That's
1    how
2    it bites
3    you.  A lifetime
5    of indifference to photographs unless
8    they captured people you love and then, one
13  winter afternoon, an amaryllis blooms and you, unconscious of the long-term impact, snap
21   a photo.

 21 But wait.  That wasn't the best angle.  It's more beautiful head on.  You can see the pale star on

1    the
1    petals,
2    the way
3    they descend into
5    unfathomable mystery while, low down,
 8   you glimpse a bud and see simultaneously what
13  was and will be; leaving you to wonder if you've captured anything real.

1    You
1    return
2    each day
3    to learn more.

 1    When
1     the
2     lower bud
3     blooms, faith re-enters
5    your life.You yearn for
8    others to feel your thrill, and this time
13   you turn the pot; leaving nothing head-on except the bud, still mostly furled.

1   Try
1   the
2   other side.

1    Or
1    angle
2    the camera
3    a bit downward.
                                                                      by Mary Cartledgehayes
TO BE CONTINUED

Writing an Artist Statement

I started working on an artist statement a few weeks ago, and this is how far I've gotten:

Mary Cartledgehayes is an ecological assemblage artist who works primarily with castoffs, fiber, and fixatives.

Good start, huh?  I'm telling you this because I want to show you some more of the castoffs I've found, and I thought I needed a proper artist statement to cover the dumpster diving -- although these days if you aren't dumpster diving you aren't green.

I'd like to put together a research project surrounding materials in local dumpsters, but so far I'm relying on random observations, which in the global pollution mess is better than no observations.  Around here we have weeks that seem assigned to certain objects.  For instance, we had the Week of the Couch, when I dsaw 5 or 6 couches in the ten closest dumpsters.  Another week it was outdoor grills -- 4 or 5 of those.  Plastic storage containers are a staple, as are -- somebody explain this to me -- small trash cans.

This piece is my favorite.  It appears to be the wire frame for what was once a very large urn or container of some sort for flowers -- at least that's the story we're sticking to until someone comes up with a better idea.

 I dearly love this piece (thus the many photographs) and think it has enormous potential.

In the meantime, it's simply enormous and living on the patio.

The Hapless Homemaker Strikes Again

 I started at the other end of the house and moved toward the living room.  That explains why my work table is overcrowded.  I also don't yet know where I'm going to stuff the sewing machines so they'll be invisible yet readily available.  Also, see those papers?  They needed attention, which would have interrupted the flow of cleanliness from end of the house to the other.

 This corner is behind the table you saw.  The box is filled with 4 x 6 cardboards cut from cereal boxes, to be used for mail art.  The three pictures are ones I made; the top one is an impressionistic view of Beargrass Creek; the second is a friendly sight for tired eyes; and the third I didn't so much make as cut up a woven pocketbook ten years ago and frame part of it.  The woman with the chicken on her head?  I found her in Philadelphia 20 years ago, and the lamp was beside the dumpster a few weeks ago, lightbulb included.

 I also cut all of the little tabs from the cereal boxes -- the ones used to establish the colors.  Some boxes have, on the inside strip that's glued in place to hold the box together, blocks of color down the strips.  I had a handful of them, and they wouldn't fit in the box with the tabs, so I looked around and found the vase with bow as well as some ivy I'd happened upon recently.  Surprising how nice the colors are, yes?  The tiny yellow box to the right is a clicker that makes Laramie stop what she's doing and find something better to do.

 My sweet little turkey with the sweet little mums, the centerpiece for our table on Thanksgiving.

I told you the kitchen was clean,and I meant it.  That blue thing is the top of the dog's water bottle, and the yellow things are the rubber gloves I'm required to wear and the mess in the far corner is the coffeepot, sugar bowl, two bags of coffee, and a jar of no-calcium Cremora to use each morning until the thyroid pill is absorbed in my system.  (Calcium negates its effect, as does iron.)  That's the tidiest my kitchen counters have been since I left South Carolina.

Varmint Watch

 This is a not-to-scale drawing of the trees in our neighborhood all summer long.  The orange lumps are bad-tempered squirrels.  Those little scumbags would cheep and click at the dogs every time they saw one. Yes, I know it's a mystic spiritual animal communication system; but I also know there aren't enough predators in my neighborhood for the number of varmints.
 
Therefore, this weekend there was a huge squirrel roundup, with professional critter wranglers stalking the grounds and roofs, installing cages and gathering up hundreds of squirrels, as well as assorted possums and chipmunks, all of which had taken to traveling in packs and shouting insults at the community dogs. We believe they all now live on a beautiful farm out in the country.  I'm cheering for the feral cats' side.

I can't believe I went to all the trouble of creating an authentic and also realistic drawing (except for the squirrels being orange).  One day you're blogging and the next day you're putting yourself out for other people who aren't visual enough to catch images on their own.

What I won at the Kentucky State Fair

The distant view of my photo with the green Honorable Mention tag.  It's second up from the bottom on the left and shows up not at all in a pile of other photos.

Now you can see more clearly that it's a brand new grocery cart lying on its side in a creek -- Beargrass Creek in Louisville, where I've been taking photos for several years now, many of which feature trash.  No photo-sopping was involved with this photo, so it must have been the time of day making the creek appear so blue, because I've never seen it that color.

I've been saying that I've never won a ribbon before, but I don't know if that's accurate.  I've had two pieces of art, both collages, both textile, win prizes in competitions.  The first was in an art show at the Duke University Divinity School, where I think I won third prize; and the other was in the annual Spartanburg Sidewalk Art Sale, where art is hung on the gates surrounding Converse College.  That time I won second place and also a check -- I think it was 2001.  But did I get ribbons, and if so where are they now?

I suppose I'll have to clean out the file cabinets to learn the answer.