We've been doing lots of colorful, springtime- and bunnies-inspired crafting this week.
PAPER EASTER EGGS
trace:
color:
inspiration:
cut out, then hide, play or display:
EASTER EGG NAILS
choose colors:
make dotting tool (straight sewing pin stuck into pencil eraser):
go crazy!
So much fun.
|
|
It was over a year ago now that our dear doggie, Vega, passed away. Surprisingly and fascinatingly, it is the littlest one of us, Maeve, who is still processing it most actively. She's four years old, which means Vega's death occurred one-quarter of her lifetime ago. And yet the event seems to be on her mind more often than it does for the rest of us. Or maybe it's just that, as such a young person, her emotions are closer to the surface so we see them more clearly.
As a mother, I find that, both in our culture in general and certainly in myself at times too, there's a jittery discomfort with children's sadness: an anxious need to fix it as quickly as possible, distract the child out of it, and assume it means something must be wrong with your caretaking. To sit and just BE with a little one's sadness - or rage, or anxiety, or fear - is a tall order. But I think that's often exactly what they need. Just to have a grown-up face them, take it all in, and not freak out. Not try to fix it. Let it be theirs.
So I fight my occasional urge to talk Maeve out of her sadness. She brings up Vega's name in conversation and gets our family to talk about her. She likes to decorate, shrine-like, the framed photo of Vega we keep on a side table. She will crawl up into my lap and announce, "I'm sad about Vega," get a cuddle and some comforting words, and then happily go back to playing. None of this happens terribly often, so I'm not worried she's obsessing. I'm happy that Maeve can work through the big sadness she experienced in such an open way and on her own time frame. It seems thoroughly healthy to me. And making space for it seems valuable not just to her own emotional health, but to all of ours. It's a little thread that this big-hearted girl weaves through our days, reminding the rest of us to be more present to our feelings.
All of which is to say that I wasn't particularly surprised when Maeve recently announced to me that she wanted to make a book about Vega, though I wondered what she had in mind. An imaginary story? A letter to Vega? A description of what Maeve remembers from the day Vega died?
I dutifully got out supplies: plain white paper, old magazines and tape, colored pencils, and a photo of Vega that I didn't mind if Maeve cut up. Maeve said she wanted to look for pictures of dogs in the magazines, so we searched. Luckily I had some O magazines in the pile because, let me tell you, there aren't a whole lot of dogs on the pages of Elle and Vogue! We collected six doggie pictures, and Maeve cut them out with her safety scissors.
With just two pieces of paper, we were able to make a book with a front and back cover, plus three double-page layouts inside, for six pages total (one for each dog). I just put one piece of paper on top of the other, folded them width-wise down the center, and stapled along the fold. I don't have a long-arm stapler, but Amy Karol's easy eraser trick (see it in this video) is awesome for when you want to fasten somewhere too far away from the edge of the paper to reach with a regular stapler.
Maeve did the cover first - taped the photo on and asked me how to write "Vega Died," the title she wanted. That just about broke my heart, but I managed to keep it together. Then she wrote proudly, "By Maeve."
Then she began taping the magazine cut-outs into the rest of the book, centering a dog on each page. Finally, she dictated the words she wanted me to write. It ended up being something of a love letter to Vega, telling her how much Maeve misses her and why, with details clearly prompted by the magazine pictures in that kind of murky-reality way that little ones are so comfortable with. This is what she said:
I miss you, Vega. I miss you, doggie. You were a good doggie. I wish you could still walk with me. I liked when you sometimes licked me. I like your footprints, Vega. I love you. Bye.
{pages 1-2}
{pages 3-4}
{pages 5-6}
What I love most about this particular way Maeve expressed her sadness about Vega is that she made something. She wanted to and we did it, almost immediately. The whole process was like this great, easy channel through which she could metabolize whatever she was feeling. And afterwards, she proudly asked me to read it to her once, then put it away and moved on to something else.
|
|
This is my desk. You've seen it before, here, when I talked about the inspiration wall I had going last year. It's easily the most personal space I have in our home. It is where I do all my writing for work and for True North (I'm sitting here right now, as a matter of fact), where I set up my paints and water when I paint at the easel, where I scribble in all my little notebooks, listen to whatever music I want, and plan and dream and get to be entirely myself - no one's mother or wife or friend, just me.
I loved the pictures and cut-outs on the last incarnation of the wall so much that I kept them up for a long time... long enough to get stale. When that happened, I started to let things pile up on my desk, brought the laptop out into the living room, and generally just ignored the office. I needed a little motivation to get back in there and freshen it up, but let's just say I wasn't feeling particularly... inspired.
Then in October --remember, I mentioned this?-- I started taking Lisa Congdon and Mati McDonough's five-week online painting class, Get Your Paint On. (Which was fantastic, by the way. I very much recommend any of their online classes.) The first week of the course, they told us NOT TO PAINT. I love them for this. The class really made me pace myself, right from the beginning. Instead, our assignment that week was to consciously start finding and documenting inspiration: filling blank books with clippings and photos, using a bookmarking site like pinterest, putting up inspiration walls, etc. Mati and Lisa's instruction was to begin filling up a well of inspiring visuals for you to use later. To use. This was so important.
Last year's inspiration wall was beautiful to me. I loved looking at it. But I didn't DO anything with it. I've been thinking a lot this year about how it's so easy for me to be lazy about "being inspired." Many of us do this, don't we? We fetishize inspiration; we let inspiration itself be the end goal. Last spring, I followed along as a great online conversation evolved on this topic: first Good Morning Inspiration, then Inspiration Fetishism, then the fabulous Blair with Curate or Create?. If you have time, do read these links, they're some seriously nutritious food for thought. (And the comments are good, too.) In this digital age we're in, it seems like the ease of sharing inspiration should be a good thing for creative people, but instead, it can be a hazard. There's this great Ira Glass quote that was making the rounds on facebook a few months ago:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
So, ok, there's a lot we could talk about in that quote. It's pretty excellent stuff. But besides how inspiring it is in helping you get over yourself and keep plugging away at your work, one of the things I just love is this distinction he makes between your taste and your art. Exhibiting your taste level is not a substitute for making your art. Curating a collection of things you like is not the same as creating a piece of your own. Similarly, it's so easy to troll around the internet forever just gorging yourself on all the pretty pictures and everybody else's creative process. But that's not a substitute either for creating something yourself.
The Get Your Paint On assignment butted up against all this in my head. I wanted to switch up the wall and start using that space again, but didn't want to just decorate. This isn't, after all, my middle school bedroom, with 90210 posters hung up with tape. This had to be a giant mood board that I would actually utilize. Mati and Lisa were not asking, "What do you think is pretty" but "What specifically is inspiring you right now?" And I wasn't sure what the answer was.
So I just figured I'd have to let my eyes decide. I sat down to collect images for the latest wall all in one go, without any themes in mind. I grabbed the magazines and catalogues I keep around for collaging with the kids and tore through them, literally, tearing out anything that called to me, all impulse, no thought. Then I rampaged through the "inspiration drawer" in my desk, in which I periodically throw things I like, and then I dug out a few overstuffed envelopes of collected art postcards and little keepsakes that I like to fill and then squirrel away in random closets. As opposed to last year's wall, which I added to a little bit at a time as the mood struck, this was much more of an image feast. Afterwards, I looked at what I had and saw some big themes and colorways organizing themselves through the pictures:
Color. Exuberance! Exuberant color. Within this grouping, there's also a lot about pattern, feathers, and, for some reason, parenthood. Who knows why. I love it.
(I dig these side by side. We have one of those rotator painting machines, and my girls can get in a mood and churn out 50 in one sitting. Some of them I keep for myself because they're just so happy and beautiful.)
(photograph of part of my favorite mural in the world, on The Women's Building in San Francisco. Half the time I lived in SF, I lived right across the street from this - in fact, this was the view from my window. What I would give to see it on a daily basis now...)
Pomegranates. And a general vibe of antique, formal still lifes with a riotous twist - been thinking a lot lately about the Dutch Baroque still lifes from the 16th/17th centuries (like this one), with their fruits split open and their flowers crawling with beetles.
The woods - particularly a lush, humid summer forest with an abundance of leaves. Love the idea of greenery growing so rampant that you only get glimpses of what's behind it.
And then, something harder to define. Something that is the opposite of all the wild fecundity above. A feeling of containment and mystery, of secrets kept.
(drawing to the left I did eight years ago when I was pregnant with Stella. It was a stained glass-inspired precursor to this journal cover.)
(bottom is one of my Maeve's paintings)
Similarly to last year's inspiration wall, one of the main benefits of having all these lovely images up in my workspace is simply that I walk into the room and feel immediately happy. The wall is a place for my eyes and mind to rest when I'm trying to think through an idea or figure out how to articulate something. But this wall is also a brand new and completely different entity for me. I have actually been inspired by this wall, as in: I've been making work, the idea for which has come to me because of the pictures I've hung here. Instead of feeling overwhelmed when I try to organize my creative plans, I feel more focused; I know what ideas I want to work on right now. How can I forget them? They're right there, writ large on my wall. I'm almost finished with a close-up still life of a split-open pomegranate, which I'll share when I'm done, and I've started sketches for a large self-portrait based on the Frida Kahlo postcard. I have pages of sketchbook ideas filled with more nascent ideas for paintings, and almost all of it is sourced from the wall one way or another - subject matter, color scheme, or mood. This is the best thing I could have possibly done for my creative process. I am truly being inspired.
|
|
From a new banner here at the blog to a new wreath on our front door at home, we're beginning to celebrate autumn and all its blazing beauty. I can't wait for the leaves to start changing and for hot apple cider and for putting together the girls' Halloween costumes (on deck this year: one princess, one vampire bat). Maybe it's because I have an early-fall birthday, or maybe just because, like spring, fall is so fleetingly and extravagantly beautiful, but I am definitely a fan.
Around our home, we've changed the seasonal mobile in the kitchen by switching out the little flowers we had up all summer for some pretty fabric leaves.
Then with more fabric leaves, I made a fall wreath for the front door. I picked up a plain twig wreath at Michael's (I think it's called a grapevine wreath?...), and on the same trip bought a garland of fake fall leaves. I cut the garland apart, leaving the leaves in groups of two or three so that I could easily thread them between the twigs of the wreath - much easier to get these to stay than if I had used single leaves like the ones in the mobile. Then I decorated with a big bow made with leaf-patterned ribbon, and looked through my craft supplies for other little bits and bobs to tuck in and wind around, like the owl ribbon and red beads. I love that you don't really notice these little touches until you get up close, like treasures scavanged by a bird for its nest.
And, in our house, autumn means pomegranates! My girls and I go crazy for the tangy, ruby seeds, and removing them from the fruit's outer peel and inner pith underwater (much easier and cleaner) is actually part of the fun. It's a whole fabulous sensory experience for the girls, and the rewards for their labor - both culinary and visual - are more than worth the time spent.
I've done other seasonal home updates here before, most recently: summer and winter/holiday. Lately my belief in the importance of these yearly traditions has been re-energized by The Rhythm of Family: Discovering a Sense of Wonder through the Seasons, a lovely new book by one of my favorite bloggers, Amanda Soule, along with her husband Stephen. I highly recommend it.
Happy Autumn!
|
|
It's really summer! And not just because I finally changed my header... ;) The girls are home from school, we're eating corn on the cob every night, the strawberries we planted for the first time this year are ripening to ruby red, and we are ending the days in a state of dirty stickiness that is only acceptable in summer. Chris started a new job last week (that was what that phone call we were waiting for in the last post was about) and while it's basically a form of boot camp right now, he is coming home happy and excited like I've never seen him be about work. Things are good.
But my brain is still on school-year overdrive, like a hamster wheel that's still spinning from its old momentum even after the hamster has gotten off. It's hard to detox from the mode of "must get this to-do list done," isn't it? And I do still have work, both the regular variety and the Big Project kind (more on that this week.) But I am determined (you know, in a relaxed kind of way) to chill out this summer. Despite my best intentions after our vacation back in April, I let myself go a little crazy this spring: all hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline, trying to do It All. I talk a good line about putting yourself on the priority list as a mother, about being "good enough" and all that. And I really do believe that stuff. Yet the pull to try to be perfect - to be everywhere, do everything, and not let anyone down - is insanely strong and I definitely have not been walking my talk lately. And look, how interesting, I haven't been posting here much... Because, of course, I haven't been making much... Because stress is the antidote to creativity, at least for me. So: enter summertime. Even if I have to make a stupid plan to do it, I WILL relax and enjoy myself, and refocus on my creative life. Again.
So here's the plan, at least as much as I have. I figure I'll make the rest up as I go along. Or just not really do any of it. You know, whatever. (She said, in a summery sort of way.)
1. Summer Reading List:
I've been building up a little pile of books. Books I've had for a while and been meaning to read, or that I've borrowed from my mom - books I'm excited about reading, all together in one place so I can't get away with complaining that I have nothing to read. Some smart chick lit, a couple of memoirs, a little witchiness, and two classics. I love Isherwood and have been moderately obsessed with him ever since I watched the beautiful documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story, about his long-term relationship with (much younger) portrait artist Don Bachardy. A fascinating and utterly moving movie. Anyway, it's lovely to read his older stuff. He's an amazing writer.
2. Go out (without the kiddos) for some pure entertainment:
Roller Derby. Um, enough said. So excited!
3. Get outside and play more, and celebrate the season in our home, too:
Summer altar, with assorted pretty things.
(I love this gorgeous vase that was my grandma's.)
4. Sew myself a sundress:
Part of this weekend, I tucked myself into a corner of the dining room - on the floor behind the table where the kids could at least partially forget about me - and started on the Trapeze Dress from Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing. I've had good luck with this book (see here), and I really love this wild fabric I'm using, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this comes together. Will certainly report back!
5. Rock a bright manicure as often as possible:
I make no apologies for loving the girly stuff. Painted nails just make me happy, and this summer I want to go all-out. Neon green is next.
6. Play more Candy Land:
This one's symbolic. I DO hope to get in some good games of Candy Land this summer, but what this really means is say yes to the girls more. I've been getting confused lately about what exactly I'm supposed to be teaching them. "Act more like a stressed-out grown-up" seems to have been the dominant message. It's got to change. I hope to put myself in their hands more, let them dictate the pace and silliness level of our days. This one is maybe the hardest of all, because my god is it hard to just sit and be with them, play with them, when the siren songs of Computer, Dishes, Laundry, and Phone are calling my name. But it's summertime. And kids just intrinsically know how to do summer, don't they? We may have forgotten how to relax, but they don't even know what relaxing is - they call it FUN.
(Maeve with her first-ever sparkler yesterday evening, feeling very BIG and very lucky.)
(Amazement and joy watching the fireworks.)
So that's the overarching project of the next two months. Do less. Have more fun. Further suggestions are always welcome. What are YOU most excited about doing/not-doing this summer?
|
|
I must have sounded a bit like her, when she asks hopefully if she can sit in my lap. "Can I paint with you?" I asked, a little shyly. She was communing with her reds and blues so nicely, doing one of her super-saturated puddle paintings. I was worried I'd break the spell by asking. But it has been a long day, already, and I am jittery with stress. We are waiting for news, and the waiting feels excruciating. Painting with Maeve had suddenly looked like a great idea.
"Sure," she replied generously, and slid over a piece of paper for me. "What are you gonna paint?"
I didn't know. "I don't know. Just whatever I feel like."
She nodded knowingly, watched me for a minute, then returned to her own work.
A little while later I caught her glancing over at me again, as I was filling in the spaces between the blue lines with yellow and green squiggles. "I like your painting, Mommy."
"Thanks, sweetie."
"What does your pattern mean?"
"It doesn't really mean anything to me, it's just making me happy to paint it. What do you think it means?"
She didn't answer that. But she did ask, "Can I have it when you're done?"
Yes, honey. You sure can.
|
|
This is my desk in our home office. Chris has his desk on the adjoining wall, with a window in front of him when he sits down at the computer. But I wouldn't give up my inspiration wall for anything, even for a window. Which is saying something for me, light addict that I am.
I keep a drawer in the desk for pages out of magazines, old postcards, etc. that I love. An inspiration drawer. For so long I was trying to figure out how to cleverly showcase my favorite images so that I could see them when I was working. I thought about hanging the pictures from a string or wire with little clips (like here and here) or making some kind of cool bulletin board (where did I see someone make one out of about a thousand of those Ikea cork trivets?) But in the end, I decided just to stick them up on the wall with tape. Tiger Beat poster-style. And I love it! They do me a lot more good actually up on the wall than they do waiting for the perfect display system. Looking up at this wall when I work at my desk makes me really happy.
Rip-outs from Vogue and O magazine... Anthropologie and Bonpoint catalogues... art postcards... paintings done by my girls on the rotator painter... a photo of one of my favorite murals in the San Francisco Mission district... a triple spiral carving from Newgrange that will someday be my second tattoo... beautiful ladies of all ages...
Collecting images you like is a funny little way to get to know yourself and your aesthetic. I certainly don't choose pictures just because they relate to other things on the wall, but there are definitely some noticeable overlaps and places of synergy - glowy lights, intense pattern, a rich orange- and blue-heavy color palette, a bit of whimsy... I love the mash-ups that happen on the wall, the conversations between images that are next to each other.
I also set my computer up so that my screen saver is a slideshow of favorite pictures I've culled from the internet. Any time I really respond to an image, I save it into my "beautiful" folder. Sometimes I come back to my desk after a break and the screen saver is scrolling though all those beautiful pictures, and I just sit and watch for a while.
|
|
I had the chance to make some beer with Chris recently. Previously, this has been a boys-only job at our house, but since one of our big family dreams is to brew for sale at some point, I thought I should see first-hand what it's all about.
We started in the kitchen, heating water in the brew kettle.
Brewing feels like a cross between a science experiment and an episode of MacGyver. Lots of little packages and tubes and strange paraphenalia, some of which Chris has rigged together himself.
You add the hot water to the barley and let it steep. Then comes this whole crazy process, which I didn't get any photos of, of draining the water off and filtering it back through the grain a few times.
Finally it goes back into the pot, along with the hops in their little sack, like a hop tea-bag.
We supplemented this batch with some hops Chris grew himself. They're beautiful, like tiny, green, dried roses. And they smell incredible.
Soon, it was down to the basement to cool the beer - carefully - with this crazy contraption.
And into the carboy it goes, with the yeast, to ferment for a few weeks. It's down there now, the yeast working on all that sugar and turning it into alcohol. Soon we'll get to toast with our first-ever couple brew.. <3
Cheers!
|
|
Yet another snow day for the kidlets today. In an effort to keep us all from going stir crazy and from watching an entire day of Barbie movies, I launched Snow Day Art School. Which is really a fancy way of saying that I emptied the contents of our art cart onto the dining room table and let the girls go at it.
Dining room table before:
Dining room table after:
It was very much an instance of the process and not the result, as we didn't create any particular masterpieces today. But for about an hour before lunchtime, all three of us sat quietly and contentedly and did our work.
Maeve painted portraits of babies. On the left is Stella as a Baby with Three Blue Eyes, and on the right is Maeve as a Baby with Poop. Three-year-olds are awesome.
Stella made collages and paintings and an abstract drawing in crayon and marker. Her mind works in mysterious ways.
And even I got in on the action, gathering some inspiration and making some plans for an ikat-inspired home improvement project. More on that at some point. Hopefully.
Hooray for snow days!
|
|
I dig any excuse to decorate little corners of our home and make our everyday family life a little more special, so I love Christmas. It's so cliche to say that it's magical but, especially with kids in the mix, all the excitement of taking out the old friend ornaments we haven't seen in a year and planning surprises for Christmas day really does make our home feel sprinkled with fairy dust... or would that be elf dust?
Some of my favorite festive sights around the house this year are our chubby tree (above), the foil stars in our front windows that I've had since I was a girl,
and the needlepoint JOY that Chris' grandma made, hanging from the mirror in the living room.
The layers of old and new are so sweet.
More evidence of mama-elf fun around our home (and kiddo-elves too!)...
{It's so nice to come home to the birdies on our wreath.}
{Paper snowflakes on the mobile in the kitchen}
{and on the windows. Decent snowflake-cutting tutorial here.}
{Homemade red, green and white play dough. Our recipe here.}
{Letter to the big man.}
{Stella's snowman picture in the window... I like how he's jauntily tossing his hat!}
{My regular old snowman,}
{and Maeve's awesome, deconstructed snowman.}
And have you heard the new Christmas song by The Killers? An homage to It's a Wonderful Life. It totally yanks on my heartstrings, I can't help it.
|
|
