Gratefulness

 gratefulness



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Blog; New Beginnings

Image
  Nearly three years have passed since I last wrote a blog post. Setting up this new blog, I never expected to encounter such a seemingly insurmountable obstacle right off the bat. . . naming the blog. Having tried nearly 28 creative names and finding them all unavailable, this was the first one to stick. So, this is it, and here it goes . . .  The arts have always been a part of my life, thanks mostly to my father who insisted that I play the violin in elementary school and encouraged me to always give school projects some sort of artistic flair. I guess a part of that mentorship was due to his background in music and art. As a gifted artist, sculptor, and industrial designer, he was an amazing role model and our house always had a plethora of varied art supplies. My journey towards art, however, has been a delayed one.  Having abandoned my music major in college, I turned to education. The last couple of years of my 35-year career in public education, I discovered jewe...
Read more

Maker Beehive

Image
  Maker Beehive Another great workshop with a fun, talented instructor: Jennifer Chamberlin. I loved her sense of humor and her relaxed, playful style of creating art and relating to her students. I learned more about techniques I have been using for quite some time such as working in layers, collage, adhesives, and reusing/repurposing. New learnings included the value of considering transparency in layering, underpainting, and a technique of laying down a paper towel over wet acrylic paint to create more of a printed look rather than seeing the brush strokes. One of Jennifer’s signature techniques is rubbing or blotting over a wet acrylic layer with a baby wipe or damp paper towel. Cool way to get a blended effect. One lesson helped me to realize that I need to do more frequent Zentangle doodling sessions, as we were to doodle inside splotches of paint, and I found myself struggling to come up with a wide variety of doodles. My repertoire is sorely diminished from lack of practice...
Read more

Winter Solstice 2024 and Woman Unleashed

Image
Winter Solstice 2024 and Woman Unleashed  I haven’t been inspired to write a blog post for several, difficult months. Health challenges, a stunning and shameful election that revealed the ugly truth about America, and the overwhelming depression and anger resulting from both, immobilized me. That changed with the arrival of winter Solstice 2024 and the Woman Unleashed retreat. Watching the solstice sunrise from Stonehenge was deeply moving. Of course, as always, the dense cloud cover obscured sunrise, but the experience of watching it live (at 1:30 am PST) with others (though virtually) was gratifying and inspirational.  Beginning on winter solstice, the Woman Unleashed retreat commenced. I can’t thank  Amber Kuileimailani Bonnici  enough for this much-needed retreat. Her opening meditation was so beautiful and spoke to me so profoundly. So much so, that I was inspired to create two spreads in my beautiful new journal (made for me by my dear friend Karen). Beginning ...
Read more