Cartography

I make a map for my day.

And then I get off track.

All good!

I Am a Mapmaker and a Traveler
1.5 x 6" bookmark
ink, watercolor, gouache, and oil pastel
on a Funk & Wagnalls dictionary page
abstract
2022

 

Psalm Sequitur

Look what falls into my lap while poking around a file for something else today:

“I once knew this little girl,” 

Father Barry was saying, 

“who had to do a reading in church. 

She’d memorized the Twenty-third Psalm. 

And she got up, 

all confidence, 

and she began, 

‘The Lord is my shepherd ...’ 

And she was stuck. 

She tried again. 

‘The Lord is my shepherd ...’ 

And she couldn’t remember another thing. 

And so she just looked out 

at the congregation 

and said, 

‘Well, that’s enough for now.’ 

And that, I think, 

is going to have to be the way 

we all approach this ...”

The words of that little excerpt from Jacquelyn Mitchard's A Theory of Relativity turn out to be just the right words for me, right here, right now.

bookmark

Across the Silence

To pray is to enter 

into a humble receptivity. 

It’s to realize the familiar self’s 

inability to deeply know. 

Most fundamentally, 

to pray is to open to wisdom 

that’s available 

to come to the heart 

in a time of readiness. 

This is not 

the emotion-saturated heart 

cramped by desire or need, 

but the open one 

that’s receptive to truth, 

painful or otherwise.

—Jan Frazier

The Ways We Are Changed by the Answering Silence
4.5 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, collage, and pastel on paper
abstract landscape
2020

Postcard Piecework

I am endlessly fascinated by the way creative energy puzzles things out and pieces things together.

Went to my studio over a week ago with an intention and a time limit.

Intention: make a postcard for my dad.

Time limit: have it ready to take to the post office in less than an hour to allow for its arrival in Maine on time for our mutual birthday four days later.

Here's what I picked up and worked with:

• a greeting card printed by moo.com from a photo of a piece of art I made in the early days of grieving my mom's October 2015 death;
• my trusty decades-old paper trimmer;
• a Marvy LePen marker (has no rivals with its unique micro-fine point and sleek, elegant, lightweight barrel design) recommended, I think, by Sheila Delgado in a blog post some time back;
• my box of print matter, torn from magazines and culled from all manner of postal deliveries;
• blunt scissors from my kids' early days art supplies;
• matte medium;
• a spray can of Krylon Triple-Thick Clear Glaze; and
• my travel-size hair drier.

Cut the greeting card to become a postcard and rotated it from portrait to landscape orientation. Used LePen to 'tie strings' to the 'balloons.' Combed through my print matter for options that fit my color palette and featured words that might suit the occasion and recipient. Tore, glued, glazed, dried, wrote message, added address, affixed postage stamp.

Made it to the p.o. on time!

Energy Puzzles
4 x 6" postcard; collage and ink on printed image on cardstock
abstract
2020 upgrade of a 2015 piece