Making Art In Transit

Packing for a move and trying to complete certain projects before the end of the month. There's always the next thing to do, to accomplish before the next thing after that, the next thing on the list: like a ticker-tape, time moves relentlessly into the future, tapping tapping at the next thing, the next thing.

It's too easy to get caught in this trap. The act of making art helps me escape; I get lost in the materials, the possibilities and experimentation, the pencil to paper and the eraser to paper and the inks applied after, the colors, images, shapes, words.

Moving is very symbolic. In late middle-age, it means, perhaps the next-to-last move. I have been throwing out a lot of old papers and items no longer useful, recycling when I can, but I am so aware of how much I still will carry forward into the next place where I'll spend the days of my life. Tick-tick-tick.

Remember how many childhood games were about being able to move ahead: Red Light, Green Light; Mother-May-I? Drawing, writing, creating a newsletter, sewing, these things help me stay that push onward, make the moments more real.

Un-Supersize Me

Artist Trading Cards--my current passion channel for exploring form, color, relationship between word and image, design--are restricted to a 2.5 inch by 3.5 inch surface built on paper, cardboard, canvas, metal, cloth, or whatever material will travel safely, stiffly, legally through international mail.

I am not primarily a visual artist. I have come to it from my practice of poetry and writing, and bring no expectations for making a living from it, showing in a gallery, or doing anything other than having fun, and perhaps sharing/swapping with others.

It's art-in-miniature or "miniature art" as my friend Sara describes it. (I recently turned her on to the ATC phenom and she has bit: hook, line and sinker.) You can collage, paint, draw with watercolor pencils (my latest, favorite tool), watercolor, sew, punch tin, or do so many other things to create these little pleasures that are then traded, one-on-one, or swapped (3 or 6 at a time in a group "hosted" by someone who swaps out the same number as you have traded into the group). Kind of like having pen pals, only these folks do incredible things with art.

In a culture that values everything LARGE, especially out here in the American west, this art form instead values teensy. It fits my nature, as when I first went to Europe and realized streets, cars, buildings could be so much more pleasant when downsized from the American model.

We may like our wide open spaces historically, but Americans have a propensity of filling them up with BIG things, like automobiles, Stetson hats, skyscrapers, dams, and, finally, junk yards--something we see all too often out here on the plain/deserts. As the world gets smaller, and more interdependent with our resources, scaling down may be just the goal for us westerners. It wouldn't hurt us to go on a diet--might even leave us with a new renewable energy, a cleaner brain and body and more to share with others.

Feathers
for my sister, Karyn
One by one we remove white feathers.
With each our mother’s head softens,
lowering to the floor of her pillow,
releasing its burden. We make separate
stacks--my sister and --piling them up
from the sand floor of an old cottage.
Two small ladders of feathers
drawn from a snowy goose rising
as the pillow flattens into the quiet
where my mother rests her head,
a pebble of gold that sinks
to the worn tucked sheet.

When she releases her last breath,
another feather swims from her round mouth.
The feathers my sister and I carefully placed
scatter to the corners of the early-morning room,
trace their contours across the walls,
seep as if liquid light through closed window blinds,
finally nudging the hospital door open--
that heavy green hospital door
we will never open again.
-- Jannie M. Dresser 6/18/09

What Grief Does to Creativity

The few times I have experienced creative blocks, particularly with writing, have been during periods following the death of a loved one. When Frankie Smith died, a dear friend who introduced herself to me at a non-violence training as a "Catholic witch," I couldn't write a poem for several months. This spring and summer have brought me several deaths, and most recently the passing on of my 87-year old mother, who died last Saturday at 3:30 a.m.

Mom left me with her last words. When she stirred as I held her on the hospital bed, I asked, "Mom, what do you need?" She came out of her morphine haze briefly to say: "I need . . . belly laughs." For someone with a failed heart, failing kidneys, years of painful arthritis, and a variety of other ailments, she could have used a few more belly laughs, for sure.

I am told by professionals that I am doing about as good as any one could in a time of loss. In truth, I am functioning well, even by my own lights, if "functioning well" means keeping on, keeping on. Since last Friday, the day before she died, I have not sobbed or shed many tears, nor have I belly-laughed, but I've tended to the practical things.

Where does our creativity come from? Wallace Stevens, in his "Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour," claimed "God and imagination are one." In times when we are aware of the decay of life, even though the process can be awe-inspiring, it is hard for me to experience God. God is most present for me in beauty, nature, love, and yes, creative imagination. Right now, I just feel the absence of someone I love and my own heart feels flat and grey. Thus, the creativity is stunted and on hold.

I have faith that this will change; experience has shown that it does. For now, I live in the shadow where it is difficult to see God and the imagination, and where belly laughs wait still further back in the wings stifling themselves until they are once again permitted on the stage of daily life.

Relativity

Learning to work with more than one dimension is interesting as I explore color and relationship with shapes and words. This series was for an Oriental Swap and the field was wide open. I decided to use packaging from dry-good products and instead of cutting off lids and working around edges, I'd cut out cards (2.5 x 3.5) incorporating folds and edges.

Because I'm a relative newcomer to artist trading cards and creating visual art, I feel very free to play and make mistakes. My cards aren't professional in any sense of the word, and it is a forgiving world, that of being an amateur.

I'm aware more and more of the dualities our culture poses, pitting success against failure, right against left, cat lovers against dog lovers, meat-eaters against vegetarians. There is an old saying that nature abhors straight lines; well, I think most of us fall in between the false extremes too often posed or given to us as choices. I don't have to pick one and forsake other interests, deny myself the pleasures of witnessing childhood because I don't have children, or hold a solid certainty about any particular issue.

Keats talked about negative capability as essential for a poet. To be able to hold within the mind two opposing thoughts and not become immobilized. More on this another time, but it is a statement that has guided me.

Rocking With ATCs

We had a good-sized earthquake a week ago, centered in a town just north of where I live. I was at the computer uploading some artist trading card images when it happened and I felt the approval of the universe for my little bits of art. Little bits of art: that's what ATCs are. Just tiny glimpses into the creative world and imagination. I have entered swaps now that are hosted in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Bremen, Germany; Milan, Italy; Seattle, Washington, and elsewhere. I have traded with someone in Finland, Canada, Australia, and all over the U.S. Right now, I am trading with someone who lives on the Isle of Man. The Internet has made this possible and it has expanded my ability to share my projects with people who actually have an interest. Amazing! It's also a very supportive and kind world, with the feedback of the most generous nature. Since I am not an artist by profession, I've loved having an outlet to encourage the growth of my skills and exchanges with peers. It's only been a few months, but ATCs really have rocked my little world.

This week I am presenting my "Death Poems Book" to an audience attending a program on "The Art of Comfort & Joy: A Tribute to End-of-Life Care Providers" sponsored by Compassion & Choices of Northern California (www.compassionandchoicesnca.org). It'll be the first time I've combined my interest in art and interest in poetry for a presentation.

I began my "Death Poems Book" several years ago after sitting at bedside of individuals who were dying. I read to these people from the Bible, from poems they knew and loved, from poems I knew and loved, and sang to them as well. I realized that when it comes time for me to be dying, that I didn't want to live it to chance what others might choose to read to me.

Since poetry has been so much a part of my life, I decided to take some of my favorite poems, and, in the manner of medieval illuminations art, create a book of poetry illuminations. Slowly I have added poems to the book which I keep near my bedside. Some of the poems are old standards, poems of such beautiful language that they comfort and inspire me; others are poems about loss or death that I find quirky, amusing, disturbing, intriguing. I don't think my tastes will change dramatically when I am on my own deathbed, so I continue to cull from a wide range of poetry selections to create this book.

There's no escaping the fact that I'll be on a deathbed someday. I hope I will have time to say goodbye to loved ones. When they come to visit and want to do something for me, they can take my "Death Poems Book" and read from it. I hope by that date, it will be full, full, full of great poems that I have illustrated.

Celebrating Another's Success

Tonight I am going to my friend Deb's first art show. She had four of her gorgeous assemblage art pieces accepted at the Frank Bette Center's May show about "Characters." We had gone to the gallery a few weeks ago to check it out as a potential place to be part of an artists' community and possibly have work displayed. Deb followed up by submitting the four pieces--all accepted into this month's show. I feel so happy for her, knowing that this step was a difficult one. She is a brilliant artist, with an incredible sense of color arrangement and design, and careful technique. I've learned a lot from her about ATCs and design in general. So, here's to you dedreemer! You can see Deb's work at www.katuragreetings.blogspot.com

Holy Moses! Get Rich Selling ATCs!

Carry your cards with you always!
Last evening I went across the Richmond Bridge to San Rafael with Adam, a poet friend to hear another poet friend, the delightful performance artist Marvin R. Hiemstra at Cafe Arrivederci. The Monday evening Artist Salon is run by Angar Mora whose idea it is to mix it up where artists are concerned. There were musicians, printmakers, fiction writers, and most importantly visual artists in attendance, including Elizabeth Addison, a printmaker, who spoke about making monotype prints. Her work was displayed around us on the restaurant walls.

Because Mora heard that I did art as well as wrote poetry, he asked me to bring examples of Artist Trading Cards. No one at our table had ever heard of this phenomenon, and they too, wanted to see my binder full of cards. My little pieces proved quite popular, a real ice-breaker for the 10 or so folks sitting around baskets of sourdough bread and bowls of shredded parmesan.

Towards the end of the evening, Angar ran an auction for work that various artists had brought. On a dare, I held up my ATC of the little imp peaking over the sunflower; I had created him at one of Deb Price's ATC workshops and he seemed to represent one side of the Muse. Surprisingly, someone paid $4 to own my little collage, a man who turned out to also be a painter.

You just never know. Og Mandino may be right about what it takes to be "the greatest salesman in the world." The first task is just showing up.

The Need to Retreat

To take a retreat. To have time to forget time. To be among redwoods and fir, and to hear the insects buzz against bark. To let the worries subside. To enjoy friendship and food, the deer that seems unafraid of me, the meditation room where I write, the sunset that blazes in pink and in pale blue. Ah. This helps me remember, reflect, restore my soul. Thank you, thank you.

On a Roll . . .

Really on a roll now with making and swapping ATCS. Many thanks to my beautiful friend Deb who helped me get started with this fun hoppy! (It would only be a hobby if it didn't make me bunny hop all around the house at night looking for scraps of whatever to incorporate into cards.) I'm drawing, coloring, cutting, pasting, just like in kindergarten! Now my cards live in England, Alabama, and Oklahoma. More swaps on the way. For joy for joy!

Trip to Lucky Mojo

My art partner, Deb, and I made a journey up the highway to Forestville, California, where a strangely wonderful little shop is tucked away along the trail to the Russian River. Selling potions, candles, incense, amulets, it fed our imaginations, and I learned about the history of the evil eye and why it is associated with the color blue. As a blue-eyed divil meself, I reflect on how so many traditions have a deeply cultural bias and why we must constantly question our assumptions.

My First Overseas Swap

Congrats to Coop who will go down in history as my very first overseas swap, trading his humorous "Shake Well Before Using" card for one of my World's Worst Oppressors cards, the one in the "Dead Dictators" series of Pol Pot, the Cambodian genicidal maniac who destroyed so many innocent lives. May we never forget what tyrants may do. I have added an incredibly insightful poem from John Clare to help us remember.

SpinnngJannie

Working on "The Dark Side" Swap

This is one that comes naturally to me, yet I want to do something unique, as it should be when you are making Artist Trading Cards. So, I'm thinking about what is "the dark side"? It can be a positive, as in the wealth of the imagination hidden behind the conscious mind, the dreamlife behind sleep. It can be, and has usually been considered, a negative: "darkness" linked to fear, the unseen, the underbelly of human behavior. We don't apply consistent meanings to our word symbols.

Worlds' Worst Oppressors

I've been working on a 4x4 series, four cards each of four different world tyrants/oppressors/dictators/demonical murderers of masses of people, starting with Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Pinochet. Since art and religion are useful to me in as much as they teach me how to live, how to be a better human being, I turn to both for lessons, instructions. I never really wanted to study history's atrocities but can't seem to escape it; I love to read what happened, and inevitably, it takes me to some place that leaves my stomach roiling, nightmares imploding, my daydreams intruded upon. Is it part of mental illness that drives me to this, a morbid compulsion which I have sensed from childhood when the story about the world and the world itself as I experienced it never fully jived. We lived with our parents' false tales, as they lived with the cleaned-up stories of their ancestral pasts. I want to get down to it, underneath it, not to make of mine an unhappy life--not at all, because I seek joy, love, happiness--but to be the examined life I believe I am meant to be. If God is a verb, as I believe is the case, then Evil, Satan, whatever the dark side is called, is also actively engaged in the world. There ARE scary monsters, there are full unfettered truths. I have a job to do, not simply create beauty but to unmask the ugliness, too.

And she's off . . .

I finally have enough ATCs to go online, so I joined ATCs for All (www.atcsforall.com) and joined three swaps yesterday: text in ATCs, the "dark side," and one on the theme of anatomy. Ooooh, this is going to be fun. I only do my ATCs after retiring after the workday, while sitting in bed, with my supplies, my bed desk, and usually a cat or two, and husband at my side, while watching t.v. These projects seem to redeem my "down" time, ordinarily given to watching the news, or a favorite show.

Spine of a Fish Welcomes Visitors

Dear Fellow Artists
Leave me your blessings and suggestions,
Your ideas and your smiles,
Your hints and precious moments,
Create, be kind, love life, do right.