My "Don't Fear the Mixer" Potholder for the Mother's Day show on May 12th

When I was in second grade we had a special assembly.  There was a fireman on the stage in the auditorium and I imagine he was  giving us safety tips.  But, the only thing I remember is his story about the mixer.

A girl came home after school and decided to surprise her mother, who was at work, by making a cake.  The girl didn’t know that the cake mixer was damaged and when she plugged it in and started to beat the batter she was electrocuted and died.   As a kid I wasn’t sure what the lesson was.  Never make a cake without asking your mother first?  If you use an electric mixer you can die?   Don’t make a cake for your mother?  What ever the lesson, what I took from it, was that every time I’ve used a mixer I would think of that story.  At first the fear of death was great, but after baking hundreds of cakes and cookies over my life time and not  dying,  the fear became less powerful.    So that  eventually, even though I still thought of the story, I no longer believed I would die from using a cake mixer.

This weekend, Jon and I went on a two day silent meditation.  I used to imaging a silent meditation as being enveloped  in peace for 2 days, but it’s not like that.   It’s more like dredging the Hudson River down stream from General Electric.  All those demons that have been hiding out since childhood start showing up.

The question is what to do with them when they arrive.  I tried several different techniques.  First I treated them like ghosts and asked them what they wanted.  They didn’t have an answer, the demons were actually confused by the question and left me alone for the rest of that sitting.  When they came back at the next sitting I had a vision, of a person sized bird throwing stars to my demons and floating them up  to space expanding the universe.  The last time they came, I welcomed them in for tea, then blessed them and let them go.

I don’t know if the demons every really go away, but like my fear of the mixer,  they do seem to have less power the more I acknowledge them and let them go on their way.   And even if they hang around, they’re not all that’s there.  After all, every time I faced my fear of the mixer, I got a cake out of it.

Jon and I were driving home one evening and as he was taking pictures I saw the wind whipping around this long, piece of shrink wrap.  I didn’t even feel the cold wind as I took the video, I was so enraptured with the whole scene.

Like a  powerful waterfall or a tornado, I found the this piece of plastic sublime.

I Am Myself Again

Wow, all those great comments on my blog about this piece made me cry.  I like nothing better than to make such connections.  I just wrote to someone that I feel like an advocate for midlife and menopause.  I’ve never been happier or more fulfilled in so many ways.  But it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t kiss my self awake.

I knew this piece had to have a purple velvet border, like a Queens cape. And a touch of hot pink for the  feminine fire inside us all.

And I may have mentioned it before, but if you’re interested in reading more on the subject (the advocate in me)  pick up The Wisdom of Menopause by Christiane Northrup.  As I read it I continue to find myself saying “Oh, so that’s what’s going on.”

It seems I keep reading about the idea that in midlife, women pick up where they left off after puberty begins.  After puberty, they often stop living for themselves and start thinking more about others.  Then, after they’ve lived the life of wife and mother, they go back to wanting to live for themselves.  Of course this is a generalization and some of us have never done the wife or mother thing and yet still find ourselves in mid-life wanted something else for ourselves.

It’s not finished yet, but I made this piece for someone who asked for a streaming wall hanging dealing with this subject,  I could have made it for myself.  I guess it’s been inside me for a while.

The words are : “Kiss myself awake I’m tired of sleeping, Answer the call of the Full Moon, Standing on the house of my heart, I Am Myself  Again.”

I’ve written about it before and I thought I was done with it, but yesterday I saw it was back.  My Shipping Fears.

I’ve had the first printing of Jon’s Rose in the Mist photos since last week and I’m just mailing them out tomorrow.  Yes, I’ve been waiting for payments  and for the second printing, but the real reason it took me so long to get to its is because I was anxious about shipping them. I’ve never shipped un-matted prints before  and I wanted to do it right.  Unfortunately, for me, this particular anxiety doesn’t get me moving, it makes me procrastinate.

So instead of getting the prints and figuring out what I needed to do to safely get them where they’re going, I put them aside and told myself I’d get to Staples and find the right envelopes.   Once I got to  Staples, I was still unsure, so I bought envelopes I thought might work, then put them aside.  A couple of days later I finally tried to send  a print off and realized I needed foamcore to keep the package stiff.  By now it’s the weekend and Image Loft, where I get the foam core, is closed till Monday. On Monday I got the foam core and realized the envelopes I got from Staples weren’t  big enough.  So I called ULine, where I get most of my shipping supplies, and asked them what is best to use.  As always, they told me what I needed and shipped it the next day.  By now it’s a week later.

So today I have everything I need to ship the prints and I’m standing at my desk, looking at the prints in their  plastic sleeves with foam core backing  and the tissue paper I’ve decided to wrap them in for extra protection and the  gusseted, self-seal, stay flat envelopes and I’m still looking at it all afraid to put the first print in the envelope.  So, I look at it all some more and wonder what keeps me from placing the print in the envelope and sealing it and sticking the address label on it.

And I think, once I start, that’s it.  There’s no going back.  If it’s wrong, if the photos get damaged in the mail, if I type the  address wrong, if my filing system fails,  it’s all my fault.  I am 100% responsible.

But I guess there’s a part of me that trusts me, because I find myself packing the first print.  When I get to the second one,  I start starring again,  then tell myself to just do this  one, and not think about the other 25.   I do the second one.  And then, like magic  I don’t even think about it anymore and find myself wrapping prints and printing labels and sealing the self stick envelope like I’ve been doing this my whole life.  I don’t even remember that I was anxious  and I’m listening to  new Bonnie Raitt  on my ipad, and soon I have a  box neatly  filled with Rose in the Mist prints ready to be shipped.

Looking at  all the neatly stacked envelopes, the paypal receipts in one pile and the checks in another, I’m impressed.  It really looks like I know what I’m doing.  And I guess I do.  It’s just that sometimes, I don’t know it.

My box of Rose in the Mist photos ready for the post office

I started making potholders for the Mother’s Day Show a few weeks ago.  This is the  first wall hanging I’ve made for the show.

When we were feeding the donkeys this morning, they all started circling me as I crouched down with them.  Jon said I was in a sea of donkeys.  The words struck.

But once in the studio I felt a small knot, like a dense, dark ball in my stomach.  My mind started wandering, going to really old  feelings of fear.  They was nothing specific, just waves of feelings that made me feel bad about myself and doubt what I was doing.

I tried to get out of my head and into the part of my body, just below my ribs, where I feel strongest.  I focused my attention there whenever the feelings arose.  I tried to put it all into this piece, what I wanted to be feeling,  not what I was feeling.

And I tried something new. I’m still not sure if those three patches of fabric scattered in the piece work,  maybe I’ll know tomorrow, when I get some distance from it.

The words are “I found myself laughing in a sea of donkeys, pull the weeds from my brain and live in my gut, turn it to sunshine, the dark stone in my stomach isn’t fear but a geode.”

The Mother’s Day Show is Saturday May 12th at Seventy Main in Greenwich NY from 10am-6pm.  For more info go to my Events page.

Donna with some of her portraits

On Friday I meet Donna Wynbrandt for the first time.  I had seen her paintings in a gallery in Cambridge NY  a few months ago and fell in love with her work.

On first seeing Donna’s paintings I thought them delightful, then their  depth  began to reveal  itself.  They are completely unselfconscious, expressive, emotional and skillfully executed.  Her subject matter comes from the myths and figures of  historical art and personal experience.

One of Donna's watercolors from 2011

Donna is  a self taught artist who started  painting seriously  in the 1990′s after a family member  mentioned to her that he thought she was a good artist.  She showed me a stack of Art books that she consults for subject matter and said she also likes to sit in Stewarts (Upstate NY’s equivalent of 7-Eleven) and draw the people who come in.  The portraits are all people from her life.

Woman and dogs

Donna is one of the six artists in the next show at the Pig Barn Gallery on Bedlam Farm.  The exhibit is called The Everyday Goddess and is about the goddess in us all.  It will be on the weekend of June 23rd and 24th.  We’ll have an artists reception on Saturday the 24th and you can meet the donkeys, dogs and chickens (hopefully) too.  I’ll be writing about and showing the work of the other artists in the days leading up to the show.

So plan for a day at Bedlam Farm in June.  Depending on when we sell the Farm,  it may be the last show in the Pig Barn Gallery.

Egyptian figurine of a woman grinding wheat

  I got an email from a yoga teacher this morning and it brought me such joy and so much laughter that  I thought I share it. ( especially after yesterdays post. )

After seeing my yoga potholder, she asked  me if I could make her a Streaming Wall Hanging with a figure doing the tree pose.  But she wanted to know if I could make ” her foot higher up on the thigh, not pressing on her knee, as this causes problems in the knee joint, and the standing foot forward, not off to the side?”

“Who else” I wrote back to her ” would try to correct a figure on a potholders posture, except a yoga teacher.”  How could I resist such a request?  And if it isn’t quite right, I know I’ll hear about it.

The truth is I’ve been irritable and anxious all day (just ask Jon)  and now I’m tired and irritable and anxious.  So here’s Izzy  looking like the bottom of my sock in pink and orange thread .  He looks a little annoyed himself and who can blame him.

Not only do I like seeing my work in it’s new home, but Karyn’s still life is really beautiful too.