beauty is the mystery of life

"Take advantage of the awareness of perfection in your mind. See perfection in everything around you. See if you can discover your true feelings when listening to music. Make happiness your goal. The way to discover the truth about this life is to discover yourself. Say to yourself, What do I like and what do I want? Find out exactly what you want in life. Ask your mind for inspiration about everything."

Agnes Martin, 'Beauty is the Mystery of Life'

the days are shorter but still warm and sunny. the few leaves are deteriorating, in wind swept piles, on the sidewalk and in the curb. around four-thirty in the afternoon this glowing window appears on my wall and by five o'clock it's gone.

i'm thinking about how we experience beauty. how we know it, what it feels like and if/how we are changed by the experience.

holiday cards

I printed cards for the President at UArts and LiLu Interiors last weekend. I'm working with similar imagery in a new print series that will be exhibited at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in December.

in progress

snowy clouds + foggy windows

virginia woolf

"above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities, and its shallows, and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever changing and turning world..."

"Q: How can a singer transmit his emotions to an audience?"

"A: By feeling strongly himself. Sympathy is the sole transmitter of emotion and the feelings of an audiences are excited by our own, as the vibrations of one instrument are awakened by the vibrations of another." Hints on Singing, Garcia

lake louise

remembering how nice home is.

prayer

expect good and
give in confidence

tone

synthesizing

I need time to live with the ideas I'm working with. An idea will intrigue me but I might not know what it looks like yet. It seems to take some time for a project to take shape for me. I need to ruminate and left various options live inside my head for a little while. 


Sometimes I just need to leave the project for a weekend and return to it on Monday morning with a cup or coffee and the answer suddenly becomes obvious to me. Arranging in-process pieces on the wall in various ways helps me see relationships between concepts and materials and figure out the next iteration of a project.

filling up

"I don't think you have that kind of time either. I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good enough at it, and I don't think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect. You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water."  Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird 

A Way of Naming

I want to go home. But first I have to make it. Every day. This year I left the home I knew and now I have no real place. The only choice is to become. To chose every day to become. This involves letting go and filling up. I need to keep my hands moving, shed what is now extraneous and show up every day ready.


I write and document things I see as a way of naming to build a foundation for how and what I see.