cut-up: anthropologie catalog

I bet there are thousands of things you can make with an anthropoligie catalog.

here are two: a paper chain & paper beads. simple things for little fingers in your favorite vintage hues.

vintage scene from the sketchbook

I made this in my 20's during a time of letting go & self forgiving. I always laugh when I come across it.
Liberating, light, and of course, there is the underlying struggle. funny. ya?

envelope you

experimenting with gouache

wabi-sabi

"Wabi stems from the root wa, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquillity, and balance. Generally speaking, wabi had the original meaning of sad, desolate, and lonely, but poetically it has come to mean simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice, and in tune with nature. Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else would be described as wabi. Sixteenth-century tea master Jo-o described a wabi tea man as someone who feels no dissatisfaction even though he owns no Chinese utensils with which to conduct tea. A common phrase used in conjunction with wabi is "the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe." A wabi person epitomizes Zen, which is to say, he or she is content with very little; free from greed, indolence, and anger; and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.
Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough. An old car left in a field to rust, as it transforms from an eyesore into a part of the landscape, could be considered America's contribution to the evolution of sabi. An abandoned barn, as it collapses in on itself, holds this mystique.
There's an aching poetry in things that carry this patina, and it transcends the Japanese. We Americans are ineffably drawn to old European towns with their crooked cobblestone streets and chipping plaster, to places battle scarred with history much deeper than our own. We seek sabi in antiques and even try to manufacture it in distressed furnishings. True sabi cannot be acquired, however. It is a gift of time."

I have not read the book, but reading about these ideas feels like water going down.

found here

groundlessness

another pema chodrin quote I find so comforting...

ecstatic laundry

so much of my life is folding, scrubbing & tidying... trying to remember bright moments are often lurking in a simple choice or mind switch.

super hero

working on a new form of hero

scenes from the sketchbook

Trying to think of how to harvest the art.

Taking pictures of my sketchbook helps synthesize what I have been doing.

Still, I struggle with where to put it all.

the handwritten quote is by pema chodrin