krobo beads

A dear friend gave me a strand of glass Krobo beads from Ghana for my birthday a few years ago.  They are "Mue ne Angma" or "Writing Beads",  made from finely ground glass with glass slurry decorations that are "written" on and fused in a second firing.  They are brighter than most of the beads I tend to favor and they only found their way into a couple of pieces.  I like an aged, more elegant look and these are - well - kind of crude and brash.  But I know that if I find myself resistant to something, it means I have to suspend my judgement and find its own unique beauty.  It works the same way with people too, but that's a little more problematic.



Grouping the them into color affinities was my solution to the problem of what to do with the Krobo beads, adding other bright resin and ceramic beads and some rustic bone Tibetan Buddhist mala beads.

In a short-lived burst of creativity, I made a batch of bracelets strung on leather and embellished with charms.  

still august

Once in a while, a piece just kind of makes itself.  That doesn't mean this was just the way I needed it to be the first time.  I had to restring the smokey quartz crystal because it didn't hang right and the Tibetan mala bead that connects the coin to the leather cord originally had turquoise chips in it that were way too blue to go harmoniously with the other turquoise beads and had to be changed out with another that had only a brass inlay.  But overall, the process is just joyful when it comes together so smoothly.  (It also sold within a couple of hours of being listed on Etsy.)  Now, if I could just do this whenever I wanted to ...

muse-ing

The other night I was watching a pledgeweek replay of a tribute concert for Bob Dylan on PBS.  It got me thinking about an interview I had seen where Dylan was asked where he got the inspiration to write songs like "Blowin' In the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changing", songs that expressed the deepest feelings of many of us who came of age in the 60's.  He gets this really really sad look on his face and he says, I don't know --- they just came through me and I wrote them down.  The way he looked, you knew that hadn't happened to him in a long while.  For a time, he was a clear channel.  Or he was "visited by his Muse".  He didn't know how to make it happen again and though he's written some pretty good stuff since, nobody's looking to him as a prophet anymore.  

It must be a relief to some degree.

I used to spend a week each year at Nancy Crow's Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Columbus, Ohio when I was making "art" quilts.   One of the workshops I took was with David Walker and he had us start each morning with meditation and drawing with our non-dominant hands to left-brain type music.  Vollenweider.  That sort of thing.  The idea was to imagine ourselves as clear channels --- open to the creative juices of the Universe.  For some reason, it hadn't occured to me before that workshop that there was a spiritual component to the creative process.

At the best of times, I feel like the piece already exists in its whole and perfect form, in a parallel universe or heaven or someplace.  The Platonic ideal, maybe.  Like that quote that's going around on Pinterest, "If you get out of the way, the art will make itself."  My job is to bring it into being. I NEED to do that to be happy.

doldrums ...

The creative side of my brain has left on its summer holiday and, as usual, has forgotten to take the rest of me with it.  So here I am, looking for inspiration once more, cleaning my cramped work space in the hope that the need to put a few different pieces together will eventually overcome the summer doldrums.

But since I have no new pieces to share with you, I would like to share that one of my favorite books, Native Funk and Flash, is back in print after many many years,

My original copy from 1974 is stained and worn but I still get inspired by the work of the San Francisco artists who light up its pages.  If you want some real hippie, boho, tribal, gypsy vibe - check it out.

Peace, man.