Old, Hard, Stiff, Uncompromising Clay

Late in the afternoon on Thursday of this week, we were still so covered up in projects at the shop that I was just an overwhelmed wreck. So, with a less than stellar attitude, I made an abrupt decision that there wasn't enough time left in the day to either finish a project or begin a new one. After tidying the fit table I opened the closet (where precious Martha has graciously organized row after row of supplies) and after a few indecisive moments, pulled out some clay.

But that stupid shameless clay... it was old and harder than granite. The last time it had been used was when my daughter Ashley made a rabbit and gave it to my Father -- probably six or seven years ago. And naturally, all my clay tools and the mechanical roller used for kneading were at home...

So, with no tools except two rough and cut-up hands I started smashing and crushing that clay. It crumbled. I rolled it and squished it with a tiny wooden dowel rod. It stayed as hard as ever. I took an old Altoid box and clobbered it over and over and over and over. It became too thin in some areas while still rock hard in others and it stuck to the marble I was using as a work surface. I got mad at it and threw it at the floor but it just rolled around picking up dust. Finally, since it wouldn't relax and soften, I plied some of it apart and began working on it in sections. I rolled it. Tweaked it. Patted it. Pulled it. Stretched it. Tiny part by tiny part. And it softened. It yielded.

Oh my goodness. With it ripped into small and manageable sections, pretty quickly it was ready and I could put it all together into one lump and work it. What had been as hard as a rock was now pliable and easy to knead.

These little wings were fashioned in just a few minutes. What took the time was the preparation of the clay. Once it was ready for use, forming the tiny wings and laying out how they were to be sculpted was so simple. The work was in the preparation, not the sculpting.

Old. Hard. Stiff. Uncompromising.

All ripped and torn and crushed and smashed and dropped and then kneaded back together soft and useful.

Then quickly fashioned in the way I knew they'd be before I even retrieved the clay from the cabinet. So easy once the clay was willing.

Oh, to be willing clay.

All Kinds of Paperwork

Paperwork.

Today was spent doing all kinds of paperwork that didn't involve artistic creativity in any way. The paperwork consisted of tax reporting and W2 forms and bank ledgers and invoices and then reworking our embarrassingly out of date website.

After gathering what was needed and moving from my disaster-of-a-desk in the office at the shop, I moved into the back workroom. On that large and spotless table (normally used for fitting projects) I had plenty of space for two laptops as well as all the stacks of papers I needed. At the end of the day, everything was more-or-less finished, but the entire landscape looked like an elementary student's desk. Geez.

I did paperwork of that sort and similar other tasks for almost two decades when I worked as a secretary years ago. I used to write the minutes of Board meetings and before that I kept track of how millions of dollars were spent dollar-by-dollar for the city department I worked for... and I was happy enough in those jobs. But these days, the only paperwork I really want to do is paperwork involving painting and cutting and pasting.

A few of the "wings" centerpieces.

This past fall, my major paperwork consisted of creating several small and one large three-dimensional  "wings" sculptures to be used as centerpieces on tables for a group one of my daughter's is involved with. After those were completed, I thought it had been successful enough to begin a more challenging wings project and decided to create a set that is over five feet tall and sturdy. I got a fairly reasonable start on them, but then the shop got too busy for me to devote any time on them.

One of the small "wings" centerpieces.

It's incredibly challenging to take up an abandoned project -- and the reason for that abandonment makes no difference. It seems there's always something new I'm wanting to do (and probably never finish either.) It's one of the worst traits many artsy-fartsy people share. We are super at starting. We are frail at finishing. It's a terribly immature, destructive, wasteful and lazy trait.

This spring, we'll see how lazy and immature and wasteful I am... oh, how I hate being accountable! But my daughter Alicia... she'll be asking about them. God bless Alicia. God bless all her pointed little comments to her beloved Mother-Sweet-Mother!

I started by cutting out the basic shape of the wings and sanding each piece.  I've been trying to improve on my poor circular saw skills.  My dad used to tell me that I was going to cut off a leg because I was careless and didn't use good judgement about how I set up a cut.  To combat this proclivity for recklessness, I've tried to behave slightly more like a human instead of a monkey when I'm cutting. But I still love power tools so much it's hard for me to settle down and behave.

After the boards were cut, it was on to figuring out how they would actually look.  Unfortunately, I made a mistake right at the beginning and started forming the left wing from the right cut-out and the right wing from the left cut-out so my original sketch of what they were supposed to look like was messed up.  Another GEEZ!

I made extensions to flesh out the support out of foam core and screwed them to the base. They seemed sturdy enough to withstand the process but I really wasn't confident about how well they'd hold up when they were drenched with water.

The bases made, I noticed they looked more like giant ears than anything else. I'm still bummed that I messed up the original design, but think they'll work.  They are folded wings, after all.

Next came the foundation for the "feathers." It's just water-logged paper soaked in flour. I'm always amazed at how well this elementary school trick works.  Thank you, Mrs. Stormes (my grade-school art teacher!) for this tip as well as the millions of others you shared with us. God bless you.

It took so long for the wing-folds to dry, I started to become wonder if it would even work. It was also hard to leave the folds alone and stop fiddling with their positioning. I was a little concerned with the possibility of mildew they were so big and so wet, but it dried a little each day and finally they were as stiff and sturdy as I could have hoped for.

They dried a little each day -- very little each day.

I began to add the layers of "feathers" but didn't get far. We got so busy beginning in August that I haven't been able to work on them since. This winter I'm likely have a few days. Oh how I love a quiet snowy day in February and March! I'm anxious to take this project back up. They've been hanging in the mat-cutting room taunting me for months. I desperately want to finish the feather-work so I can begin the painting. That's the part I am most excited to do. NO! I'm most excited to hang the finished wings in the gallery!

Mary: the Mother of God

Wonder what sort of woman Mary was?

Did God select her as the earthly mother of his son because she was so holy? So gracious? So maternal? So wise beyond her years?

Was Jesus' mother a competent and worthy young woman? Was she masterful and talented at the things she tried to do? Was she accomplished? Well spoken? Smart? Graceful? Resourceful? Admired? Wise?

Was Mary a good cook? An excellent housekeeper? An able teacher and disciplinarian?

Was Mary a good wife and did she make Joseph happy and proud?

Was she pretty? Beautiful? Saintly?

I wonder? Was Mary sometimes a bewildered young mother uncertain of what her real role was and what God expected of her? Did the load ever feel just too too heavy? Certainly, there must have been times when she felt misunderstood and persecuted... the ridicule about Jesus being illegitimate was still happening decades after his birth.

Did Mary enjoy living in Nazareth -- a place derided by the more important folk of her day -- or did she long for something more exciting and fun? Did she ever wish for more than Joseph's humble means could provide? Did she bear patiently with her workload and the heat of the summer and cold of the winter seasons or did she sometimes complain and grumble and feel impatient and put upon?

Mary was chosen among all women of all time to be Jesus' mother. God could have chosen any of us -- any of us at all -- to be his mother. It's not anything Mary asked for or hoped for or longed for. It was just something that, well, for lack of a better word -- HAPPENED to her. It just one day, out of the complete blue, happened to her.


If we had been choosing Jesus' mother, would we have chosen a young, poor, uneducated, simple woman to be his mother? More likely,we would have given him every advantage to ensure a prosperous and successful  homelife and upbringing and it would have included not only a stable and well-to-do home, but also a stable and well-to-do community in which to live and learn.

The way God does things so often seems counterproductive. He makes the wise foolish and the foolish wise. He makes the strong weak and the weak strong. He makes the proud humble and the humble proud and the first last and the last first.

Wonder what sort of woman Mary was? Young. Naive. Foolish. Weak. Humble. Poor. Unimportant. Overwhelmed. Confused. Last.

Why choose her?

Why Mary? Why? Why why why? What qualified her for such an honor?

I believe it was because of one thing: Mary was obedient.

She was humbly, confidently, foolishly, naively, dependently, patiently, decidedly obedient.

Obedience is something that, as Americans, we don't take too seriously. We like a rebel and an independent thinker who doesn't mind to stir it up. Obedience seems bland and boring and unintellectual. You don't have to be too bright to be obedient. You don't really have to be too good at anything. We don't really hold obedience in high regard. We even think it's sort of trite. We teach our children to question authority! We think respect has to always be earned (not given until lost) and we sometimes think obedience indicates weakness.

But to God, obedience is an honorable and important part of who he created us to be. The Israelites failed to attain all the blessings God had planned for them because they were disobedient. Does the same thing happen to us?

Wonder what sort of woman Mary was? Sometimes I think she understood a concept that is completely foreign to me. She was obedient.

“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord.  "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Isaiah 1:18-20

Lydia's Boa

Our two-year-old granddaughter, Lydia, is positioned to set this world on fire.A diamond set between two hard-as-rock boys, this fearless little girl is as delicate and ladylike as an old fashioned Snow White (NOT the Snow White portrayed by that sulking vampire-lover) but also holds her own in every category.

One day when the kids were at work with us, my daughter Alicia and I struggled to put a giant air conditioner into a back window. While the boys watched Bambi on the DVD player, Lydia quietly observed her mother and me for quite a time before deciding the coast was clear. She stealthily swiped a screw driver and a screw from our little pile of tools and commenced to patiently installing the screws into a metal part laying on a shelf.

Lydia is a problem-solver. She accesses situations and determines how best to proceed. She arranges her toys to suit her even if it takes great effort. She pushes her baby carriages and shopping cart through mazes of toys and furniture and, if needed, lifts them over any and all obstacles. She almost always has a baby doll in tow -- she's an excellent mother, an excellent mother -- but still manages to handle all the other domestic issues that present themselves to her all while looking stylish and behaving like a lady.

She's bold. She's fearless. She funny. She's loving. She's spunky. She's ornery. She's bright. She's quick. She's sweet. She's bigger than life.

A couple weeks ago our church hosted a family reunion and had various small animals and reptiles brought in from a reptile farm somewhere around St. Louis. Lydia petted the alligators and iguanas and stroked the hedge hog and exclaimed about the tarantulas. Then, in her fluffy-cotton-candy dress, she tried on the boa, happily engaged with the handler and Princess the Python for about ten minutes.

How do we become who we are? Are we born a certain way or do the sum of our experiences -- and how we interpret them -- make us into the people we are?

Who will Lydia be in ten years? In twenty? In fifty?

She'll be the girl with the hat and the dress and the shoes and the boa, that's who.

And she will be magnificent.

Longmire, Gloria, King George and Dad

Gloria and Longmire

Last year, late in the summer and into the fall, was a sad and difficult time for us, filled with a variety of disappointments, disillusionment, and life-altering events. Many things had to be accomplished in a few short weeks -- almost all with insufficient resources -- and personal tragedies and dramas had to be relegated to the pile of problems we would think about when there was a spare moment and an ounce of energy. Often, it felt as though our loads couldn't get any heavier or we would simply collapse where we stood... and yet, the fountain was open and continued to gush difficulty and sadness.

Our front entry at the shop -- my tribute.

 

One evening I came home from another heat-festering and physically-demanding day at work, so tired I could barely stand to even stay alive. I was even too dirty to stay alive. Too tired. Too dirty. Too sweaty. Too discouraged. Too forgotten. Too mean.

Instead of going inside (where I'd immediately need to take fifteen minutes to care for our little wiener dogs who would accost me as I came into the door), I dragged over and sat on the old metal arbor with the intention of spending a little time feeling sorry for myself and my sad and difficult plight.

I was so tired I couldn't think. So tired I couldn't see. So tired I couldn't feel. I just sat and looked but when I looked out across the yard I wasn't seeing a thing. When Shoobydoo, one of our old ugly cats, came around to greet me by swishing her tail across my bare legs, it made me mad that even she wanted something from me when I had nothing else to give and so I huffed at her and turned the other direction on the arbor and looked out over the driveway.

There, past my filthy old red truck, were two peacocks, quietly picking their way through the gravel under the woodpile beyond. They moved stealthily into the yard and toward me as I looked on in utter astonishment. Shoobydoo walked over to them and greeted them as she'd greeted me and the peacocks seemed familiar with her.

Dad and his old watches and knives.

Gloria and Longmire, and even the big boy peacock we call King George (who has all his feathers) are still visiting a year later and each encounter is intriguing and wonderful. They belong to a neighbor who lives about a half mile away and the peacocks travels back and forth across our back field fairly regularly. We often hear them calling to one another. Actually, they seem to enjoy roosting on our roof and then screaming in their formidable peacock way.

But on that particular day last August, as I looked upon those beautiful and quiet birds at my feet, I was mystified once again by all that our lives encompass. The endless details that we seek to master but which often instead seem to conquer us are insignificant when compared to the very real and magnificent details God has prepared for us in this world: His endless, effortless details.

I told my dad about the peacocks and showed him the pictures I had taken. In his bed in the nursing home, he said he would like to see them but of course, he never would and he knew it and so did I.

We finished that time in our lives. We. Finished.

Oh, there's still tons of work to do at the shop and our resources are still lacking in a variety of areas and many of the changes that came upon us last summer are permanent. But we finished that season -- we finished -- and we won't ever have to repeat it again.

Sometimes a person will tell you that there is a reason why all the things that happen, happen. I know it must be true for them. But me. I don't seem to get any wiser or richer or more spiritual or Godly or learn a thing. I just stay dazed and confused and overwhelmed. So me. Well, I don't know why all the things that happen, happen.

What do I know after last year? Nothing. Not a blamed thing.
 
Those peacocks -- they were a mystery to me. My time with them was fleeting and I think about them and hope to see them again every day. When I do, it seems magical and enchanting and I love them. What a fine thing: those peacocks.

My father -- he was a mystery to me. My time with him was fleeting and I think about him and hope to see him again every day. When I do, it will be magical and enchanting because I love him. What a fine thing: my father.

This Beautiful Light

A wall in the gallery in the early evening light.

I love the light.

I love the way it comes into your home or where you're working and transforms the colors in the room.

I love the patterns it layers onto the wall and onto the faces of those you love.

I love the late-day sun and the way it tousles the leaves when the wind stirs through the trees.

I love the light on water -- any water, not just important water -- the light on puddles and ditches and in the tiny sprinkles on a window.

I love the light sifting through the dust on our old dirt road after a car passes by. It's stirringly beautiful in a way that's not sensible unless you've seen it yourself or unless you have either an artist's soul or an humble soul or an old soul.

I love the low winter light and the light from the North best. 

And I love the light behind big, dark billowing thunderclouds that turns the edges of them orange-yellow and disconcertingly threatening.

My younger daughter, Alicia, is consistently bothered  because I prefer to have the lights off in a room and she doesn't see any reason to live life in the dark.

"It's not dark in here," I say even when it is.

"It's dark in here," she says. "I can't see anything."

So she turns off the darkness.

And turns on the light.

And when she does, we lose the real light -- the natural light -- God's light.

Sometimes, at night, when the moon is full and I've remembered to open the drapes, the light will awaken us when it reaches the far western sky. I like to open the windows then and watch the moonlight lay patterns on the curtains as they move in the breeze.

My older daughter told me once that the curtains in our bedroom are okay for me, but look like they belong to an old person. "But I like how they look in the light," I said and she reiterated that they were fine for me but that she wouldn't want such old-lady curtains.

Next time she's at my house when the moon is big, I'll open the windows and let the wind into the house and then wake her to show her how the light looks filtering through the ruffles on the Priscilla curtains and embroidery work on the drapes. I don't know what she'll think. Probably, she will not like it. Probably, she will wish I hadn't bothered her with the minutia of my life.

Wonder why the light makes freckles on our faces? It made freckles on my brother and sister's faces and my children's faces and mine too. My cousins have freckles.

It's taken me decades to decide I wasn't cheated because God decided to make me and those that I love the most with freckles. Actually, now, when I paint a portrait -- any portrait at all -- I always paint them with freckles because...

Freckles, maybe..? Yes, maybe. Maybe they affirm to us that God loves how we look in the light.

Yes.

Maybe so.

Riding on the Clouds

The window next to the design counter.

Something happened this week at the shop.

We're almost six months in our new location now and it seems that during most of that time it's been a harsh and hopeless winter. We trudged through a lot of desperate days in February and even into this month as it's continued to dip into merciless temperatures day-in and day-out. But yesterday we opened our windows and let the wind inside.

You're right. It was still too cold to do that. But how can a person really live or breathe with the windows closed? My poor husband has put up with this ideology from me for 32 years because we sleep with the windows open almost every night in every season. (To do otherwise, obviously, would cause instant suffocation and relentless complaining and carrying on.)

One of the front windows at the shop.

 

 

 

So with wild abandon of common sense we opened our windows and the wind caressed our souls while we worked. We could smell the earth and the sky and the promise of the rain that was still miles away. And with that cool sweet wind permeating our afternoon we thought maybe it was possible that it would -- eventually -- be Spring. We thought maybe we might even survive this harsh and unfriendly winter to see it.

When I got home last night I immediately raised the bedroom window and sat on the edge of the bed, resting my chin on the window sill to watch the clouds boil into the sky and the bare black branches on the trees shiver and frenzy in anticipation.  Frankie, our eight-year-old wiener dog, paced nervously back and forth on the bed, whining occasionally, as he always does as the thunder drew closer while Lucy, our fifteen-year-old wiener dog, stretched out under the blankets for her after-supper-sleep. Frankie simply couldn't be calmed or comforted. Lucy simply couldn't have been happier or more content.

It's been a hard winter in every single way. And all winter long I've stomped around like Frankie, incapable of receiving any comfort at all and whining more than occasionally. My goodness. It has been hard. But if I could have settled down... If I could have stopped stomping around, maybe I could have been happier and possibly even content.  Like Lucy. Just cuddled in to rest. 

I guess there's something Frankie doesn't know about storms. The Lord rides on the clouds. He rides on the clouds. Glorious glorious glorious.

"Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before him -- his name is the Lord." Psalm 68:4

Calm down, little Frankie. It's just a storm. Calm down, little sister. It's just a storm. When the rain comes, it'll wash the storm away.  Meanwhile, ride on the wind. High on the wind, little sister, is the Lord.