Modern Quilting Bee + Creative Sweatshop = A Great Week!

Banner of Bishop's Ranch birds using ipad drawings printed on fabric

I spent the week at The Bishop’s Ranch Quilt Retreat.  I have watched the myriad of quilting groups that come through, wandering the rows of tables piled high with colorful fabrics and tools of the trade; sewing machines, scissors, rolling cutters, rulers, on and on and on.  Along with all the stuff and stash at these retreats there is an abundance of accumulated wisdom, practiced advice, and a flowing fount of ideas.  I have been threatening to attend one of these bursting, bustling events myself for a few years and this week I finally did.  I have a lot of sewing experience and have even done a bit of quilting but never seriously and never with all the tools and information.  I tend to launch into things with a lot of enthusiasm but little knowledge and muddle my way through, with mixed results.  This retreat provided me with two things I don’t usually have: 1. a wealth of shared tools and space, 2. more importantly, a generous community of experience and encouragement.  Almost everything I do these days I do alone, my graphics work is just me and the computer and the rest of the time I am stashed away in my tiny bursting at the seams studio.  I am something of an introvert so mostly I don’t mind the alone time, but this week I got to experience the joy of the sewing circle, the draw of the modern quilting bee.  Back in the day when quilting bees were a part of life, church ladies and neighbors would get together to work on quilts, each in turn helping the other with wedding quilts, and baby quilts, anniversary quilts and quilts for the county fair.  Women would chat and share, gossip and support.  It was a productive excuse to take a break from the hard isolated work of keeping a household running back in those days.  And today the needs are different but the draw is the same.  We all are running full tilt in our own little worlds, getting snippets of friends on facebook, learning new things off of  youtube.  Don’t get me wrong I use those resources too, and it’s amazing what you can learn out there floating in the world wide web, but you are floating alone. I know we’ve got our “friends” and our “links” and our “bookmarks” and our “pinterest” but we are still sitting alone with our device….or more likely sitting with other people who are all searching their devices (I know because it happens all the time in my house ….myself included).  But this week community was incarnate, we were there in the flesh, ideas, comments, instruction, feedback, sharing, help all happening in real time.  It was invigorating and exhausting all at once.  Although we were all working on our own projects, unlike the quilting bees of old, there was still a strong sense of collective effort.  I went in with an idea of what I wanted to accomplish and managed to achieve that but gained much more from the passion and practice and patience of this modern sewing circle.

Fellow quilters and stitchery

It was good to get out of my little box, otherwise know as my studio, and try something new.  I made the bird banner (pictured above) members of the sewing circle and stitchery (picture below)  The bird images are ipad drawings that I printed on fabric on my home printer then pieced in a traditional way and machine quilted.  I am going to donate the wall hanging to The Bishop’s Ranch to raffle off for the 2012 annual fund.  When there is a link for raffle tickets I’ll let you know. 

SHAKE IT UP: 40 ways to say I love you

El Corazon

Well I focused my attention and intentions on Love this week and came up with this collage piece and I have to say I fell in love with.  I broke out of my habitual way of working this time, and shaking it up brought some great results.  Usually I plan out my collages, laying out the images and carefully placing each piece.  This time I decided I needed to loosen up and what better theme to do that on than love.  The Mexican Lotteria card for heart, el Corazon, inspired me.  I used multiple images of the el Corazon card and started gluing and laying down images with abandon.  Many layers later along with some paint, rubber stamping, encaustic medium and even a shrinkie dink (my angel at the bottom).  I came up with my thoughts on love.  Love in all it’s chaotic, joyious, tumultuous, playful, extraordinary wonder.  And I offer it up to you my faithful readers, so shake it up a bit,  get out there and say “I love you”, and if that’s not enough here’s 40 ways to say it, have a love filled week. Happy early Valentines Day!

• 1. Arabic – Ohiboke / Nohiboka
• 2. Burmese – Chit pa de
• 3. Bulgarian – Obicham te!
• 4. Chinese – : Ngo oi nei (Cantonese)
• 5. Croatian – Volim te!
• 6. Danish – Jeg elsker dig!
• 7. Dutch- Ik hou van je!
• 8. Filipino – Mahal Kita / Iniibig kita!
• 9. Finnish – (Mä) rakastan sua!
• 10. French – Je t’aime!
• 11. German – Ich liebe dich!
• 12. Greek – S’ayapo!
• 13. Hawaiian – Aloha wau ia ‘oe!
• 14. Hindi – Mai tumase pyar karata hun
• 15. Hungarian – Szeretlek!
• 16. Indonesian – Saya cinta padamu!
• 17. Irish – t’a gr’a agam dhuit!
• 18. Italian – Ti amo!
• 19. Japanese – Kimi o ai shiteru!
• 20. Korean – Saranghamnida!
• 21. Latin – Te amo!
• 22. Lebanese – Bahibak
• 23. Malaysian – Saya cintamu!
• 24. Mandarin – Wo ai ni!
• 25. Norwegian – Jeg elsker deg!
• 26. Polish – Kocham ciebie!
• 27. Portuguese – Eu te amo!
• 28. Romanian – Te iubesc!
• 29. Russian – Ya tyebya lyublyu!
• 30. Serbian – Volim te
• 31. Spanish – Te amo!
• 32. Swedish – Jag älskar dig!
• 33. Thai – Phom rug khun / Chan rug khun
• 34. Tongan – ‘Ofa ‘atu
• 35. Turkish – Seni seviyorum!
• 36. Ukrainian – Ya tebe kokhayu!
• 37. Urdu – Main tumse muhabbat karta hoon!
• 38. Vietnamese – Anh yeu em / Em yeu an
• 39. Welsh – Rwy’n dy garu di!
• 40. Yiddish – Kh’hob dikh lib!

Check out my website new pieces have been added to both the Mandala Challenge and ipad drawing pages… with BUY NOW buttons… thanks Jack.  This El Corazon piece will be coming soon… I work too fast for my webmaster!  http://lisathorpe.com

Seeking: The Thrill of the Hunt!

California Quail drawn on my ipad

This week the weather was back to a glorious bright winter days and after the abundance of rain last week, here at The Bishop’s Ranch, my mind turned to treasure hunting, golden wondrous treasure! Golden chanterelle treasure that is. I gathered up my gear, a knife, a stiff bristle brush and a paper bag, I threw in my bird guide and a pair of binoculars for good measure. I was ready for treasure of both of the leafy loamy, fungus kind, and feathery flighty kind. I have written about the satisfactions of mushroom hunting and amateur birding before but it continues to thrill me.  What is so wondrous is to discover a bounty freely given by the earth to anyone willing to seek and ready to find.  The pursuit of mushrooms is similar to the inclination to bird watch.  With birds, as with mushrooms, the quarry is there, it’s there whether we are looking or not, it’s there whether we are attending to its beauty and bounty, it’s there whether we are paying attention or not.  Bounty and beauty are freely given, the little joys of life flit about and abound in the loamy leafy places all around,  but we have to be prepared for the harvest, ready for the sightings. We need our spiritual binoculars to search the skies and our stiff bristle brushes at the ready to dig through the leaf litter and find life’s little gems right under our noses.  I won’t tell you if I found any chanterelles or what kind of birds I spied… it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s the seeking that matters!

I did this Quail “painting” on my ipad!  I’m having a lot of fun with this new medium.  I found a great way to present these pieces, there is a new process of printing on metal that gives the art a hard ultra sturdy surface and a lovely glow.  My web master husband promises to have the Quail and other birds up on my wesite this weekend along with last weeks January painting …. until then other ipad painting are showing there so go to my website to check it out!  http://lisathorpe.com

Getting My Gratitude Groove On

Frosty January Sunrise

January has been a strange and wonderful ride here in the Sonoma Valley.  The weather has been, to put it mildly, strange.  The New Year began unseasonably dry. For those of you unfamiliar with our habitat zone here, winter and spring are when it rains, summer and fall typically have little or no rain.  January is usually one of the most productive rain months, reservoirs begin to come up to capacity and the snow pack in the Sierras deepens with a promise of summer melts that continue to fill the reservoirs for the thirsty valley below.  This year, however, the rains did not come.  The Old Year ended and the New Year began, and still no rain.  The fine weather became the most talked about topic, every where from the checkout counter to the front page of the local paper; rain, or the lack there of, was on everyone’s mind.  In those conversations there was a complex mixture of feelings “can you believe this weather” followed by “but we sure could use the rain”.  I my self gloried in the wondrous winter weather, taking advantage of dry days to venture out on trails that should be muddy and mucky with swollen creeks crossings making them impassable or at least adventurous to cross.  I must say those sunny crisp days helped my mental state, brushing back the post holiday doldrums giving me a brighter outlook in the dark days of winter. Gratitude for the sun and bright blue sky warmed my January heart.  Well into the month, and just a little off the meteorologist predictions, the rain came.  And boy did it come, last week the clouds started building and when it began to rain on Thursday, there was so much pent up desire in those winter clouds, they could not stop, it rained and rained and rained…so that by Monday morning nearly ten inches fell on our little hilltop here at The Bishop’s Ranch.  Just like the sunny days of early January the rain was the topic of the day.  Not a single person complained we all laughed as we shook out our raincoats and umbrellas and donned our rubber boots. Gratitude for the rain and blustery grey sky filled my thirsty January heart.

The experience of the past month reminded me of an interview I heard with Matthieu Ricard talking to Krista Tippit on her radio show “On Being”.  Ricard is a French born Buddhist Monk.  Before becoming a monk he trained in France as a scientist with a brilliant career.  Now he is a liaison to the Dali Lama on issues of science and acts as his French translator.  A few years back a gathering of scientist and great thinkers including the Dali Lama and Ricard was conviened and the Mind and Life Institute was formed.  From this collaboration scientific research was launched into the functioning of the brain and the effects of meditation and emotion on the neuro pathways.  Ricard became one of the studies early participants.  He has been declared the “Happiest Man in the World”, a title he laughs off.  His brain has developed a unique set of neuro pathways that are attributed to mediation and his practice of compassion.  A research study showed that regular people like us were able to reshape their brains by practicing 20 minutes of meditation a day for 8 weeks.  This neuroplasticity means that the brain can carve new channels, we can redirect our thinking, and it can reshape our lives, through out our life.  This gets me back to the Gratitude groove.  Greeting each day with gratitude can dig a positive neuro pathway in our brain, a drainage ditch of positive thinking.  It’s like clearing out the rain gutters of our brain of all the yucky gloopy stuff that has accumulated so that the positive channels are clear to send all that cleansing good energy all through our thoughts and body and life.  We CAN change our minds.  Thank you January for reminding me to be grateful for what comes when it comes; I’m cleaning out my mental rain gutters and setting up my rain barrel, so let it rain!

Here is a link to the Mind & Life Institute http://www.mindandlife.org/.

You can listen to Krista Tippits  “On Being” interview with Matthieu Ricard by going to the American Public Media site podcasts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84rP844SssY&feature=related

 Here is a link to a 1 min. youtube video that simple illustrates Neuroplasticity; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84rP844SssY&feature=related

My webmaster husband is away for the week so this painting is not posted on my website yet but will be soon and is for sale… to see what is posted click > http://lisathorpe.com/

 

Making Friends With Your Medium: 10,000 Hours or More!

I’ve been spending the week preparing for a two day Encaustic Collage workshop I’m leading this weekend.  I spent the first two days gathering supplies, mixing up a big batch of encaustic medium (beeswax and demar resin) tidying up the scraps of paper and ephemera I have collected over the years to share with my students, writing my lesson plans and making teaching samples for the retreat.  One of the things I always tell my students is that you have got to get to know the medium.  I ask them to think about this workshop as a first date.  I tell them don’t expect to get to first base the the first time out… meet for coffee – take some time, ask questions, explore; no expectations, no demands, then when you get to know each other better well….  While I would say I’m on very friendly terms with encaustic collage I realized this week that I hadn’t taken time lately to get together with this friend for a quality visit.  Most of my recent encounters have been more like a quick chat standing in the parking lot after a PTA meeting.  This isn’t enough to catch up and deepen our relationship.  I really needed to spend some quality time with this dear friend that I had been neglecting.  So I spent the next two days playing, not just getting ready for a sale or a class but really exploring going deeper.  I’m glad I took the time, it will make the class I teach better and it renews my excitement about the process, that’s good for me and the folks coming to the weekend workshop.

That leads me to share some insights from a book I often quote, Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers.  In it Gladwell explains the 10,000-Hour Rule. He sites studies and presents stories suggesting that the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent. It’s simply practice, 10,000 hours of it — 40 hours a week for 5 years or 20 hours a week for 10 years, you get the idea.  That’s a lot of hours! Talent comes from putting in the time, building a relationship.  I find this notion particularly compelling even comforting.  In my work, my art, my relationships, my parenting, my everything, I am on a journey, wandering (sometimes focused, sometimes aimlessly) towards my 10,000 hours.  I am working on understanding, building richness and depth. When I’ve reached my ten thousand hours, what then? Well then I’ll dive right in to my next ten thousand hours and see what more there is to be learned.

Here is a link to Malcolm Gladwell’s website http://www.gladwell.com.

Many of you are on my Blog Email list and a few of you are on my Art updates list.  If you are interested in being added to this list to get info about upcoming classes, shows and sales let me know at artist@lisathorpe.com

Cleaning: the only thing to do when the muse won’t come.

A new altar for the new year, an ode to rebirth

Well I took a 3-week hiatus from the blog and the regular flow of life and art.  I spent time with family and friends and had both hectic and restful days in the mix.  The idea of a vacation, or at least the ideal, is to go away and break the patterns and get reenergized and renewed.  That’s all good and there is definitely a piece of that in taking a break but another piece of it is messy.  I mean literally messy. For the weeks before vacation there is all the hustle and bustle of getting ready to be gone and then upon return all the putting away sorting and through what didn’t get done. When I returned to my house and my studio and regular life and time, after the Christmas tree came down and the furniture was put back in place, there was an underlying uneasiness, an unsettled feeling, I couldn’t keep on task, and I certainly could get anything creative done. For me there was only one solution, cleaning.  The layer of dust in my house was daunting; I had been able to disregard it in the low and lovely light from the Christmas tree, but no more.  There was no ignoring now.  It doesn’t help that we are having an unusually warm January; with the screen door open in the middle of the day…there was nothing better to kick my creative malaise than to don the rubber gloves, fill up the bucket with detergent and arm myself with a hearty stack of rags.  Five laborious hours later from ceiling fan to baseboard, my house was clean.  All that sweeping, scrubbing and dusting set this teetering porcelain vase that is my emotional self squarely back on a firm dust-free shelf ready to be filled.  Now my studio!

This is a favorite poem by Rumi that is about being swept out whether you are ready or not and embracing what comes.  It seemed to fit my mood for the week, hope it inspires you too.

The Guest house
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
-Rumi

Over the break my husband, Jack, revised my website, adding to the Mandala Challenge page as well as a new page of iPad art. Check it out lisathorpe.com

Happy Solti•Hanu•Christ

The shortest day and the longest night surround us and yet we rejoice in the radiance around us.  Such is the contraction of the season.  Whatever ancient religion you like to observe and celebrate with friends and family they all had the idea that this time of year is special.  In this season we arrive literally at our darkest hour and yet all around us is abundance.  The persimmon tree is the perfect reflection of the dichotomy of the season, a time of deep darkness and bitter cold that is filled with plenty and radiance.  The tree itself is both bare and abundant.  Like it’s sister trees it has lost all it’s leaves and stands naked along the path tucked between the Labyrinth and the old Ranch house here at the Bishop’s Ranch and while bare of leaf this nearly hundred year old beauty is in no way barren.  The ancient tree is deeply laden with gorgeous globes, fruit of a deep orange color that is dense and rich, a fruit juicy and bursting.  There she stands on these frosty frigid mornings defying common sense, full of fruit and possibility.  The persimmon tree stands as a sentinel on this darkest night.  We light our candles in celebration that we have made it once again to this turn of the earth and we will rise to greet another, slightly longer day tomorrow.  Faith, in whatever form we choose, that this moment of beauty and wonder, so pregnant with possibility, will push it’s light into the coming days and weeks and months ahead.  We are each a little light in the dark, we are each a flickering flame, huddle close my friends, share the flame within you, as the saying goes a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle let’s set the world on fire.

I’ll be taking a break until the second Friday of December.  My husband, and web guide will be updating my website with this painting and some new work for you to see I will post a little something when he does.  Until then have a wonderful holiday season, may your heart and hearth be full of warmth and light.  Lisa

Path of Desire

Lucky on Path of Desire

The past few weeks the phrase “path of desire” has been roaming around my head.  I’m not sure where I first heard the term, but the way I have come to understand it is a path of desire is like a deer trail in the woods.  A physical path of desire is usually a thin well-trod path that leads somewhere that a critter or human needs to go.  It is often the most direct path to something important.  The ones in the woods may led to water or safe shelter, or be the most direct, safe way from here to there.  Human paths of desire are like that too.  You often see one across an empty lot cutting the corner the fastest way to a destination.  Campus’s and parks have paths of desire carved into them if the planned, sanctioned paths don’t get people where they want to go.  One of the most infuriating things about Central Park in New York City is the vast amount of grassy area that is fenced off from the rambling masses, they really don’t like those paths of desire people want to make, and a fence is about the only way to keep them from popping up, or rather wearing down.  Anyhow, here at The Bishop’s Ranch we’ve got a number of physical paths of desire.  The most obvious is a widely used one that leads from the lower part of the campus to the dining hall. The official walkway takes a big wide loop along the driveway, and it’s clear that when it comes to dinner no one wants to take the long way!  So this past few weeks our visiting Americorp team turned that path of desire into a sanctioned path, leveled it, widened it and laid the path with woods chips to keep it from getting muddy. Desire fulfilled.

This week has also seen another kind of path of desire hewn.  This path is of a spiritual nature. In the season of Advent The Bishop’s Ranch offers a Silent Retreat.  Participants can choose from offerings of prayer, meditation, labyrinth walks, the art center open and ready to explore, hiking the trails or do nothing at all. Over the years I’ve watched these introspective wanderers with some degree of envy.  I thought to my self how wonderful to just wander and wonder at your leisure do whatever you please, what an indulgence.  But this year I have come to a new understanding of what these travelers are up to through the paths of desire lens.  Physical paths of desire are not frivolous; they are direct lines to safety, sustenance, and shelter.  Spiritual paths of desire also lead to sustenance and safety.  It takes time to wear a groove both in the earth and the terra firma of the soul, and what ever the soul is needing the path of desire can led one there.  Each travelers journey is different, each true.  It seems that one must walk the path for some time to wear a groove, to press down the insistent grasses that wants to grow and obscure the way.  Figuring out what path to forge is part of the journey, the other, and perhaps more difficult, is to follow it faithfully.  A path of desire of true self of inner understanding is carved only by repeated use, so let’s start walking.

Upcycling: going beyond the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)

After a busy past six weeks of teaching classes, shows and sales I took a little pause this week and looked through some magazines that I had marked with post it’s, and leafed through clipping ideas torn from catalogs.  The problem with being a “crafty girl” as my 80-year-old friend Zelpha refers to makers like me, is that there is never enough time. Never enough hours in the day or room in my studio to make all the things that tickle me enough to say “I could make that!”.  This week I decided to spend a little time with my “cool ideas” file and see what I could come up with.  In the interest of killing two birds with one stone I decided to try out things that could be gifts too.  Some of you have known me long enough to know I have had a long running love of clothes and fashion.  One of my favorite things to as a kid was playing with paper dolls. Folding the little tab corners over their little cardboard shoulders was heaven for me. From paper dolls I graduated to Barbies.  When just changing their clothes got boring I made outlandish outfits with scraps from my mom’s sewing basket on a hand crank kiddie sewing machine.  It probably wasn’t a big surprise to my parents when I decided to study design with a focus on fashion.  I spent a little time doing costuming for theater productions but ended up submitting my senior project in wearable art.  That was back in a time when it seemed ok to major is something completely impractical…but I digress.  All that is a lot to explain that when I have a little extra time or want to make a nice gift for myself or someone else I always think ACCESSORIES!   One of my clippings was from a catalog, they had a line of oven mitts made from old t-shirts, but who needs an oven mitt?  So I took this upcycling idea in another direction, you got it accessories. That’s right, scarves from cut up old t-shirts. I think they turned out grand and are not too heavy and bulky, plus they have had heavens knows how many washing to soften them up before being reincarnated into a scarf.  The next adventure in upcycling was fusing plastic bags.  This is from an article in the July/August issue of ClothPaperScissors magazine.  Belts seemed like the perfect use for this cacophony of color.  And a still have a lot of this plastic “fabric” to play around with and see what else I can come up with.

Next week I’ll get back to my usual musing on life and landscape here at the Bishop’s Ranch but in the meantime if you have some upcycling ideas to share I’d love to hear them!

November: from extrovert to introvert on only 30 days

I offer my November painting a few days into December due to the fall of Fridays and blog posting.  But in contemplating the month clear through the end, November has revealed something to me in it’s vibrant colors, crisp mornings, and whisking, whipping winds.  The lively colors of the vineyard accentuate the folds of the landscape; it is like a last shake of the sheets on the line before they are dropped in the laundry bin, cupboard bound.  Or like a beautiful Turkish rug right before it is rolled up and packed away.    Throughout the month the yellow, orange and red of the fields has slowly faded, dropping and drifting with each passing day and as if to say to December “these colors are not for you” the last night of November there was a wild scrubbing windstorm.  November stomped away from the party taking her flaming cloak with her leaving only the most tenacious leaves clinging to the near naked vines.  Perhaps the wind was sent to remind us to take a little turn inward, fold up your party dress and pause.  Before the extrovert fest ahead of us during the December holidays, we should pause and take a little moment to breath.  My son, who early on recognized his need for quiet internal time to recharge, dubbed this time “Turtle Time”. I encourage you to take a little Turtle Time, fold up on the couch with a cup of tea, and take a deep breath, embrace the quiet while you can.

Saturday December 3^rd I am having an Art Show and gift sale, if you are in the area please join me follow this link for more info: SHOW.  To see this November painting and other works from the blog and more follow this link: lisathorpe.com.