Laundry Line Divine

Do you ache to be valued?
Do you yearn to do something with your hours that expresses more of your soul?
Have you closeted an early passion that is crying to be let out in to the world?
Do you have piles of notes for a book you have not yet written?

I am of the firm conviction that we are born artistic. We are born delighted with what our senses report to us. We begin to organize those impressions in a myriad of ways. Our fascination grows in to passion, which, for some becomes a career or for others a hobby. Many times that creativity falls away after we outgrow our fingerpainting aprons. Whatever happens along the route to adulthood that squelched our creativity is part of what makes us unique.

I sought success in a career as an actor, which kicked my self-esteem to the curb many times. However, my foundered acting career did not kill my creative spirit.
In the writing of my first book, Laundry Line Divine: A Wild Soul Book for Mothers, I have come to value my creativity in all it’s faces. And I have come to see its catalyzing power to improve the quality of my life, how it has built in me a resilience in adversity and has led me to find meaningful self-expression that I can manage while raising my children with my husband.
My creative spirit has allowed me joy I could not have accessed otherwise.
I don’t think you have to be a woman or a mother to be creative. Every human being has the capacity for wonder and expression. Each of our days are speckled with choices that emerge from that delightful sense that is uniquely ours. I write about motherhood, because, as you know, I am a mother. And, motherhood provides a certain set of conditions that severely impact a woman’s overt acts of creativity.

For the past few weeks, I have worked feverishly on the non-fiction book proposal for LLD with my writing coach, Stephanie Gunning. I am honing my proposal in preparation for sending it out to literary agents. This has caused a stirring of thought in me about my mission in life, my own personal manifesto, if you will.

I am a full-time mother of two teenaged kids, a boy, 17 and a girl about to 14. I live with my husband in the mountains of western Massachusetts. I have been an artist my whole life. I am thinking you have been too. Truly, we are all born creative. We just seal that zone of our life off sometimes, to find meaningful employment or to please the expectations of others. There are scads of reasons why hoisting a paintbrush on a canvas is impractical and a waste of precious time. Sure. I can see how it happens. I have lived my version of that story. For whatever reason, I have continually found a way to create, no matter what the conditions of my life are.

I started life as a collagist at the age of four, cutting out images I loved and gluing them in to this giant scrapbook that sits on my shelf now, 47 years later. When I was about 7, I discovered that theatre was to be my life. I played a boy who turned in to a rat in an after school program production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. What could ever be better than disappearing behind khaki boy shorts and knee highs in to a rat costume, shoving my fuzzy hair under rat ears while standing jammed in a bathroom stall at Potawatomi Park in Chicago. In that moment, I felt my passion ignite.

Left to my own devices, which I was from the moment I considered where to go to college, I pursued theatre until I was 30 years old. I had some success. I became a theatre artist, marked forever with discerning taste in new plays and a loathing of bad lighting. I love plays. I love the stage. I love seeing good plays, which I will see over and over, like some people ride a rollercoaster. The ride of an artfully created production captures every human sense and transforms our daily reality in to something quite magnificent. Many years have passed since I have played a role in a scripted play. I have done readings, studied singing, and read my kids hours and hours of stories with all my training at the tip of my tongue.
All my life, before, during and since doing theatre, I have been a fiber artist. I learned to sew from my Grandma Mimi when I was ten. The skills she taught me enabled me to sew costumes in high school, got me a good job in college in the costume shop of my theatre department and kept me from having to waitress during my years in New York City. I worked for the Martha Graham Dance Company, re-creating costumes from Martha’s early solos for her company of stunning dancers. I sewed clothing for the Cabbage Patch Kids magazine sets, under the direction and design of a woman who was a costumer to Miss Piggy herself.

Along the way, I met my husband. By that time, I had segued from costumes in to fine women’s clothing, custom created in my apartment. I enjoyed having my business, but could not keep this up once I gave birth to our son. We eventually moved to the Berkshires and my creativity flowed in to running our household, developing my fiber art skills by learning to knit and felt, and into gardening.

I don’t do things lightly. I jump in full throttle. I learn to do things until I have a certain level of mastery over them or decide they are not for me. There are things I have tried and put aside. I like to do things well. For this reason, I have studied and can capably brew compost tea for my tomato plants, save seeds for next years’ crop of nicotiana. I have learned to grow and preserve quince. I love to bead, make ribbon embroidery and french braid my daughter’s hair. I even won a ribbon for skillet tossing, but that is another story.

None of this is that extraordinary you know. I bet there are things you have learned in the recent past that you never thought you could do. All these things I do are just different faces of my creativity pouring forth. I guess those early collages or playing at boy who turns in to a rat opened the gates of my creativity and they have never completely closed. In the process of writing my book, I have begun to see and celebrate the value my creativity has brought to my becoming the happy, excited, authentic mature woman who I am today. Yes, I can say that with full authority. I thank all the glue sticks, morning-glory seeds and embroidery floss that I have ever touched for leading me to this moment of recognition.

What is this all about? It is about taking ownership of your own exquisite creative forces. I don’t want you to quit your job or anything. I just want you to let yourself play a bit. The things I have learned to do have found a spot in my daily life as a mother at home with kids. Picking strawberries led me to making jam. Needing to cover bare baby heads led me to knitting. Loving textiles, textures and color has led me to becoming a mixed media collage artist. Being passionate about communicating has led me to a five-year postal art collaboration which has now become a way for me to lead others to discover their own expression in their daily lives.

Over the next weeks on this Laundry Line, I will be writing about creative women. There are so many people who inspire me, making art with their days. However humble an expression may be, the will to create beauty is ceaseless and essential to our human spirit.
Here is what I found on a very cool website:

There is something very moving about the way these humble women are driven to be creative, in lived, everyday sense. It gives us much to reflect on what we take for granted as the provenance of art: for one, their painting is not the unique creation of any single individual but a tradition grown in a community. The work is not produced for a market, but for themselves, as well as the community at large. And viewed in the context of their lives, art doesn’t seem to be a luxury that has to be bought by opportunities and free time.” ~ Gita Wolf

This quote is from Nurturing Walls: Indian Women’s Animal Art by Meena Women. Read the article here.

Even doodling has value. Chalk drawings on the sidewalk too. If you let yourself make one origami crane out of the free newspaper you picked up yesterday, you might discover something new about yourself.

I dare you.
Tell me what you created this week.

Here are my doodles in my collage-a-day journal.

Tomorrow’s post will be about my Arthouse Sketchbook Project submission. I met a wonderful artist online who shared some of the pages of her sketchbook. She inspired me to take part in the next Arthouse Sketchbook Project. Read here about that.

More to come,
With love,
S

PS If you have read to the bottom of this page, maybe you agree with me, this feels like the beginning of my manifesto. Any feedback you give me would be appreciated. xoxoxox

We all do different things on vacation.
My son does his homework and rides his mountain bike.
My daughter makes art, finishes her summer reading and swims.
My husband pushes his envelope on his mountain bike and swims, too.

I toss skillets.

At least when I am in the Northeast Kingdom.
Yesterday, I won the Orleans County Fair Skillet Tossing Championship.

For this, I received a purple ribbon. The ribbon is a very nice wide, long silky thing. But it says “Senior Division” on it, so I am not posting a photo of it. Of course, I am too mature to be in the “Youth Division” but if the AARP gets wind of me in any sort of Senior Division, my mailbox will flood with unwanted coupons for golf carts and real estate in Arizona.
I am sure they mean “Senior Division” in the nicest of ways.

I know you are steeped in yearning for just how it is all done, how does a skillet tossing competition run? I will give it to you on the Line right now. This video tells it better than I can. These are pretty simple videos that you won’t find on You Tube.

First, here is footage of my daughter, in the “Youth Division”, so you can see the technique in motion.
Next, me.

This is my 3rd year competing. I am quite sure I can do even better with my toss. I have increased my distance every year so far. I pitched an eight inch cast iron skillet over 40 feet. I lost a little for accuracy, like 2 feet I think, so my winning number was 39 feet 3 inches. This was a good 10 feet further than any other of the firewood pitching, sturdy Vermont women I competed against. Okay, there was Ursula, my dear friend from Germany tossing the skillet too. I don’t think she has ever done anything like this before. Her daughter Anna placed first in the “Youth Division” with my girl coming in second. Ursula came in third in the mature, wonderful, gorgeous women over 25 Division.

Here I am getting my ribbon.

I had a lot of fun. No cotton candy for a prize this year.
I spun around on the Tornado and visited the chickens and cows.
This fair is one of the sweetest I have ever visited.

While we are in Vermont, I have sprouted an artist’s club. With this post, I announce the new Darling Hill International Artist’s Club. Here is one of our members at work.
We have worked with many different techniques this week. Strip collages.Frottage papers.Packing tape transfers. Mark making of several sorts. Plein air painting. Pamphlet stitched books with some renegade covers, a blend of fine art and art on the run made at a picnic table with of packing tape and wind. Lots of ‘found’ material art making with pressed or rubbed botanicals, soda or beer container covers, sugar and tea packets and many chocolate wrappers thanks to Werner, the husband of Ursula.

Tomorrow we are showing our work in the sitting room of the Wildflower Inn of Lyndonville, Vermont at 12:15 pm. If you are in the neighborhood, we would love to have you visit! The show will run until 1:00 pm after which we will head to the Lake. Pass the word to any art lovers you know in the Kingdom.

Meanwhile, I will be rubbing and tossing, stamping and diving in this high season of black flies, marvelous thunderstorms and the delicious waters of Lake Willoughby.

Yours, with love,
S

February 5, 2010

I’d really rather be in Antigua. I am not in the mood to step out in to the cold. Skiing and ice skating are fun, but do I have to move off the radiator I am pressed next to in order to stay warm enough- warm enough to endure another month or two of winter?

I have the long detailed fantasy about a retreat I take in to a cave.
Yeah, a cave. A sacred, secret, no dinner preparations or wash to fold retreat where I can sleep, dream and bathe in hot mineral bathes to my hearts’ content. A long winter’s nap, now that we have taken down the Christmas tree. No one really needs me that much here at home this month. They are all in the swing of winter dressing, lunches and homework. They would hardly notice my absence.

And there I would be, warmly ensconced in soft robes, lost in a dream while some kind being tends to my every need without any conversation necessary.

Growing up in the quintessential winter wonderland, I never really understood people who went South. That is until I myself grew up a bit, sophisticated to the point where I found myself under a palm tree instead of a pine and let those tropical breezes soothe away my chapped cheeks and chilled fingertips.

This collage is my invitation to the Cave.

XO S