Laundry Line Divine

Today on the Laundry Line I am giving a big shout out to Berkshire Local She-ro, Amy Cotler.
Storey Publishing published Amy’s book “The Locavore Way” in 2009. The well illustrated book is filled with great information on how to eat locally sourced foods and support community based agriculture wherever you live.

Included on Amy’s page of thanks, is my collaborator, Karen Arp-Sandel. Karen must have cooked up some of Amy’s recipes. Aside from being a fervent FeMail artist, teacher and yogini, Karen is a wonderful cook.

Two women and a wheelbarrow full of creativity centered around our most basic task as humans, which is to feed ourselves and sustain our health and well being with nutrition. What a great combination.

In the next weeks, I will be featuring other local authors from the Berkshires.
There are so many. Writers find many warm spots to share their words here in the Berkshires, like at the Tuesday Night Writer’s Room at ybar in Pittsfield.

I have my own venue for featuring some local wonders at ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes: an evening of mothers reading to others’ on Friday March 2, 2012. The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers is hosting us at Blodgett Hall on the campus of Simon’s Rock College of Bard. Please join us if you can. Turn to the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ page here on LLD for all the details and read the blog posts there.

This week’s blog post is from Lissa Rankin, M.D. of Owning Pink – and aside from meaning Medical Doctor; M.D. also stands for magnificent dame! Lissa is a friend through The School of the Womanly Arts in NYC. Lissa is a mother, artist and well spoken advocate for women’s health.

Lissa has written an important and useful book called What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist if She Was Your Best Friend.

Our Sunday night dinner with Shar, Susan, Abbey, Jeff and Melinda.

How about you? Are you reading any of your local authors? I would love to hear about them here.
Be well.
Love, S

This rainbow landed on a magazine photo of this elephant that hangs next to my art table.

I am deep in preparation for my sankalpa session with Karen tomorrow. We will look at our work over this past year and collect our sankalpa (or some may call them desires) for this New Year. Below is one definition of sankalpa, which is so close to my understanding of my desire, that they are one and the same to me. Not a wish list, not a gift list, but something deeper and resonant. By looking over our work of this past year, the themes that emerge and manifestations of our sankalpa from last year begin to take more tangible form. There is something of print making impression that our lives make upon us that develop a pattern- which I dare say is the stuff of my manifesto…but this is getting very wordy.
For now, I give you this definition and then a beautiful interview with Meryl Streep who speaks about her choices around her career and family life. This video continues to populate the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ manifesto with poignant and clear expressions of the vital importance for our creativity to be expressed. Listen to her very last sentence. You will know what I mean then.

The juicy, precision sankalpa is the resolve, determination and good intention that resonates precisely in your core and aligns sublimely with your essence . It is fluid enough to insinuate itself through the semi conscious patterns of self sabotage, wounded self’s objections and ego discontent. It is a will power that is flexible enough to account for changing circumstances as the sankalpa begins to manifest in your inner and outer world. Yet it is precise enough not to be diverted by the core negative beliefs that stand against it.

this definition of sankalpa is from Saraswati Yoga

Yes, your creativity is important,
Love,
S

The studio is an extension of the sandbox and the kindergarten playroom. It has a dynamic unlike any office or factory. It’s a room at the service of a dreamer on her way to becoming a master. Wandering from project to project, she moves in a private soup kitchen where there’s always something on simmer. With something to get on with–something to finish, something to start–even the tiniest of workrooms has within it the building blocks of talent. Stay out on the streets at your peril.

from Robert Genn‘s newsletter today.

In an hour I am off to the Cape with my husband for a few days of ocean walks and quiet, as we consider this past year and look forward to the next.
I am preparing for the New Year by writing, collaging and being outside in the wind.
I have an important artist date coming up in a week or so with Karen Arp-Sandel.
My art collaborator Karen and I are fervent witnesses to each other’s expressions all year long.
Last year, we began a practice of meeting in the early days of the New Year to take a look at what we have done in this past year, what we have shared and what we hope to receive in this coming year.
We include all our creative work- and this includes our family and personal lives, our well being and our presence in our communities. We did this with our friend Sarah Nicholson, who is an amazing photographer.

Reading Robert Genn today as I tidy up my studio and pack my art supplies for the week, I am struck by his phrase “she moves in a private soup kitchen where there is always something on simmer”.

My life is simmering.
‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ is taking shape.
My kids are adventuring in Munich.
My husband has launched his new business and slowly the simmer collects in to a boil.

What is simmering in your private soup kitchen today?

Didn’t you love the favorite frames commenters left on yesterday’s post?
Daniel, Karen, Jennifer, Geri and Laura all are actively creative people in their personal and professional lives.
Don’t you wonder what they have simmering?

Here are a few more Favorite Frames of 2011:

1.I loved having our Anna come to live with us. She is here with Catherine under the blueberry bushes. What did I get? An expanded heart and a new daughter.

2.The total joy of collaborating with Karen Arp-Sandel as FeMail and in all the other ways we play together, like assisting her at Kripalu for her Vibrant Visionary Collage and Yoga Immersion, in the collage studio classes that she teaches at IS-183, in our Moon Circle, and all our FeMail travels like the day we spent at PRESS last week with Melanie Mowinski. What did I get? Deepening friendship, articulate collaboration and an immense amount of fun.

3.Seeing Gabrielle Senza work on her temporary installation at the Sanford Smith Fine Art Gallery in Great Barrington. Gabrielle is a daily inspiration and great friend. What do I get from her? A heart warming smile, candor and a high bar of excellence.

4.Seeing our son Ben, DJ at Railroad Street Youth Project and at Berkshire Pulse. He is DJing in the New Year in Munich. What do I get from watching Ben perform this way? So much energy and joy seeing this young man express himself and connect to his audience through music.

5.All the immense amount of fun I have had using the Instagram App on my iPhone. Here are two of my favorite shots from this year. One is up on Mount Greylock where Karen was doing an artist residency and one taken at my favorite nursery, Windy Hill. What do I get? Color and texture play visually and community to share photos. Just plain fun.

How about some more frames from you?
Quoting a line from one of my favorite plays “It’s so eeeeeseee!”.

Love,
S

Walk to the well.
Turn as the earth and the moon turn,
circling what they love.

Whatever circles come from the center.

Rumi

There is a tumble of information flowing through me right now.
And, in the event of an emergency, please know, right now, that I love you coming to visit the Laundry Line. I am thrilled for all your support that is helping me birth my first book, “Laundry Line Divine: A Wild Soul Book for Mothers” and the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ blog series and event.
I am not planning on dying any time soon, but it is important to me that you readers all know how vital you have become to my momentum. Not that I need you to write or create, but knowing you are out there improves my diction.

FeMail for KA-S 2008 by Suzi Banks Baum

This weekend, JNB and I visited the Norman Rockwell Museum, which is only about 20 minutes from my desk. Our friend Laurie Norton Moffat is the Museum Director. The museum houses the work of one of the wonders of the Berkshires, Norman Rockwell and also hosts a steady flow of intriguing exhibits highlighting illustration art and the people who make it.

this is part of a diorama the Reys created in visualizing a book.

This season NRM features “Curious George Saves the Day” which originated at The Jewish Museum in New York City. I am a huge fan of Curious George, having had those stories read to me, reading them to my little sister and to the kids I babysat, then lately, say in the last 17 years reading them and often quoting those passages to my kids for whom the ‘Man in the Yellow Hat’ and George himself stand for a certain kindness and rambunctiousness that is particular to that sweet faced monkey. Plus, we all share a fondness for bicycles, travel and paper hats.

I heard of this exhibit on my area NPR station, WAMC, where Joe Donohue hosts a daily interview show called The Roundtable. Joe is the best interviewer I have ever heard. Ever. I don’t know when he sleeps because he talks to his guests with such confidence about their work, having read or seen their creations. His personal experience and curiosity sets the guests at ease. So many of Joe’s guests say at some point in the interview, “Thanks Joe, great question, I never thought of that”. When I heard Joe talking to the curators of this exhibit, the story of the Rey’s life as it is reflected in the stories of Curious George and their other books fascinated me. I will tell you more about Joe another time, but if you’d like to hear him at his best, this interview of Michael Feinstein is quintessential Joe.

The exhibit of the work of H.A. and Margret Rey included personal papers, the few of which survived their swift immigration from Europe right ahead of the Nazi invasion of Paris in 1940. The paintings, illustration plates and photographs tell a story of great courage and enormous levity at a time where people like the Rey’s where loosing their lives, their livelihood and family members. I won’t tell you the whole story, because you must see the exhibit or see this timeline about their escape online here.

Something Joe said struck me. He reflected that though the stories and art of Curious George don’t tell the saga of the Reys fleeing Europe, their art stood as an antidote for what they were going through. Art does that. You may not actually depict the storms of your soul, but by expressing yourself, the passion of your inner life gains balance and equanimity or in the very least, your art work stands as a placeholder for your sense of self while all other aspects of your being are washed overboard by life events.

I love the handmade stamp Rey used over his signature.

I know most of you aren’t in a place to see this exhibit. But, you are near a bookstore, library or your own bookshelf, where that curious monkey is cooling his heels until you flip open the pages to see his lively and engaging antics. When you look at the pages knowing that the creators narrowly escaped Paris by bicycle and were assured exit visas by virtue of the illustrations and text they carried with them to prove they had gainful employment, you will realize that every work of art carries the heart and soul of it’s creator, no matter how cheerful or merry it appears.

During the next months here on the Laundry Line, we will be talking more and more about creativity.

Sending you splendid hours,
S