Laundry Line Divine

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

share 1 (shâr)
n.
1. A part or portion belonging to, distributed to, contributed by, or owed by a person or group.
2. An equitable portion: do one’s share of the work.
3. Any of the equal parts into which the capital stock of a corporation or company is divided.
v. shared, shar·ing, shares
v.tr.
1. To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion.
2. To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns.
3. To relate (a secret or experience, for example) to another or others.
4. To accord a share in (something) to another or others: shared her chocolate bar with a friend.
v.intr.
1. To have a share or part: shared in the profits.
2. To allow someone to use or enjoy something that one possesses: Being in daycare taught the child to share.
3. To use or enjoy something jointly or in turns: There is only one computer, so we will have to share.
Idiom:
go shares
To be concerned or partake equally or jointly, as in a business venture.

I love to share.
Sharing means so many things. In this post I am using the verb form of share.
To me, share means to spread the wealth of attention, the wealth of pretzels or the wealth of appreciation. To share can also mean, as in number three in the definition above, verb transitive, to offer a story. At the dinner table, we always ask the kids to share one good thing about their day. This can lead to an argument about ‘always being asked to share’ but as long as JNB and I are supplying the butter for the family bread, we get to ask things like this at the kitchen table. “Share One Good Thing About Your Day”. See? It sounds like a movement when I put it in capital letters and quotation marks.

Sharing, on the Internet, can mean linking to or copying an image from one place and using it in another.

I am a long time collaborator with people, really with life, I guess. I love to share what I learn and how others inspire me. If you go to my Face book page you will see many links to sites that capture my eye or speak to a need I know someone else has. The sidebar to your right has links to websites that intrigue me and I bet there is at least one that will intrigue you too.

One good thing about parenting is I have been teaching my kids to share since they were tiny. Looking at the two of them across the dinner table last night, big as anything, I realized that whatever I have taught them about sharing, making connections, of real time offering of some part of themselves, whether it is a story from their day or a pad of college-ruled notebook paper, the teaching time is over. Now, I just have to live it and hope they are noticing.

Living the way I do, paying attention to the subtle and not-so-subtle clues that the Universe gives me on any given day, I can be awash in serendipity.

Just last week I was driving to the grocery store, listening to Joe Donohue on WAMC’s show The Roundtable, I heard Joe interview author Nathaniel Philbrick about his new book “Why Read Moby Dick?”. I tingled with glee. Just days earlier, at the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival I had met a young knitwear designer, Ann Weaver, who just self-published a collection of her knitted designs inspired by “Moby Dick”. And, to keep the connection even more electrified, I saw that her book “White Whale” was illustrated by mixed media compositions created by artist Matt Kish, who I had also just read about on one of my new favorite websites for culture and news, www.brainpickings.org. Matt has created an illustration for every page of “Moby Dick”. Yes, that door stop sized novel that opens with “Call me Ishmael.”

Is it serendipity that “Moby Dick” shows up in my life four times in one week? I have not even read the whole book. Or that I live not far, like about 20 miles from where Herman Melville lived when he wrote the novel? Or that Joe Donohue, who is one of the best interviewers of artists that I have ever heard, should ask Nathaniel such great questions that I was mesmerized while driving?

You know I started my life, my professional life, as an actor, right?

I learned quickly the importance of attribution, of my bio and credits on a program. I learned from stinging disappointment the heartache of not being mentioned in a program or being omitted somehow from the roster of contributors to a project.

That is one of the reasons you will see lots of links on the Laundry Line. I like you to know where I get my information. I love to share what I have gathered throughout my day, even from my drive to get groceries, or reading a new blog, I love creators to get all the attention they need to affirm in their minds that the world is receiving their work.

Nina Paley, a cartoonist, filmmaker and activist for artist rights created one of the most delightful movies I have ever seen. Here is a trailer for “Sita Sings the Blues”.

My postal art collaborator, Karen Arp-Sandel shared this movie at her yearly Vibrant Visionary Art retreat at The Kripalu Center last year. Nina’s work about the combinational nature of creativity is dynamic and thought provoking. See a great piece on her work on Brain Pickings.

It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss the nuts and bolts of copyright and sharing rights for art in general. What I would love to ask of you my readers is to do what I do and that is to “Link With Love”. If you share something you like here on the Laundry Line, whether it is my art or photography, something I have written or quoted, poems that I post- please give credit where it is due. I just put a “Link With Love” badge here on my sidebar. If you click on it, you will be led to a great site with lots of information about this topic. If attribution and copyrights really call out to you, go to Nina Paley’s website.

And, in terms of what I share on the Laundry Line, these words and photographs and art express my personal experience. I share them with you because it is my life mission to share. My Mom used to tell the story that when I was old enough to use the telephone, a nice heavy black plastic one in a niche in the wall of our Chicago apartment, I would call all my friends on Wolcott Avenue to let them know I was heading outside to play. This was not to boast about my whereabouts, but to call everyone out to play with me. I have always always always loved to share.

“Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.”

Mom shared this Swedish proverb with me too.

Fun. Grief. Quince. It is always better shared.

xo S

My Story of ReBirth and my Scarlet Runner Bean

We snuggled our big brown beans, rather speckled like an heirloom breed chicken egg, in to nests of wet paper towels in small sandwich size plastic bags. There they would germinate while the rest of us delved in to vibrating visionary collage at Kripalu. I was determined to get every drop of goodness from my days in retreat. I let my seed rest on a windowsill. When the air was too chilly there we moved them on to the floor.

Every day I handled my seed. As I cut and laid out photomontages I peeped at my seed hoping to see sprouts. Other seeds were advancing along rapidly. Mine lay like a cold wet rock in the towel. I watered it anyway. It began to create it’s own condensation, so I knew something was happening within that reddish brown thing.

By the end of our 4 days creating collages and doing yoga, most everyone’s seeds were sending out tiny roots, fingering the interior of the bag for nourishment. Two had cracked open and sent out sprouts. Mine lay quietly.

I neatly piled my scraps, collected my painted papers and my triptych. I bustled my tin shrine in to my overfilled canvas bag. Off I went home to integrate 4 days of fine wholesome meals being prepared for me, daily whirlpools, labyrinth walks and sharing hara time with a group of women. It was a sacred time together.

I placed my bean bag on the sill above the kitchen sink, where, besides my bed, I spend the most amount of time staying in one place. I watered my seed. It slowly generated rootlets, fine white strands of hairy root growth. Finally a green head poked the bag up a bit and I knew the time had come to pot it up. I had heard tales of everyone else’s beans in pots with sticks for the vining bean to climb.

I collected soil from my own garden; let it sit in the sun to warm in a pot I could carry in to the house without too much mess. Finally, I set the seed in there, the sprout a good 1 ½ inches and thick and hearty looking. I tucked in some soaked and scratched nasturtium seeds too, imagining a pot of bean vine circled with brilliant orange blooms in July.

By morning it was dead. Black. Curled back to the soil like a deflated balloon, no sign of life. Was this the metaphor I’d have to make sense of as I put my own meals together for my family and prepared for Easter? These days are a challenge for me as we create our own spiritual practice away from the traditions of our upbringings.

Then, on the Saturday before Easter, as I watered the seeds, because I wanted those nasturtiums to sprout, there was another sprout heading straight to heaven from the center of the pot. This was no nasturtium. This was the scarlet runner bean having it’s own resurrection.

On Easter morning, while I was ruminating over how to speak to my kids over lunch about this Holy Day and what it can mean for us, I saw how the bean sprout had grown easily 6 inches in one day. If I had sat still next to it and watched I would have seen it track up away from the moist soil under which the egg-like seed safely sat.

I like to see life in life. I like to find sacred solace in nature. I like to have metaphor-strewn stories to give my kids palpable roots to cling to as they create their own foundations of faith, their own journeys with the sacred. There I had it in my Scarlet Runner bean. I talked about how when things look all but dead, dead, just plain done with living how we can each lean in to all the things that nourish us deeply. And how, with a bit of water, sun and kindness, even at our bleakest moments we can nurture ourselves to life. We can be reborn.

Retreat.
4 days of yoga and art at Kripalu- just up the road from my desk here in Great Barrington, but hundreds of miles away. “Vibrant Visionary Collage” with Karen Arp Sandel and 11 other delicious women was a huge gift I received this week.

My roster of gratitudes would make a mile long list here, but I am going to share some with you all the same. At this Portal to this Mysterious Female, gratitude is the entrance fee. With it, you can enter your own garden of lush creativity and grace, finding all that you have been blessed with on any simple day.
I am so grateful for the time away at Kripalu.
IAG for the support of my fine husband for covering all he did this week with the kids, his work, our family, track practice and radio plans, meals and laundry.
IAG for my husband picking me up today.
IAG for the sun in my bedroom where I just took a nap to prepare for the homecoming of kids from school.
IAG for color.
IAG for the underside of the red tail hawk, it’s soft colors against the brilliant blue sky today at lunch.
IAG for the labyrinth at Kripalu.
IAG for the women I met this week and the collaboration we enjoyed.
IAG for our trip to see “Fe-Mail”.
IAG for my appetite for yoga.
IAG for my teacher Kaliji at Kripalu over the weekend.
IAG for my friend Martha’s alignments.
IAG for the bounty in my life on every level- support, abundance, safety, friendships, women and men, kids, community, color, texture, garden projects surfacing from under the snow, snowdrops, clean laundry and all the meals I enjoyed this week with my new friends.
IAG for my kid’s health.
IAG for my health.
IAG for all my desires floating out in the Universe, singing to me from across the pages of art that flow out of me.
IAG for breath.
IAG for time.
IAG for you reading these words.
IAG for the gratitudes you hold in your heart and the courage to share a few with me here.

I will share more of the art from my week here.
So glad you stopped by the Line.
Love and thanks, S