bits of me

Surrounded by ten little girls in the 3rd-5th grade church club, I tore photos from magazines, chose words and images that appealed to me for any reason at all, glued them to construction paper while they did the same.  A "getting-to-know-you" activity when we began meeting in the fall, it worked well to give us a bit of a glimpse into each other's personalities and preferences.

I had so much fun, I made another one at home.  It's surprising how a collage can capture someone's essence.

It's not terribly grown-up of me, probably, but I wish I had a collage from each of my friends, to help me see life through their eyes, just a bit.

caged poet

This morning I sat by the fire we brought back to life from last night's coals, watching smoke spiral upward into the morning sunshine which streamed through the dancing leaves like so much gold dust poured down from heaven.  Oatmeal in a mug, with swirls of maple syrup, warmed my hands.  Sugar, Spice, & Nice dressed in the tent to an accompaniment of their own squeals of excitement.  Their favorite kitten had figured out how to unzip the tent flap, and dashed out with her booty: Spice's shirt.

After our oatmeal I speared some bread & cheese to experiment with toasting.  Spice & Nice happily shared my first batch, assuring me that it was a success.  I fed the second round to Sugar as she washed up dishes, and my Farmer and Lil' Snip (who slept late after a stuffy-nosed night) took turns with the last of it.

Next up for today:  digging worms and fishing for my Farmer and his progeny, while I enjoy the quiet solitude of laundry and more campfire cooking.

I love my family.  I am grateful for this week of interlude.   I can say, in all sincerity: "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance."  (Psalm 16:6)

And yet ... to have the heart of a poet, and to be trapped by the myriad mundanities of serving a family, is to live, though winged, in a cage.  If I ever finally learn lasting contentment, it will be the fruit of surrender.  

I am determined to find beauty in the bars that enclose me.  

And when I do, I think I will find that the bars do not enclose so small a space as I first thought.  

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some tomatoes to transform into bisque for our campfire lunch.

what's in a name?

[from Nov. 2011 .... something I still wonder about]

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Last night I sat at a pottery wheel and spun some clay.  I picked up tools and dug in pots to make designs.  I drew.  I cut.  I smoothed out seams with fingers.  I pulled a handle and fastened it to make a mug, a pitcher. For inspiration, I used the images in my head and in my sketchbook.

I am an amateur, unprofessional, a hobbyist.  I am a mother with a BA in English and a TESL minor, raising children, and throwing pots for fun.  I pay for the privilege of instruction.  I sit under people who earn (at least part of) their living from their art.  Any dreams I have of making pottery "for a living" are very faint indeed, dimmed by my very real and present duties of cooking and cleaning and loving, and pulled out only on weekend retreats.

My classmates, fellow hopefuls who have tried their hands at this for years, complimented everything I did last night, ooh-ing and ahh-ing with abandon.

Feeling dishonest with my "thank-you's", my discomfort reached a tipping point when one of them spied my sketchbook left open, full of chicken scratch, attempts to capture beauty with a pen to help my memory.  More exclamations, and then,

"Are you an artist?"

I thought how I should answer.  "I am a mom," I said.  "I have an English degree and I like to make pottery - a lot.  Does that  make me an artist?"

She looked back in my book.  "You're an artist."  Her voice was firm, authoritative from her decades of teaching school.

What's in a name?  What separates the amateur from the artist?  As much as I'd like to believe her, and as much as I appreciate the encouragement, I think she's wrong.  The admiration of amateurs does not determine art, but the acceptance of those who have already gained acceptance from those who have already gained acceptance from .... the public.  Hmmm.  Perhaps I have created a circular argument.

Either that or my brain is just limp with hearing Nice playing with Lil' Snip, my ears held hostage to that piercing voice reserved for the hard-of-hearing, foreigners, and small children.

But feel free to point me in the right direction - what is your criteria for defining art?

in my wildest dreams

There is a barn outside my window.

Fading white paint perseveres under a (mostly) new green metal roof.  Glass-block windows punctuate the low north wall.  A neglected milk-house, used by my daughters as a rainy-day play place, juts out westward, toward the house.  Inside, sunlight pours through the smudged six-paned windows that line the southern wall.  Broken panes admit the swallows who take up residence every spring, dotting the beams above with their mud nests and swinging merrily from one glass pipeline to another.  Two gutters, full of three decades of debris, stretch along the stalls for the length of the barn.

Around the back, a bank leads to the upper entrance.  The light is dim.  Dust swirls around two old hay wagons, stacked boards, and bales of ancient hay.  The floorboards, here and there, are soft - even missing! - underfoot.  One treads carefully.

The barn has sat empty, except for swallows and mice and farm-cats and children and the occasional coon, since the 1980's.  It looks like the Rapture happened - tools and cow chains and various metal implements left lying where they were last used.  Manure never mucked out of the box stalls molders when the rains seep in.  Log sheets hang on a clipboard in the milk-house, next to a cupboard of long-expired antibiotics.  Milkers dangle in water-less sinks.


Some days, when I am feeling wildly optimistic, I peek into the barn and see visions.


I see the aisles of tie-stalls replaced by an art-lined hallway, sunshine streaming into cozy groupings of plants and chairs, doors leading off into monastic retreat bedrooms where there used to be calf pens.  A quiet library where the box stalls were, and maybe a dining room.

Upstairs, where now the air is thick with quiet ... I picture busy corners of creativity:  a pottery studio, of course, and where the hay is stacked against the northern wall, a bank of windows, and an easel for paints or pencils.  A walled-off workshop for woodworking, maybe, and a music room.  Supplies for basket-making, chair-caning, candle-dipping, or any other kind of satisfying handwork.  Weaving?  The large high-ceilinged center of the floor for dance, perhaps.  And skylights.  A vast space for the rich interplay of communal creation, and for more solitary pursuits sometimes, too.

A drum circle.  Poetry readings.  Movie night.  Jazz improv.  Writing workshops.

A corncrib stands sentinel by the upper entrance, stacked full of my father-in-law's winter wood.  It could be, instead, a compact one-man retreat, walled-in with earth and heated with wood, a respite from electric's hum.  The farm could hide half a dozen little havens, tucked under trees, secluded from all but the birds.

: : :

I love to create beautiful things - pottery, food, photography, garden - but most of all I yearn to create beautiful spaces for living, for Life to happen.  To take something dusty & broken, something that is the very symbol of disappointed dreams, and turn it into the joy of living ... would make my spirit soar.


What's standing between my dream and reality?
Research.  Money.  Hard work.  Guts.

Will the barn ever become The Barn?  I don't know.


This is my wildest dream.

what's in a name?

Last night I sat at a pottery wheel and spun some clay.  I picked up tools and dug in pots to make designs.  I drew.  I cut.  I smoothed out seams with fingers.  I pulled a handle and fastened it to make a mug, a pitcher.  I used the pictures in my head and in my sketchbook.

I am an amateur, unprofessional, a hobbyist.  I am a mother with a BA in English and a TESL minor, raising children, and throwing pots for fun.  I pay for the privilege of instruction.  I sit under people who earn (at least part of) their living from their art.  Any dreams I have of making pottery "for a living" are very faint indeed, dimmed by my very real and present duties of cooking and cleaning and loving, and pulled out only on weekend retreats.

My classmates, fellow hopefuls who have tried their hands at this for years, complimented everything I did last night, ooh-ing and ahh-ing with abandon.

Feeling dishonest with my "thank-you's", my discomfort reached a tipping point when one of them spied my sketchbook left open, full of chicken scratch, attempts to capture beauty with a pen to help my memory.  More exclamations, and then,

"Are you an artist?"

I thought how I should answer.  "I am a mom," I said.  "I have an English major and I like to make pottery - a lot.  Does that  make me an artist?"

She looked back in my book.  "You're an artist."  Her voice was firm, authoritative from her decades of teaching school.

What's in a name?  What separates the amateur from the artist?  As much as I'd like to believe her, and as much as I appreciate the encouragement, I think she's wrong.  The admiration of amateurs does not determine art, but the acceptance of those who have already gained acceptance from those who have already gained acceptance from .... the public.  Hmmm.  Perhaps I have created a circular argument.

Either that or my brain is just limp with listening to Nice playing with Lil' Snip, talking nonstop in that piercing voice reserved for the hard-of-hearing, foreigners, and small children.

But feel free to point me in the right direction, someone - what is  the criteria for defining art?

(I'll come back in an hour; my brain will be more receptive when they're all enjoying "Quiet Time" ...!)