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Hand Forged Vessels
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Sunday, November 30, 2003 |
December 1st is another of my personal holidays: Rosa Parks Day. Yes, it's the anniversary of the day she refused to give up her seat just because the other person was white. She sparked the civil rights movement that changed the United States much for the better. I know, we have a long way to go yet. Still - I'm grateful to Rosa Parks.
May her vision of justice come upon all of us.
May her courage spark our own.
Thank you, Rosa Parks.
10:56:50 PM 
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Today is the start of a new moon quarter, the Waxing Cold Moon. This waxing moon quarter is said to be the ideal time to start a new creative project. Is there something you've been meaning to start?
"Cold Moon" is one of the standard names for a moon, but I don't know if other people are calling this particular moon that name. Back around 1990, I read Delores LaChapelle's book, Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: The Rapture of the Deep. She points out that it's absurd to have names for moons standardized over many bioregions. The names need to come from careful observation of the land and its inhabitants. This made sense to me right away. So I began watching. That led me to my own set of names for the moons of the year.
The moon closest to the Autumn Equinox I call the Harvest Moon, like nearly everyone else. (I say "everyone else" but if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere, surely the main harvest time would be different.) After that comes the Long View Moon. Here in the foothills of northeast Georgia (USA) the woods open up completely during this moon. Leaves come down, so the views lengthen enormously. From the cabin here, "the mountain" appears in the west. (Our mountain is Mount Yonah, so named by the Cherokees because it looks like a bear lying down)
Next in my own natural calendar comes this moon, the Cold Moon. Indeed this is the moon when we usually have our first really cold weather. Right now I have extra boxes of supplies that shouldn't freeze, stacked just inside the door of my insulated "clean studio" called The Nest. The rest of the studio is the dirt floored blacksmithing studio, where things are allowed to freeze on cold nights.
Despite my personal calendar, last night we had a surprise scattering of snow. We looked out the window onto the deck and lo and behold, it was white! As always, this was very exciting. Even a little snowfall in Georgia is rare enough to be a thrill.
Sometimes here, the Snow Moon comes and goes without a trace of snow. Still, I keep it on my calendar. Maybe I'll find a more appropriate name someday. I'm still watching the land and my coinhabitants here.
6:46:03 PM
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Friday, November 28, 2003 |
Getting new glasses recently led me to think a lot about my vision. I first needed glasses in elementary school. I think it was the first year I was in public school, toward the end of third grade. So I've been remembering grade school a lot.
What strikes me as odd is that all I remember loving in school was the singing. It was what I liked most at the two-room private school where I went for first and second grade. Every morning the whole school, grades one through six, gathered in the front hall to sing. It was a great start to the day.
Then in public school, we had singing for a little while at some point during the day. I remember treasuring the songbook. "Erie Canal" and "Shenandoah" were my favorite songs, but "Silent Night" topped them all. I remember the thrill of looking at the song written out with the notes. Written music was magic!
Somehow this early joy in singing got pushed aside in favor of other things. If it's true that early loves are important, then this is something I need to bring back into my life. Why not? "There's a Song in My Heart...."
11:24:21 PM
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Today was a Puttering Day. It gave me a chance to recover from yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter's house. The time with my children, grandchildren, and two greatgrandsons was delightful. But the drive home in the rainy night was not. This is the second time I've driven home from a family gettogether saying "I can't keep doing this. Never again! No more driving in heavy rain or at night - and especially, not both!" I guess I keep wanting to deny that age is affecting my physical abilities.
When I woke up with a desire to clean out my email, I could tell today would be different! Sometimes even if I suspect that such a desire is a way to procrastinate, I find it best to give in. It's a great way to get something finally cleaned up.
I won't tell you how many messages I had in my Inbox. Some I deleted, others I archived in folders where I'll be able to find them easily if I need them. (This is one of Microsoft Outlook's best features.)
I did some other little puttering cleanups, too. Cleaned out the office closet so I could finally stow some more things in there. Just did one thing after another along these lines. I kept feeling satisfied with what I was doing, so I continued. It was damp, windy, and cold outside, so this was a good day for indoor cleanups.
Sometimes a Puttering Day is just great. I feel relaxed and satisfied. I even feel more rested.
5:48:05 PM
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Just received an email newsletter from Harry Bosma, creator of the dream interpretation software I used, Alchera. He keeps working on improvements. I must say, that this software is wonderful just as it is.
Why keep your dream journal on the computer instead of in a notebook? The obvious reason is that it's simple and quick to search for related themes. Any question such as "Haven't I dreamed about a black dog before? When was that? What was going on?" is quickly answered.
I chose Alchera after researching the options pretty carefully. I like the simple look of it. There's nothing distracting about the interface. Some of the other software programs had a lot of decoration. Even when I liked the decoration, I found it distracting. When I'm trying to remember a dream or interpret it, distractions are the last thing I need.
Also, Alchera is simple to use. There are some hints for dream interpretation - some suggested exercises. But it's not rigid or domineering in any way. I'm free to use any method I choose, for interpreting my dreams. I usually use some variation of Gayle Delaney's methods, so I prefer this looser approach in the software.
Another thing I appreciate about Alchera is that journal entries about events, physical symptoms, etc. are integrated into the software. This really helps with dream interpretation. It can also help to solve mysteries about physical symptoms, when you can track their occurrence and link them to events or thoughts.
If you're considering dream interpretation software, I recommend Alchera most highly. I have no personal stake in the company. I'm just a satisfied user.
5:28:16 PM
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We finished watching this film, thanks mostly to our liking Harrison Ford. Afterwards, I felt a little embarassed for his having acted in what I'd call a Grade B movie. It's not terrible, but it's certainly not as good as a film like "Witness."
"Hollywood Homicide" treads a fine line between absurd comedy and suspense. The suspense plot is convoluted and just barely convincing. The comedy consists mostly of watching the two policemen pursue their dream careers by cellphone, while chasing criminals. This is funny only so long. Unfortunately, the film lasts longer.
We've seen films a lot worse than this. But I'd recommend seeing it only if you're really, really in the mood to watch a DVD and there's absolutely nothing better to pick. I'm rating it 2 stars.
4:25:47 PM
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Tuesday, November 25, 2003 |
This afternoon I picked up my new eyeglasses. My order from bhphoto was timed perfectly, as it was delivered today too. And tomorrow I'll borrow a slide projector and screen from the library, to use over the whole holiday weekend.
I bought the Braun Novamat projector from bhphoto, despite some negative reviews online for earlier models. The small 8" square viewer was just too tempting. (You can project slides with it onto a screen as usual, but it also uses a mirror to show you the slides on an 8" screen, for close viewing.) I decided I had to try it.
So very soon, I'll be able to tell whether or not the slides are really not sharp, or whether they just looked blurry projected because of my old glasses. And I'll be able to compare the new projector with a standard Kodak. If the Braun Novamat doesn't compare well, I'll return it to bhphoto.
The only thing I'm missing, for judging slides, is a higher magnification loupe for looking at tiny details. The Mamiya 4X loupe is perfect for viewing whole slides. (Or at least it was, with my old glasses. I hope the diopter adjustment will give me at least a good a view with my new ones. If not, I'll wear the old ones to use it.) But 4X magnification isn't really enough to see every detail, or so I'm told by various online sources. I need around 10-12X for that. Maybe I can find some in an Atlanta photo store to try. That's how I found the Mamiya, by trying several at Showcase.
The real test of the new glasses will be in taking that next roll of slides. Will I be able to see to focus better? If not - I'm going to buy a Canon Eos7, maybe even a 7e with eye controlled focus. Yep, I'm unstoppable at this point. Are my bowls worth taking this much trouble to photograph? You bet. And the next bowls will be even better. I'm in this for the long term.
9:50:52 PM
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Monday, November 24, 2003 |
Here's another quotation from Anne Truitt's most recent book, Prospect:
"...but I have learned that living with psychological insecurity is critical to psychological growth. For the greater the number of freely entertained different, mutually contradictory ideas, the greater the chance that their collision will strike a spark, ignite insight. And a house that is entirely secured is a prison." (p. 207)
4:50:48 PM
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I've been rereading the sculptor Anne Truitt's autobiographical trilogy. A line from the last book, Prospect, caught my eye this afternoon:
"Transients wending our way on the earth, we press ephemeral marks on its resilient surface. We put up private 'prayer-flags' - in my case, sculptures." (p. 206)
4:48:41 PM
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Sunday, November 23, 2003 |
The cover description made "Henry Hill" look like a "despair to fulfillment" story. Naturally I always fall for these. However, this is yet another film we stopped watching partway through. There were too many flashbacks to "yet more despair," Henry was just too, too unappealing a character, and the woman who might save him looked equally so. Some films just seem like hard work to see - for no reward. I think this is one of them. Not recommended.
11:22:52 AM
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We watched "Kissing Jessica Stein" for the second time recently. It's about two women in New York, frustrated in their search for meaningful romantic relationships. On a whim, one places an ad for a date with another woman. On a whim, the other responds. They end up having a relationship. I won't tell you how the film ends.
It's not a great film. But it does have a nice mixture of comedy and drama. And you can watch three main characters (yes, there's a man in the picture too) make some meaningful personal growth. That makes it worth seeing.
11:20:03 AM
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From the previews, I thought the film "Chateau" would be a silly but fun comedy. Instead, I found it wearisome. We stopped watching it partway through. Most of the comedy is apparently supposed to be from watching two Americans try to communicate in France, although they speak only a few words of French. This really isn't enough to carry a movie. It's amusing for about two minutes.
The story is about two Americans who inherit a French mansion burdened with debt and needs for repair. The four French staff members don't want the Americans to sell the chateau. None of the six characters are very appealing. Well, need I say more? I don't recommend this film at all.
11:13:49 AM
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003 |
"The Crime of Padre Amaro" is one of the most thought provoking films I've seen. From the cover description, it looks like a film only about a Catholic priest's sexual temptation. In reality, I found it more about how a craving for career position and recognition can corrupt. Step by step, we watch the young priest sink deeper into a web not just of sexual exploitation, but of laundering drug money, covering church corruption with lies and scapegoating, persecuting a priest who does hold integrity....and more. At the beginning of the film the young priest, Father Amaro, seems idealistic and genuinely good hearted. But when he has to choose between integrity and his career position, his downfall really begins.
This is my interpretation. The reason I find the film so thought provoking is that the exact same thing can happen to anyone in any career. It applies to artists and bankers as much as to priests. Of course the rule of celibacy is specific to Catholic priests, but every profession has its own strict rules - along with the temptation to break one and get away with it.
If this film creates a world wide self check on integrity, it will have accomplished a great deal! Of course, I forgot to mention that it's also a beautiful film, set in Mexico, well written and well acted. Certainly I'm giving it 4 stars. If your conscience is up to it, this is a film to see for sure.
6:28:18 PM
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003 |
Had an interesting experience today. Driving to an appointment today, my truck radio popped on. There's a short in the wiring somewhere so I get occasional pleasant surprises when National Public Radio suddenly starts up. Today it was music - a Bach piano "English Suite."
As soon as the music filled my ears, my vision seemed to expand. My peripheral vision became more "alive" and I felt the woods and countryside more, as I passed through them. It's as if the music opened me outward.
What seems surprising about this is that I'd have expected the music to focus my attention simply toward it. My vision would have contracted instead of expanding. Not so at all.
I suppose I've never noticed this before because I used to turn the music on as I started the truck. So I never experienced the shock of the change in vision and awareness. Thank heavens for wiring shorts and the surprises provided by the Universe.
Does only some music have this effect? I'm sure that's true. I've been in plenty of places where the music playing made me want to shrink away - and leave as soon as possible.
Wonder what this means for artmaking? For playing music at art exhibitions? This will be a fascinating topic to explore.
7:57:26 PM
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Monday, November 17, 2003 |
Today I had an eye exam and ordered new glasses. Sigh. Last week I went to the library to use their projector and screen to check my slides. To my dismay, they didn't look sharp. Some were better than others, but I noted only one as really sharp. After some reflection, I decided my next step to be getting new glasses.
It's possible that even a newer prescription won't enable me to focus accurately. In that case, I'll go ahead and buy a newer camera with autofocus and with diopter correction for manual focus. But I'll still need better vision for judging projected slides. So I'm waiting a week till I get the new glasses, to take any more slides.
Meanwhile, I can use a digital camera to explore which views of each bowl will be best to use when I do shoot the next slides. I can scan in some early prints to see what I can do with them in PhotoShop Elements 2. This program amazes me with how well it edits photo files, with such ease. And I can earn some money doing computer work. A week will go by pretty fast.
5:14:38 PM
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Recently I've had to face the fact that after the first one, my new series of bowls took a turn into a direction that sometimes seems totally absurd. In some ways they're quite fragile. Soft wisps of unryu paper are exposed in the second. In the third, a little flag of watercolor paper could be bent or crushed. With each bowl the copper mesh became less rigid.
With the first bowl, the copper mesh was very flexible until I added layers of unryu paper and acrylic medium. That stabilized it. By the time I finished the bowl, though, I'd decided to let the crystal sphere stabilize the whole bowl, holding paper/mesh and iron together by its weight alone.
Even this was unusual for me. I've always wanted my iron bowls to feel and be very stable. Rigidity seemed like the way to accomplish this. So if part of a bowl felt too flexible to me, I'd make a little tack weld to bind it to its neighboring part, so it would be firm and rigid.
Recently I've come to think that this "crazy" turn toward flexibility and fragility is my artistic response to the terrorist attack on 9/11/01. I'd already started the first bowl then, but I hadn't finished it or made the decision to let the sphere hold it together.
The later two bowls were begun after 9/11. So I think they express my basic emotional response to that day - a shocking, ongoing awareness of the fragility of life. Everything that seems stable and familiar can be gone without warning, destroyed.
This is an obvious fact of life - before 9/11. But like many people, I was not inclined to face it, to absorb it, to live out its consequences. So I made bowls that were rigid and sturdy, like the way I wanted life to be.
After what's stable and familiar is destroyed, is anything left? Only love remains - and sometimes, hate lingers a long time too. Both energies can be much stronger than any human structures.
So now I am making fragile bowls to express the fragility of life - and the power of love.
8:19:31 AM
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Sunday, November 16, 2003 |
In the Special Features interviews, one of the actors said he wished every girl on earth could see this film - and know it as their own story. He added that he wanted every boy to see it too. I share that wish. This is a soul nourishing story, done so well that it shines. The Whale Rider is about a Maori girl who by right of inheritance would be the next tribal leader - except that she's a girl. What makes the story so compelling is that it's love that holds it together.
Don't miss this one!
9:58:08 PM
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Saturday, November 15, 2003 |
Today, November 15, combines two personal holidays for me. One is Georgia O'Keeffe's birthday. She wasn't a saint by any means. But I've had many of the same conflicts and obstacles. It has helped me to learn how she worked through them or at least survived them. Just knowing, for example, that she felt like throwing up if someone saw her work in progress, has been a comfort to me. She needed to work in privacy.
Privacy is hard won for any person, but especially so for a woman. A woman is expected to be nurturing and available. This is the "good mother" archetype. When a woman demands privacy and time for her own work, she suddenly seems like the "bad mother." Here is where goddesses like Kali can be useful. If the "bad mother" can be a goddess, maybe she has some legitimacy in life.
The "bad mother" and Kali played a role in creating my other personal holiday for November 15: Freedom Day. This is the date back in 1990 when I said "no more" to doing commissions for ironwork. I'd been trying to balance commissions with making bowls, and the bowls always lost. The commissions always took priority because they had deadlines or target dates, people writing or calling to inquire, live people for whom I had a lot of caring. I was a sort of "good mother" artist-blacksmith.
Yet I was very far from my own path. All I really wanted to make was bowls. Every day I betrayed myself. Every day I did violence to my soul.
On November 15, 1990, I summoned enough courage to say good-bye to commissions for anything but bowls. I "gave myself a grant" to start making bowls. This led to the Creative Power series of openwork iron bowls.
So my Freedom Day is about "freedom from" but even more about "freedom to" - freedom to make the bowls that most want to be made by me.
8:44:56 AM
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Thursday, November 13, 2003 |
Last night I remembered my dismay when I began graduate school in social psychology at Emory University. It was the basic theory class that disillusioned me about my chosen field of work. I remember picturing an orange. In sociology we tore it apart, analyzed it - and never once tasted its sweet juicy flavor. We never once smelled its tangy scent. The work I wanted to be sweet and juicy was shown to be flavorless and dry.
There were other things wrong that first year. I was smacked by the culture shock of moving from Chicago to Atlanta. I found southern courtesy making a kind of false shell around each person, so that I never knew where I stood. And Atlanta was then, in 1969, a contrast in black and white. I was used to the greater diversity of Chicago's neighborhoods: black, yes, but also integrated Hyde Park, plus neighborhoods of Greeks, Irish, Italians, Germans, Poles, Chinese, and more. It was like moving from color film to black and white, to come to Atlanta.
And in the sociology department at Emory, the faculty polarized into two groups. They fought bitterly for control of the department. We students felt like pieces of meat being torn apart by our professors.
I had a headache that whole year, until I got the letter telling me I'd been awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship. This was a portable fellowship, so it enabled me to switch to Georgia State University.
There I tried hard to bring the passion and juice and flavor back to my study. My own focus became metaphor - working from Eugene Gendlin's Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, and Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. I studied Whitehead's process philosophy, thanks to my partner's earlier teachings.
Had I been more perceptive, I might have changed fields of study instead of schools. I never became the research scientist I'd intended to become. Had I gone to art school instead of studying social psychology, I'd not have fit in there either. Only recently have I come to admit that I'll never be a real artist in the sense of caring passionately about the field of art. I don't care about advancing the field of art.
Just as I wanted to work in social psychology in order to make the world better for people, now I want to work in art not for the sake of art, but to make certain energies of wild nature available to people - perhaps even to speak for wild nature. I want the work to enable people to come more alive.
I seem unable to give full allegiance to a field for its own sake. I know the work demands and deserves that allegiance, but I can't or won't give it. My allegiance is to the sacred fire that burns in all.
As the potter Rick Berman once told me, "No time is ever wasted." I use all my past studies in my life and work. Now, though - I taste the orange. At least now my work is sensual - the feel of hammer in hand, of soft unryu paper in my fingers, the flow of paint from my brush. Now I contemplate the orange as its full self.
9:05:36 AM
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Wednesday, November 12, 2003 |
On the drive to Atlanta Monday to get slides processed, I realized that the best work rhythm will be to complete a bowl, then photograph it. Do this before beginning the next one, so that I’ll have truly contemplated the first bowl. There’s a way in which making a really good and true photograph of the bowl helps me know it in a deeper, fuller way.
This is completely different from my inclination to push myself to do two or three or even four bowls at once, for efficiency.
Now that I’m writing this, I start to doubt my recognition. It’s a little scary. It threatens my confidence in being able to produce enough bowls to earn a living with them, to work fulltime.
This new rhythm would emphasize dialogue. The whole process is a two-way conversation between the bowl and me. The new rhythm calls for me to listen more than I’ve been listening. When I emphasize productivity, it’s as if I’m intending talk talk talk talk talk. I think of high productivity, fast productivity, as an ideal to reach. But if I think of this same thing as talk talk talk talk talk, it doesn’t look as ideal.
Yet it feels weird to think of deliberately slowing down. All my life I’ve been the one to “run ahead.” I’m impatient to see around the next curve, to run over the next hill. “Come back, stay with the group,” my fretful camp counselors would call. Even when I was the assistant counselor, I could not stop myself from running ahead of my group instead of patiently shepherding them. (Certainly I was a disappointment as an assistant counselor.)
In making my bowls, I’ve been fretting that I work “so slowly.” I envy artists who are more productive, who work faster or more steadily or for longer hours. Of course, in my own way, my slowness is still about “running ahead.” If I learn a new technique, instead of making twenty more bowls using that technique, I want to “run ahead” to learn another. If I try one thing with a bowl, I want to try twenty more with the same bowl before deciding. And sometimes I try to skip a step or two, which takes more time because eventually I have to come back and do what I missed.
That’s one thing that’s happened with the photography. I was trying to skip the steps of looking at each bowl carefully. What view lets the eye move naturally around the bowl? What is the focal point? And most of all – what view shows the bowl’s spiritual power?
Shooting film without taking time for this step has allowed me to learn a lot about lighting, exposures, warming filters, backgrounds, and more. But it’s not going to show me how to take really good slides of my bowls. Only this first step of careful contemplation will do that.
So I must dare to go even more slowly.
10:11:27 AM
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Today, looking at two paintings at the bottom of Robert Genn's clickbacks, I noticed how much I preferred the painting done in blues, to the one done in reds. Both paintings are by the same artist, Ridha Mehadhebi. Both are of a city in the middle east. (To see the paintings for yourself, follow the link above and scroll down almost to the bottom of the page.)
The cityscape done in blues looks moonlit. Suddenly it dawned on me that blues are "night colors" - the colors of the west, of the Dreamtime, moonlight, night - of connection with the unconscious and with the larger Field.
Reds are "day colors" - the colors of the east, of morning energy, of high consciousness, of ideas, thinking, putting thought into action.
Actually, I'm merging four points of the Medicine Wheel into two - east and south with the reds and yellows, west and north with the blues and white or black.
This blue vs. red association is so obvious now that I see it. Why did I never notice it before? It was seeing the two paintings side by side that allowed me to see it.
How will this new awareness affect my own work? I don't know yet. I welcome it, whatever it is.
It helps to clarify a change in my work from the older series of iron bowls, to the new series of mixed media bowls. The first series, the Creative Power bowls, is predominantly in blues. In the new series, the bright copper mesh emphasizes reds. Perhaps this expresses a change in my usual state of being? Or a desire for a change?
Now it interests me that the first time I painted the paper part of the first bowl in the new series, I painted with transparent red oxide, balanced with some greens. Then I didn't like it. The coloring was too strong is some sense - in some direction I hadn't anticipated and didn't like. I gessoed it white again and started over. Now it's in greens and blues. I like it. And I wonder if I'm actually heading in the direction of more "red energy" but am afraid of it.
In the first series of small paintings, one was all in reds, one all in blues and greens. I liked both, but the one I thought was most successful was the one in blues and greens. Perhaps I'm just beginning to learn to use "red energy."
 "Be Wild"  "After the Storm"
Of course, the copper mesh is really red-orange - a color of sunrise and sunset. So the new bowls are about the transition times, aren't they? Of rising consciousness, and of opening to the unconscious.
9:53:15 AM
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