Art is me….

Art Is You was

all about just being YOU.

Comfortable in your own skin…

Enjoying great times with loving friends

(Patti, Linda, Terry, Me, Terry, dominos, wine)…

Tutu and tiara wearing ecstasy…

(fellow fairy, Linda E. & me)

Getting to meet and learn from inspiring peeps in person…

Like Pam Carriker, who is an amazing, and oh so knowledgeable teacher !

And long time on-line friend, Mary-Beth Shaw, who is not only uber-talented but just plain adorable and fun !

And then there were my two days spent exploring my own artistic language with the awesome, Tracy Verdugo. I feel so lucky to have had that time with Tracy, who is from Australia, and traveling around the US right now, sharing her talents and her love of intuitive painting.

My 30 X 30” canvas went from this

all the way through to…

this final product that I brought home with me.

I love it a lot.

It is filled with all kinds of sweet spots that remind me of all the steps it took to create the final piece

Each little sacred mark is a little piece of me…

and a reminder of what it is like to “Be Here Now.”

Art is You was a great time, creatively and socially. I am home now, and though I am kind of exhausted from go-go-going and not sleeping so well for my 4 nights there,  my creative juices are filled up. And it was great to spend so much time with such awesome like-minded artist people!

Now it will be time to settle in and put all that good stuff to use !

Happy Thursday, Beautiful Ones !

Inspiration Prompt #24 - Lessons Learned from Unequalled Teachers

So I found this blog along my recent Blogland travels called "Creativity Prompt" which has some great ways to fulfill that urge within us to live a more creative life. What I like is that it includes creative inspiration in a couple of different forms - inspiration prompts like quotes, photos, and stories, journaling prompts to inspire writing or art journal pages , and creative prompts for projects which often include tutorials. A new place to play ! Yay !


So today's inspiration prompt encouraged us to think about unequalled teachers in our life and the lessons we learned from them. About a year back, I was teaching an art journal class and we played with this exact theme. Reading today's inspiration prompt made me go back in my journals and pull out the page I created for that class.

This page (a little scrapbook-y for my tastes but I still love the intention behind it !) was dedicated to my sweet, loving grandmother or Bubby as I called her. My grandmother was a Russian immigrant to Canada. She fled Russia with her husband and his brothers at the age of 18 (this photo of her was taken that year.) They spent the end of WWII running from bombs in fields across Europe, only to end up in a German work camp. My grandmother was a few months pregnant with my mom. The Americans came and freed the workers in the camp about a month after my mom was born. No doctors to help, just other women who had had babies of their own, to help my Bubby through the pain of childbirth.

My grandmother had many horror stories to tell. I asked her about them often, always unable to believe that this same woman was the one who had lived through all of that. The thing that always surprised me the most was how little anger or hate she had in her, towards any one. She had lived through unspeakably gross events in her life and yet she was the kindest, most loving and sweet person I knew. She was the best bubby a kid could have ! I remember how much we laughed and played together and I remember how whatever she cooked was always the best tasting thing on the planet. I remember from a very young age, lying in her arms, putting my face into her ample cleavage and deeply inhaling the sweet, dough-y, lovely smell of my Bubby.

The pages was called "Lessons At My Bubby's Breast"because of those memories. My grandmother passed away 15 years ago this month. I miss that unconditional love in my life so much some days ! Here is some of what she taught me :

Taking out this page just a day after Dia de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead is kind of fitting too, I guess. In the end, despite all the hardships she lived through, my grandmother's life was a celebration of family and good, big loving. Here's to you my sweet, sweet Bubby, my unequalled teacher in so many wonderful ways ! Let's go facaffee ! ;-)