Spring & Summer Hiatus

I've got big plans for this summer and almost all of it is offline work. I am in serious need of uninterrupted studio time to experiment and play with my writing and my art. I need to slow down, simplify and contemplate. I don't want any deadlines or expectations for myself and so I decided that the best thing I can do is put my blog on a hiatus until September so I can FOCUS. Remember that was my word of the year? It's time to get back to that.

Now listen, you know I love you right? I do. You beautiful people who visit my blog, read about what I do, and leave me thoughtful and meaningful comments are the world to me. I love my community and part of this break is also about making this space better. I promise to return with a fresh point of view and some new ideas.

I hope you have some amazing plans for the summer too. Even if amazing means laying in a hammock and reading a book. Let me know in the comments what YOUR plans are for this summer! Are you going on vacation? Starting a band? Renting an RV and driving all over the country? (That is my dream summer in about three years.) Or maybe, like me, you are cleaning out your closets (those literal and metaphorical), re-organizing your house and your life, making plans for the future and allowing your creativity to slowly wander where it wants to, without judgement. Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

Do not fear though! I am not leaving the digital space entirely. I love my digital life and might shrivel up and die if I could not go online. You will still be able to connect with me and see what I am up to on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. I hope to see you there. Or you can always browse my archives, there are lots of interesting and inspiring things to read in there. 

Have a great summer, take good care of yourself and your family and I will see you back here in four months!

<deep breath.........>

xo

A Mother: Then and Now

It doesn't change much, with a mother, you just get bigger. Right? That unconditional love, the big hugs, the care that they give you. It stays the same, even when you are an adult.

I miss her so much.

Today isn't hard though, it's just another day to remember her. Another day to honor her.

The things about my Mom that I hope live on in me are:

• her fearlessness
• her sexiness
• her ability to let me be my own person and pursue my own dreams
• the way that she always stood up for me
• her calm and contentedness at being at home
• her love of nature
• her exuberance and love of life
• her talents with sewing and cooking (still working on this one)
• how she took care of people
• her skilled hands with puzzles and fixing things
• her determination

There are many things about my Mom that I am not, but there are many more that I am. I hope to always embody the best of those things, to teach my kids the important things that she taught me and to remember all the good things that she brought to the world, like purple feathers in her hair and bubbles and rainbows.

Happy Mother's Day to all the women out there who have children, who care for children, who are waiting to become mothers and who embody the spirit of a Mother. You know who you are and I love you all.

Fragile Things: Part Three - A Broken Egg

Part Three of my Fragile Things series is here!  Part One is here. Part Two is here. This is the final part of the series featuring my photographs of fragile things, with hand-lettered text from Neil Gaiman's book of short stories, Fragile Things, overlaid on top. Working on this project has been enlightening and I really appreciate these final thoughts about the nature of fragile things.

From the Introduction:

It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean.

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.

Fragile things are everywhere, HUMANS are fragile things. People die. People break. I know those things all too well now. However, I am comforted by the thought that each fragile thing is actually very tough in it's own way. We survive. We keep living. Feathers can fly, hearts can heal and eggs can hold up bricks. 

Looking back on my experience with my Mom I can hardly believe that I went through what I did with her. That I heard the doctor say she only had months to live. That I took my children to say goodbye. That I went back, held her hand and watched her die. It's a wonder to me, now, as I sit on the couch crying about it, that I was so strong in those moments. We are capable of doing things we never thought we could, and more than that, we are able to do it with strength.

Remember that, the next time you are fearful of something, the next time you think you can't possibly live through something devastating. You can, and you will.

Found: Wooden Spools for Thread

I found these wooden spools at a yard sale for four dollars. I couldn't pass them by. They were screaming at me: MAKE SOMETHING WITH US! I don't quite know what I will do with them yet, but for now I've made this lovely photograph. Wouldn't it be a cool puzzle?

I loved sorting through all these little wooden beauties and arranging them into groups based on size, color and labeling. Some of the labels and stamps really appealed to the designer in me. I have a feeling there is a history lesson waiting for me, with a little research, I'm sure there is a story to tell about the companies that these came from.

I love to find anything that was once made of wood and is now made of plastic. Wood is so much more beautiful and tactile, isn't it? 

Do you visit yard sales? What do you look for?

Recontructing Youth // The Yard

Digging through all my parent's negatives uncovered something I had forgotten. When my Dad would create photo albums, the kind with the sticky pages that you could arrange anyway you liked, he would crop the photos with a paper cutter. The trimmings were usually discarded, but I found two photo sleeves full of them.

Tapping into my puzzling and artistic nature I decided to sort through all the trimmings and see if I could find a pattern to them. Happily, I did. In the random slices of photos I found a few very familiar places; the yard, the kitchen and the living room of the old house that I grew up in. The trimmings I found showed all the edges, the unimportant parts and the backgrounds. In those places though, I found something special. It's slightly elusive, hidden and quiet, but it's how I feel. It's a searching feeling, it's a shadowy feeling, it's something just outside of my field of vision, brought into view. 

It reminds me of how our memories work. It's a disjointed view. It's in pieces. It's broken. Or at least it was when I found it. Now, it's as complete as I can make it.