giving thanks for the light and beauty

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, 

as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves

 - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The hummingbirds have returned, with their quick flights, and territorial behaviors. Some Native American’s call them warriors. Hummingbirds were thought to be the sun, courting a beautiful woman, the moon. They are also a symbol of good luck and joy. Off in the woods I hear the quail call for the first time this season. It is fully spring.

A pattern forms, built over time, influenced by dark and light, warmth and cold, proximity and personal preference. Awareness and gratitude play a part.

This weekend is Opening of the Studio.  My studio beckons in the light of the changing season, in the warmth of the space and daylight for the walk back and forth. The sound track in the background is the song of birds in the day and the one billion frogs crocking in a near by pond in the evening. 

I’m a fair weather painter. I create all winter, in a small warm spot near the fire. The studio is welcoming in spring and summer and fall. And so the painting experiments continue. Water colors, papers. Monoprinting. They cover the floor and any flat surface. Each day I pull the dried papers apart to see what has happened.

The gardener called me to the door and said “I’ve found a treasure.” In his hands was a year old nest found in the honeysuckle. 

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. 

If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.

 Your life will be impoverished. 

But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Frank Lloyd Wright

 

I’m drinking tea, making marks and giving thanks for the light and beauty in my life.

 

Patience, grasshopper, patience.

Collage sketch, Leslie Avon Miller

Patience, grasshopper, patience.

That’s my new theme in the studio. Patience. More patience. 

After more then half a year of trying many mediums, my search continues to find something that flows for me. Soy paint? No, no. Pastels? No. Oil pastels? Quick drying oils? Nope, not those either. Eco dyes? Nice, but no. I even tried burying art outdoors in ashes over the winter. 

No, not that either.

Collage Sketch, Leslie Avon Miller

At the same time, I need to make art. I simply must. I indulge myself with small collage in my sketch book. I create slightly larger collage on paper. I mail art. I make new mark making tools. I use my own collage papers, watching my stash dwindle. I use crayons and charcoal and pencils and some inks.

When I experiment with new mediums I can’t find my compositional feet on the ground. I can’t design anything, let alone convey a message of some kind. Its painting, but it must be similar to going from a ballet on two skis to a heavy board strapped to both feet. Nothing feels natural. Nothing is dependable. I have no vocabulary. I can’t think in this medium, let alone speak or write a poem. 

Collage Sketch, Leslie Avon Miller

Patience, little grasshopper, patience.

With my collage sketches, I naturally fall into a river of my personal language of marks, patterns, juxtapositions, white spaces and textures. I can flow with the current. I can speak in my artistic voice. I have a vocabulary. 

These are my Haiku landscapes, my observations of the seasons and my place in the landscape. 

Collage Sketch, Leslie Avon Miller

Throw a pebble into a pond and watch the perfect circles 

form and spread effortlessly. 

Think of your art as that circle – 

a circle of creative energy spiraling out, 

taking in new influences, 

reaching out for new experiences – 

but always coming back to center – 

to you.

~Virginia Cobb

 

Sanctuary

Leslie Avon Miller, Collage

The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things.

 I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever

~ Mary Oliver ~

Leslie Avon Miller, Collage

Leslie Avon Miller, Collage

I have been seeking refuge, a sanctuary and retreat. 

I find my path by making small art.  

Art is my refuge.

Leslie Avon Miller, Collage

Do not let Sunday be taken from you.

If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

~Albert Schweitzer

  

Paper, textures, torn edges, small patterns, marks and my thoughts.

These make up the collages 

which are my refuge, my Sunday.

My soul is not an orphan. 

One Heart Telling Another Heart

Shell Bundle, Leslie Avon Miller

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible

 and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. 

It is a little star-dust caught, 

a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Bundle, Leslie Avon Miller

Art takes all the time I can give to it. And in return I gain the satisfaction of striving, creating, expressing, and knowing what it is to engage deeply. Being an artist is like living in a poem of sorts. I feel so very fortunate to be on this path.

I would willingly give more time to my art.

Bundle, Leslie Avon Miller

But that’s not the way of it for me. I juggle between day job work, home life work and art.  I enjoy most aspects of my day job as I assist lovely folks who are in a predicament. I like people, so being a helper is good work for me. I feel rewarded on the best days and I know less rewarding days come with the territory.

I love our home and take on the tasks which are mine with a willing heart, at least most of the time. I am into the Zen of kitchen work. I find that preparing a beautiful meal is a type of art in itself. I can even find some satisfaction in a folded basket of clean laundry. 

Bundle, Leslie Avon Miller

I don’t think of art as work exactly, more like a sustained endeavor, a quest, a joy. Most of all I love the long hours in the studio, exploring and creating to my heart’s content. Like the waves breaking on a rocky beach, exploring and creating art goes on and on and on in an eternal rhythm. I can’t stop.  I wouldn’t want to.

  

Furoshiki, Leslie Avon Miller

I experience this juggling of activity as a constant dance. If I throw in the laundry while I cook up a meal, I can have the afternoon as studio time. If I can skip out of work early, I can have an hour in the studio before supper time. 

And (here is a favorite) if I stay up late I can make some art after enough of the other things are taken care of. To be fair, there are plenty of times I stay in the studio and get called to supper prepared by my patient and understanding husband. Much to his frustration, sometimes he has to call me several times, as I say “in a minute, just another minute.” That’s another great way to carve out more time in the studio.

 

Bundle, Leslie Avon Miller

A couple of months ago, I read a particularly inspirational blog post which was spot on about the juggle and reward of having both a day job and a creative life. Fiona Dempster called the dance creating an artistic life style. Fiona said

  

I can't quantify how much living an artistic life adds to my life, my experience, my well-being, my pleasure and my joy. It means that we think about art, talk about art, visit galleries, contribute to exhibitions and have art-minded friends who we chat to over coffee. Living an artistic life is full of joy and happiness and pleasure, satisfaction and wonder.  I think continuing to live a life like this will be the best thing I can do. I am also grateful that I have the opportunity - I don't take it for granted for a moment.

~Fiona Dempster

Bundle Box, Leslie Avon Miller

I would add to the list of artistic lifestyle elements the connection I have with artists via the internet, like you dear reader, that enriches my life. Thank you for the conversations we share. It is on line where many connections with other artists are made and enjoyed.

This year I decided to eschew many of the traditions of the holiday season, and focus on the parts I really enjoyed. With this new mantra, I made hand made gifts for friends who would appreciate them. I began to bundle. And bundle. Part of creating an artistic life style is what I choose to do, and what I choose to let go of.

Bundle Boxes, Leslie Avon Miller

It really doesn’t matter how we engage our art and creativity, 

as long as we keep dancing the creative dance.

 

Bundle, Leslie Miller

Our intention is to affirm this life, 

not to bring order out of chaos, 

nor to suggest improvements in creation, 

but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, 

which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind 

and desires out of its way 

and lets it act of its own accord.

John Cage

  

Paper Bundles, Leslie Avon Miller

The act of painting is about one heart

telling another heart

where he found salvation.

Ai Weiwei

 

Tangling and Interweaving

Nest Leslie Avon Miller

Here’s the sexy white hot truth about creativity. 

It’s a religious experience. 

It’s a transcendental adventure.

 It’s the losing of the daily self and entering the magic kingdom. 

You come back bigger. 

You come back satiated. 

You come back sweeter. 

You come back with wings and fins and new toes that seek for higher ground. 

You never come back the same.

~Tama J. Kieves

Nest II, Leslie Avon Miller

I watch as the art, the creation takes on its own beingness.   

What didn’t exist now does. 

Messages come to my hands and the materials weave and 

move and engage with one another. 

It’s a time of making. 

The more I make the more I want to make. 

The more I make the more I think of to make. 

You know how that is.

 

It’s also a time of giving, so I won’t show you everything

 so as not to spoil the surprises.

 

Cedar Root Coil, Leslie Avon Miller

Roots. 

Tiny tendrils at the terminal ends especially delight me. 

These precious cedar roots have been coiled and waiting.

This particular coil is bundled so beautifully I can only call it art and leave it as it is.

 

Nest III Leslie Avon Miller

Nest III Leslie Avon Miller

Cedar Root Coil

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting, after the long season of tending and growth,

the harvest comes.

                                         The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy

 

Nests Leslie Avon Miller

Materials: cedar root, cedar bark, morning glory vine, sweet grass, excelsior