A Bear Named Hope

SALON 29: THE LAST OF THE WOOD NYMPHS

2009-11-08T15:47:00.010-07:00

Welcome back to our Creativity Salon...it's been a long time away but the call for creative minds to share is a magnet that does pull us back, even across oceans.

To remind you how this works...if you have anything you would like to ask our guest artist, just click on the comments indicator at the bottom of the page and it will take you there. Our artist is located in Central Scotland so it may be several hours or a day or two before he receives your question or comment and is able to respond. We will keep the salon up and running through the end of November. We love to get a real dialogue going and since many of our regulars are in America, this will be an interesting opportunity to do some cross-pond conversing. If you have any problems sorting out how to leave a comment just email me and I'll send you the instructions or post your comment for you. (And please be very patient with me...it's been a while since I fiddled with this blog system so my memory on how to arrange the photos interspersed with text is very vague...so they are clustered at the bottom of the page. Please go take a look!)

So let us begin!
I've been ready to start again and some of you started contacting me asking when we would...but the thing that really inspired me to start this up again was meeting George Wilson...or let's go back a bit...finding Delta Art Studios in Larbert, Scotland, meeting the director/artist Craig McKechnie, getting involved in some collaborative events...then one day while visiting the giant warehouse of never ending hidden corridors and mysterious closed doors (with art and artists hiding behind every one!)...a wee girl who was with me that day came and tugged my sleeve and said I should go look behind one particular door that just so happened to be open that day only.

I am so grateful that she told me to check it out...I walked into a small very green room with plants and beautiful paintings of trees on all the walls and in the center was this lifesize reclining creature carved of wood. He/she had dragon fly epilettes and cicada rings and a breastplate of intricately carved leaves...powerful and stunning work. I felt I had crawled through the proverbial secret door and come into a very magical place indeed. So of course so I had to go find out who had created this creature called "The Last of the Wood Nymphs"...and who had penned these words on the wall:

“...She speaks to you symbolically, with a hundred different voices, from a hundred different species...She could be the last of her kind. The last of the wood nymphs. Whom, like Shelley’s ethereal beings, love, but live no more.” ~ George Wilson, The Wood Beyond the World

What I Found Out:
George Wilson didn’t really plan to create a Wood Nymph, he didn’t know why he had to start carving its suit of leaves, but it took over his life for a year...or she took over...or is it he? The Wood Nymph is life size and decidedly androgenous, which seems appropriate, and is in keeping with the mythical tradition of wood nymphs, according to George.

George has a deep respect for tradition. He works with only arts and crafts type hand tools (many of his tools are 100 years old) and although his work is his own unique design and statement, he is influenced by the artistry of the Art Deco and Nouveau periods. He speaks with great passion about the demise of the tradesman and tradition of craftsmanship in Scotland. Intentionally, there is only one electric tool in his workshop - a saw.

Every leaf of the Wood Nymph is individually hand carved and fitted to the torso. You can see about 60 kinds of wood in this creature, but George assures you that actually 100 different kinds of wood went into its creation ~ the rest of which the viewer cannot see (constructing the body, under the breastplate) but the artist knows they are there, and there for a reason. “I used only recycled woods, especially woods at risk due to deforestation. The Wood Nymph is my statement about what we are doing to our rainforests,” he explains. “I want people to think about these woods, where they come from and the horrific environmental vandalism happening in those places. Some of the wood in this Nymph is now commercially extinct.”

As there is some outrage behind his reasons for creating the Wood Nymph, it makes sense that the face should have such a quality of strength. It also has a multiracial quality, intentionally, depicting that it comes from a blend of many cultures. “I didn’t want it to be a frail butterfly nymph,” says George. “I wanted it to look like it could look after itself.”

There is Scottish and international history in the piece ~ wood from Carriden House in Bo’ness; Victorian and Georgian woods from recycled furniture and window sills; commercial timber; various species of mahogany, teak, olive and woods from South America, USA, South East Asia, Africa, Canada. Some of the wood dates back to the 16th century. There are slivers from the Winchester Cathedral foundation, bits of semi petrified wood from bog oak, thousands of years old.

The Wood Nymph is looking for a home. A place where people can see this stunning and thought-provoking piece. George has had offers from various galleries and venues asking to host temporary exhibitions of the Wood Nymph and he is considering them, but meanwhile seeks a long term solution The thing is, you see, he has this vision for another carving and his studio is small and, well, frankly...the Wood Nymph is taking up all the space!

This time it’s sea nymphs, two figures intertwined with an oceanic wave, inspired by a 1950s comic book cover illustration by Virgil Findley (from the Famous Fantastic Mysteries series).

“This piece will have a lot of movement, in wood, and will be partly to push me forward as an artist right to the boundaries of what I can do. When I use these tools that were used 100 years ago and wood from hundreds of years back - these things effect me. These woods will be reborn, I’m the one that will be left in time, these things will go forward in time. My intention is to make things that make me feel good and which are also beautiful for other people, to make them feel good. That’s enough for me.“

Article by Michelle Miller Allen/McCallum (c) 2009
[Adapted from version which first appeared in NEW LEAF NEWS Autumn 09 at http://www.cgiscotland.org/]

ABOUT THE ARTIST: George Wilson has had a working studio at Delta Art Studios in the Lochland Estate, Larbert SCOTLAND for six years and says he is the most dust-creating artist in the building. Wilson is a woodworker who creates custom furniture, conservatories and does remodeling and repair of Victorian buildings in Edinburgh, Glasgow and other parts of Scotland. The eclectic nature of the art and artists one can find at Delta encourages creativity and freedom to explore. (For information contact Craig McKechnie: www.deltastudios.net) Many who have seen the wood nymph feel it belongs in a museum setting. The Wood Nymph is for sale, for “the right home”. Contact Delta Studios for all queries. Or contact Michelle to pass you along: spiritbear1@btinternet.com

REMEMBER...DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Green Phoenix Productions

SALON SABBATICAL: A conversation is not over until...

2009-02-02T11:25:00.003-07:00

After two successful years of this Salon, we are taking a long break until Winter 2009. To think, create, refocus and come back refreshed.

Hosts and hostesses are being lined up for the rest of the year meanwhile.

Please feel free to browse through our past salons at any time, they are often rich with inspiration and interesting dialogues.

You can still leave comments at any of them, any time and I will respond or others here may. A conversation is not over til it's over...and even then, decades later, it might pick up mid-sentence again.

If you are a creative person in any art field, anywhere on the planet, if you would like to host a two-week salon here later this year, just drop me an email with your thoughts - it's free, it's fun, it's networking:

spiritbear1@btinternet.com

Meanwhile, everyone,

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen

Green Phoenix Productions

New Mexico/Scotland and beyond...

SALON 28: Painting From the Inside Out

2008-12-15T02:45:00.022-07:00

Painting From the Inside Out

Featuring Guest Artist:
D. Lee

Greetings, salon guests! We have had a long break and are back to finish out the year with an interview with American artist D. Lee from Lexington, Kentucky.

This will be your last chance to take part in an interesting discussion at the Salon, until Summer 2009. As of 15th January 2009, the Salon will close its doors for renovations and return in a new format in Summer. As always, if any hosts are interested in taking part in 2009, please contact me and we can schedule you in.

Thank you all for your support and participation in our discussions the last couple of years. I feel good that we have added to the growing body of blog-as-group-dynamic, taking it into a different arena than blog-promoting-one-person. Both are totally valid (I have personally used and will probably use both again), it's just good to see the form has multiple uses and is evolving.

Have a contemplative Winter, thriving Spring and see you again in the good old Summertime.

Now, onto our discussion with D. Lee. Although this is an interview format, please feel free to ask questions. Both D. Lee and I will be checking in to respond over the next few weeks.

Do What You Love and Love What You Do!

Michelle Miller Allen
Green Phoenix Productions

THE INTERVIEW:

M: Greetings, D. Lee! Thank you for agreeing to join us at the salon and share some of your beautiful work with us. Was animal portraiture always an area you intended to get into as an artist? How did that come about? Also, to clarify, would you say that is your main area of professional art work? Wildlife and animal portraiture?

D: I don't feel I am a portrait artist, even though I have done, and occasionally still do, portraits. Animals were a natural choice, because I love them and that is where my interest and knowledge lie. But I also really want to do more figure (human) work. But skin frightens me. :) I haven't gotten the knack of skin. Even though I know I should look at it no differently than grass or fur or anything else. Portraits are my least favorite thing to do, as it feels restricting and the pressure can be huge. I'd rather just paint something and hang it, if someone likes it, they buy it, end of story. I have dealt with some real pita's doing portraits. But they are good bread and butter.

M: Have you had mentors? If so, we'd love to hear about that process and how it has impacted your career.

D: Yes! The most influential has absolutely been Morgan Weistling. (www.morganweistling.com) . I got lucky enough to take one of his (two) workshops, about five years ago I guess. He influenced me so much. It was actually a very intense frustrating workshop (we were painting from live models, something I had barely done), and my drawing skills are sorely lacking. And Morgan is big on drawing accuracy, as one should be. I truly wanted to just throw my palette across the room more than once during that workshop. I could SEE what I wanted to do, and could not even come close to doing it. More than that though, he taught me about painting 'from the inside out'. That is, where you really don't sketch out the whole painting beforehand, you just start at a certain place and complete as you go. I really related to that kind of painting, even though it was (and still can be) frustrating to learn at the time. But in a way, I get much less panicky about painting when I paint like that. If I have a big piece, or a subject I am not very sure of, that is how I paint it best. If I paint all over the canvas at once I tend to get distracted, uneasy and a lot of times never finish the painting. There are many, many paintings of mine with another painting underneath.

M: Do you find that there are areas of your life that "being an artist" feeds and vice versa, that is, are there areas of your life that feed "being an artist"...I guess I mean, how integrated into the whole of who you are is your artist career?

D: Well, if I want to wear bizarre-ish clothes, people will just say 'Oh, she's an artist.' :) It probably only really affects how I see things. I see a thousand things I wish I could paint, literally and figuratively. Literally, in that I wish I had a camera to capture it, or could actually paint plein aire and do a good job, figuratively because I know I am not good enough to really pull it off. Great light gets to me all the time. And sometimes even if I had a camera with me, the moment or view is too quickly gone, and it's over. That always makes me sad.

M: Do you have rituals before you begin your work? What kind of space do you work in, do you require solitude, etc. We love to hear the details!

D: My rituals before I work involve doing almost anything to not work! It takes me FOREVER to get in there, and then I am easily distracted. I wish I was an artist that painted a certain number of hours a day. I have friends like that. They make me feel guilty! And honestly, I suppose if I REALLY wanted to paint eight hours a day, I would just get my butt in there and do it. I'm not sure if it's just my nature, or if it goes back my earliest days of trying to paint, and having two young daughters and a demanding husband, and earning money by teaching lessons, training horses, cleaning stalls, etc. Art was something I got to do after 10 pm in the corner of the kitchen after everything else was done. Needless to say, not alot got done.

I actually had a workshop instructor (Tom Browning) say to me "It takes you forever to get ready, but once you're there, you can really paint!" Haha. I guess maybe that's why I like Quick Draws (completing a painting in an hour)... it's right up my alley. Of course some of them also turn out like crap. :)

M: When you are on the road, like going to art shows or things involved in your own horses and other travel, do you do much on-the-road art?

D: I haven't done a show for more than a year now. And I don't miss it either! I am in two (almost three, if I get off my butt and get something done) galleries now, and even though they take a substantial cut, that is what I prefer to do. When I am traveling, art is usually photographing. I am not much of a plein aire painter, although I KNOW I should be.

M: Do you feel like you are "a real artist"?

D: Haha, good question! The answer now is 'yes'. It took a long time. People would say "Oh you are an artist?" and I would answer "No, I just paint." I'm not sure when the shift took place. Funny, the people who can make me feel like maybe I am NOT an artist, are other artists. Usually ones who do abstract or very contemporary work. I think artists can be their own worst enemy, which is kind of sad. I paint realistically, but in an impressionist (loose) kind of way. I am not a photorealistic painter. I'm not an abstract artist, my mind doesn't even work that way, I don't think I could do it if I really tried. In fact I know I couldn't. And sometimes I really wish I could. One of the most irritating comments I hear is "just let it flow". Argh. That is usually said by a non-artist if I speak of a struggle I am having. "Letting it flow" has no bearing on my type of art. It really is amazing how technical it truly is. Which is also why I question the "right brain' thing. But anyway, painting is definitely NOT relaxing for me. One of Morgan's sayings which made me laugh out loud when I heard it, and is one of my favorites to this day, is "We all know painting is nothing but a series of disappointments." I still smile when I type that. Kind of makes you wonder why we do it!

M: There is a cultural mixed message...one, that to be a true artist you must starve in a garrett and have fame after your death...the other is that if you don't earn a living by your art you are not a true artist. Any comment on how these mixed messages have impacted you or impact you?

D: I don't think I'd ever heard the one about 'if you don't earn a living you are not a true artist'. I've definitely felt a somewhat of an Art Whore because I DO sell. Obviously I'm painting for money, right? It's an interesting discussion. I do look at art as a source of income, as well as (occasional) pleasure. I truly love when someone loves their painting. That makes me happy. I hate having to make up Artist Statements and such, WHY am I painting, WHAT was I trying to convey (umm... a cow?? Buy me?? ), blah blah blah. Tim tells me that is the marketing aspect, maybe it is the 'true' art aspect, I don't know. I've had to do that a lot lately, and it makes me think too much!

I do know that since the beginning (about 17 years ago now), when I first picked up a brush, I knew I would hang in galleries. Good ones. I got offers to hang in restaurants and such, but never took anyone up on them (not that there is anything wrong with that!). My goal was Jackson Hole and Scottsdale. When I first got in a gallery in Jackson, it was HUGE! Now I have been there five years. I love my gallery peeps, we are a family. I definitely won't be in a gallery that isn't fun. I know of too many who are pressure cookers, no thanks. I don't have so much of a desire for Scottsdale anymore, as I don't do that much western art. But you never know. :)

M: What is the best work you feel you have ever done?

D: Eek. Tough question. The best answer is probably there are some good 'licks' on some paintings. There are pieces of a lot of paintings I really like, seldom do I like the whole thing. Some of my favorites are probably the swan (which is still in my living room), "In the Meadow", which is my biggest and looks pretty good from far away, "Waiting on the Dudes" which is disappointing in some ways, but the most complicated piece I've done, it's credible, umm.... "Reynard" (fox), that's all I can think of at the moment. There aren't many paintings of mine I can hang and look at every day, that's for sure.

M: If you had unlimited resources, funding, support, etc. do you have a dream project you would do?

D: Wow, never considered such a thing. It would probably be sculpting something large. The one sculpture I have done I really enjoyed, and I have another one in progress (aka gathering dust). I need to get back to it. Casting is so horrifically expensive.

M: As a woman, have you "set up your life" to make being an artist your priority? How have you done so, if you have, and does your family (husband, bio family, etc.) play a part in that?

D: In my life, it has never been easier to paint than right now. Which is why I get angry with myself when I'm not. Of course I only have experiences of being a woman trying to paint, but I do believe we have it tougher. Tim is hugely supportive, and that is why I feel I have really grown as an artist since meeting him in 2000. In '01 I started getting more serious. I have to say I wholeheartedly believe there is still a gender bias in art, especially perhaps in western type art. Case in point (I know you know there is a reason I sign 'D.Lee'!), I won a pretty big award a few years ago. Got a small writeup in Art News ( I think it was), that said "D.Lee won the Southwest Art Award for Best Body of Work for his oils." And in that SAME issue was a huge article on how gender bias does not exist anymore in the art world. Haha. And the editor was a woman. Boy did I have fun correcting them! And that is just one example. I really feel that male artists are taken more seriously in my world, especially if the subject matter runs to cowboys (hey, I was a rodeo queen!), cattle, wildlife etc. Horses maybe are a little easier to accept from a woman artist. If you run down the list of artist in the Prix de West show, the amount of men is amazing. And we won't even get into the CowBOY Artist of America organization, of which no woman has ever been invited and probably never will. And that is one of the most prestigious art organizations around, commanding big prices if you can sign 'CA' after your name. Oh well. I just keep doing what I'm doing and trying to get better. You need a thick skin, to be sure.

For more about D. Lee's work and to see her stunning on-line gallery, her website address is:

http://www.dianasart.com/

Paintings shown on this blog (and all copyrighted by the artist and may only be used with her specific permission) are, in order of appearance - for details on them, see her website:

In the Meadow

Room With a View

Reynard

Sarah

Steaming

Waiting on the Dudes

SALON ON HOLIDAY

2008-09-25T12:38:00.003-07:00

WE ARE OFF ON HOLIDAY IN THE WILD HIGHLANDS, SALON WILL RESUME SOMETIME IN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle, Bob and Rebus

SALON 27: A Gatekeeper~A Sorcerer's Apprentice~A Solemn Oath

2008-07-20T12:18:00.039-07:00

I remember as a child being confused at the concepts that we lived "on the earth" and "in the world". Trying to sort out adult jargon. Ultimately of course I came to understand it's both, in and on. That the earth was one thing and the world another. And yet the same.

Everything in me is resisting introducing to you, in any linear fashion, these two reality spinners who reside with us ON the earth and are doing magic IN the world - Joseph Rosado and ShaRi Brooks. Instead, please just take a look at the images they decided to share with us in this Salon, and then if you are even the least bit tweaked or curious...ask a question...and consider joining us all at The Chalice Well in March 2009. (More to follow later on the exact itinerary, dates, etc.)

JOSEPH ROSADO and SHARI BROOKS each currently reside IN Albuquerque, New Mexico USA ON Planet Earth. They were both gifted into my life by Rick Allen after he left us all to become a spiritual warrior. And he's been VERY active, by the way!
Joseph, you have spoken to me before about the way you ask for your "mission" or assignment" each day. How does this connect with your renewed energy to share your photography?

JOSEPH: - It's been quite a number of years since I've exhibited my photography for anything other than a workshop. In this case my assignment was to make a connection with ShaRi and bring her on board to Water/Wind/Stone, the main company used for all my retreats and journeys. The purpose was to give her a strong vehicle and tools by which she can teach others, through the power of her Mandalas, to liberate themselves. At the same time, more than meet her financial needs. After all, we did not take vows of poverty. ShaRi at some point will become a facilitator of her own workshops with my help and contacts. So you might say that my assignment was to use my photography to develop a series of ten day workshops at the Chalice Well and Gardens in Glastonbury, as a way to introduce ShaRi and her work to the participants, but more importantly become one with the energy of the Chalice Well and its mystical surroundings.
MICHELLE: Obviously there are experiential elements common to all who take part in the kind of retreat as you are planning at Glastonbury. What does the experience of being a spiritual guide or shaman for such a retreat do for your own art and spirit?

JOSEPH: This is a very good question. First, I don't consider myself a shaman or a spiritual guide. What I am is a Gatekeeper, and by doing what I do, I am doing my life's work, which is to help "liberate people, to set them free." So every time I do a new journey, I am the same person working on another level. Every workshop, every journey, every soul that walks past my gate brings me to another level. I learn so much from those that participate in my retreats. This is why ShaRi and her work and the Chalice Well as a venue is a perfect alchemy for achieving the goal.

MICHELLE: I love that term "Gatekeeper". I'm rather fond of threshholds myself! So...what is your personal connection to the Chalice Well, Glastonbury?

JOSEPH: My personal connection to Chalice Well is that I was Co-Guardian there with my then partner, from late 1995 to the end of 1998. Together we made positive changes, and left a lasting legacy.

MICHELLE: I've watched you make positive changes in more than one place in the short time I have known you...if you had unlimited resources, funding, support, etc. do you have a dream project you would do in the artistic and/or spiritual realms?

JOSEPH: Yes, A World Centre - A Centre for Healing and Understanding. This was my assignment while I was Guardian of the Chalice Well. So I wrote the Document of Intention to be built on 30 acres. I have this document to this day, which was received with great enthusiasm by the city planners and Counselors, but fell short of funding. It was so radical of a project that it made sense! It created over 450 jobs, 220 accommodations, 2 restaurants, shops, multi level theater with workshop space and lecture rooms, library, 7 sanctuaries - one for each chakra. Oh please don't let me get started! A revised document is available, I can attach via email...Yes, let's teach others how to build these centres and have them all over the world! And while we're at it , let's lay a few crystals underneath for good measure.

MICHELLE: Maybe someone out there will read this and contact you on that! Meanwhile, what would you advise to someone who wanted to do a vision quest but did not know where to begin?

JOSEPH: I have a workshop just for that purpose. Or a private consultation via phone or email. Jot down my contact information for a free initial consultation. Joseph Rosado, nativesoil@aol.com Office - 505-404-0838 Cell - 505-414-5171

MICHELLE: What feeds your muse, your soul?

JOSEPH: Soul Buzz! Intense Happy People!

MICHELLE: I would like to point out to our Salon visitors that the first photographs you see here were taken by Joseph of the Chalice Well, stunning pieces. And the other photos of Glastonbury here are by him also, to give you a sense of the peace of the place and the well itself. I met Joseph a few years ago at a New Age event in Colorado and we became soul siblings at first sight! I can only tell you that in his presence is a feeling of almost childlike happiness yet a very practical, adult groundedness. He inspires one not just to dream, but to take action on the dream...just by being himself. There is a lot of lot of lot of light coming from this man.

Now onto ShaRi...as this Salon celebrates the joining of two powerful forces and world spinners through their work. To contrast what I feel in Joseph's presence, in ShaRi's presence I feel connected to the essential. A sense of not dealing at all in superficialities, yet a very light feeling.

ShaRi is sharing with us here some of her recent work, her "wOMandalas". I will provide a link to her blog so you can see more of these. I will leave it to her to tell you more about them as we get into our discussion. But first some questions...
MICHELLE: ShaRi, How does doing the mandalas relate to your spirituality and/or sense of your purpose on the planet?

SHARI: I first discovered the mandala thru Jungian psychology in my post graduate studies in art therapy. We were to portray an emotion that we had had that day. Mine had to do with anger. The image that came out of that exercise was a somewhat chaotic, broken~glass~shards type of image in reds and orange. It did seem to have a kind of motion to it though. The image moved into my subconscious, and quickly morphed into a succession of dream mandalas, and the emotion morphed along with them. The anger was transformed into a sense of peace and calm.

Thus began my path of discovery of the magical and primordial energy of the mandala. This quote from Peter de Jong (http://members.home.nl/imskaar/Website/index.html) sums up pretty explicitly how the making of mandalas affects me personally; I experience mandala making as a way of centering oneself. The concentration which is needed is like a training of the mind, learning how to focus one's attention on the here and now. I experience this as a form of meditation, a way of reaching inner peace and balance.'

As for my sense of purpose on the planet, it was thru these same art therapy classes and Jungian psychology that I also discovered the archetype, or universally shared imagery, of which the mandala is the most primordial and universal. It is a unifying force, of which we are in desperate need of here in this point in space and time. The mandala is also a force of centering and balance, something that is also much needed, both personally and globally, on our planet today. My statement, 'We may take different paths, but we all end up at and emanate from the same center', has long been at the core of my sense of being and coming into being.

MICHELLE: There is a lot of digital magic in your process with the mandalas. When you do "non-digital" artwork and then when you do digital artwork, is there a difference in terms of where the work takes you?

SHARI: Having recently done a collage, my first non-digital creation in quite some time, I am actually able to answer this question! I would say no. The act of creation has the same affect, no matter what media is used. The computer is just another paintbrush that we use to bring into fruition visions from the ethers. Making real the ethereal :)

MICHELLE: So how much of an element of surprise is there, for you as the artist, in doing the mandalas? Do you have a "pre-vision" of how each piece will turn out or is it something like raku where you put elements from around you together and see what comes out of the kiln?

SHARI: It is very much like Raku. (my favorite form of pottery~making, BTW, and the name of one of my kitties) There is always surprise and delight as the faeries, spirits and creatures reveal themselves as the whole starts to come together. It is also fascinating to see what kind of pattern comes into being at the center. There is no pre-vision, other than an inquiry of the Source photo as to what kind of 'pie' it wants to be. Most of the wOMandalas are made by inserting a piece of a photo into a slice o' pie template, then rotating them into place next to one another. It is at the seam where the slices come together that the patterns and totems reveal themselves, or come out of the kiln as it were.

MICHELLE: So it's an interface where the interest is created...and what about that interface between daily reality and creative time? Do you have rituals before you begin your work? What kind of space do you work in, do you require solitude, etc. We love to hear the details!

SHARI: No rituals here, just the ever present urge to create. Solitude is, and has always been, an inherent part of my life, so whether I require it or not, is a question I can't answer. Solitude is, however, the way I have apparently been given to experience this lifetime, and it would appear that my creativity is most likely a product of that solitude.

MICHELLE: Solitude is indeed a blessing...so, as an artist, if you had unlimited resources, funding, support, etc. what would you do?

SHARI: I would travel the world over, holding free and/or fund~raising mandala workshops, in hopes of bringing the healing and unifying power of this Wheel of Medicine to as many different venues on the planet as possible. I would also gift anyone that wanted one, one of my wOMandalas, or perhaps ask for payment in the form of a solemn oath to in some way or another make a contribution to peace on the planet. And, of course, advance the cause of the GreenMan & wOMan as well. After all, there can be no peace without a peaceful environment, without the trees and animals, without plentiful clean air and water, and without freedom 2Bee.
MICHELLE: ShaRi, can you tell me a bit about the convergence of your work and Joseph Rosado's, especially regarding the upcoming retreats at Glastonbury in March 2009?

SHARI: I am the Sorcerer's Apprentice, right now, hoping that all those broomsticks don't get out of hand!

See more of ShaRi's work at: http://womandalas.blogspot.com/

Thank you both...

Blessings...

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!!!

Michelle Miller Allen

http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

Traipsing Down the Yellow Brick Road...

2008-07-13T14:23:00.002-07:00

Ok, Ok, I admit it, I've been a lax Salon Hostess! I have abandoned you all for a couple months and have spent all my time running community environmental gigs, trying to write, writing grant proposals, acquiring equipment for litter picking events, trying to write, job training, meeting new creative friends in Scotland, going back to work (at my age!), trying to write, nursing a sick doggie...

Ok, ok, I admit it, I've also been hanging out in the woods near Bonnybridge and discovering the yellow brick road really DOES exist! An old road through the woods for carts and such I guess at some point...19th century brickworks nearby...exciting discovery! Oh, and an old rusted WWII munitions boxcar, that a new creative friend Gills and I are planning to do things with...

and trying to write.

ANyway...I have begun to write again and have other tricks up my sleeve to address THAT situation...pup is better on his pain meds (he's too young to have arthritis!) and now I've lined up some artists to host our Salon!

NEW INTERVIEW FORMAT FOR SALON:

Beginning July 19th through 31st, we will have INTERVIEWS with digital artist ShaRi Brooks and photographer/shaman Joseph Rosado. Many treats in store for you with these two...wOMandalas from ShaRi which are astonishing new work...I think she has truly found her artistic calling now...and phenomenal photography from spiritual guide and artist Joseph Rosado...and news of a Glastonbury Retreat they are planning for March 2009...meanwhile some of ShaRi's work can be seen at http://womandalas.blogspot.com/

Then beginning August 1 we have an interview with American artist D. Lee (you can check out her website meanwhile at http://www.dianasart.com/about.htm.

That should keep us busy til summer's end!

See you in about a week,

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen

http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

SALON 26: A Powerful Army of Children Brandishing Paint Brushes & Crayolas!

2008-04-12T01:44:00.008-07:00

Greetings Salon Visitors:

Since the only thing preoccupying my time and energy and passion lately is this big litter clean-up campaign I'm spearheading in Dunipace, Scotland, I thought I'd post some of the great posters the local children have done for the art poster contest I put together, with funding from Falkirk Environmental Trust...and a couple photos of what we're up against.

Although some of the "older youth" have created the "art display" on the bench with their under-aged drinking binges, the wee ones have created these posters. In fact, something like 1000 posters were created and we have to select the final 15 and top winner. But many of them are about to be displayed all over our community, too. It's been nothing but delight to go through the posters.

I'll be back in May with a new guest hostess but, for now, enjoy the children's work...and pick up your litter! This is an international problem, especially the plastic bag problem, now with bags filling our oceans.

Cheers,

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen

www.greenphoenixproductions.com

SALON 25: the point is how much can you eat, drink, smoke & write before check out time?

2008-03-01T12:10:00.004-07:00

Last summer I stood in a sunhat and sunglasses in the doorway of an outdoor storage unit in the New Mexico Desert, sorting through writer memorabilia.

You know the kind: the envelopes and folders and stacks of your writer history you saved because some mentor along the way said that if you ever "made it" you could sell all that to a university museum for their archives.

Especially if you had an incriminating letter in there from another poet who became more famous than you.

(Aye right.)

Old poetry reading posters from a Milwaukee bookstore circa 1973.

Poetry drafts, actually TYPED on a MANUAL typewriter! Many of them on the backs of interoffice memos from your day job.

Bits of verse scribbled on happy hour napkins from hotel bars. When all you could afford was happy hour watered-down cocktails and free pigs-in-a-blanket.

Rejection slips which devastated you at the time. Now those literary magazines have long since folded and that junior editor is probably on a sofa somewhere watching reality TV.

Acceptance letters. Now those literary magazines have long since folded and that junior editor is probably on a sofa somewhere watching reality TV.

Anyway, while sifting through all that, I found this photograph of a dead typewriter in a landfill near Santa Fe.

And this bit of coffee-stained typing from an Art Heaven weekend spent at the old De Vargas Hotel in Santa Fe in 1982 with two other performance poets - Mark Funk and Raymond Sipe.

We three former performance poets have gone onto other things.

I won’t say "better" or "worse" other things. Just..."other things".

I hope you enjoy this bit of reminiscing and that it makes you think of some of your own romantic visions along your creative path and share them with us, be they pre-war, pre-revolution or pre-computer.

This is what the typing said:

the structure of your face changed i can't explain what i mean
no it wasn't just a mood change or a moment of unfamiliarity
more than you slipped into a foreign language
i can't explain it i could sit here all day and tell you but
i wouldn't be able to explain it not really
she takes this hint of herself she doesn't understand it
but she takes it as valuable puts it away somewhere to take it out
look at it at moments when she seeks definition
doesn't know what his eyes see but knows some version of truth

clear vision: a characteristic of the fluid that lines his eyes

moving moving coffee truck stops good piece of pecan pie
smells of tanking up smells of early coffee pine juniper sage
waiting for morning sun to firm up the roadside colors
it never does it's just your eyes get sharper as the day goes

look at the shadows the sculptures form on the wall behind
just as she said it the shadows deepend, defined sharper lines
a sign a new dimension that breaking of gravity laws we all wait for
we all are not surprised by we wait breathless constantly for that
but it was just her friend moving closer to see the shadows, his head
blocking the light bulb in such a way as to sharpen the shadows she'd pointed out
don't keep saying "just" he told her. you constantly undermine downplay
the events of your life. there is no "just". no "just reality" or "just a dream".
your friend's head, his blue cap changing the light to deepen the shadows just at the
moment when you were ready to really see them
that was no "just"

the splitting up of space. we came here, three, to share a room and write. write together, write apart. permission to stare out the window. permission to browse the local phone book, find old names we'd misplaced, make nostalgic phone calls. all the movements toward the typing: buying film to photograph ourselves at windows, at typewriters, buying souvenir ashtrays (none in hotel room). buying art paper to try the new japanese ink set. buying italian bread, wine, imported beer, smoked oysters, london strawberry preserves. buying white chocolate, black chocolate in pyramid shapes. visit the artist, inhale his activity. back to hotel. unpack. food on steamheat altar. pry open the veranda door. plug in coffee. arrange cups. separate typing spaces, divide ashtrays, match books. all these rituals performed as three. then the separation. she goes to her novel, rewriting those bits. how to tie in the man on the bus with the broken window on the 3rd floor. he goes to the veranda, notepaper, pen, writes careful sketches of ducks, manikin heads, empty birdcages in storage windows across the street. the other stands at the window, staring down don gaspar, seeing ghosts, sits on the chenille spread and writes it, makes the phantom affair real with words. separate spaces, cocoons built around each moving into private word places. then restless. how to conmbine the novel, the ghosts, the window ducks.

funk moves in and out of tense. all the windows open moving cigarette fumes if we could see them, a certain infared light, our fingers typing would cut the fuzzy smoke film wrapping everything. you lift a coffee cup, a hollow sits waiting, ghost of its shape formed by cigarette fumes

the economics of art heaven:
$3 roses marked down to 50 cents
$6 wine, 1/3 drunk, the rest left floating cork wrapped carefully overnight in bathroom towel like european waiter
99 cent souvenir ashtray: we could have bought one for 79 cents but this one had new mexico indians and balloon fiesta on it and since we're not from omaha we had to have it
$10 on film to photograph ourselves flinging ponchos against hallway shadows of sunset ivy, smoking different brands of cigarettes, watching tourists below with moody poet eyes

funk says let's crash at midnight. sipe falls asleep his nose in gideon. miller sticks her finger in her ear against trucks, snores, radio, crunches against pillow. funk comes in from the cold porch, "anyone want to go for a walk?" now he's awake. miller wakes later, funk and sipe giggling on the floral carpet at sounds of drunk down the hall throwing up, neurotic woman tap tap tapping on the bathroom door

it's cold like we wanted. it could be late september. it could be seattle. in the bakery a woman in hot pink and black wipes her eyes and blows her nose. her croissants arrive. she rips them hungrily. we can't see her male companion from here. he isn't eating. we can see his hands. they sit still next to his coffee cup. as if she is alone, eating alone.

the point is how much can you eat, drink, smoke and write before check out time? write 30 lines by 10:45, it doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be english we'll perform it later, yell words on top of each other, no one will know

sipe got up at 6, went out to find us croissants, cappucino, the new york times. bakery wasn't open yet, the only out-of-town paper was the Albuqueqrue Journal. He drank solitary juice at La Fonda and came back. With the Albuquerque Journal.

Miller rewrote one poem seven times since last night. first in the personna of a child. then in her own voice. kept changing the "me" to "us" and "we". Did not want to accept responsibility for her vision. I see you. we see you. you see me. you see us.

details on habitat:

1. bedsheets have holes in them. miller noticed hers before she slept. sipe noticed his in the morning. funk won't say.
2. no bulb in one night light
3. generic towels, no devargas imprint souvenir
4. no tv. funk paces at 2 a.m.
5. large closet. no hangers
6. three bars soap, three towels, three rags
7.

Michelle Miller (c) 1982

As ever, as always, DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

SALON 24: Like seeing the ocean and clouds from a hijacked airplane...

2008-02-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.

"Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and reaching beneath reality's surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one's own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit." - Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists

Salon Guests: Our Creativity Salon, A Bear Named Hope, began in March 2006 with the goal of bringing creative people together to dialogue on any aspect of creativity, to help expand networks and bring attention to artists and writers of interest to us.

I am very proud to say, two years later, we have now held 23 salons with guest hosts and hostesses from a range of genres and disciplines and we are going strong! (I am also encouraged to see that more and more blogs have cropped up which use the blog forum as a place to dialogue, beyond the original ego-based use of "the blog". I think we have been pioneers in this!)

Our 24th Salon is hosted by artist and scientist Dr. Brett Weber (and his wonderful canine companion Sophie, alias Underdog). At this point I can't remember how I found Brett Weber on the Internet, but there he was and I was compelled to follow up and find out more! I hope you find his work and thoughts as provocative as do I, and that we can begin another of our amazing dialogues -- this time on the healing art of creativity, one of my personal favorite subjects.

The narrative for this Salon consists of excerpts from Brett Weber's thoughts on "the healing art of creativity" (I love the way he moved those words around!). You are invited to browse his thoughts and then add your own responses, questions, stories in the Comments section. Dr. Weber will be on hand over the next two weeks (February 8 - 22) to dialogue with you at the Salon. There are also links to his website and a cause near and dear to his heart.

Thank you for visiting! --Green Phoenix Productions

From Dr. Brett Weber...

John Paul II's beautiful words speak to a universal human experience we share in when we create. I do not mention the word "Healing" in my artist statement, but the notion that art and creativity can be used in the healing process is not a new idea. Certainly, there are many examples where a passion for creativity has helped people face and persevere against tremendous personal obstacles--especially in the arts and sciences.

Control and Release

Since my own diagnosis with Progressive-Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis (MS), the freedom to express myself creatively through art has been physically beneficial and psychologically therapeutic. How so? First, creating artwork (or simply acting creatively) may not be a cure for Progressive-Relapsing MS, but it is an example of both a physical and mental process which helps me to maximize my own natural coping skills--while alleviating some of the negative emotional stress caused by the progression of my disease, stress which I believe increases symptoms and disability caused by my form of MS.

Whether a person suffers from a chronic illness like MS or not, we each do our best to overcome unhealthy stress and we each adapt to change and adversity. Our sense of self-worth is closely associated with our apparent ability to control change within our lives. When negative changes take place and are beyond our control (such is the case with MS), our need for control escalates...

The entire process of creating and then naming my paintings provides me with a very satisfying physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual release. What's more, because I approach my artwork with no expectations of good or bad, right or wrong, correct or incorrect, much as a young child first approaches art, I experience very little of the stress and anxiety that is often associated with the creative process...

Talking in Our Sleep
You may have noticed that I only work on square canvases. This is because while I am painting I do not consider the final orientation of the work. I paint freely and often turn and spin the canvas in different directions and then again when I am interpreting the final abstraction. Only after I have given the painting (and digital art) a name do they receive their final correct orientation.

I call the process "Wakeful Dreaming" because much like the early Freudian and Jungian psychologists who first attempted to understand their patients' dreams using various techniques, I attempt to understand my paintings (and digital art) by giving them each a specific name which usually comes to me upon reading a famous (or not so famous) quotation, or idea. In this way the process of freely creating abstract imagery that I reflect on and finally name embodies an ongoing conversation that I have with myself...

Listening...
My artwork is about bringing unity to myself. It is about listening to instead of shouting at reality. It is also about triggering my mind's unconscious thought processes toward healing--by paying attention to and making sense of the normally silent, repressed and often time distant elements within myself. Because I am also trained as a neuroscientist and believe that the mind plays a role in healing the body, I am approaching my art as an experiment. It begs the question do we have more control over our health than we appreciate? And if so, how might a person harness that control? Perhaps, by letting go of control entirely--the paradox of combating chronic stress and depression?

Escaping to an Answer...
I understand the painting "Escape" [see tryptich above, info below*] as a conversation I continue to have with the unconscious part of myself through wakeful dreams--it is about finding an escape from the disease MS. Much like seeing the ocean and clouds from a hijacked airplane, "Escape" addresses the questions that I believe most people with MS ask themselves "How can I escape?" "Why is my body attacking itself?" "Does some part of me know the answer?" and "Can I regain control?" I named this painting "Escape" after a quotation by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), the renowned physicist and man of the 20th Century.

"One of the strongest motives

that lead men to art and science

is escape from everyday life

with its painful crudity

and hopeless dreariness,

from the fetters

of one's own ever shifting desires."

-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

A Way to the Dream...
Art can be stimulating to both eye and mind, and can provide us with an opportunity to heal ourselves and others...

...Unfortunately, many people with MS lose their ability to do the very fine hand-eye coordination required in representational art and may stop doing art in frustration, but abstract art does not place as high a barrier to disabled people with limited hand-eye motor control and provides the same therapeutic benefits...

...Although MS has affected my hands to some degree, I choose to do abstract art not because of my reduced dexterity, but because abstraction is the only style of art that can be executed without planned intent, and therefore a way for me to dream...

Dr. Brett Weber (c) 2008

Escape
We can escape the commonplace

only by manipulating it,controlling it,

thrusting it into our dreams,

or surrendering it

to the free play of our subjectivity.
- Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934- )

*(Information on "Escape":

Oil & Acrylic on Canvas 3.75' x 11.25' end to end;

subtitles: "Dreams", "Report", "Disease")

ABOUT OUR HOST:
A Moravian College alumnus, Dr. Weber received his B.S. in Biology and his B.A. in Art in 1991. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Temple University in 1997, and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) the week before completing his doctorate.Since then, he has devoted his life toward understanding MS through science and art. Dr. Weber leads members of his "Broken Art" class to better wellness at the Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network (http://www.goodshepherdrehab.org/ or http://www.goodshepherdrehab.org/interactive/index.asp) in Allentown, Pennsylvania. "Members of our class, regardless of their experience, are considered to be artists here, not simply a group of people with MS." By inspiring bold and creative artwork, http://www.brokenartgallery.com/ aims to inspire equivalent bold and creative scientific research in seeking a possible CURE for multiple sclerosis (MS) and every disease and disability on the face of the planet. Email: Art@BrokenArtGallery.com

Dr. Weber has displayed artwork in galleries located in: SOHO, Manhattan, NYC, NY; Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown & Bethlehem, PA; Denver, CO, USA & Hania, Crete, Greece.

If you would like to purchase prints or make a donation...

Dr. Weber does sell prints on his website. When I asked -- if anyone wishes to contribute to his work as a result of this salon -- he said that contributions would be welcome to the regular weekly "art done for wellness group", the above-mentioned "Broken Art Creativity Class" at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital in Allentown, PA.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen

www.greenphoenixproductions.com

PS If you would like to view Pope John Paul II's entire Letter to Artists, here is the link. We will focus an upcoming salon on this letter:

http://tinyurl.com/23vm2f

OUR SALON LINKS MESSAGE BOARD:

http://cbs3.com/topstories/MS.Multiple.Sclerosis.2.311800.html

http://www.faceofms.org/

http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking

http://www.brokenartgallery.com/Handout_ONE_&_Show_Information.pdf

http://www.brokenartgallery.com/Updated1ArtProgramDescription2008.pdf

http://wfmz.com/view/?id=147006%20

SALON 23: Just Sitting Between a Dalek and the Tardis, Watching Musical History

2007-12-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

JUST SITTING BETWEEN A DALEK

AND THE TARDIS,

WATCHING MUSICAL HISTORY

From Tumbleweeds to Thistles
Maybe it’s an old military brat thing. Or an American baby boomer thing. Or just a teenage – or human – thing. But, for me, music was like a big hook that pulled me into life as an adolescent, and I have stayed hanging on that hook ever since.

Many are the childhood memories of having just moved into a new town in the summer, before school began, and not knowing anyone to play with yet. Often we moved into new suburban houses, in developments that were not finished yet, mud abounding and only saplings planted here and there. My dad often drew the straw of being assigned to places we kids thought were boring – middle-America (and, no, that’s not like Middle Earth!). So I spent a lot of time with a transistor radio during those summers. We sure could have used headsets and CD players and all the newest gizmos back then! I won’t even pretend to know the names of all those tiny gadgets my stepdaughter carries around that hold the whole universe of music on them.

Anyway, back then (early 1960s) there were many summer nights with crickets, open windows, the transistor radio clapped over my ear and the pillow over that, to muffle the sound. I would play it so very very low that the adults would not hear, but it was right in my ear. I recall, from places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, listening to Dick Biondi, “WLS Radio in Chicago”. I was too young to know anything about Chicago but I knew it was a big city and far away from me, so that made it exotic enough. Such scintillating tunes as “Drifting along with the Tumbling Tumbleweed”, “Corina Corina”, “Ring of Fire” and “Don’t Fence Me In”…well, I am giving away my milieu here.

Fast forward to me, in my late fifties, an adulthood of my own eclectic musical favorites. Relocated to Scotland. Tuned into the radio real fast, to get my bearings, find out what is here. What’s the music.

This Guy on the BBC

In truth, it was long before I actually relocated to Scotland that I began listening to Scottish radio. My fiancé, a Glasgow boy and musician himself, sent me a link by email to listen to “this guy on the BBC”. The idea of listening to music on one’s computer was a novelty to me, back in 2003. I began listening. I checked out the website. You could send this Iain Anderson an email. I did. Five minutes later he read my email out loud to the whole planet! I felt so connected, suddenly, with this tiny country 6400 miles away from where I was then (New Mexico). I began listening as often as I could (it was afternoon when I listened, late at night in Scotland when the show aired live). My fiancé and I would send emails to Iain and he’d read them and we all got some humourous interchanges going.

Anderson is a Shakespearean actor with a fantastic smoky voice. He plays American blues, soul, rock, country and UK the same genres, and some Celtic folk, lots of stuff from the 70s, 80s and contemporary. His selections are phenomenal – there is a peculiar magic about the way he groups his choices. Sometimes I think it’s almost diabolical the way he can pied-piper you down some alleyway with a sequence of selected music! On his show I also find out about a lot of old and new artists I didn't know about before, especially from my own culture!

Goin' to see Dougie

Anyway, so the Sender-of-Music-Llinks and I got married and I hauled myself and dog (who loves blues harmonica, Bob Dylan specifically, in the key of B Flat) over the pond. And have continued to listen to Iain Anderson on the BBC Radio Scotland. Iain and Stewart Cruikshank, his partner in radio crime, even came to our wedding - thus we all met face-to-face. When his show had its 5th-year anniversary this past spring, we went to the celebration party in Glasgow. Stewart proudly showed us a map on the wall with stick pins showing all the new listeners around the planet. So many countries were represented! And lots of Americans, a lot more than a couple years ago. I like to think I helped create that a bit. I sure sent the link to everyone I knew!

Bob and I attended a live broadcast of the Iain Anderson BBC Radio Scotland show in Glasgow this past September. It was part of a celebration of the new BBC Scotland’s home, Pacific Quay, a huge glass building overlooking the River Clyde. We particularly wanted to attend that night’s program so I could finally see Dougie MacLean live and another Scotland great, Michael Marra.

For me, MacLean has been an important connecting point with my new husband and even an affirmation that I should go ahead and move to Scotland in 2005. During one of those “should I or shouldn’t I?” and “who is this guy and can I trust him?” times back in circa 2004, when my Scottish fiance and I were courting long (long long long) distance, in an email one night he asked if I had ever heard of Dougie MacLean. Hmmm, I thought, that name rings a bell and I’m seeing it on a cassette, perhaps, handwritten in Rick’s script…a cassette he recorded off someone else’s cassette. I said I’d rummage around, the name did ring a bell. Bob said he was a very important Scottish musican and a particular favorite of his.

I began digging through the New Mexico music collection but found nothing. Still, that name kept bugging me. Later that evening I stumbled across some old videos and there it was, “The Land: Dougie MacLean”. And then I remembered.

In the late 1990s, a friend brought my first/late husband Rick this bootleg video of “a Scottish musician”, knowing what a Celtophile he was. I recall us gathering to watch it on a snowy day in the Jemez mountains, and being completely enthralled with the music, the man, the land. I know that video lit a wee flame in Rick to get himself to Scotland someday.

Now I was totally stunned at this connection between my two men, and took it as one of many signs to “go with it” with my strange cross-pond courtship.

So when I heard that Dougie was going to be playing live at the Pacific Quay, hosted by my favorite Scottish radio personality/music presenter (Iain is much too dignified, with his classical stage voice and presence, to be called a “DJ”), at night in a glass building overlooking the lights and water of Glasgow, it sounded a bit too perfect to me! We emailed for tickets, they arrived promptly in the mail and off we went.

Intimacy, Familiarity and Coorying Doon…
Inside the lobby of the building, BBC Radio Scotland had set up a series of broadcasts of live music. The small seating area – for about 50 people – was near the windows overlooking the River Clyde. In one corner was a Dalek from the very popular TV show, “Dr. Who”, and at the other end was the Tardis – that telephone booth that doubles as a time machine. And there we sat, with an assortment of viewer/listeners – from their twenties to their seventies – and experienced musical history. Things were happening musically here that would never be repeated. It felt very important to me.

The thing that keeps striking me about the music scene in Scotland – at least the bits of it I have so-far experienced, through Iain’s show and our local pub – is the intimacy of it. Even in the presence of a nationally important musician and personality, there is the feeling that this is just a local favorite son, accessible at any time.

It has something to do with the smallness of the country, what they call “wee” here. If there is a known entertainer here, he really is known and not just to a small sector of the population. To help Americans get a perspective on this...if you can imagine whatever small town you grew up in, or live in now – unless you live in a big metropolis of course - and think about the local bands, some of whom will stay right where they are and others of whom will move on to the big lights…but you know who they are and can nod on the street when you pass them. They are part of your landscape and you can’t really say you are in awe of them but you appreciate them and support them.

It feels that way to me here to a large degree, that Scotland is just one “big wee town” (with, of course, several parts each having their own language, food, traditions, etc.) and the musicians here – whether they are only known here or have an international presence – are familiars, comfortable, accessible. It’s a good feeling and the sensation is that you are not so removed from their work by “the industry” the way you feel removed from the big names in America. Of course you can buy a pricey ticket and go listen to these Scottish musicians in a concert hall, or buy their CDs on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk – but you can also just jump in your car at 10:00 p.m. and drive to Glasgow, park in a huge, mostly empty parking lot, and walk into a great glass building and sit down a few feet away from them and listen to Iain’s brilliant conversation with them in between songs, watch them tune their guitar. And if you smoke you can stand outside rubbing elbows with some of them on a cigarette break!

I think it also has something to do with the coorying doon quality of Scotland, something I wrote about for The Jemez Thunder a few months ago:

“Coorying doon is what my husband told me we would do here, on the winter nights. Meaning to keep close to the hearth fire, snuggle, stay warm and cozy in our wee cottage. Another form of coorying doon, of course, is to walk to the corner pub and share a pint and chat (haver) with your friends and neighbors. Coorying doon is in the language, in the faces, in the attitudes. The awareness of the bigness of the weather in contrast to the smallness of the land makes the humans scurry together for warmth and solace. And yet they love their weather, much as they complain (it is standard on a sunny day here to say 'Aye, we’ll pay for this, we will!'). They thrill to the grey fog and the harshest of weather, as much as New Mexicans thrill to the stark sunlight and amazing turquoise sky.”

Live at the Pacific Quay! (11 September 2007)
Dougie MacLean is a very coorying doon kind of singer. He’s also a songwriter, guitarist and fiddler – and an institution in Scotland. Some consider his song “Caledonia” to be an alternative anthem for Scotland. His wee concert on Iain’s show was intimate, funny, powerfully beautiful, totally satisfying. He has a voice that soothes and just about breaks your heart with an urgently gentle emotion. One song was about his father and I'm sure it reminded us all of our own fathers as we listened.

Then there was a small news break and a scurrying of stage hands. Suddenly appeared a close-shaven man, spry and craggy, at a piano down front, singing in a voice that was reminiscent of Tom Waits. There was something about the song, the man (Michael Marra) the moment that was pure magic to me. It was folk but it was rock but it was jazz and the man was audacious with a twinkle in his eye that gave himself permission to be dark and funny all at once. It was unique, it was entirely his own – not only his own voice and music and lyrics but a quirky “take” he had on reality. I was happy to let him take me on a tour of that perspective.

Also that night we heard the Endrick Brothers who are described as “a Scottish Americana/rock band originally from the Stirlingshire area” who borrow their name from a river that flows through their village and have made Glasgow their musical home. I loved the way the lead singer of the Endrick Brothers approached the microphone when he sang the song “Thorns on Every Rose”. (In fact, you can even watch this yourself! Check out the video on their Myspace.com page, from their February 2007 performance in Den Bosch, Netherlands) He had this way of gathering himself slightly off-center of the stage, then blindsiding the mike with a full assault. A lot of sexual energy and charisma from this group.

Kirsty McGee and Matt Martin…at her website she describes her music as “songs of vagrancy and restlessness played by raindrops on a tin-pot banjo”. Obviously the woman is a poet, a poet with a compellingly beautiful voice. The evening ended with her anti-war song “gonna cry like a crow in some dark corner of the road”. This was a merging of voice and lyric and anything else going on during that song was just invisible. I could hardly get up out of my chair after that one!

My Gift to Share With You
Well, now I feel pretty high from writing this and re-listening to these fantastic musicians in my headphones while I did. Because, wonder of wonders, you can hear all these folks for free right now! Below are the links to their websites. Each website has either a place to click and listen or a link to their myspace pages and you can listen there. (As Joni Mitchell's lyrics say, "...playin' real good for free!") You can consider this my gift to you all this season. I hope you really will check them out and enjoy these very soulful talented musicians.

http://www.dougiemaclean.com/
http://www.musical1.com/bands/1/photo.php
http://www.endrickbrothers.com/v2/
http://www.kirstymcgee.com/

And be sure to click on and listen to Iain Anderson’s show anytime…send him an email and he will no doubt read it on the air a few moments later.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radioscotland/programmes/iainanderson

Just a couple of clues: (a) Usually his Friday night show is pre-recorded, so you can’t get a live interaction that night; (b) You can listen to his shows for a week after they air, at the BBC Radio Scotland website, so if you miss a show it’s not too late; and (c) Please tell him Michelle2 and The Mad Scotsman sent you.

Forces of Evil, Time Machines and Spider Webs
Oh, in case you were wondering about the Tardis and the Dalek and the cobwebby image of the radio tower…there is method to my metaphoric madness. When you sit in the midst of music, when it is given as a gift…you are sitting in a space between the forces of evil and chaos and the gift of suspended time, timelessness…

As for the spiderweb - that’s what music is to me, and this particular salon. A web of sound, of sharing, of wishing-you-were-here and making it so!

IF YOU WERE THERE OR HAVE EVER HEARD THESE MUSICIANS LIVE OR WANT TO COMMENT ON THEIR MUSIC, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT! WE WOULD LOVE TO BE FURTHER EDUCATED ABOUT THEM!

Spread the threads, share the music, forward the links and…

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen (C) 2007
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com/

(Thanks to Iain Anderson and Stewart Cruikshank for letting me rave on, and welcome to any of their fans and listeners. Please take a moment to leave a comment and say where you are from, on the planet!)

PHOTOS BELOW: You can see some of these better at the relevant websites, these are just thumbnails. Some child listening...Michael Marra...Kirsty McGee & Matt Martin...Iain Anderson... Dougie MacLean with the Dalek and Tardis.

SALON 22: Invitation to a Dance: Khayelitsha

2007-12-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

GREETINGS! PLEASE WELCOME

OUR SALON HOSTESS,

LAVON RICE.

FEEL FREE TO JOIN IN

AT THE COMMENTS SECTION.

CURRENTLY IN SESSION:

DECEMBER 3 - DECEMBER 17

Invitation to a Dance: Khayelitsha

"Africa has been waiting, for centuries, to be discovered with...the eyes of a lover."

--Ben Okri

And can the lover ever see anything from the outside (discovering, as if from a distance)? No, the lover zooms in with her camera, and we are made intimate with every pore of the beloved. How the beloved holds her pen ransom, rapt and writing. How she casts a bright green glance somewhere.

How does the lover learn how to see? Slowly. It takes time to caress, to hold the warmth of images. It takes a lifetime, really—and if you don’t have a lifetime to spare, then do not call yourself lover, artist.

Stop, listen: the blare of headlines--Africa: famine, civil war, blood diamonds!--drown out the sweet nothings whispered by the women and girls of Khayelitsha. Where they fall, inexplicably, in love. “Women and girls dream there,” asserts Joylynn Holder, director of the to-be-released feature film, The Only Road to Khayelitsha. It’s where the main character, the young Thuli, writes and dreams—in Khayelitsha, the largest black township in Cape Town, South Africa.

Although Thuli is a fictional character, the issues explored in the film are based on the very real stories of women and girls from all of South Africa’s provinces. The human rights organization Treatment Action Campaign, the co-producer of The Only Road, provided the interviews that inform the film.

But Holder had no interest in mere reportage, and neither did the women she talked to. Instead: poetic verisimilitude. News reports and documentaries only about the woes of South Africa have been done (and overdone), she believes. The women interviewed—even as they battle poverty, sexual violence, HIV—want poetry. A film that doesn’t reduce them to the size of their suffering. To be seen whole, panoramically.

“They don’t want a sob story,” says Holder, who adds that it’s often Westerners that are more paralyzed and hopeless about the conditions in South Africa than the people actually enduring the conditions. The women have hope because they can’t afford the luxury of despair….

"They don’t need rescue," continues Holder.

They don’t need the condescending camera, or the patronizing pen. Some of them are veterans of the anti-apartheid movement, and they are resisting again—on behalf of the full personhood of women. So these women don’t need pity. But they do need beauty.

How can one dare discuss aesthetic pleasure amidst the shantytowns of South Africa? Ah, how can one not? It is black South Africa that boasts of some of the most beautiful protest songs the world has ever heard. Art and agitation as body doubles. Beauty: like bone, like breath.

So instead of documenting only the “what is” with soundbite-sized analysis, Holder says she wanted to architect a film that says, “Look at what we can imagine.”

Look, indeed.

“People need roadmaps, alternative realities,” she insists.

So the camera turns cartographer, mapping out the could-be country. So the camera turns choreographer, essaying ways we can move in the world differently because the beloved is everywhere (there is no need to look for her).

Watch what happens when the photographer puts down her equipment and invites the “subject” to a dance. Lip to lip, belly and belly: the art of the empath.

The only one there is.

(Photos by Louisa Butler)

ABOUT OUR HOSTESS: Based in Washington, DC, LaVon Rice writes frequently about "artivism" for Colorlines. She is the co-curator and co-conspirator at strangeblackgurl.com, a soon-to-be-live online destination for quirky women of African descent (and their allies). To be informed when the site is up and running, e-mail her at LaVon.Rice@gmail.com. She is also a script consultant for The Only Road to Khayelitsha. To learn more about the film, visit http://www.coconutdaughters.com. To donate, e-mail director Joylynn Holder at joylynn@coconutdaughters.com.

ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM

MICHELLE and GREEN PHOENIX PRODUCTIONS:

Greetings,

I'm excited to see what dialogue ensues with our new Guest Hostess, LaVon Rice, regarding social responsibility and the creative process. Myself, I can't stop staring at and enjoying that first photo she gave us (the photos are stills from the film), and lingering over her way of writing - sheer poetry.

If you go check out the link she provided, you can actually watch a few minutes of the film and hear its compelling soundtrack! So...go watch a movie for a bit, visit the links she gave, then come back and let's talk!

MY NEW BLOGS:

Meanwhile, I have a few new blogs for you to check out, in all your cyber spare time. I would be thrilled if you would send these links to any of your friends who might be interested in ritual scarves or treehouses!

http://gppsynchronicityscarves.blogspot.com/

http://jemeztreehouse.blogspot.com/

COME HANG OUT AT WRITEFINE...

AND ENTER A SHORT STORY CONTEST!

Please visit http://writefine.com/ where I am on staff as a writing instructor. We are having writerly conversations in our Forum section, and a beginning writers' fiction competition! Although most of the workshops are for a fee, YOU CAN HANG OUT AT WRITEFINE.COM FOR FREE and join in the dialogues, pick up some tips, finds lots of writerly articles to read, ask for advice, give advice...It's a great new place and already it's winning awards and attention on the Web. You can get in on the ground floor with some good people and get a little creative hit with your morning java!

The 1st Annual Writefine.com Short Story Contest is unique in that the prize is editorial! Winning writers will be able to then work, FOR FREE, with a writing instructor in their particular genre, to take their story to the next level, to get it ready to submit to publishers or other competitions, and garner an editor's recommendation to boot. Plus other prizes that only a writer could value (Grin). For all the information on this interesting competition, see the home page at WriteFine.Com. DEADLINE IS JANUARY 20TH, 2008.

Speaking of contests...Michelle Miller Allen is pleased to announce that her essay "A Fork in One Hand, a Pen in the Other" won 2nd Place in the 2007 FundsForWriters One-Year-to-Write Category! To read the essay (and find out about Hope C. Clark's website, blog and pioneering work in helping writers get paid for their writing), visit: www.fundsforwriters.com/annualcontest.htm

Writer Silvia Sanza and Polly Frost's Blog:

Writer friend Silvia Sanza was recently interviewed at Polly Frost's blog, leading me to discover the joys of Polly and her circle...including fans of the Dog Whisperer (I'm a HUGE fan). Check out Polly Frost at http://pollyfrost.wordpress.com/. This week she is interviewing an interesting animation expert, Tom Hart, and as soon as I finish posting this blog, I'm off to visit HIS website. Animation is something I've always wanted to do, myself! (And check out Silvia Sanza's books too. A sassy, sexy urban writer of literary note - her books are at Amazon.com!)

Oh brave new world!!!

UCPOMING SALONS:

December 18-December 31: Michelle Miller Allen, Just Sitting Between a Dalek and the Tardis, Watching Musical History

January 2008:Brett Weber of Broken Art Gallery (http://www.brokenartgallery.com/) His website tells you it is about "The Healing Art of Creativity: combating chronic stress, depression and multiple sclerosis (MS), but learning some colorfully sweet notes along the way." (Exact topic and dates of salon TBA.)

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

And please remember, I am always happy to talk to potential new hosts and hostesses. It's free, it's fun, it's networking!

Michelle Miller Allen

http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com/

SALON 21: No Writer is an Island

2007-11-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

GREETINGS! PLEASE WELCOME
OUR SALON HOST
DARRELL LAURANT OF
THE WRITERS BRIDGE.
FEEL FREE TO JOIN IN
AT THE COMMENTS SECTION:

CURRENTLY IN SESSION:
NOVEMBER 18 - DECEMBER 2

NO WRITER IS AN ISLAND

Unlike tennis, checkers and creating babies, writing is almost always carried out alone.

That's part of its charm -- frail human against white space, like Hemingway's Old Man braving the Gulf Stream in his little fishing boat. It's a romantic notion, and one which we writers tend to embrace.

What we don't often think about is the downside of this self-imposed isolation.

I'm not talking about loneliness. Our writing is most likely done in conjunction with a "real" life -- a job, co-workers, a significant other for company (or at least a pet). Personally, I've grown to love getting up at 6 a.m., when everyone else in my house is still asleep, and spending a couple of quiet hours in front of the computer with a dog at my feet, a cat in my lap, and a cup of coffee steaming at my elbow.

That sort of isolation can be soothing and productive. What I'd like to discuss over the next couple of weeks is something very different -- the way we writers have isolated ourselves in the marketplace.

Into an Envelope
There are some, of course, who write simply for the visceral joy of it, with no hope of ever receiving a check in the mail. They pour their souls into journal pages, craft poems for their children, and never even think of folding their work into an envelope and sending it off for someone to pass judgment on. They may be the lucky ones.

Most of us, though, are much less ephemeral. Creative writing, we firmly believe, is a skill we can turn into cash.

But that belief doesn't protect us from our inferiority complexes. Tails tucked between our legs, flinching in advance before the kick, we circle the houses of the literary gatekeepers like wistful stray dogs, hoping to be at least noticed, if not fed.

And when we get rejected, we both expect and resent it. The strongest among us go whistling through the writers' graveyard, taping their growing collection of rejection letters to a wall. Others become defensive ("Those people are morons"), still others drink a lot.

I once saw and saved a cartoon that showed a small, balding man slouching away from the Pearly Gates with a glum expression, a sheet of paper in his hand. A note on the paper said: "Thank you for your interest, but unfortunately, you are not what we need at this particular time." The cutline declared: "Hell for editors."

Whoever conceived that cartoon had to have been a writer. Personally, I'm always tempted to respond to a rejection of that sort by asking: "Could you tell me if there is a particular time when it will be what you need?"

Conditioned to Believe
We all have our war stories, and we grin about them until it hurts. I once sent a non-fiction proposal to an agent, explaining at some length that it was a book on the criminal justice system of a Virginia county and had been painstakingly researched through interviews and court records. I even included a couple of chapters.

"While your writing is very accessible and interesting," came the response, "I don't feel that your characters are believable."

At the risk of having this devolve into a rant, let me say that I have worked with many editors who were both fair and considerate. Some, I would even call delightful.

But then there is the lack of respect we get from others. Why should it take a small magazine three or four months to respond to a query? No matter how busy one may be, how long would it take to hit "reply" on an e-mail and type: "Thanks, but not for us" or "We've already covered that"? Then the writer could get on with his or her life and submit the query somewhere else before it lost its shelf life.

And I've noticed that the markets with the longest window of response times are often the ones who add: "No simultaneous submissions."

Why do we put up with this sort of thing? Because we've been conditioned to believe that the people who publish our work are doing us a tremendous favor.

From Chaos to Mutual Respect
Still, I'm astrologically a Libra, which means I always look at the other side. And editors definitely have their own horror stories -- articles sent to them that bear no semblance to the idea that was pitched, deadlines missed, writers who simply disappeared off the face of the earth. I was also once a magazine editor.

Our Website for The Writers' Bridge http://www.thewritersbridge.com/ illustrates what I think is an appropriate metaphor -- freelancers and editors occupying thousands of tiny islands, each separated from one another.

Over the past four years with TWB, I've tried to figure out ways of changing the freelance business from chaos to mutual respect. It's a work in progress.

Let me assure you, though, that I didn't agree to take Michelle up on her invitation simply to push The Writers' Bridge. If some of you want to find out more about us, that's great -- we need all the members we can get. But ultimately, we can only handle so many writers, and I would love to see 100 groups like ours spring up around the world.

I'd love to see beginning writers nurtured by veterans. I'd love to see a system where someone in, say, Afghanistan could write an article in his or her native language and have it translated and sold to a publication in Belgium or Brazil. I'd love to see us editing each other, telling each other about ideas and markets, and sharing information -- good and bad -- about how those markets are treating us. I'd love to orchestrate a collaboration between writers in three or four places who would come together to produce a single marketable piece of writing.

My dream for The Writers' Bridge is that it become a bubbling multicultural soup, filled with writers who are male and female; black, white, Hispanic and Asian; Africian, European and Latin; liberal and conservative; gay and straight, and all manner of religion and anti-religion. From such a soup would, I believe, come understanding.

And from you, I would love to hear suggestions about how writers can work and brainstorm together.

--Darrell Laurant (c) 2007

ABOUT OUR HOST: Darrell Laurant, Founder and Head Honcho at The Writer's Bridge, an on-line agency whereby he helps put freelance writers and editors together with magazines and those in need of such services. As a veteran newspaper columnist and freelancer, he says, "I've become frustrated by the randomness of the current market 'system' and haunted by all the voices that aren't being heard. That's all changing, and my primary goal in life is to help effect that change." I've been a great admirer of Laurant's writing, mind, energy, attitude and integrity for many years and am thrilled that he has agreed to host this salon.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

And please remember, I am always happy to talk to potential new hosts and hostesses. It's free, it's fun, it's networking!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com/

UPCOMING SALONS:

December 3-17, 2007:
LaVon Rice. Based in Northern New Mexico, LaVon Rice writes frequently about "artivism" for Colorlines, and is the scriptwriter for an upcoming film about women, silence and AIDS in South Africa. She will lead us in a discussion on Social Responsibility and the Creative Process, and I am particularly delighted for us all to get to know this woman!

December 18-December 31:
I'll be sharing some thoughts and links with you to some Scottish musical wonders!

January 2008:
Brett Weber of Broken Art Gallery (http://www.brokenartgallery.com/) His website tells you it is about "The Healing Art of Creativity: combating chronic stress, depression and multiple sclerosis (MS), but learning some colorfully sweet notes along the way." I discovered Brett Weber through his art on the Internet, and have been following his phenomenally energetic career for some time now. I am also partial to knowing anything about his wonderful dog Sophia (all email announcements from Brett are really from Brett & Sophia). PLEASE go check his website, it is so uplifting and exciting and colorful and has nice music to boot! I am thrilled that he has agreed to take part in our salon (exact dates TBA), and we will link to any donation opportunities during his salon. He is doing very important good work on the planet.

SALON 20: Big Black Billboards

2007-11-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

BIG BLACK BILLBOARDS

By Harry Willson

I snorted when I first saw one of those big black billboards that contain a brief message in white lettering, signed, "God." Then a TV morning talk show hostess noted them and thought they were a very good thing, and isn't that anonymous fundamentalist millionaire who's paying for them just wonderful! I found I had to take another look and then I thought some more about what the billboards said and what they really meant. They come from and encourage the great obsession and a restored sense of wonder could free us from that.

[1] "Don't make me come down there!" — God. I can hear the tone of voice of this one. It takes me back sixty years. Very young children, playing too rambunctiously, one crying, in the upstairs bedroom. Adults downstairs, trying to read, or listening to the radio. "Don't make me come up there!" It could be either mother or father, two different memories, two different uses of that same warning tone. So we calmed down, because if either one did come up, there would be serious trouble.

This billboard reduces adult humans to the toddler stage of life, or tries to. It also assumes the three-story cosmos, with heaven above and the earth beneath, which hasn't been anything but mythology since Copernicus. Infantile humans must deal with a God who is menacing, threatening, frightening, trying to frighten, insisting on things being his way, demanding that others do what he wants. I'm thankful that there's no such God.

[2] "I'm making a list; checking it twice." — God. We know where this comes from. We suspected it all along. God is really Santa Claus, the Cosmic Bookkeeper — and his concerns are about "naughty and nice," not honest, not just, not heroic, not compassionate, not courageous. We little kids — there's that again — we're expected to do what he wants, which is "be nice," to get on the right list, so that we can "get stuff." That last bit has a very up-to-date ring to it. But who really believes in Santa Claus? Who needs to take this God seriously?

[3] "What part of thou-shalt-not don't you understand?" - God. This is a rephrasing of something I first heard from my daughter, who was dealing with her four young daughters. "What part of NO don't you understand?" The meaning was clear. "This is not a discussable matter. Argument is futile, and forbidden. I have the authority, the size and the will to enforce my way. Do what I say, or bad things will happen to you."

Again, adult humans are reduced to the role of little children. The commandments may be outmoded, peculiar to a particular patriarchal culture and irrelevant to our own time and place [graven images?]. They may be inherently unfair and arbitrary. It doesn't matter. Do what they say. Does "Thou shalt not kill" include capital punishment and war? Most fundamentalists don't think so. Does "Thou shalt not commit adultery?" include heads of state and other high officials? Forget such quibbling, and obey, the ogre-father says.

[4] "You think it's hot here?" — God. Here we have threats, serious hostility and menace, hellfire, eternal conscious torment, punishment, legalism, loopholes, escape clauses, and the requirement that one believe absurdities. And who does it frighten? Little kids. Little kids only. It becomes abuse, spiritual abuse. Kids need love, and so do we all. If this is a joke, it's not funny. If it's not a joke, it's sick. For God to try to get us to do what he wants, to behave as he expects, he threatens to hurt us, to isolate us forever, to make us really regret it forever and ever with no hope of paying back and being done with it. What kind of God is this? What kind of people believe in this kind of God?

[5] "We need to talk." — God. At first glance this looks like the least offensive of the five examples, but it's the worst of the lot. "We need to talk." There's trouble and we need to talk about it and tend to it. Who says this? Parents whose authority is slipping. Spouses whose trust is giving way. "We need to talk."

Not me. Let me out of here. I was just leaving. I'm going far, far away. I know who's saying this. That same unforgiving, uncomprehending, thoughtless father-figure who insists that everything has to be "my way or else."

I know real fathers like that. "The kids never call." But the father does nothing but berate them when they do. Why should they call? Just to catch more hell. "We need to talk." No, thanks. Keep your threats and your list and your punishments. I grew up.

Excerpt from Chapter 1: The Great Obsession, FREEDOM FROM GOD Restoring the Sense of Wonder © 2001, Harry Willson

GREETINGS! Please welcome Harry Willson, our Host from November 3-17, 2007.

MICHELLE'S DISCUSSION POINT FOR SALON GUESTS:
Bruce Ferguson wrote of this book, "...Willson would persuade us to give ourselves over to the Whole Thing... ‘All the multiplicity we see and feel around us is made up of interacting interlocking parts which make up One.' (page 112) The word ‘God' is inappropriate in that context because we cannot strip it of its anthropomorphic connotations."

Willson says these billboard messages "...come from and encourage the great obsession and a restored sense of wonder could free us from that."

I remember being taught, as a young Catholic child, that God was Omnipotent, Omnipresent...making it therefore so very difficult to equate the word/concept "God" with the words/concepts "Wholeness" and "Oneness". Because that concept of "God" did not include me...yet I KNOW I am part of the One. So I have had to learn to "think" about all this in my own way...and try to erase (as in blackboard) my images of the scarey, tall nuns as they explained "God" to me.

Any thoughts?

ABOUT OUR HOST:
Harry Willson, Amador Publishers, LLC, Albuquerque, New Mexico, writes novels, short stories, essays, rants and book-length philosophical memoirs. His most recent titles are Freedom From God: Restoring the Sense of Wonder and Myth and Mortality: Testing the Stories. Find excerpts and more about this very interesting man -- a former pastor who is now a wise elder, I would say! -- at http://www.amadorbooks.com/.

UPCOMING SALON November 18-December 2, 2007:
Darrell Laurant, Founder and Head Honcho at The Writer's Bridge, http://www.thewritersbridge.com/ an on-line agency whereby he helps put freelance writers and editors together with magazines and those in need of such services. As a veteran newspaper columnist and freelancer, he says, "I've become frustrated by the randomness of the current market 'system' and haunted by all the voices that aren't being heard. That's all changing, and my primary goal in life is to help effect that change." I've been a great admirer of Laurant's mind, energy, attitude and integrity for many years and am thrilled that he has agreed to host one of our salons. (His topic TBA.)

Blessings, DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

And please remember, I am always happy to talk to potential new hosts and hostesses. It's free, it's fun, it's networking!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com/

Photo of Harry Willson by Rogulja Wolf (c) 2007

SALON 19: At the Threshold...

2007-09-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

Over a year of planning for a big day - a reception to launch the first book published by my company, my friend's memoir, years of labors-of-love finally unveiled...

Hundreds of photaes taken that day of speakers at microphones, musicians playing beautiful music, presentations and book-signings, guests mingling, old friends reconnecting...

Yet, as I cull through them, this is the one that stands out. This is the one that speaks best of the day, and of the reason for these events we put together to honor and give focus to one person's creative product...

It's all about those lone, quiet moments of creative process, of becoming lost in the DOING or the MAKING of the thing.

Just a young woman, hidden in the shadows, playing her flute while the rest of us gather and make all the noise of busy birds at a feast of literary crumbs.

I know this young woman, we had a few conversations this summer while I was in New Mexico. She is a visual artist, a musician, a seeker, she is intense and playful, focused and scattered, yin and yang. Her excitement and joy and bewilderment and pure energy is such a reminder of my own young time, those first days of poetry and words and promise, of such intense emotion.

This picture is so perfect, of her. She's playing her music at a threshold. And that is where she is, in her life. At a threshold.

Many of us have already passed through those kinds of openings, and we are at the other side, quite far from that archway, grappling with the thing we have become, the place we have created, by having chosen that particular opening through which to walk.

But life has a way of presenting us with new thresholds, no matter where we are on the path, no matter how long we have been on the path. Christopher Vogler in The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, notes thresholds and threshold guardians as archetypal - ala Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey - in our creative work: "A hero hesitates at the threshold to experience the fear, to let the audience know the formidability of the challenges ahead. But eventually fear is overcome or set aside, often with the help of wise, protective figures or magical gifts, representing the energy of the next stage..." and "We must take the leap of faith into the unknown or else the adventure will never really begin".

I think this young woman in the photae is quietly contemplating that leap...and using the magical gift of her flute, sending out a song ahead of her steps.

Creatively speaking, have you crossed any thresholds lately? Did you sing softly as you passed through, or scream like a baby being born? Did you land yet?

I would love to hear your stories!

SOME PRACTICAL NOTES...

What It Is...

You may notice that I have changed the name of this blog from "Workshop/Salon" to just "Salon". Having the summer to think it over and looking back on our discussions here these past 18 months, it seems to me that we are more of a salon than a workshop, thus the more clear definition from now on.

Chance to Register for a Writing Workshop!

I am embarking on a more traditional "workshop" format at another website, in another arena where I am joining other writer workshop teachers. I have decided to put my "workshop teacher" skills over there for now (alongside the work I do one-on-one with writers as an editor in "3-D life"). I hope you will all visit that new arena and tell others about it and maybe sign up for one of my workshops. The website is up, my workshops will be posted for registration in the next few days and will be held in October and November, then more in the spring. That's at http://writefine.com.

So, here at A Bear Named Hope, we will continue our creative discussions which are so rich and rewarding!

Speaking of HERE, here is the upcoming line up. I'll send notices if you are on my emailing list, closer to the dates.

OUR CALENDAR:

September 22-September 29

I am here to share in the salon discussion about thresholds (or wherever our discussions go!). Then I will be unavailable on the Internet from 9/20-10/14, so will leave you to it without me.

October 19-November 2, 2007:

Thoughts From the Highlands. On my return from a creative retreat in the Scottish Highlands, I will post a salon. Since I haven't crossed that threshold yet, I can't yet predict what it will be about! I'll bring back some seashells and things to ponder, no doubt...

November 3-17, 2007

Harry Willson, Amador Publishers, LLC, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Harry Willson writes novels, short stories, essays, rants and book-length philosophical memoirs. His most recent titles are Freedom From God: Restoring the Sense of Wonder and Myth and Mortality: Testing the Stories. Find excerpts and more about this very interesting man -- who is now a wise elder, I would say! -- on the website at http://www.amadorbooks.com/. Again, I am very honored we will have him as a host. Closer to the date I will announce his exact salon topic, but it will be derived from a section in Freedom From God.

November 18-December 2, 2007:

Darrell Laurant, Founder and Head Honcho at The Writer's Bridge, http://www.thewritersbridge.com/ an on-line agency whereby he helps put freelance writers and editors together with magazines and those in need of such services. As a veteran newspaper columnist and freelancer, he says, "I've become frustrated by the randomness of the current market 'system' and haunted by all the voices that aren't being heard. That's all changing, and my primary goal in life is to help effect that change." I've been a great admirer of Laurant's mind, energy, attitude and integrity for many years and am thrilled that he has agreed to host one of our salons. (His topic TBA.)

December 3-17, 2007:

LaVon Rice. Based in Northern New Mexico, LaVon Rice writes frequently about "artivism" for Colorlines, and is the scriptwriter for an upcoming film about women, silence and AIDS in South Africa. She will lead us in a discussion on Social Responsibility and the Creative Process, and I am particularly delighted for us all to get to know this woman!

December 18-December 31:

I'll be sharing some links with you to some Scottish musical wonders!

January 2008:

Brett Weber of Broken Art Gallery (http://www.brokenartgallery.com/) His website tells you it is about "The Healing Art of Creativity: combating chronic stress, depression and multiple sclerosis (MS), but learning some colorfully sweet notes along the way." I discovered Brett Weber through his art on the Internet, and have been following his phenomenally energetic career for some time now. I am also partial to knowing anything about his wonderful dog Sophia (all email announcements from Brett are really from Brett & Sophia). PLEASE go check his website, it is so uplifting and exciting and colorful and has nice music to boot! I am thrilled that he has agreed to take part in our salon (exact dates TBA), and we will link to any donation opportunities during his salon. He is doing very important good work on the planet.

Blessings, DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

And please remember, I am always happy to talk to potential new hosts and hostesses. It's free, it's fun, it's networking!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

WORKSHOP/SALON 18: The Nurturing Response: irrepressible, unstoppable creativity!

2007-05-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Salon/Conversation with Charleen Touchette, Author and Artist May 15 - 29, 2007

May brings Mother's Day and my daughter's 17th birthday, and with it thoughts of our responsibility as mothers and to mothers and daughters worldwide who represent the hope that springs eternal in the human spirit.

April 2007 was the cruelest month again, with over 3,000 soldiers and over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians killed in the Iraq War and the death count rising daily, and 53 cents of our tax dollar going to the military and only 3 cents to our veteran soldiers. Women and children suffer worldwide from war, oppression and violence. Each day the call to peace is more urgent.

Mothers everywhere want peace and justice. We don't want anyone sending our young people to other countries to kill other young people in the name of protecting women and our children.

We are in a dark time of war and violence, when we are called upon to bring light and love into this world.

As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

As a woman and a mother, I see it is time for action.

We are not powerless. It doesn't start with them and it isn't their fault.

It starts with you and me.

"All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for." - Hopi Prophecy

We need to restore the power and respect for the matriarchy that served humankind for tens of thousands of years before the establishment of patriarchy just a few thousand years ago that has led our earth to the edge of destruction.

I am a mother of four young people ages 17 to 27 who are dealing with the mess our generation has made of the world. I don't have the luxury of blaming others, I must act to create a world where their creativity can flourish and they and their children beyond the seventh generation can breathe clean air, drink fresh water and live in peace with justice.

As a mother, I know first-hand that every action affects the earth and my children and grandchildren's future. As environmental Native activist Winona LaDuke wrote, "We are women who redefine 'Women's Issues', and say all issues are women's issues. I say We are mothers of our nations, and anything that concerns our nations is of concern to us as women. Those choices and necessities move us to speak out and to be active." (Winona LaDuke, "Introduction", GRASSROOTS by J. Baumgardner and A. Richards.)

The time is now. There is no path, no blueprint, no road map to peace.

The path is peace. Act peace, be peace, buy peace.

I respond by nurturing and supporting my irrepressible, unstoppable creativity. I make art night and day. Despite the obstacles, I find ways to show it, share it and give it away to people.

Art does matter. It can change lives and inspire the world.

The only things I can really control or change are my actions in each present moment. So, I meditate and focus on embodying mother love to help heal and nurture my family, friends and community and by extension, the people and the earth.

My grandmother Mimi embodied mother love. Her storytelling while combing her long black hair inspired my painting series, "Mimi Combing Her Hairs" (1983-1989) Mimi was the quintessential Indian grandmother with a wide lap and a warm ample bosom. She had the same beatific smile as the Mona Lisa, and the East Indian female avatars liek Amma and Karunamayi who travel throughout the world giving hugs. Despite adversity, Mimi loved unconditionally and laughed whole-heartedly. She embodied joi de vivre.

And she imparted it to others. Her laugh and happiness were infectious and healing.

Now that I am becoming an elder and officially a crone, I understand the source of my grandmother's joy. I can see why despite her hard life and the difficult times she witnessed, including two world wars, she was exuberant and loved life.

My art-making includes painting and image-making, but also spinning and knitting hand-made textiles to warm and embrace the wearer, growing healing herbs, building a healing bath house by hand, and getting our home "green" and energy-sufficient. It is all part of intensifying my connection to the earth and embodying creativity.

What are we doing or can we do, toward healing the earth?

- Artists' skills like Seeing with Clarity and Keen Observation can lead to Healing and Transformation. The natural result of seeing clearly is to use our voices to speak out and to use the gifts we each have to act.

- Action equals Revolution, meaning Change. Today, the world faces the need for a fundamental Paradigm Shift. How can we transform how we think about the Earth and our relationship to our home?

- How can we change the way we walk on earth so we can make less impact and create a smaller carbon load? The good news is as human beings we have a much longer history of living in harmony with Earth than the short period of patriarchy and insanity we're dealing with now.

People talk about "us" and "them". But it is us who are doing this to the earth and other human beings. Human beings are doing this. It is our habits and greed that have depleted the earth's resources, and caused catastrophic climate change, it is our money that pays for the destruction; and we can stop it.

Two things, we can vote with our voices, and with our actions.

We live on one earth; think about it, and act like it.

Everything is connected, and each time I turn on a light switch, if I ask where that energy comes from and did the way it was produced hurt or benefit life, I'll conserve energy. If I extend that question to everything I consume, it won't be possible to use plastic without knowing the consequence might be the murder or mutilation of a child in Iraq to protect my "right" as an American to petroleum products.

And I won't be able to forget that drilling for oil on that California high school campus gave American teenagers fatal cancers, or that emissions from plants making plastic kill inner city youth with asthma.

This thinking won't make me stop using plastic all together. After all, I'm a modern woman, a mother in the modern world who loves the conveniences just like everyone else. But I will choose healthy greener alternatives whenever possible.

It is time we look at the real cost of our American lifestyle - the cost to our environment, our children's future, and our souls.

Everything is connected. When war and genocide are perpetuated on the women of the Congo to make it safe for U.S. and British bankers to mine minerals to run video games, cell phones and computers, we as consumers become accomplices in the destruction of a people.

It is the same story of colonization from the beginning of time. Colonized populations "demand" consumer goods that depend on the destruction of indigenous peoples. The gold in the Black Hills in the 1880s, the California Gold Rush, cutting down the Brazilian rain forest, all are tied to the creation of consumer demand in westernized (colonized earlier) states. What if we see the connection and stop buying products and energy that destroy and pollute?

Artists are the Real Revolutionaries
Artists are the Real Revolutionaries because they are free. But so what? Artists can make art that looks good on the wall, or art that matters. If they make decorative art, they have a better chance of selling, if they make political art - not so much. If you make art to communicate, you face a dilemma. Do you self-censor to please the gatekeepers? Or do you create what you must and get the art to the people in other ways?

Living in Santa Fe has made me hate art, but I still love image-making. The longer I've been in New Mexico, the more dematerialized my art has become. I've gone from painting large scale huge thick collages on canvas to small oil sketches and photoshop prints of political images layered in micropixels.

"I suspect with your energy you will sit up at your own funeral (hopefully distantissimo) to explain three or four more projects you have in mind. Do you know the painting by whatshername, California Maidu artist [Judith Lowry] of Frida Kahlo? Like that." Tony award-winning playwright Bernard Pomerance (The Elephant Man)(11/12/2001 in an email to Charleen Touchette)

Artists are compelled to create, and I've always been a creative dynamo. Even in the depths of depression, I keep making things to keep going.

Creativity is not a choice. It chooses you.

Revolution meaning Re-Evolution --
My friend American Indian leader Russell Means says that revolution means going back - re evolving to indigenous ways. He points out that in the long time line of human history, the earth flourished for tens of thousands of years with indigenous, clan-based matriarchal cultures, but in a relatively short period of the patriarchy during the last few thousand years, the earth has been destroyed to a point of crisis. When we speak together about the Oppressionist Art Movement, Russell uses his long fingers to draw a circle in the air to illustrate the meaning of a revolution, a return to the beginning, a return to the matriarchy.

My Metis and Quebecois people taught us Survivance. I think of it as the Persistence of the Mother. I began my Repatriation to regain my indigenous beliefs and heritage in my 20s and chose a different path for my children. My memoir, It Stops With Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl, is a Feminist Manifesto that advocates going back to the Matriarchy we had for tens of thousands of years before the Patriarchy began in the Middle East and the Greek City States just a few thousand years ago.

For artists, Seeing requires Action and Speaking Out
That is why I -
- Host Mixed Blood Radio - Voices on Indigenous Arts and Politics across the Americas with my producer and daughter Liesette Paisner. In the summer and fall of 2006, we traveled in Minnesota, South Dakota and California to gather taped interviews with Indian, Mixed Blood and Indigenous-minded leaders, artists, activists, authors and musicians. (Currently in production.)
- Mentor young artists with the TouchArt Youth Art Salon to encourage them to Embrace Diversity and to Live and Act Green.
- Founded TouchArt Books to empower diverse and progressive voices because the people who write Books Impact the World.
- Knit and design and spin wool for LDK - Liesette Doesn't Knit, where my daughter and I create handmade custom textiles to embrace and warm the wearer.
- Plant an orchard and organic garden at TouchArt Ltd and prepare to become a beekeeper.

The bees are disappearing.
Since last fall, 1/4 of the bee population in America, Europe, Brazil and other countries have disappeared due to hive collapse disorder, which some attribute to cell phones, genetically altered crops or the varoa mite. Einstein is often quoted as saying that if the bees disappeared, there would only be 5 more years left of human life on earth. Although it's disputed that Einstein actually said this, he should have. Bees pollinate many fruit and vegetable crops essential to the circle of life. Bees, like the miner's canary, can alert us to serious threats to our environment.

My new bee series honors and calls the bees home in a symbolic ceremony. In this art, I combine bee imagery, goddess paintings I've been working on since 1974, and my photographs of abundant rain clouds over the mountains in Santa Fe, a rainbow from my backyard in Navajo Nation, the forests of the Anishinabe waterlands in Northern Minnesota and ancestral Pueblo ruins from Canyon de Chelly. There is alchemy in these multilayered images which synthesize elements from the four directions, the elements, fire, water, air and different times between the present and ten, twenty and thirty years earlier.

Earth Changes today tell us we all need to be ndns again.
Everybody is indigenous to this planet earth.

We need to stop taking more than we need.
Adopt indigenous values of respect, sharing and family.
Us and Them is an Illusion - we are them and they are us.
We're all on the same planet. Divide and Conquer can stop.

It is not Hopeless - Every one can act and make a difference.

Each person can see how use of resources contributes to either destruction and violence or peace and justice. We can choose to reduce energy consumption one step at a time.

One Earth - Think about it and Act like it.

My next step is to go outside to turn the compost and plant the apple, plum, pear and cherry trees my children got me for Mother's Day. That is how I get through the day and act for the future. I can almost taste the first plum we'll eat next summer.

Ho Mitaku Oyasin...
(We are all related.)

Charleen Touchette
May, 2007

Author of It Stops With Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl (Foreword Book of the Year 2004 Finalist Award) and ndn art (Fresco, 2003).

For more of Touchette's artwork, visit the blog entry previous to this one, posted earlier in May at COMING ATTRACTIONS.

---------------------
Images above, top to bottom clockwise:

"Calling the Bees with Petroglyphs" 2007
"Boys and Bees in the Forest" 2007
"She's Alive!" (part of 4-part oil painting suite "I Dreamed I Saved a Drowning Baby" 1995)
"Unity Plaza Mural Proposal 2007" (two photos)

All of Charleen Touchette's images of her artwork are copyrighted and may not be reproduced or circulated with her express permission.

Please visit the following of her web presences:

http://www.touchart.net
http://members.authorsguild.net/touchart/
http://oneearthblog.blogspot.com

PLEASE WELCOME CHARLEEN AND FEEL FREE TO ENTER INTO DIALOGUE HERE...

WE WOULD ALSO LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR OWN NURTURING RESPONSES!

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!
Presented by Michelle Miller Allen
www.greenphoenixproductions.com

(please copy all links to your browser, we can't trust where links take you from here!)

COMING ATTRACTION: The Nurturing Response: irrepressible, unstoppable creativity!

2007-05-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

COMING MAY 15 - 29th, 2007:

Charleen Touchette, Author and Artist

(Author of It Stops With Me, Foreword Book of the Year 2004 Finalist Award; Host & Producer MIXED BLOOD RADIO...and more!)

THE NURTURING RESPONSE: irrepressible, unstoppable creativity!

A Salon Conversation on:

--the connection between the abuse of women, children and the family...and the abuse and destruction of the earth and indigenous people

--restoring the power and respect for the matriarchy that served humankind for tens of thousands of years before the establishment of patriarchy

--intensifying our connection to the earth and embodying creativity

From her blog at http://oneearthblog.blogspot.com:

"...When we think about the crazy weather changes that threaten to destroy the homes of so many people and animals, we can see the earth is cleansing herself. If we continue to think in 'us and them' terms and look around for someone else to blame, we will move towards more wars, chaos and great suffering. Instead we can see how we share one world and everything we do impacts the earth and every being on it. I try to take little steps."

Check back on May 15th for the opening of this Salon and to welcome Charleen Touchette. Meanwhile, you are invited to visit her websites and learn more about our hostess...

http://www.touchart.net (Art & Literature Connecting Progressive 21st Century Minds)

http://www.members.authorsguild.net/touchart/

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
www.greenphoenixproductions.com
stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk

---------------------------------------------

Images from Top to Bottom, clockwise:

New Series in Progress:

"Boys and Bees in Forest" 2007
"Maiden, Mother, Crone at White House" 2007

Paintings/Prints and Cards:

"Elk Woman at Twilight"
"Shima Story Telling"
"Scarey Daddy"
"I Dreamed I Saved a Drowning Baby" (Suite of 4 oil paintings ea 20"x16" 1995)

NOTE: All images are copyrighted by the artist. Permission to use them must be requested from her. To access websites and blogs listed herein, copy and past them to your browser - we can't trust the links at blogspot.com to take you where you are trying to go!

Workshop/Salon 17: IN THEORY I COULD BREAK FREE...

2007-04-11T13:10:00.001-07:00

IN THEORY
I COULD BREAK FREE...
Art on the Brutal Edge

"The line between acceptability and unacceptability is an important line to cross - it is an urgent, compelling opening, not a boundary, not a limitation. It is the nature of the art-making process, the art-finding process. Why explore the known?" - Christine Taylor Patten, New Mexico artist (1991)

"What do you want
a poet for?
To save the City of course."
- Aristophanes,
Dionysus in The Frogs

Getting Deeply Personal: The Hurt Series
This workshop features the work of American artist Mark Funk, whose career I have been following since 1979. He has been gracious enough to agree to let me post some of his 2005 work, the "Hurt series", which deals with themes of child abuse, by way of sparking a discussion on some of the darker...or light-seeking...aspects of art.

If I may quote from a recent email discussion with one of our blog participants, Bradford Hansen-Smith: "Much of what we see now days does not go very deep. Art has no value if it is not about the artist. Nobody is really opening to the potential beauty we are, because maybe all are afraid to talk about it because it only becomes tempered in the brutal aspects of life. So we talk about art as if it really matters, instead of the individual life that really matters. Nothing wrong with getting deeply personal, we all are."

My sense, when I first saw these new paintings, was that Funk had wiped off decades of camouflage and was now showing us the real stuff (for perspective, he just turned 60, I've been watching his work and visiting his studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico since he was in his 30s). Oh, previous work was strong, it definitely grabbed your attention! And there were periods, between the more angst-ridden work, of serene landscapes and dreamy abstracts. But...the message seemed often quite intentionally veiled, ambiguous. So I had to ask, what happened to spark this change?

A Burning Party?
Funk explained that the purpose of this series was to illustrate his "bizarre upbringing", and that they were the result of his exploration into his emotions following the deaths of his parents, and dealing with the aftermath of what he describes as "their cruel and unusual child rearing". He says he eventually showed this series to a therapist. In Funk's own words:

"...who happened to be an 'art therapist' - whatever that means. I failed to ask him, but he certainly didn't have to ask me to use stick figures and arrows to reveal the abuse, i.e. 'What do I have to do? Paint you a picture?' Ha!"

Funk says that at one point the therapist told him it was time to have a burning party. Funk started painting over these canvases but our hero, Bradford, visited him and saw what was going on and told him to stop, that this was important work, and, instead, to archive and photograph it! Funk has since had at least one gallery express interest in showing it.

"Shortly before my mother died, who had Never expressed an opinion about my art, she said to me, '...you are something of a Pollyanna and paint the world as you would like it to be, but you should paint the world as it really is. It is time to Tell The Truth.' Of course, I'm sure she didn't have this Hurt series in mind when she said that, but, after both parents had passed away, I felt empowered, or allowed, to tell the real truth about my personal history, my personal 'world'."

I am reminded of one night in my university days when I was watching a late-night talk show in New Orleans featuring Tennessee Williams (one of my heros in theatre literature). Williams said that he had spent time in and out of mental institutions and that one therapist had told him he would be fine if he would just stop writing. Fortunately, he didn't take this advice!

Dare We Show Disturbing Art? (Or Dare We Not?)
Society manifests a complex and ambivalent attitude toward those it identifies as its artists. On the one hand, creative people are held in awe and envied - for the expressive daring and the personal freedom which they display both in their work and often in their lifestyles. On the other hand, artists are viewed with distrust and dismay, for saying and showing what is often held to be unspeakable or taboo by the dominant culture, and for living an "on the edge" or libertine lifestyle. It does seem to be the nature of the artist to move and live in some way against the grain of the dominant cultural viewpoint.

In Reimaging America: The Arts of Social Change (O'Brien & Little, New Society Publishers 1990), artist Ricardo Levins Morales confirms the power of art: "The more a society has to hide, the greater control it must exercise in order to keep artists from doing what comes naturally: exposing its most private dreams to the light of the sun."

In the USA, I followed the Maplethorpe controversy a couple decades ago, and read the transcripts from the 1989-90 congressional hearings on the reauthorization of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). This is powerful reading material, I consider it to be of immense historical importance. The transcripts are, in effect, a culture talking to itself, a censorship dialogue which is literal, public record and available for posterity. And not just any culture, but one which the whole world is watching - the USA, that great experiment in human freedom of expression.

I have always been taken with writer Larry McMurtry's statement in those transcripts:

An Old Tenacious Fear
"In our view, the animating force is the desire to control what art experiences Americans may have. Underlying this desire for control is an old, tenacious, profoundly anti-intellectual fear of art itself. Art is not feared because it is expensive. It is feared because its strength and its reach are essentially uncontrollable. The fallacy feeding the fear is that art is thereby dangerous to the citizenry and the commonwealth. This fear, born of ignorance, supposes that the force and power of art might provoke anarchy; that it might make us less responsible Americans, less effective citizens. The great voice of history tells us that the reverse is true. Art has been loved by all peoples and treasured by all peoples, not merely for its enchantments and delights, but for the moral and spiritual resources which it lends in support of our uncertain human state. Art is not a choosy lender either. It lends, on occasion, even to those who distrust it." [Hearing on the Reauthorization of the NEA. US 101st Cong., 2nd Sess. H. Rept. Washington: GPO, 1990. 2:59-60]

What Can Be Done About It?
Mark Funk's current series brought forward old concerns of mine, about art and censorship. I wrote a thesis on this subject ("The Artist as Culturally-Authorized Deviant" Thesis, MA Theatre Arts, University of New Mexico 1995), for which I interviewed many American artists and writers. My thesis, and conclusion, was that an incident of censorship never exists in a vacuum or in isolation. Censorship has reverberations which keep the dialogue in motion, between artist, audience and censoring authorities. Primarily, censorship is a mechanism for setting social boundaries and defining cultural identity.

When I discussed that project with my peers, back then, a sense of serious concern regarding the then-climate of political censorship was the usual result. Inevitably I was asked, "What can be done about it?" My response was - and still is - automatic: "Artists have to become more and more courageous." I laid out a set of recommendations then, let's see if they still apply:

Ideally the artist will assume as one of his/her life tasks to become educated about and armed with the following cultural awareness:

1. There are well-documented and pervasive preconceptions about artists that impact your interactions with the culture.

2. There exists a cultural fear of the potentially "uncontrollable" power of your art.

3. Be consciously responsible when you carry those preconceptions and wield that power.

4. When your art is presented, it becomes part of the cultural dialogue through public forum.

5. The dominant culture defines itself in part through "boundary patrol" of its parameters.

6. You and your art may be "used" as a tool of that patrol.

7. You may also "use" that tool of patrol in your own contribution to the dialogue.

Early Warning Systems...
In short, I continue to see artists as the guardians at the edge of culture. I, for one, always want to see what they have to say, because they are often the coal mine canaries. Art has a power that statistics and science do not - the power to engage and impassion a viewer at all levels. That is, intellectually, physically, emotionally, psychically - and, in that engagement, to then perceive, present, translate and interpret our continually changing understanding of the physical and psychic world.

As written by Edward A. Maziarz in Value and Values in Evolution (Gordon & Breach, NY 1979), "Some artists were like distant early warning systems of the human condition today. They read the signs of coming ecological and social disasters early and with full grasp...We were not unwarned..." Maziarz sees hope in the fact that today's artists are not simply questioning the means by which to express themselves, but the very meaning and foundation of their work; they are taking on questions concerning the validity of making or not making art, and "the revitalization of the entire human environment".

What do YOU think?
How does Mark Funk's "Huart Series" strike you? Can you talk about any art (visual, music, written, etc.) that has had a disturbing impact on your life? Or that helped rearrange your attitudes on something which, previously, you didn't care to examine?

And, when the eyebrows of inner and outer censors are raised in your direction...how courageous are you? Do you feel free to...

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO?

We invite your thoughts.

Text: Michelle Miller Allen (c) 1995, 2007
Art: Mark Funk (c) 2005

Catalogue of Paintings in order of appearance, top to bottom.
(Unless indicated otherwise, all are 30" x 40" x 1.5" Acrylic on Canvas):

In Theory
Love Spank Baby
Spacey Child (PhotoShop Image, any size)
Lick of Sense
Make Him Love You
Catalpa Sex Dream
Marry Sex Once

About the Artist: New Mexico artist Mark Lee Funk, age 60 ("I was born in Texas, but woke up here.") has been a professional artist in Albuquerque for the past 35 years. Following graduation from the University of New Mexico in 1968, he taught high school in California where he discovered that he was meant to DO rather than teach art. Funk returned to his beloved New Mexico and dove into a lifelong career of creating and selling his art. His work is in international collections. He is also a published author. If you wish to contact him about his work or for a studio visit, email Michelle at stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk and she will put you in touch.

PLEASE NOTE: These images may not be copied, distributed or used in any manner without express permission of the artist.

(Please visit the Green Phoenix Productions website, just Google us! -- Dare not provide the link here, I've had trouble with blogspot's linking system!! No telling where it may take you!!)

EXCITED ANNOUNCEMENT: HERE'S TO ELIZABETH MCBRIDE!

2007-03-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends:

Sort of a Birthing...
The only thing on my creative mind this week is that we are launching my dear friend Elizabeth's memoir:

LAST OF THE NICE GIRLS:
How a Nice Girl from the British Empire
Ends up a Witch in the New Mexico Desert
A Memoir by Elizabeth McBride (1933-2004)

Green Phoenix Productions, An Imprint of Amador Publishers, LLC
ISBN: 978-0-938513-38-4
[568 pp, 8 pp b&w photaes, $28.95/£14.77]
Publication date May/June 2007

This is Green Phoenix Production's first publication (our first CD was Rick Allen's "Inconstant Bard" in 2002), this launches us as a PUBLISHERon planet Earth, and I am very excited! (This is Part 3,456,709 of my Creative Goals and Dreams!!)

All that scribbling...
Editorially, I am now culling lists of all her friends in Scotland and the UK and sending them letters to announce the book, hoping to meet them along the way...planning book parties in New Mexico (from Scotland), taking book orders, receiving happy emails from her friends who were out there waiting...and waiting...and waiting...after all, everyone saw her scribbling away all her life in those diaries she carried everywhere!

Please go see!
Please drop by the Green Phoenix Productions website and find the LAST OF THE NICE GIRLS page to read all about it, including excerpts from the book and beautiful photaes of her life, reviews and ordering information. We have an EARLY BIRD SPECIAL, a 10% discount on orders before May 1st.

A little history...
Elizabeth and I met in 1995 when she started a wee writing workshop in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. From then til 2003, she and three other women writers and I met every month, faithfully, to share our books-in-progress and critique and cheer each other on as writers. Elizabeth was always working on her memoir, bringing in bits and pieces. Her life history was so exotic to me, covered so many countries, timeframes, moments in history! Yet it was so very much about a woman's interior...very familiar, funny and sad.

My brilliant team...
When she knew she was dying of breast cancer, she hurried to finish the memoir (based on a lifetime of intimate/intricate diaries spanning the 1940s-weeks before her death in 2004) and left me in charge of doing the final culling, editing and publication. Since 2004 I have been working on this book and then, in 2005, brought in her adult son Ramon Berguer and her companion Noel Sorrell and my cohort in publishing, Zelda Gatuskin (a most amazing woman!!!) to get this to the press. It's there now...my brother Lyle L. Miller did the cover...I could go on and on about the fantastic editorial team and how we have accomplished this mostly via email!!!!! Not to forget Rita Bates, Rick Allen's sister (my forever sister-in-law-and-love) in Wisconsin who has been working on putting together the new website pages, hours and hours of brilliant creative genius...all for love...

I am very grateful tonight for the brilliant, good, intense, dedicated people who have helped Elizabeth's dream come true. And I know she is at my shoulder, along with Rick, and is very very proud.

So please go take a look and garner some inspiration - because all Elizabeth cared about at the end was that other writers (women in particular) would have the courage to write.

Coming Next Month...
In April we have a real treat in store here at the Workshop/Salon, we're going to get Very Serious About Art....oh no, I ain't tellin'! More on that later!

For now...
I raise a wee glass of single malt (let's make it the one called Superstition, from the Isle of Jura, where there is a writer's colony) in Rick Allen's pewter flask, a toast to an incredible, elegant and courageous woman I was so privileged to know...and to a book that was her life's work...and her life. And is now her gift to us all.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen

(PLEASE ACCESS MY WEBSITE VIA GOOGLE OR YOUR FAVORITE BROWSER...BLOGSPOT.COM IS CURRENTLY HAVING TROUBLE WITH LINKS BEING REROUTED TO PORN SITES, ETC. GEESH! HOPE THEY FIX THAT QUICK!)

www.greenphoenixproductions.com

WORKSHOP 16: Lost Earrings and Found Bricks

2007-02-13T15:16:00.002-07:00

It all started with a lost earring.
It turned into an adventure that reminds me of childhood excursions into fields, abandoned or empty building ruins, groves of giant trees that made you feel enclosed with leafy walls. It reminds me of the way, in childhood, you could leave your parents' house on a bicycle and return with a head full of mystery from your explorations into the world-out-there.

I put on my dichroic glass earrings, the pair I bought on New Year's Eve a few years back while visiting "the bomb museum" at Los Alamos, New Mexico with friends. There was a gift shop attached to the museum which had art from locals, including jewelry. The fiery colors of these earrings spoke to me mainly for their beauty, but also as a sort of secret joke to myself to commemorate the visit to a museum dedicated to the memory of a bomb, with colors of explosive fire. Perhaps a bit morbid but...for reasons I won't go into here, it was a significant day, significant friends, significant time and I wanted to have a keepsake.

So I put them on and went to the local co-op for groceries. While walking through the parking lot (or car park as we call it here in the UK), I recall flipping my muffler around my neck against the cold and catching my hair in it.

Coming home, removing my hat, muffler and jacket, I found one earring was missing. I was really sad and figured it was somewhere in the car park, lost forever - probably from that moment of flipping my scarf with too much enthusiasm. I cursed myself for wearing delicate, dangly earrings in a place where hats and mufflers and wind are a daily occurence. I decided not to wear them anymore outside, or only wear the kind with security latches! Just another getting-used-to-it thing after living in New Mexico where we wear big jewelry with our denims, and hardly any outer gear.

For two days I often thought to drive back over there and look for my earring, but then told myself it would be futile - either I wouldn't find it or a car would have smashed it.

Three days later, I needed to go to the co-op for eggs. While walking through the car park, I watched the pavement just in case...and, lo! Right there, smack in the middle of the asphalt, where hundreds of cars had driven over and people had walked across, for three days, was that fiery bit of glass to attach to an earlobe! And, although fragile, it wasn't even broken, the ear wire wasn't even bent! In the dark grey of a Scotland winter day, on the grey pavement, it seemed to shout its neon presence. I could not believe that no one had seen it...or that, if they had, they might not have at least picked it up out of curiosity, since it is truly so beautiful and the colors very compelling!

Happily I brought it home and returned it to its partner.

The enboic mystery
Because of this event, on my next walk along the river with Shaka, I began watching the ground, observing everything more keenly, still amazed that no one had picked up my earring. I couldn't help thinking that if it had been lost, smack in the middle of a parking lot in New Mexico - where people are very attuned to intense colors in the landscape, architecture, clothing, art - someone WOULD have picked it up and, if they were a creative person, would have incorporated it into something as "found art" - a collage or another piece of jewelry.

Crossing the bridge with Shaka, I looked down into the water and saw, again, amidst the boulders and rocks under there, a brick that had been worn and rounded with age and currents, and the letters on it that I had noted a few days ago. For the first time I wondered what exactly did the word on the brick say, and why was there a word on a brick? And how old was that brick? And might I be able to find out the mystery of the letters? From where I stood, it seemed to say "enboic". Was that a Gaelic word? I puzzled over it, and on the way home found another brick that had been displaced in a recent flood, this one said, "De?ar", the ? being a splat of bird poop. (Later I found it said Dewar.)

I came home babbling to Bob about words on bricks and we got on the Internet to try to find out...were these old? How old? Were the words the names of the companies which made them, or the companies who commissioned them, or the names of buildings?

Thus began a wee creative adventure that has continued now for over a month. I went back that afternoon and collected the "enboic" brick from the river - a bit of balancing in waterproof boots - and now, in our back garden, I have 35 bricks - some whole partial - with words and bits of words engraved on them, in various colors and conditions.

My name is Michelle and I'm a brick addict.
Shaka is thrilled to see his mommy has finally figured out the joys of rocks (rocks and bricks are the same to him - in fact, he really started all this! Months ago he came home from a walk carrying a heavy beige brick named "Stein" which I had barely noted in his rock collection outside the front stoop. Now I find out it is one of the older ones in brick history here. Stein was a very important name in Scottish brickmaking history.) Now when we walk, we go to either of three areas near the river, where the water is very low this time of year. I pick through the boulders and bricks and lay aside the ones I want, while he plays his usual game of fetch-and-push-a-rock-through-the-brambles. Our walks have doubled in the length of time they take and I get as lost in the fascination of finding words underfoot as he does with his games. I have begun hauling them home in a backpack while he carries a small partial one in his mouth.

More often, we will set out on "just a quick walk, no bricks today" and yet, there we go, like homing pigeons or magnets to steel, back to our brick-foraging haunts. I always end up carrying two bricks home and a partial in each jacket pocket.

It has taken on the quality of an addiction, for me.

I have sorted out that I will need 57 bricks to line an area of the garden when we begin landscaping later this spring. So far I have 35 and, at my spots on the river, there are 15 more waiting for me in little stacks. So far no one else seems to be collecting them, no one has disturbed my obvious hoards. (I think the same people who ignored my earring pass by there on a daily basis!)

I keep going over the same areas each day and am amazed to always find something new...or I decide I do want one, after all, which I had previously passed over. The movement of the river tossles them around into new configurations, and reveals new ones under the boulders. The most exciting days are when I find a word I never found before. I have begun to understand which are more "valuable" in terms of age, names of companies that weren't around long, symbols on some which indicate they predate others of the same name. I count as extra valuable one brick whose "n" is backwards, which tells me the words were "engraved" with moulds and one-letter-at-a-time.

Researching, we have found they are apparently named after the manufacturers and most of them are from the 19th century. There were a few brickworks in our area and up-river - the neighborhood we live in once was a mill all built of bricks.

New Configurations
I also found that there are brick collectors all over the world. They even have an organization (International Brick Collectors Ass'n -- Google it!) and get-togethers where they trade! All most amusing to me. We found there is a lecture later this month at a local council, given by some kind of architectural archaeologist, about the history of the brickworks in our area. So we will attend.

Most of my bricks say "thistle" and I'm still trying to sort out the source of them. "Enboic" turned out to be, excitingly enough, "Glenboig", a company from our area, 1930s. Later I found one that is intact, says Glenboig and has other symbols that date it as earlier in the 19th century.

Some of the bricks I find are so warn down that the letters are barely indented impressions and illegible. Yet, because of the shape and color, I recognize which ones they are. It reminds me of some of the ancient carved stones I've seen in Ireland and Scotland. Only through X-rays can they determine what images used to be there. I have such a new sense of history and how nature impacts it, from all this.

I look forward to laying out the bricks in our garden this spring, arranging the words and colors and shapes next to each other in the most pleasing way. This wee project had added an element of fun and childhood memory to my terribly adult life these days. It makes me feel connected to this place in a new way, it has taken me down research alleys I wouldn't have gone otherwise, and now the neighbors probably call me "the weird brick lady".

I don't quite understand why or how, but this whole thing has helped me with my writing. It's like a wee fire of curiosity and amazement has been lit.

And now those earrings hold even more significance for me. Something about how man explodes things and they are scattered - and then, through imagination and creativity and curiosity, they can be brought back together into a new configuration.

If that's not too far-fetched.

Speaking of fetching, it's time for a walk by the river, says Shaka. Hmmm, I wonder how many "enboics" he can tote in his doggy backpack?

----------------------

HAVE YOU FOUND SOMETHING - or has something found you - that helps you link back to those childhood adventures where you became lost in time and space and exploration...and no adult could intrude?

Please tell us about it!

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

WORKSHOP ON LEAVE UNTIL FEBRUARY

2007-01-21T16:14:00.000-07:00

NOTICE TO VISITORS:

This workshop/creativity salon will resume in February 2007. If you wish to be on the email list to receive notice of our next workshop, feel free to email us at stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

TO LIGHT OUR PATH INTO 2007

2007-01-01T06:24:00.001-07:00

THIS WORKSHOP/SALON WILL RESUME ON JANUARY 14, 2007.

Meanwhile, these photaes are provided courtesy of the photographer Jennifer Maxon, taken in Santa Fe in December.

I love the beautiful tradition of luminarias (simple bag, sand & candle) in New Mexico during the holidays.

Wishing you all a well-lit path into the New Year.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

WORKSHOP ON HOLIDAY

2006-12-24T14:02:00.001-07:00

WORKSHOP ON HOLIDAY UNTIL JANUARY 2007

Here's wishing all my dear workshop/salon friends a warm, safe, peaceful holiday. Thank you each for sharing your art and heart and thoughts and self and humor with me this year at this salon. It has been everything I had hoped it would be.

Feel free to use this spot to send each other holiday greetings if you wish...I'll resume a workshop after the New Year.

Take care and DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen

http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

WORKSHOP XV: Walking Away From Art: Falling in Love

2006-11-30T17:54:00.003-07:00

The democratic, free gift of art is on my mind lately. Two things have brought this on:

A visit to an art fair in Edinburgh last week. A jam session at the local pub tonight in Dunipace, Scotland.

Cause We Got Free Tickets
At the art fair this year we just went because we got free tickets to the opening reception and we had such a good memory of going last year. We knew we couldn’t spend any art money this time, we’ve “blown our wad” lately on other life events like USA/UK travel that’s required, daughter off to University, house repairs and repainting, etc. We have bought quite a lot of art and spent a lot on framing art this past year so...we have had to rein ourselves in a bit in that category of spending...for now...

So we went to enjoy. I found about £15,000 worth of art I would happily have purchased if I had won the lottery. My husband saw one painting for £3000 to which he really responded. We spent a lot of time lingering around the pieces we loved. I went back two and three times to see the ones that had grabbed my attention particularly. Mostly these were scenes of ordinary things that are “Scottish” - telephone wires in fog, chip shops, city scapes, even a little painting of a steak pie on a plate! Lots of landscapes made me smile, they looked like areas where I walk Shaka. Some work of Russian painters and a Czech painter were very intriguing in their mysticism and fairy tale preoccupations.

The painting that my husband particularly liked really took us both away, a figurative piece by a Serbian artist. He was taken with its political and psychological and existential aspects. I was taken with the spiritual aspects, and also the existential message. Between the two of us, we got our money’s worth out of just staring at it, then exchanging meaningful glances, then looking at it again. I could imagine living with that one for a very, very long time...and felt so emotionally invested in it that, in a way, I felt I owned it. That was a feeling that lasted a few days, especially after I Googled the artist, even got to see his studio in cyber space!

Even now, a week later, I recall - several times a day - the particular pieces that spoke to me. I realize, as time passes, that the art is truly a gift. Even if I could not purchase it with money and take on the responsibility of ownership this time, it gave so much to me, for free...like the Joni Mitchell song, “...he was playing real good, for free...”

Cause Gus Said to Come
Tonight we followed a lead and went, Bob’s guitar in hand, dog on leash, to the local pub called The Red Hoose. We heard there was a jam session to happen. It’s apparently been a long time - years - since a jam session happened there. We missed the first one two weeks ago, but a musician named Gus told us to come tonight.

A small pub, crammed at one end of the bar we had six guitars and a fiddle and that many musicians. Everyone nonverbally sized each other up and began to play this piece and that...a mixture of folk, American blues and rock, Scottish tunes, UK blues and rock...quite a range. To my delight I knew most of the words to everything they played, so sang along happily. Shaka made the rounds, sipped a bit of Guinness, sniffed everyone’s knees and other parts of their anatomies, and lay down in the center to sleep through the music. We kept hoping the E Flat on the fiddle would make him sing but he was in a quiet mood tonight.

We left there quite high on the music, with invitations to play at another jam this Saturday night at someone’s “just a place”, then next Thursday at another pub, then back at this pub the following week. Email addresses, phone numbers were exchanged by all...but not names! Quite funny!

And everyone played real good for free.

Money, professions, careers had NOTHING to do with this experience tonight. Just pent up music energy, the need to sing, the need to play...and it is a STRONG need.

So it’s a gift, like the artwork.

Give the Gift
Yes, I know how important it is that we artists, writers, musicians find a way to earn a living doing our art so that we can feed our art, keep body and soul together, not get caught up 100% in making the bucks to survive. But we lose touch so often with the gift of our art. That’s what it is and must be, the bottom line. One must do the art because one has the gift, needs to express, has something to share, needs to GIVE the GIFT. Because one’s art makes other people feel good, feel alive, feel worthy, feel life is to celebrate - even the hard parts of it.

It makes us all feel connected.

Walking away from art - no painting for the wall, no book to read, no CD to play - walking away with the sheer gift of the one-time energy of you and it...is like falling in love.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

(IMAGES: Bob McCallum Giving it Laldy; Chagall's "Painter to the Moon"; Rick's Saturday Morning Ritual)

WORKSHOP XIV: THE COMPANION ART OF FRAMING

2006-11-10T07:38:00.004-07:00

THE COMPANION ART OF FRAMING

It was because of my transition, back in 1979, from Chicago, Illinois to Albuquerque, New Mexico, that I first became interested in the companion art of framing.

I had a day job as secretary at the University of Chicago, which just paid my bills. So I decided I needed a moonlighting job to make enough extra money to relocate to New Mexico - which had grabbed my heart - and took a night and weekends job at "The Great Frame Up", learning to build frames and cut mats and glass, working with customers in the do-it-yourself frame franchise in the Hyde Park neighborhood. The owner was a young up-and-coming inner-city artist herself, who taught me a lot about the business. She was also a savvy businesswoman, and planned to turn the place over to a manager so she could open an art gallery next door, to showcase the work of other Chicago artists and her own. She had her eye on me for the job. She almost talked me into staying on after six months, said she would make it worth my while and it would be the start of a new career for me at age 29. But my eye was on New Mexico, so I had to say no. Still, I was tempted. A career on the art fringes of Chicago was definitely one of my "roads not taken", and there have been more than a few!

A Passion Discovered
At TGFU, I had to exercise my own discretion and "eye" for what went with what, as I helped customers build their frames - most of them for the first time in their lives. I became quite passionate about the work. People brought in photos of loved ones, pictures of places they wanted to go or had been, family heirlooms, their own watercolors (one I recall had a watercolor landscape full of small holes. She was proud of them, her budgies had pecked the holes and she did love her budgies - apparently more than, or as much as, her artwork!) As we chose the frame styles and mat colors, they talked to me about why they were framing this particular thing. Some were framing pictures of newly-departed husbands and wives, so the stories could become quite emotional. I loved the stories as much as the artwork.

We used to rotate the manager shift (probably while the owner was checking each of us out, grooming one of us for the job) from night to night. One Friday night it was my turn, and I was not entirely pleased at the "honor", as it meant I had to kick butt with some younger workers who wanted to play loud rock and smoke joints in the storeroom. I had to insist we keep the music more low key - in keeping with some of our elderly customers, and generally keep them in line. That night an older woman wanted a particular frame for her husband's portrait, and the kid in the stockroom nonchalantly said we didn’t have any more of that style and she would have to select something else. As it was, she and I had spent an hour finding the exact right frame. The kid hadn’t even looked...he knew that particular style was way in the back, up a ladder and hard to get to. I made him go dig it out anyway, although he stayed miffed at me from that day forward. I felt her urgent desire for THAT frame and I agreed with her choice. It was important. That was the night I realized I was feeling passionately interested in my work!

To Honor the Work
So I have come to love browsing in a well-stocked frame shop - with a wide range of international styles - as much as a good fabric store or art supply warehouse. As I have befriended visual artists over the decades, many of them have taught me about framing - how to frame or not frame their particular works. I have come to see it as a way of honoring the work, not only to preserve it, but it is a statement that "this is important, worthy of the time, thought and expense of framing it". I admit that some things I still "stick on a wall" or tack onto the back of a door, but that is usually just until I figure out how I want to frame it, or have budgeted the funds to do so. Some things only need a cheap frame from a discount store; others need archival preservation, a professional framer's touch. And some things just need to be hung from a branch or a tapestry rod, or sewn into a fabric collage (some of my favorites above).

The variations on the ways we "frame" a piece of work are endless and as broad as the imagination.

Letting Them Be What They Are
So many of my framing experiences - especially when they have involved working with someone else - have taught me something new and have fostered significant memories. In the past year we have found a framer/art gallery in a nearby town that we have gone to for most of our framing needs. In fact, we bought our first piece of purchased-together art from them. The two women who run the place have a true bird's eye view into our courtship, wedding, marriage, as they have heard the story behind each new acquisition. Our wedding invitation, the mat signed by the guests; an oil portrait of Shaka by D. Lee; a watercolor of Castle Tioram, gift of brother Lyle Miller for our honeymoon, etc. And some not so new - a painting by Bob that was hiding in a corner is now framed in silver and grey; a still life of Cat's was languishing in dust under the bed, it is now hanging in the dining room.

Most recently I took a painting in to be framed, one that Bob's daughter did - a self portrait. She had done it while on vacation at Dorlinn one year, painting on whatever was handy which, in this case, was a cardboard box from amazon.com. I anticipated having it framed in such a way as to crop out the visible amazon.com logo, to hide the fact that it was not painted on canvas or art paper, to use a mat to do that.

But the woman at the gallery was delighted with the humour of the painting on the packing box and showed me that we should preserve that history also, that it was part of the charm of the painting. She talked me - easily - into a shadow box effect, mounting and matting in a dark purple to echo some of the purples and lavenders in the painting, with a quarter inch of under mat showing in the same caramel brown as the amazon.com box, and a thick black frame. I realized she was totally right, because Bob himself had been so amused to see what she had painted it on, some of the charm would have been lost if we had hidden that history (see above). It was an important lesson for me - counteracting that part of me that wants to make things "nice" sometimes, to the detriment of letting them be what they really are. And it delighted me, as it was the first that I realized how truly artful this woman is, that she has a real aesthetic sense and heart gift in how she approaches her work at the gallery.

Grey to Green: Coming to Life
I love the way you get to know a piece of art more intimately by going through the framing process. For example, there is an old linotype print of a medieval ballad singer performing in a king’s courtroom that Rick’s best friend gave him years ago. Rick always had it propped up or tacked to the wall wherever he lived. Sometime after he died I rescued it from a tack behind his office door, slapped a plain black Walmart frame on it, and was quite pleased to have it on the bedroom wall. However, that room was quite dim and, in the corner, it was barely visible. This summer while back in the USA I decided I really wanted that print with me and would frame it right, here in Scotland. So I sent it to myself. The day I took it in to my favorite framer’s and we pulled it from the protective paper, in the good light of her gallery I suddenly realized that print was not grey tones but a beautiful forest green ink on cream-colored paper! I had never seen that before, I wonder if Rick ever even realized it. So we selected archival papers - she said it looked valuable so I should preserve it - and a thin stripe of green under mat with cream mat on top, and a burnished silver wooden frame. Now it hangs quite peacefully in our Scottish living room, where there is a lot of green in the drapes and furnishings. While she and I were selecting the frame, we both noticed - I for the first time - that whatever the ballad singer was singing was really upsetting the people in the court! Every single person in the picture (and it is full of courtesans, jesters, lords, king, queen, etc.) looks either very angry or very worried or is whispering conspiratorially with someone else. There is quite a story being told by this print. Again, pondering it, I wondered how carefully Rick may have looked at it over the years...he spoke a lot about the bardic poets and the role of the traveling minstrels to spread news, their role in political intrigues, etc. I suspect he had become quite intimately familiar with this print. And for me, grey had become green and the true story of this print had come to life.

To Frame or Not to Frame
There is just something about holding various bits of frame sample up to a piece of art and knowing, immediately, what will work and what will not. It is a mysterious science or art...and one in which I love to engage. Unfortunately we have pretty much run out of wall space here in the wee Scottish house, so my trips to the gallery will be curtailed...until we turn the garage into a new room, that is! (Bob cringes!)

I also love to check out the outrageously ornate frames on very old artwork in public galleries. Often the frame is part of the piece, was commissioned and designed and built - with fancy engraved metal plates - to go with the often-commissioned painting. The frames are timepieces, indicators of periods of decor style. Many of the older ones cross a line between ugliness and beauty. Of course, more modern choices are simple, almost invisible framing. And sometimes that is correct, too - the painting of the castle over our bed, for example, just felt to me like it did NOT want a frame. I love the bareness of it hanging there, it seems somehow even more powerful that way. (And Bob worries less about it falling on our heads.) I also like the way some artists extend the painting around the hidden frame, suggesting in a not-too-subtle way it should NOT be framed once purchased!

Why Do We Frame?
After all, art is created to be seen, and a frame - or the way it is presented or showcased - is just a way to point the eye, to say, "Pray, perceive..." It is also a loving, respectful thing to do...a way to say to your friends, "I love this, let me share it with you."

Any thoughts from any of you about how we frame, why we frame...or not? Or stories about hidden treasures you pulled from oblivion and graced with a good frame job?

I’d love to hear your stories. And, as usual in this salon, wherever this takes the conversation is quite fine with me!

PS--You might check out some of the interesting comments by an artist, "seabows", left in the last few days at an old workshop here, our "True Colours" workshop. I love what she says about painting in different light, and most of you will have missed her comments since we have moved along since then!

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

WORKSHOP/SALON XIII: Art Heaven: Here, There & Everywhere

2006-10-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

ART HEAVEN: Here, There & Everywhere

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine." - Caskie Stinnet, Free Spirit

"If you don't bring forth what is within you, what is within you will kill you." - The Gnostic Gospels of St. Thomas

Some places are a state of mind, because the very thought of them is so evocative - to the degree that I am sure even our biochemistry at least momentarily transforms back to whatever state it was in, in that place, when we were there, each time it comes to mind.

Highland Hideaway
I just spent two weeks with my husband in such a place, a big house on a remote beach near a 13th century castle in the Scottish Highlands. The house is built on the site of the ancient chapel that was associated with the castle and its clan, so is something of a holy place to us. There, we worship solitude, the written word, music and nature. Mostly we read a pile of books, wrote in our laptops, in between walks, tending the coal fire (in all honesty he did that entirely himself - I was a lazy and grateful slug when it came to fireplace duty this time), cooking, playing guitars and romping with Shaka.

I only went out shopping twice: once for fresh smoked salmon from a local smokehouse and again to buy some wee rustic pottery bowls with sheep painted on them. Otherwise, I stayed close to the house, just to write. I propped up my laptop on a vanity in one room for a while, then later in a window seat, working on my latest fiction while glancing out at the ocean and castle and trees. Sometimes I put a CD in the laptop CD player and listened with headphones while writing.

During the hours I wasn't actually writing, I let my mind lazily wander through my novel's alternate reality, taking notes, realizing bits that needed elaborating or changing, characters that needed more ambiguity. I woke from dreams that helped with the day's next chapter, spent time reading some of the research books I'd brought with me, relative to my story.

A Gift of Space/Time and a Nest
All of this reminded me of the last time I had relatively undisturbed time to write this way...ironically it was in the home of our last workshop moderator, Jill Kiefer, when she lived on the outskirts of Albuquerque and needed a housesitter for a week back in...when was that? 1997? 1998? And, also ironically, it happened to be in a house I had lived in, myself, in previous times.

During that week, I worked 16 hours-a-day, doing nothing but living inside the world of my novel, writing the last few chapters and sorting through timeline and character charts. The rooms were big and uncluttered, the hallways wide, so I paced and read aloud to myself, overlaying the reality of Jill's space with my own fictional reality. A very important setting and metaphor in the book was a sort of nest. The first morning I woke to find a fallen and empty bird's nest in the courtyard outside the bedroom door. I took it as a sign, an affirmation, and brought it in, set it on the manuscript table where I was working, and made it into a sort of altar while I wrote. I still have that nest.

Anyway, the gift of undivided time, devoted hours to write a book, has always been a rare gift, much longed-for, in my life. The dilemma of "not enough time, not enough space" for my creations has slowly (very slowly) improved over time, once life forced me into career and personal lifestyle changes. Now, at age 57, I finally do have daily hours I can devote to my true work. It took a long time to get here and prices have been paid all along the way.

Art Heaven
Still, there is something about "getting away" into an environment that has nothing to do with your daily life, where you have no distractions or obligations. At least it is so for me. I have always had this need. I recall many times in my 20s and 30s - even when I lived alone - when I would feel the need to escape my own reality. I would pack up a suitcase, typewriter, coffeemaker and chocolate, and head for a motel - the seedier the better - to write for a weekend. I would tape pages and notes to the wall and lock myself in and pace, talk aloud, using tape recorders or note pads - whatever it took - just write. It was really a very exciting - I would use the word THRILLING - thing to do. No time table, no requirement to eat or sleep unless I felt like it, no phone, no one knew where I was. I wrote and snacked and napped for 48 hours.

An artist/writer friend, Mark Funk, coined the term "art heaven" for such sojourns. He used to hold art heavens in his home/studio, where some of us would show up with our art supplies and typewriters and take up corners and feed off the creative energy he seemed to radiate into the room like a generator. Not really talking to each other - I believe it was his only rule, "silence is golden". We would only directly connect by bumping elbows at the kitchen coffee pot now and then.

It's a Place You GO TO!
Yes, yes, I know the more philosophical will say, "But you can create art heaven wherever you are, in your own home, your own space, your own reality, without having to actually pack up and GO anywhere."

But you won't hear ME say that. Art Heaven is something very special, it is a time you get to BE an artist as well as DO your art, and NOTHING ELSE. For me, it requires GOING SOMEWHERE. Oh yes, we do and must work in our homes, our studios, our daily places...but Art Heaven is something altogether OTHER than that. You can bring it back with you...but you do first have to "go" find it and dwell there a while.

Don't get me wrong: it can even be a local wee coffee shop, at a table in the back corner that feels like "yours", where you write, tuning in or tuning out the conversations around you.

It can be your car, driven to a private spot (a field near the airport to watch airplanes take off, one writer friend used to do that) with a notebook or sketchpad.

It doesn't have to be a resort or motel. It's just..."away" and it's "focused".

Dedicated Space
I post here a photae of my work area from the past two weeks in our Highland hideaway. (And a seashell from the beach on a window sill.) It looks familiar - somewhere in my many, many boxes of papers back in New Mexico, there is an old black & white photae I once took of a desk, a portable manual typewriter, a window, part of a motel bed. 1981, a motel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Motel heaven, art heaven, another lifetime - before computers, digital cameras, blogs. I smile when I remember that photae - I see it quite clearly, even if I never find it again. And, although another very different place and time, it has the same "feeling tone" as this one of the window seat at the beach house. The same simplicity, softness, serenity, a dedicated space that is just...waiting.

I highly encourage each of you to GO somewhere to find your art heaven, every now and then. Because when you get back home from that place, there will be a small crystal rock in your jacket pocket from that walk on the beach, and it will carry the energy you found there, and it will continue as a MOMENTUM in the creative work you are doing in your ordinary life.

I would love to hear your own art heaven stories, any of you. And I send a big grin and nod of thanks to artist Mark Funk for his generous spirit in all those art heavens long ago.

CREATIVE LINKS:

Visiting us the last two days at our hideaway were friends Wolf (he put the seashell on the window sill) and Bambi from New Mexico. They were en route to a music festival in Iceland, check out Bambi's fantastic music, she's part of a duo called Charmed, their CD is "Beautifully Twisted" at http://www.two-charmed.com

I especially like the song "Drive All Night".

Check out Zona Rosa! Southern woman Rosemary Daniell has written an excellent inspiring book on creativity enhancement, "Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women's Lives". Wildly creative in the way it's written, the energy of this woman is a powerhouse. (And thanks to her for the quotes I found for this workshop, in her book.) To find out about the book and her national creativity workshops - and her philosophy about the colour PINK, go to http://www.myzonarosa.com

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com