The Moveable Feast in the Forest

"Ridges #2", watercolor on paper, 2011

There is a conversation traveling around weblands about the 

art of blogging. Terri Windling over at The Drawing Board 

referred to it as the "moveable feast", and the name has stuck. 

It has traveled winding paths from John Barleycorn Must Die to 

The Drawing Board, to A Mermaid in the Attic in Australia.

 It started with Howard and Rex of John Barleycorn Must Die 

and their around the table interview with Rima Staines 

of Into The Hermitage. I invite you to track back along 

the path to find many morsels of inspiration.  

March ninth marks my year anniversary of blogging, and I'm getting

 in on the conversation and telling a bit of my story about how and 

why I blog. Though I set up RavenWood Forest many months

before, I used it only once as an information board for a 

Summer Solstice event here. It sat idle for a long time 

until I had traveled around enough in the world of blogs 

to see the potential. 

When I discovered Rima Staines,Terri Windling, Midori Snyder, 

and the Journal of Mythic Arts a few years ago while looking

 for mythic artists to show my students, everything changed. 

I was instantly inspired by the beautifully visual worlds

 on each of their blogs, and began a journey down the 

many paths they laid in their link lists. I became quite

obsessed, really, though it was exactly the traveling 

I needed to do to offer my students rich and inspiring 

resources for a new class I was teaching, 

Myth & Symbol. 

"Orange Evening Sky", watercolor on paper, 2011

I'm not sure how it happened, but one day I decided that it 

was time to begin blogging in earnest, and I took the plunge. 

As my one year anniversary approaches, I reflect back that 

I had no idea how much this endeavor would gift me in 

inspiration and connection and how it would support my 

creative process. When I moved to RavenWood from

 Providence in 2003, I left a vibrant arts community, 

my 1100 sq. foot studio, and many, many circles 

of professional artists like myself. Coming here, 

I was making the choice to move close to my source, but 

also to move away from conversations, critiques and a 

community that very much understands creative process. 

"Wet Sky", watercolor on paper, 2011

I've discovered that blogging is an important part of my 

process. Christina over at A Mermaid in the Attic 

writes "I do not live in a close-knit creative community, 

and I can hardly accost a stranger in the street 

and force them to listen to the song I've just 

written or look at the painting I'm working on and expect 

an intelligent coherent comment." Having left my creative 

community behind, I have come to understand that 

blogging, for me, provides a format to write about my 

process and be witnessed. I have looked back at older 

posts and my work and seen threads of connections 

I might not 
have without the sequential 

nature of blogging.
 

I find that seeing my artwork online, in a new format, 

is a way of seeing it anew. Like the old trick we professors 

often advise our students - if you have been working so long on

 a painting and you no longer really SEE it, look at it in a mirror.

 And, of course, as Christina says above, its also helpful to get 

responses. When I started doing a series of spiral drawings, 

I found the comments quite interesting. They continue 

to give me insights into the spiral form - I love 

the things that people see in them. 

"Afternoon Mists", watercolor on paper, 2011

I'm participating in conversations in several overlapping 

online circles. The mythic artists buzzing around the 

artists and blogs mentioned above, and many of 

you who follow here, and the stitching, dyeing 

circles rippling out from Jude over at Spirit Cloth.

The richly inspiring communities which I now 

touch into not only help me feel connected once 

again to artists, but also continue to support me 

to be a better teacher. I am continually pulling out 

my laptop during class to show a student some 

unusual use of materials. Blogs give my students 

access to artists who are in the trenches and who

 are talking about it and who might not yet 

be published in a major catalog or book. 

This is a gift and an invaluable resource.

There is much more to say, and I'll continue my musings

 another time, as this post is reaching "mermaid proportions!" 

(You'll need to follow the above links to get the reference...)

By the way the heater is working GREAT, I've never been 

warmer in the studio in winter. All the paintings in this 

post were made in the last two weeks, 

I've been in there a LOT!

I'll leave you with some images from my afternoon walk 

with Pasha. The first in many weeks since finally he 

can walk on top of the frozen snow. I sounded like a 

freight train walking in my snowshoes today on crusty, 

icy snow, but it is still necessary as even with much 

melting from last week we still have several feet. 

Pasha was so excited, he raced WAY up these trees,  

and down in a long, gentle slide all the way to 

the ground. I've never seen him do that before! 

Spiraling Deeper

Finally, after over a month of waiting, the studio 

heater was delivered to my front doorstep on Wednesday.

 I arrived home from school, hoping and hoping that it had. 

Yesterday, I spent my first full day in the studio since December!

But it was far from warm. The nights have been frigid, so the studio 

was below freezing when I started work installing the heater, 

putting plastic on windows, weatherstripping the door 

and caulking cracks. I was cold, but inspired. I could 

feel the heat coming on and watched as, 

degree by degree,

the temperature rose. 

After a session with a student this morning,

the wonderful Kim, I stuffed the stove 

with wood and headed out to the studio. 

Sometimes leaving this scene - warm fire, 

snoozing Pasha cat - is challenging, but 

today the call to work was greater than 

the call of fur and fire.  

I packed my basket with water, music, and tea. 

I was greeted with a warm-ish studio. I figured

it needed a long time to heat up the whole space, 

and considering the overnight temperature was -6, the 

45 degrees at 11:30 am seemed reasonable!

A bit of the morning was spent cleaning, 

clearing and organizing.

In a corner of the studio, the new heater 

sits tucked underneath the old, retired one. 

Tables were organized and dusted, a slow

and deliberate re-entering of my creative 

process. After being away from work for 

so long, I needed time for re-rooting 

and re-membering.

I remember a wonderful class called, Finding Form & Inspiration

 I took in graduate school with a special professor and mentor,

Chris Bertoni. She spoke about cleaning and organizing

as way of easing back into work and that the simple act 

of entering the studio, even just to move things around, 

was a part of the working process. If you were really 

stuck, she advised just showing up to the studio daily, 

even for only a few minutes, until something 

happened. I know how wise this advice is, 

it has worked for me many times. 

For resistance is real. No matter that I was 

bursting at the seams with visual stories, 

connections, inspirations, images and 

ideas about materials to explore, I hit 

a moment of resistance at the moment I 

sat down to begin. But I do have 

strategies now, after so many 

years of cyclical creating. 

"Root Person", clay & mixed-media, with bones on shelf.

I sat at my work table, and looked at 

the things that inspire me. 

I began by writing in my journal. And looking 

back at some quick sketches of ravens on a branch 

as I imagined them in the early morning as I lay in bed 

and heard them calling off in the forest. 

Above me on a shelf, more inspiration 

from my grandfather. A striking red 

coral encased in lucite, an octopus 

and a snake. Branching systems and 

spirals... hmmm, familiar. 

So it seemed that to begin with spirals 

was the thing. I begin where I had 

ended, to find a continuum, 

and take off from there. 

I feel I know these spirals better now.

Much musing about them, and seeing them

in the details of nature through my camera 

lens, has deepened my knowing of them. 

And here we find ourselves tonight,

Pasha cat and I, much like we were this morning. 

Sitting by a warm fire, a bit more wood in the bin, 

and a few more spirals drying in the studio.

Some days are really quite perfect,

here in the snowy white 

RavenWood Forest. 

Seeds of Inspiration

Glowing embers in the blue-black of the fading day. 

Outside, sleet and freezing rain beating on a drum 

of softening snow. Just a brief respite between 

frozen winds and clinking icicles. Late tonight 

 temperatures will drop again and somewhere 

above, the snow maker will sculpt 

crystalline flake-mandalas. 

(do click larger to see the amazing detail in these!)

In a moment of remembering today, I pulled out 

an envelope of treasures. Years ago my father gave 

me two of my grandfather's notebooks, both from his 

work as a marine biologist. 

One is a small, handmade folio of card stock 

on which are pasted algae specimens collected 

from Long Island Sound. Delicate branching 

systems, and warm sepia tones: they 

could be drawings of trees. 

A well-spring of inspiration, seeds of  

drawings take root in me. Even the process of scanning 

these few pages have sparked to life some 

sleeping embers in my imagination. 

Obsessed as I am with branching systems, 

this tree caught my attention on a recent snow shoe. 

The lichen and moss patterns: variations of fractal 

patterns in the microcosm.

If ever my studio heater arrives, I think the images 

trapped inside me will explode onto paper. Though 

I've been drawing, what I want is my work table with 

my bones and stones, nests and feathers and the 

freedom to be as messy as I need to be. 

I know there has also been a gift in this time. 

I've been forced to look closely, to step out of routine 

and to let other forms of expression fulfill 

my need to create. 

Above and below, branching systems studies. 

A large wound on a beech tree reminds me that I am 

molded beautifully by the forces that push against me.

Beautiful bark texture on enormous ash tree 

in a nearby old growth forest.

My friend and neighbor, Anneliese and I snow shoed in the 

deep snow on the Rivulet Trail, one of the few remaining 

stands of old growth in New England. The trail is on

the homestead of the poet, William Cullen Bryant,  

 who "helped inspire the 19th-century land conservation 

movement that involved Frederic Law Olmsted and 

Charles Eliot, founder of The Trustees of Reservations." 

(from the Bryant Homestead site link above)

  The pine loop on the trail winds around pine trees 

reaching up to 150 feet. 

 Anneliese enjoys a moment with 

an enormous cherry tree. Its rare 

to find such a huge, straight cherry 

still standing as the wood is prized 

for veneers and furniture. The Rivulet 

Trail has several beautiful old cherry trees. 

At the beginning of our journey, 

we were met by this wonderful forest spirit.

We want to re-visit him in the spring to see 

if his fern-dreads are rooted there or 

somehow found their way onto his crown.  

We are still buried in snow, with no end in site. 

So much so that roofs are collapsing. Everywhere 

around town, roofs were dotted with people throwing 

snow onto huge piles, sometimes covering windows. 

I've been out in many a storm, trying to stay ahead. 

Arctic fashion is somewhat turtle-like. 

I really might have to have a neighbor come over with his 

tractor to move some snow around so I can still shovel 

a path to the studio! 

I decided to head the warnings, and do some 

roof raking yesterday. Tootling around on snowshoes

with a long-poled shovel-thing was amusing. A 

couple of times I dislodged a snow pile onto 

my head, and almost toppled over backwards 

when it let go!  

I decided to leave it to the youth to do the high roofs, 

so Shelby came over and shoveled. Having the two of us 

out and about all day  was great entertainment for Pasha, 

until he realized that our activities resulted in snow avalanches.  

A sense of solidarity came with the snows: 

  all of us engaged in the same chores, passing on  

humorous stories as we passed roof rakes 

one to another. 

I leave you with a recent tree drawing. I'm stuck here 

wondering whether to leave it as is or bring out more 

light. What do you think?