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.