little skrot man

how awesome is this little assemblage that husband put together? it's for the creagive art exhibition this weekend. i've got another piece with my photo of the ship being scrapped to go with it. we make a pretty good team - i collect the pieces and lay them out and husband puts them all together. i insisted that the eyes be two different sizes, as i love the expression it gives. the hands are all him. and the one is flipping off because it fits with the theme of skrot (op) (scrap, in danish, but more loaded with meaning when you add the "up" bit).

it's been a pretty great week. husband i made art together. i've met lots of new people. i survived a public speaking engagement today and was very inspired by the other talks as well. it was a sort of TED-like conference, only even better speaker/topic quality (better than TEDx Copenhagen, anyway). tho' i did have moments, while i was listening to the other talks, of feeling i have simply not been doing enough with my life. it struck me, once again, that i do best when i get out and see and experience new things. it gets my ideas flowing. maybe i'm not really made for the quiet country life. tho' i am grateful to have it to return to when i've been out and about.

i think i feel that confidence i feared was gone slowly returning. and that's a very good thing.

finishing my torso (for now)

we're going to show our torsos this thursday with a big opening splash! so i've been frantically working on finishing mine. it's been sitting there on the sideboard, covered in words, painted blue, but unfinished.  i know i want to somehow incorporate some feathers, but i don't know yet how - perhaps this little feather bouquet i found on the beach contains an answer to that.

otherwise, i've been sketching and painting some small drawings of places i love and places which have been influential in my life to decorate the torso. this is the church of sv. jovan kaneo (john the baptist, if i remember correctly) at lake ohrid. influential since i met husband in macedonia, tho' not in ohrid.

st. basil's to signify my russian soul. i sketched or printed old sketches onto some pages from an old encyclopedia - that way the pictures still incorporate words, as words are important to my conception of my torso (and thus myself).

i couldn't resist using the colorful houses of nyhavn in copenhagen to represent denmark, which has, you may imagine, become an enormous influence upon me, having lived here for 15 years now. i loved those colorful houses along the canal when i first visited and seeing them still makes me smile.

and chicago, a sort of composite of places and buildings and that chicago pizza. it's the place from which i jumped off to my life in europe, so it had to be there.

and i couldn't resist a few helleristninger (nordic petroglyphs). they just speak to my soul. i drew them with that fabulous payne's grey ink.

i love this circle of life helleristning. it's long been a favorite. and symbolizes a feeling of community that spans the world (and which centers on this blog in many ways). it is essential to include on my torso.

these were some new helleristning that i came across that i'd never seen before. i love how the one figure appears to be floating away on a balloon. that felt symbolic and important as well. and in general i love that circle with the cross inside - it's the nordic sun symbol. light is so important in this part of the world, that it had to be included.

it is once again evident to me that i am a person in need of a deadline. i'd been procrastinating working on this and tho' i've thought about it pretty much endlessly, nothing was happening on it. but now, when the exhibition looms, ideas are coming together. i came across a package of little bitty people that i found in an antique store in the US last summer and i thought that since i've not used any photos of husband and sabin, that i'd use some little bitty figures to signify them. i included sabin's lost twin as well, because she's also part of who i am.

funny how once you start working, you get in a state of flow and ideas come and things just begin to happen. a garland on which i've written a bucket list to decorate the hanger. in that flow, i hit upon a way to incorporate a few feathers, which i seem to collect wherever i go.

i don't think i will be able to declare my torso officially finished on thursday when it goes to the exhibition, but it will be finished enough to show. i suspect that i will continue adding to it and it will change and grow evolve. just like me.

what a difference a day makes

oh my, what a difference a day makes. my day started with an email from an old friend. and then an invitation from a more local friend for a spontaneous road trip. so i spent the day in århus today. the sun shined a little bit on the way there (but not long enough for me to get to photograph it). but it turns out that a simple change of scenery, an encounter with art (we picked up my artist friend's paintings from an exhibition), a trip to the most fabulous leather store and an even better art supply store (swoon) plus lunch with the best waiter i've ever encountered in denmark will really make you feel better and get you back in the zone. and get your clogged-up idea channel flowing again. and by you i mean me. 

so get out there. change your scenery. you won't regret it. i promise.

~~~

ahh notes, that lovely intervention between what we read and what what we write (and if you're me, what we think). i'd love to have attended a conference on notes. and marginalia.

when rivers of ideas begin to flow

here's what happened with my green felted stone - in fact, in this shot, it's not even dry yet.  if you recall, i used lisa's stone felting tutorial. and i fussed about worried about over-thought pondered how to make it my own. with a little viking helleristning (petroglyph), i think i managed it. i'm not done with this idea yet.

* * *

i have spent a couple of very energizing days with a friend with whom i feel very much in synch. so many ideas surfaced and best of all, it feels like there is action and impetus behind the ideas, so some of them may even materialize. i had the strangest feeling after we met last friday (what i thought would be a 2-hour meeting turned into 5 because we were so crazy in flow)...it felt like a dam had been released inside me and all of the pent-up ideas and thoughts i had had in recent months just began to surface and tho' they were coming quickly, it feels like it's at a pace where i can grab and examine them. some of them had been there for awhile, but some were entirely new. it was positively elating. it's odd how you can get all blocked and not even realize it until you're not blocked anymore.

* * *

things i'm pondering:

what it might mean to be a social artist

community gardens.

art walls.

* * *

i think my keyboard may be menopausal - the period is getting pretty unpredictable.

sorry. bad joke. couldn't help myself.

* * *

what's your type?

find out here.

apparently i'm architype van doesburg (a brutally fair typeface).

play the game, if only to hear the narrator's awesome accent.

* * *

the p boards on pinterest: patchwork. peacocks. personal style. photos that make me think.

well-rested

today's gonna be a good day, today's gonna be a good, good day....monday, tuesday, wednesday... (loosely adapted from the black eyed peas)

good things that happened today:

:: waking up from a really good night's sleep.

:: a surprise in the mail from the lovely tracy. she sent me this ceramic starbucks mug that looks just like the real take-away ones, but is reusable! thank you so much, tracy!!!

:: an energizing conversation with a friend and soon-to-be business partner. i am consistently amazed by the ways that we complement one another.

:: an invitation to sell handmade goods at a market in april!

:: another collaboration in the works with another friend - this one very near and dear to my heart (and which will potentially keep me on the straight and narrow where it concerns all of that consumerism).

:: at the grocery store, i ran into an old colleague and had a hug and a nice chat.

:: coming across these charming stories of travel.

just a small collection of things, but altogether, they added up to a very good and energizing day. it's good to be in flow, or maybe it was yesterday's wish?  or perhaps arianna huffington is right and it's all about a good night's sleep.

in flow

after the wonderful weekend full of laughter and great conversation in berlin and a day and a half of meetings and more laughter and great conversation with some old friends in svendborg, one of my favorite places in denmark, i am feeling positively in flow. ideas are coming to me. and with them opportunities and a glimmer of the path ahead.

i must remember what makes this happen...new impulses, great people, laughter laughter laughter, and intelligent conversation (and a bit of not-so-intelligent conversation -- that story of the one-legged boxing would-be bomber is still cracking me up like crazy). plus a little sunshine doesn't hurt either.

the trick is remembering all this the next time there is a flow failure. because that's the tricky part, getting there when you're not. but enough about that, i'm going to relax and enjoy this, my idea notebook at the ready...tho' first i think a good night's sleep is in order.

don't worry, i'll go back to the berlin posts tomorrow, the best bits are yet to come!

the flow of laziness

jægerspris slot

the home of some or other countess danner who was the mistress of some or other king

(undoubtedly named frederik or christian).

she surely spent a lot of time in a state of somnambulant laziness,

hanging about, waiting for the king to show up.

i've very unwisely spent the next-to-last day of the decade in a state of somnambulant laziness. i slept in 'til almost 11 (bliss). i braved the grocery stores, just as everyone (including myself) was hamstering (direct translation from danish) for the days ahead when the stores are closed - but i was so relaxed from all that sleep that the lines and the crowd didn't even bother me. i bought food for a new year's feast. i made homemade lemon curd for a passion fruit roulade that i'm going to make tomorrow. i picked up some great hummus sandwiches from sundwich, a local sandwich place. mid-afternoon, we watched hercule poirot (he really gets a lot of grief for being belgian). i baked a loaf of bread on which i sprinkled sunflower seeds. i did four art journal pages in a state of total flow (thank you clary sage).

and i did it all in a very advanced state of relaxation. because i know that we're not running around with anything that we HAVE to do for the next few days. we're making our own leisurely new year's dinner tomorrow - some gorgeous madagascar prawns (was so relaxed i didn't even think about food miles). a beautiful beef roast with all the fixings, the aforementioned lemon curd and passionfruit roulade, a bit of champagne - just for ourselves. after all of the running around and hectic feelings of christmas, we're bringing in the new year in an utterly relaxed style at home. and i guess i've reached a point in my life where that sounds just perfect.

here's wishing all of you exactly the new year's eve you'd like.