The Spirit Moves Through

The Spirit Moves Through, 2014

Styrofoam, Gold, Ash, Clothing, Acrylic

There have been many snow days, many hard days.  There have also been studio days.  Some of which I was certain affirmed my diarrhea abilities as an artist and others that affirmed that all I wanted to do and be was in those four walls.  Yo-yo times.

Perhaps I think, feel, lament and talk so much about fear because I am so engaged in it.  I think being in dialogue with it I am also in dialogue with courage.  Courage is not painless, its full of agony!  Courage takes your hand and walks you through the glass sharded gates of fear in to the unknown, scraping all your uncertainty raw.  Then when you get through those gates you may still have lingering vulnerability, which no one can take away from you...you just have to wait to see if the sky falls or opens.  Eventually those blue skys open within, expanding you with courage to do it all over again.  Compassion does nurse the wounds well.  We should all have buttons attached to a direct line of compassion, like an opiate drip.  PUSH NOW, MORE SELF-COMPASSION PLEASE.

A Souls Cocoon

I finished my weaving piece.  It became a baby basket.  A little cocoon.  As I was weaving it became clear that was what it was to become.  The empty form ready to hold new life.  To wrap and embrace a new soul. 
Our clothes, my sisters clothes, shells covering our bodies, our bodies shells covering our souls.  Empty forms created from life to hold life woven together again and again and again.
Cocoons, woven homes for one body to die and another to be reborn. The air, breathed in one body and out in to another, like a continues thread connecting us all for ever and ever and ever.

Whats this need?

Detail of weaving project.  Summers scarf, silk shirt, 70's polyester shirt and the one she gave me.

Detail: White Rice that smells like recent laundry detergent, Vintage black lace, J.Crew, the one she gave me (or did I claim it?)

Detail: One of the shirts from the last months.

Its coming along slowly...a couple shirts a day.

I have been working at this daily and it is a very slow process.  I suppose in the slow process without a clear end in sight I hear all the questions and watch the thoughts move in and out of the ropes.  "What am I doing?"  "Why am I special?" "How many ways can I see Summer?" "Wow, it takes so long." "This is stupid, I am stupid."  "Should this become something else?"  "Is what I'm making just this?"  "What is this?"  "This is hard"  "I don't want to let her clothes become something else."  "I don't want her to be gone." 

I also knitted a scarf this week and started hand built coil pots....hand meditations, physical thoughts, touching the Autumn sadness, making something, being it.

Summer Rose

Summer Rose

72" x 60"

Acrylic, Oil, Kimono, Blanket, Flowers, Yarn, Oil Crayon

 

I completed another painting, which like the last one I showed I actually started 2 years ago.  I am very pleased with this painting and am having a wonderful experience with its large size.  Paintings this large have many impressions to feel and observe.  There is the first impression at a distance that begins to change as you move closer to the painting.  When you sit (or stand) and stare at the work,  it starts shifting as you become engaged in certain particulars of the painting.  With each area of focus new emotions arise, there are so many layers to become absorbed in.

 (Just to show you the scale)

Yesterday I visited the clothing installation-the grass is beginning to grow and buds are forming.  It was interesting to finish this painting and then go see my installation becuase I saw a relationship to the colors and motion between the painting and the installation.  I think we are always working the same investigation unconsiously.  We repeat ourselves in different forms and each variance perhaps holds a clue to a deeper understanding to questions we are not even aware we are asking.

Below are pictures of my installation and reflections yesterday.

 

 (Reflections in the stream)

(Detail of painting)

(My Sunny helper)

Mothers Day Gift

Summer my sister, my angel, my star

Summer & Sunny

I Am
by Summer Knight Wibel 5/5/98

I am the angel whistling with the winds.
I am the one drop of honey left in the jar for none but one.
I am the child stomping in the mud on a mild march day.
I am the goddess of love waiting to erupt.
I am your song, play it again so you can hear me sing.
I am the star that shines so brightly above your head.
I am your favorite blanket, hold me in your arms so I can
feel your stale breath fall upon my neck.
As you see I am, just as I am your angel, honey, child, goddess,
song, star, and blanket. I am your love, your one. For I am.

My sister gave me this poem today.

Every morning I write, read and pray at the end of my bed. There is a makeshift alter on my windowsill, love symbols and such. This morning I was contemplating Mothers day and the way I feel. Which is actually pretty black as a result of some serious hormones & chemistry related to my menstrual cycle. I was thinking of that powerlessness-how its not just a choice to be happy when you are powerless over your mood because of your physical makeup. I was thinking about my destructive behavior yesterday as a result of my "black" feelings. I was thinking "OK, how can I can I plan ahead next month, how do plan for this inner insanity and live through it. I thought (PMS) Prepare Make Safe. As I was thinking about this I thought of my sister Summer, and her disease; Bi-Polar Disorder and how powerless she was over her chemistry I also thought about how she wanted to be a mom too and how she died in a fragile time during her menstrual cycle. I thought about how on this Mothers day I understood the real need to be acknowledged for the difficulties of being a Mother, a woman destined to intense chemistry and hormones and body changes in order to bear children to bring forth life.
Sitting at the end of my bed thinking about this, feeling my sister, looking at her picture hanging in the star, I thought to maybe read something of hers. I have kept a bag of her journals and writings at the side of my bed, which I have not yet gone in to. Then I thought, "No, that will only make you sadder." but then I did anyway. The one piece I pulled out was a book of poems she made, the cover said; "HAPPY MOTHERS DAY"
a gift on this mothers day.......

we are so lucky as mothers; sometimes we give birth to angels........