Spring by Meinrad Craighead

A blogging friend of mine, Laura, wrote a tribute post about her father, who recently passed away. It was a very sweet tribute but the specific reason I bring it up is because it centered around how one small act, her father giving her a teddy bear from Paris when she was a small child, was the catalyst for the direction her life took and who and where she is today.

This post is about a similar event in my life, albeit one with a much smaller impact. We all have these moments in our lives that when they happen we are usually unaware of their importance (I say usually because sometimes we have a sense of foreshadowing about them) but that years down the road, we look back and can remember them as the moment when a new direction was started, a new seed of an idea began to grow, or a decision was, even if still unconsciously, made.

I can't remember exactly when in time this moment happened. I think I was living in Sacramento at the time, so that would put it at just short of twenty years ago. A Book Sale, sort of like the Spirit stores that pop up only for Halloween or the Hickory Farms that open up in small towns in December, opened up for a few weeks in an empty department store near where I lived and I visited it several times, digging endlessly for bargain book finds. I was rummaging through a table full of non-fiction when I stumbled upon a slim enveloped item. I thought it was a calendar. It had tiny squares of different art images displayed on the back of the envelope that looked intriguing, although they were really too small to get anything but a hint of what they were.

I brought it home to discover it wasn't a calendar after all but a set of quality prints of paintings by an artist named Meinrad Craighead. What was pivotal about these images was that they incorporated many ideas and symbolisms that before that moment I had not believed to exist anywhere except in my own head.

Something recently made me think of her and the prints, which I know I still own but can't find unfortunately, they must be packed away in a box somewhere, and so I decided to Google to find out more about her. I didn't know anything about her as a person or as an artist before that except for what was written in a brief paragraph or two on the envelope I purchased. I didn't even remember her name but I assumed with the few bits and pieces of information I remembered, surely I could find her online.

TWO HOURS later, I finally succeeded. The main problem was I thought her last name was Meinham or Meinhemm or something like that and I thought she was a German artist (turns out she's from Arkansas). The only other information I could recall was that she used to be a nun and one of her paintings was titled The Corn Mother. Yeah. Not a lot to go on. Here's the interesting part though. Finally, in desperation I gave up combinations of "nun German Manheim woman artist painter Manfred etc" and simply typed in the words "God as mother" which was what the collection of prints I owned has always so clearly said to me. And there she was. Pages and pages of her.

Art of "God as mother" - that idea was the reason why the memory of stumbling upon her prints those many years ago became one of those pivotal moments in my life. Because it was the first time I remember finding someone else in the world who was not only thinking but expressing their spirituality "outside the box" of traditional images and beliefs. It was that those three things were in combination - spirituality, art, and personalized expression - that was exciting and new to me. I had felt, read, wondered about, experienced, heard about each of those ideas before, many times before. But never before had I realized that it was possible to put them all together.

I can't really express the sort of comfort and joy I found in that discovery. My experience of "the feminine divine" is not exactly the same as Craighead's experiences. But that isn't terribly important. No person's relationship to spirit is the same as anyone elses, anywhere, no matter what belief system they may share. What was important was that the discovery of her work opened me to new possibilities of thought and direction in my own life and on my own path.

I won't say anything else about her here as you can click on the links and read it more eloquently for yourself on various websites. Here's another article about her. Let me just say I am now even more intrigued with this unique and fascinating woman's life and I'll be spending more time reading about her in the future. I hope you take at peek as well.

Today's post is much more colorful then yesterday's. It's all about F-words.

Like flowers...

And flags...

And even filigree.

Photos were taken at Balboa Park.

It's all about wide open spaces today. The photos are still lovely, but they didn't capture what one could see in real time. The sky was bluer, the leafless bushes and trees were backlit in golds and peach, the sunset mountain glowed pink. Click to enlarge the photographs to get as much detail and subtle color change as possible.

We've been gone on holiday, which is why you haven't seen hide nor hair of me recently. I've set myself a daunting task of finishing up my downsizing project and cleaning out the garage in order to be ready to have a yard sale in a month's time. That and doing the taxes and helping my son tile his bathrooms and of course the daily tasks that need doing every day means it's unlikely I'll be spending any time at all in my studio for awhile. I will try to stop in every day or two, however, and share some of the photos I took while traveling the last two weeks.

On the first day of our travels we stopped in the ghost town of Bodie. One could spend an entire day there investigating but unfortunately I only had a half hour to run around and and take a few photos. Here are a sampling of them.












There are a few more photos of Bodie, as well as some cute pics of my granddaughter - don't want to miss those! - over on Beach Treasure today.

I went to the market the other day, a different one than I usually go to these days, and again the wine bottles caught my eye. It's odd because I'm not much of a wine drinker. Although, if I do have alcohol at all, it will probably be wine. Or a margarita. Usually though I'm the only parent around, and I don't weigh much, (hey! Stop laughing! I mean, compared to, say, my six foot tall plus husband and sons) so I don't usually drink at all in case I have to get behind the wheel.

In fact, I'm much more of a tea or coffee connoisseur then I am a wine one. But art is art is art, wherever one finds it.

Don't you just love this wild woman, leaping into the universe.

I've seen this label before and always admired the combined pagany symbolism of oak trees and the triple aspect of the Goddess. I'm not a big red wine fan though.

This one, on the right, is from Australia and I have a feeling something in the picture and/or name loses something in cultural translation because, although I thought it was very sweet, I wasn't quite sure what sort of mood or theme it was meant to create. Of course the Da Vinci on the left is nice too.

The "modern art" in purples, pinks, and black caught my eye. My first thought was "hmmm, wonder what that would look like done in fabrics" and my second thought was "I bet they're trying to appeal to folks who have no idea what kind of art or wine they like, but think that they should act like they do." On the right, I like the triskelian of Ravens.

How can you not smile at the little red guitar man. The Forest Ville label isn't memorable, but do they mean Forest Ville up near Sebastopol? I've been there. I've been to Snoqualmie, the bottle on the far right, up in Washington, too. I guess if you traveled and you drank a lot of wine, you could collect it from all the places you'd been. All the places that had wineries that is.

I almost took a photo of a bottle that said Lassen Something-Something on it because I was so surprised. I mean, I've never seen a vineyard on a single acre of Lassen County soil. Tumbleweed, yes. Sage, lots of it. Stands of Douglas Fir. Scrubby cedar and juniper. We've even got some wheat fields and strawberry farms. But it's not wine country. Then I realized that it was a wineyard in the Northern Central Valley and they were just referencing that they could see Mt. Lassen poking up above the foothills. Oh-h.

We don't have wineries, but we do have our very own Meadery. I know, I don't think it's really called a Meadery. I mentioned it before but this time I took a close up of some of the bottles for you. I did have a bit of their cherry mead the other day, but it was purely for medicinal purposes. No, really. It WAS. I needed to rinse my mouth with something antiseptic.

This one made me laugh out loud. It reminded me of Godzilla Turkey. Some of you who have followed my family's adventures for some years will remember Godzilla Turkey. In any case, you have to wonder how they came to name this wine after an apparently biblical mutant poultry critter.

Now, if you're more of a teatotaler, be sure to visit Beach Treasure today. I've in the middle of a Bloggers Tea Party.

I have a space on the bedroom wall that is magic. Some people, those with no vision, would look and see nothing but a window. But I see a magical, ever-changing work of art created for my sole pleasure and reflection.

It changes through the seasons of course, but it also changes depending on the hour of the day. One of my favorite times of the day to catch something exceptional is in late afternoon or early evening when the sun sinks low on the horizon and creates layers of images.

It often makes me think of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. What is reality and what is fantasy? What is physical and what is shadow? Sometimes it makes me think of how it's all about perspective - what is truth and what is just opinion? What is concrete and what is simply reflection? Other times I am reminded of correlations or the interconnectedness of everything. The shadow depends on the branch outside, the branch outside depends on the sun. Occasionally other lofty philosophical gems rattle around in my brain. And sometimes I just let the soft swaying of the images in the breeze allows my thoughts to float just as peacefully and I think of nothing much at all.

Where is the unexpected art in your world?

It frustrates me a lot that I don't post more regularly on this studio blog. But alas, to post about art generally requires one to be making it a lot more regularly than I seem to manage. I have been doing a lot of photography lately. It's the one art process that I don't have to push myself to do. I love it. But then, other than sharing it here, what do I do with all these photos? I have some ideas for using it in collage work, but I haven't managed to get all the supplies gathered up yet. If I did nothing but frame it, I could request a show at the local art's council studio. I really need to get my ass in gear. Alas, I'm afraid it's gonna take drugs, whips, and threats to get me going.

Mostly I'm sort of running in circles trying to decide whether to write, do visual art, or go back to major reorganizing of my house. Mostly I end up just feeding the bottomless pit of a teenager and running household shopping errands and then "Oh, look at the time! I'll sit and watch television shows." One reason, or excuse if you want, is that the time of day, evening, when I'm most inspired to get up and do something, is also the time when my family is home and so I feel guilty if I go off and hide from them in the studio. I did manage to get some fabric combinations lined up for more blue/green Ohio Stars the other night (which sounds easy but definitely was not!). I didn't have to choose between family and art because the only television that had sound for American Idol (we were having cable troubles) was in the studio, so they all followed me in there.

I think Georgia O'Keeffe was right when she said she had to choose between having a family and being an artist. Right in the sense that she knew she personally had to choose one or the other, that for her it wasn't possible to do both. Of course then there's someone like Tasha Tudor that seemed to combine the two lives effortlessly. I'm sure it wasn't effortless, but she made it seem like it.

Jeff and I took a day trip to Reno on Wednesday and one of the highlights was a visit to the Nevada Museum of Art. I already mentioned it a bit over on Beach Treasure, and put up some photos we took along the road as well. It's always a toss up whether to upload them here or there. So go check them out.

I saved a couple photos for here. You couldn't take photos inside the museum. This was outside in a small plaza they have in front of the building. I liked the red on red. Which photo do you like best? Jeff and I were split on which was our favorite.

The close up or...

...this one that includes more of the setting?

This sun sculpture was on the roof. I liked how the shadow made a crescent moon inside of the sun.

The big exhibit was Andy Warhol. They had some fun interactive stuff set up to go along with it - mostly for kids. The best were oversized cans of Campbell Soup to stack and make patterns with. I would have played with them but a little boy beat me to it. But that didn't stop a couple of us adults from spending time at a stamp and color markers station set up so you could make repetitive "Warhol" inspired postcards. This is what I made, it is a hodge podge of things we saw on the road that day.


Hmmm, it needs some background color, doesn't it.

One of the paintings I liked best on this visit was called Moth Prayer. (Look at what is on her skirt. And I loved the snails around the border.) It was in an exhibit called Voces Latinas displaying work on paper in the comtemporary Latino culture. I really should have made a list of the other artist's names on pieces I found intriguing so I could have looked them up later online. Oh well.

I ordered a book from our inter-library loan program called Celebrate your Creative Self. I thought it was going to be an inspirational jumpstart sort of book. Instead it's more of an art class on painting techniques. Some of it I already know, although it's never a bad idea to play with the basics. Some of it is new to me. I could spend years just working with new medium ideas from their how-to exercises but alas, I only have the book for a few more days before it needs to be returned.

Do any of you have any suggestions for inspirational books? I'd still like to find something like that.

And speaking of books, I saw this one at both bookstores we visited during our one day vacation. It's called Artist Trading Card Worshop by Bernie Berlin. Hmmm, the Amazon link is waaaaaay to long to share.... but wait! She has a blog! Visit her there and you can click on her book in the sidebar. I really have to get my own blog sidebars updated, they are practically useless now. I've found a bunch of great new art and photo blogs recently but here I am hiding them in my private bookmarks instead of sharing them with you. Sigh. My to-do list gets longer instead of shorter every day.

I told you I'd get some photos of of what I've been working on in the studio. Here are some more of the blue/green Ohio Stars I've been working on. I put them all together here with the ones I already showed you so, two sets you've seen before, three sets are new. Not a very good photo as I had to use a flash and it washed out the colors. And just for the record, that dark spot on the floor isn't dirt, it's a permanent stain left over from when this was a teenager's den of who-knows-what activities. I'm thinking I like them on point like this


This is my sewing machine table. You can see another project I'm working on in the middle of it, my first attempt at making a doll without a pattern. This is about as much as I can bring myself to show it to you. I'm just winging it, it's not coming out the way I expected, and I've changed directions on the details I want to add three times already. I don't like the beginning of the learning curve, it's painful for me to struggle through that whole "reinventing the wheel" bit - but I decided if I didn't jump in, I'd never get past it to the funner part. (Funner?)


The last thing I've been working on has been cutting out floral blocks. I've accumulated quite a pile of strips.


And here are the blocks themselves. To the left are two sets of ten blocks each, one set of light prints, a second set of dark prints. All florals. To the left are two more sets of ten light prints each and two more sets of ten dark prints each. Sixty prints in all. I was going to spread them all out for you to see but after doing two sets I decided that was too much work. You'll have to be surprised at all the different prints I've used. There are no duplicates.


I keep changing my mind on what to do with these blocks as well. They're currently 9" squares. Originally I was going to just make a simple charm quilt out of smaller charms, maybe 6" each. Then I decided I liked the softness of the floral prints combined with the sharpness of triangles, so I cut the charms larger so I could cut them into half square triangle blocks or hourglass blocks.

Then tonight I looked at them and thought maybe it'd be more fun to do a mix and match "crazy quilt" block. I don't know the name of the technique but basically you carefully line up a stack of blocks, not too many, just enough so you can still rotary cut through them. Cut through them in wonky and somewhat random directions. Then mix and match the prints with each other and sew them back together so that each block looks like a crazy quilt block. Do the same with the next stack. And so on. Anyone know a name or website that shows this type of project?

I've been working in the studio all this last week - yes I have! But I don't have anything to show you yet as all my projects are "in process". I could show you bits of cut out this or that, but it might be pretty boring. Better to wait until things are at least recognizable as something. Photos are forthcoming, I promise.

In the meantime, I've also been on a photo taking kick, for the sheer pleasure of taking photos. I've been going on long walks and bringing my camera. Even when a busy schedule or cold and wind has made me forego the walking, I've found no end of interesting scenes that have compelled me to pull over to the side of the road and "click".

A lot of what I've been photographing is junk. I mean, literally, junk. Junk has always fascinated me. Big junk, little junk, junk shops, junk yards, little junk found on the sidewalk (for some inexplicable reason when I was in Edinburgh I kept finding pearl buttons on the sidewalk), collectible junk, "mhhhmmmm, what-can-I-make-out-of-THAT" junk. Here is some of the junk I've photographed in the last few weeks.

I certainly don't think people should be abandoning vehicles willy nilly, but sometimes, when an old truck or car has been left long enough - covered in vines, rusting in the desert like old bones, it becomes part of a place. These long abandoned vehicles look like old dinosaurs exposed in the layered time of the river's embankment.


Just an old bumper, but to me, here it looks like the fin of an old whale, flung against the sky.

Old metal boxes - I simply liked the muted block of colors.


An old hubcap? Or a giant button sewn into the tree?

How many ghosts, memories, shadows, conversations, stories did this bus pick up on it's journey before being forgotten by all but field mice and curious photographers?


Old treasures found and lined up to catch the evening sun. From the outside, they're dusty bottles in a window. From inside looking out, I bet they sparkle like stained glass.


Just a cut off piece of plastic piping in the gutter, the red color makes it the most interesting object on the road. I kicked it down the street for three blocks and then hung it over a picket on my front yard fence.

I'm obviously not the only person who is enamored of junk. Think of shoe trees and muffler men, gardens full of old toilets and bed frames. Junk is not only interesting in it's own "evironment" (if it wasn't for junk, cultural archeologists would have a much tougher time trying to work out the lives of ancient peoples), but people like to transform junk into all sorts of things, including art.

I went in search of a few junk websites and discovered I'd lost an entire afternoon following a trail of junk through the internet. If you're interested in taking a cyber-hike of your own, you'll have no lack of paths to investigate, but here's a few links just to get you started.

Steve Oatway, Junk Artist - I like the way you click on each door to view his galleries.

Here's a short article that captures the feel and appeal (at least to me) of entering a junk store.

And here's a fascinating site where you can pic and choose what kind of junk you want to look at!

This isn't all junk, but a lot of these folk art shrines and creations started with someone's love of junk. Check out the Cathedral of Junk.

I haven't been back in the studio since my last post, but I have been taking a lot of photographs. It compliments the walking I've been trying to find time for lately. In the long gray pre-spring period we have here in the mountains, it helps to get outside even if the weather isn't luring one out.

I have too many photos to show them all, so I decided to narrow it down and show you only those with a "green theme" today. There's not a whole lot of green in nature itself yet, so the green in other things calls to me.

Will it be..... Door No. 1? Door No. 2? or.... Door No. 3?! Wasn't that from the old Price is Right show?


This turquoise could go blue or green. Let's call it green here.


Show turquoise with moss green and it reads more blue.


I fell in love with these old green doors.


I could have gone through my older photos and found a zillion green images in shots of summer gardens or nature. Maybe I'll make one of those flicker composite photos some day with a green theme. Maybe I'll work my way through the color wheel. The other day I was driving around in the rain noticing red too. And on one recent walk I subconsciously took all yellow photos.

Not only do I want to print out a few of these photos as they are, I'd like to use them as the basis for some collage work. I tried to work on that the other day and found it too frustrating to do on the computer with only Appleworks for cutting and pasting. I've got a CD for Photo Shop, just don't know if I should fill up my laptop memory with such a large piece of software, and our other computer and the desk space it occupies, are both in such desperate need of housecleaning that I don't even want to go over in that vicinity for fear of a paper avalanche or a monitor crash. Hubby has taken it over and I don't even know my way around it anymore.

Anyway, for now, I've decided what I really want is the experience of doing it the "old fashioned" way, with paper and scissors and glue. So that takes me back to decluttering and organizing again so I can have all my materials in one place. I did work on gathering them up a bit the other day. To quote Bill Murray's character in What About Bob? - "Baby steps."

In the meantime, anyone else want to take a shot at a green post on their blog? I'm sure it's not an original idea, someone must have suggested it before, I just haven't bumped into it anywhere. Maybe you can up the difficulty factor and not use any plant images for your green. Is Kermit right? It's not easy being green? I bet Elphaba would agree. Okay, so I cheated with that one moss picture. Maybe I'll do green again some day. If you do a Green Theme post, leave a comment letting me know so I can come see it.

Three nights in a row! I worked in the studio three nights in a row! How cool is that!

I sewed these last night for a group project.


And I cut these out last night and sewed them tonight. Two more for my blue and green quilts.

I also cut out three more sets of blue and green blocks. Maybe not the most fascinating quilt blocks in the world, but the fabrics are pretty and at least I'm sewing, so bear with me please. I'll awe you with more pics of those when I get them sewn up.

My studio has been out of reach for months. First there were the holidays, guests. My studio is also the guest room. Then my daughter and her three kids were camped out in there. Three children equals LOTS OF STUFF - so even if there had been time to hide away, everything was hidden under diapers, suitcases, portacribs and futons. She's been gone for several weeks now, but I finally, last night, dug out from underneath the flotsam and jetsam of visitors, and set up my table, sewing machine, and cutting board.

The set up took most of the Grammy Award Show. But I did manage to finally get a small thing done. These two Ohio Star blocks, which I've had cut out since.... August!? Yes, it was August because I cut them out while my daughter-in-law was up visiting and that was August. Geeze, I thought it had only been since last autumn. It was last SUMMER! Cripes!

Anyway, here ya go. They're pretty. Very traditional. A few years ago I fell in love with several floral blue and green prints and I immediately knew I wanted to do a traditional Ohio Star quilt in scrappy blue and greens for our bed. Let's not discuss the fact that the very first quilt top I ever made, is still languishing unfinished (I thought it would be fun to hand quilt it) in a bag in my closet.


I'll show you new blocks as I make them. There will be two of each block, to make two identical quilts - or maybe not completely identical, but similar - because I have a SECRET PROJECT planned for the second quilt. We'll see if I ever manage to finish even one quilt.

I might go work on something else. Maybe not even a fabric something else. I've been itching to do something creative for about a week or so now. Every time I got excited about starting something, I remembered that all my supplies were inaccessible or stored in a really, really, really cold room. That was usually enough to make me decide to get a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie instead.

But the other problem was although I was enthused about creating something, I was, still am, completely confused as to what that something should be! I have a half dozen different projects that appeal to me at the moment, but they all require me to take off in different directions.

I'm gonna go do something now. Creative. Not sure what it will be even as I go walk off to do it. But whatever it is, better then standing here at the crossroads any longer.