finally

Staying Present (7 - 15 - 06)

I've been making collages for years and years. I was inspired by an old old friend who, like me, was born in the Year of the Dragon. She had a dragon tattoo and was a practicing Buddhist. She taught me the art of the treasure map...like a stream of consciousness journal entry, you flip through magazines snipping without thought. You converge the images and then step back. Sometimes it's even better to put it aside for awhile. Then you take a really good look and you notice things.

Very often a theme emerges. In the image above, the Buddha came before I actually found his counterpart in a nearby thrift store. Santa brought the doll house. And is that me and the Princess in Hawaii this past December?

Believe In Magic (10 - 13 - 05)

Or one can work more mindfully, purposefully choosing images that represent what you want to manifest. Here I've encapsuled a healthful lifestyle, more playfullness, self - care. An added benefit was the spinning wheel that later emerged in an updated version, and the sweet soft yarn then produced.

A tribute to the power of the mind, it's a ritual and an art combined. I keep these snippets of my life in a spiral bound notebook. I used to use random canvases, mostly old cereal boxes and such...these proved too difficult to manage, and I always ended up burning them. A shame really, as they truly seemed to become mile markers of what was going on, or would happen. A sort of visual diary of the esoteric kind.

Not unlike blogging I suppose.