Friday, November 13, 2009

Love is the Movement!

Today is "To Write Love On Her Arms" Day.

For those of you that don't know what TWLOHA's is...

twloha.com

Today is basically about writing the word love on your arm. Writing it to promote awareness about things such as self injury, addiction, depression, and suicide - specifically within the teenage years. (As I think this is where it is most often not taken very lightly. - you know, hormones.) But also acknowledging that these are things people won't grow out of. That people much older than their teens suffer. They fight these things ever single day.

So writing love on your arm not only promotes awareness and conversation about difficult subjects. It's also there as a sign of support. A sign that someone cares about you when depression, addiction, self injury, and thoughts of suicide make it so difficult to believe that could be true.

Love is the movement.
Rescue is possible.

You are never alone.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Art and Meditation

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. to them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… they must create, must pour out creation. by some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating… I must create.”

-Pearl Buck

This is me. Hands down. Overly sensitive and what might seem to others as overly dramatic. I had a difficult time watching The Day After Tomorrow yesterday because watching all of those people die made my stomach feel really heavy.

I've joined a prayer and meditation group that meets on Tues. It's been going really well, and I'm really enjoying it. I was raised Catholic and so I've always had a religious prayer oriented lifestyle. But I've always been one of the more "open" Catholics if that doesn't seem like too much of a contradiction. (I personally wouldn't say it is... as I know plenty.)

And while I was living in Germany, my yoga teacher was my best friend. She was still in yoga classes at her local ashram and sometimes I would go there with her. It was a very interesting experience in Hinduism. And a bit of Buddhism. Meditation classes. Yoga practices. Prayers to the gods and "gifts" of fruit.

But I've never had the two cross over until this group I've joined. It's been wonderful.

We're reading and discussing this book - Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault.
I'm adoring it because it's bringing together my faiths? Ha. Things that I already knew were tied, but there's something to be said about validation in printed form, even if it is just someone else's opinion.

Which brings me to the next topic. Chapter 5. The main point of chapter 5 is to reinforce the fact that while meditating in centering prayer you're not suppose to look for anything divine. You're not suppose to look or even have any miraculous events happen. As the entire practice is about letting go.

But it goes into a part about how imagination and the devil are linked. And how monks use to fill their days with meditation and prayers so that the devil could not sneak in through the imagination.

For some reason this has bothered me more than it should.

Perhaps they speak of "imagination" in a different way than I do. I've never in my entire life viewed my imagination, my creativity as a bad thing. So it's been a bit unnerving to know that others might. I'm getting more use to the idea. I don't need approval from everyone. (but wouldn't it be nice if that were a possibility.) The more I think about it the more I realize there have always been people against the arts. Harry Potter, for example. I suppose the people who oppose Harry Potter and think that the imagination that led it is the devil's work are the same people that would denounce creativity all together.

It's been a difficult pill for me to swallow. Which is also silly because the prayer and meditation group is all about letting go. Instead I find myself throwing up walls and being defensive.

Silly.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

November 10th, 2009

Art Every Day Month

Note to self - colored pencils in a collage journal = ick.
I may go back through with some acrylic.

Unfinished.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

November 7th, 2009

Art Every Day Month

Novemeber 6th, 2009

Art Every Month Day.

Another unfinished sketchbook page.

Excuse the bad photo, for some reason the computer our scanner is connected to isn't working.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

November 4th, 2009




Art Every Day Month - It was a beautiful Day to play outside and take pictures.

November 3rd, 2009


Art Every Day Month, Black Butterflies Book Pg. 53 & 54 - Unfinished.
(I already skipped a day - November 2nd. but I had creative thoughts...)

"You know that I could use somebody..."

So the plan is to send around a traveling journal. Having different artist doing different pages. And then when it's completed, posted - some how, some where.

(I've always wanted a website where there was a bookcase sort of thing, and you could select the "book" you wanted and the pages would turn, ect... As close as you could get to actually looking through my books on the computer. So maybe I'll put that in motion once with is finished so that I have a place worthy enough to share the work of others. I just know nothing about website design. Maybe I'll make an art trade with someone who's willing to help in that department.)

Anyway - I'm looking for people who are willing to participate. I say willing because unfortunately there are a few requirements.

1. I want you to be honest with yourself that you'll have the time, motivation or inspiration to do a page. I'm thinking a two week max in any one place. If nothing happens in a 2 week span - that's completely okay. Things come up, but I'll ask that you pass the book along so that others have a shot.

2. There's a bit of a financial factor, as I won't be able to provide funds to mail it each and every time. So when you're finished I'll need you to mail it on to the next person on the list. I'm going to collect addresses ahead of time and move it around in a way that hopefully the financial burden won't be great, but there is a chance that you might be asked to mail it to a different country.

Other than those two things -

The idea behind the book is a game of telephone. Have you ever played that game as a child? You sit in a circle and one person starts by whispering something in the ear of the person sitting next to them, and that person whispers what they heard to the next person and so on.

The last person in the circle says what they think they heard out loud and most of the time - it comes out completely different than the original phrase.

The book will work in the same way. I'm starting by doing a page. The next person will get the book and create something "inspired" by what I did. And so on. THERE ARE NO REQUIREMENTS ON WHAT YOU DO.

Writing a story, poetry, drawing something, collage, music... (I would LOVE it if someone that was into music joined this. They could write something inspired by whatever the person before them did - and then record it, burn it to a CD - it wouldn't have to be CD quality or anything... then the next person would create something inspired by the music. It would be lovely.) ANYTHING.

The only restriction is that it fit on a two page spread of a 8x10 spiral bound journal.

If you want to participate... send me an e-mail at JFordham84@gmail.com your name and address. Depending on how many people are interested I'm going to get this going pretty soon here. Any questions, feel free to ask!

Thanks for reading. <3

"I've been roaming around
Always looking down at all I see
Painted faces, fill the places I can't reach"

A little rant on boobs...

Liberty Leading the People, 1830,
Eugene Delacroix, (1798-1863), French

This is just going to be a small little rant regarding censorship on breasts.

I briefly thought about putting a maturity filter warning on my last submission to Deviantart. (It was Page 58.) After all there *is* nudity in the piece. But I dismissed the idea because I thought that was silly. It was just boobs. With no sexual content. Nothing obscene and nothing unnatural - just a pair of boobs.

But - to my surprise I did get reported and the setting was changed.

And I'm not upset or disappointed about that. I'm on the site and I will willing follow their rules because that's what I agreed to when I made the page.

I guess I'm just saddened by the idea that it's not okay for breasts to be exposed.

I think it takes me back to my breastfeeding in public days.

I was one of those women that was going to breastfeed where ever I was. I was not going to make my child scream and cry and wait until we got home. And I CERTAINLY wasn't going to go to some disgustingly dirty bathroom to feed my child.

The only exceptions I made were for male friends and family.

But if you were a stranger... I didn't care.
At that point breasts were not a sexual thing. They were a functional thing. And I was relatively discrete not that I felt I should have to be.

I fed on planes, restaurants, malls, and parks...

And I actually did run into people that asked me to stop. Or go somewhere else.
Once I was in a mall women's bathroom - they had a nice little sitting area with couches and a table... you know the type? I had a lady who worked there come in and ask me to use a stall.

How horrible is that?

I guess I just don't understand where this fear comes from? If you happen to sit on the opposite side of this view, please... explain this to me. I promise I'm a very open person and I will do my best to understand where you are coming from with nothing but respect for your opinion and views.

So...
Yeah...
Go boobs!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Novemeber 1, 2009


Black Butterflies, Page 55

Art Every Day Month!

So I've decided to see if I can keep up with "Art Every Day Month".

I should be putting something up everyday.
Ideally, I'd love to be able to complete a sketchbook page a day, but that's not realistic for where I am at the moment. So it might be unfinished work that progressively gets finished as the days go by. It might be writing. It might be a bigger piece. (I'd like to start doing those more often.)

So we'll see what happens. And if I can keep up.