Working on The Art Prescription Kit!! My neighbor Jane Schroeder who is a photographer came over today to take some action shots. Like each new project there will be many kinks to work out, but it was fun playing with Art Prescription ideas and fumbling around with a few that just didn’t work. My haiku today comes from one of the nature projects: Take a walk and pick up 3 things from nature. Sketch and/or journal.
Purple blue pansies
And green vinca grow while sweet
Gum balls litter earth.
Cloudy, yawn, bummer
The full moon hides behind cold
Still my spell is cast.
I started writing a haiku a day on January 5th. And because I want to have a sense of full circle, I’m backtracking with 4 haikus. So at the end of 2012 I’ll have 325 haikus!!
Haiku January 1
Spring comes creeping in
Like a cat sneaking up on
Winter’s cool grey skies.
Haiku January 2
I love the way these
Wood floors creak waking up my
Early morning house.
Haiku January 3
Candy cotton pink
Chases the sun down while birds
Sing twilight ballads.
Haiku January 4
The bushy squirrels
Did squeak and squawk until they
Met soft nose to nose.
Art Prescription: Sometimes you need to go full circle! Now I feel complete to continue.
To change is to move
Forward one step at a time
Leave behind the void.
Here is a collage I started today. Right now it’s too busy and I’m struggling with scraping it, which means painting over it completely, or walking away and getting a fresh perspective tomorrow.
Art Prescription: Change is hard. Sometimes we don’t know what we need to change in our lives. Often we get subtle clues and if we choose to pay attention we can move forward. Did you make a new year’s resolution? How’s it going?
Alone I stand here
With all the smiling faces
Longing for routine
Cold nose comfort and
Biscuit making purring fill
The tired, empty.
Five days into the new year, and I’d like to start some sort of create-a-day venture. I enjoyed my Tree-A-Day holiday countdown, and my trees were featured in several Etsy Treasuries. Of late both Sam and I have been writing haikus and leaving them for each other at night and in the morning.
I know a lot of my friends like to write haikus, so if the well is dry I’d like to feature guest writers.
Painted Sky
Fragile is a day
Sun slips bashful glow pink red
Moon boasting yellow
(bev)
Sam’s haiku
Moon shining brightly
In the midnight blue sky of
Cool January.
I’m working diligently on the “Art Prescription Kit.” This seems like a good exercise to add!
Art Prescription: Take a walk at dusk. Admire the sky as the sun goes down and the moon comes up. Write about it…a haiku or any other feelings this evokes.
To celebrate Christmas Day 2011 I’d like to share some of my favorite quotes that reflect the spirit of Christmas past, present, and future. Peace and joy to you!
“For each one of us, there is a desert to travel. A star to discover. And a being within ourselves to bring to life.”
-Author Unknown
“There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
-Edith Wharton
“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
-Bod Dylan
“Sometimes, if you aren’t sure about something, you have to just jump off the bridge and grow wings on your way down”
-Danielle Steel
“At Christmas I no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May’s newfangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows.”
-William Shakespeare
“Opinion is a flitting thing, But Truth, outlasts the Sun – If then we cannot own them both- Possess the oldest one-”
-Emily Dickinson
“O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!”
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Art Prescription: “Let It Be.”
-John Lennon
Do you feel like crawling back into bed with something warm – a cup of tea or a cat? Holiday bedazzlement getting to you? Well you are normal. You are experiencing the yin of winter, and tomorrow (December 22, 2011) marks the most yin day of the year, the Winter Solstice. Yin is slow, feminine, and quiet. Look how well nature does yin, resting for a new beginning in spring.
Don’t despair this is time for celebration! The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the longest night. But now the glorious sun will begin to return day by day. This time of the year celebrated throughout history and across cultures, is time for quiet contemplation and renewal.
Painting is a great yin activity. In Chinese culture on the Winter Solstice, families would hang an unfinished painting of a plum tree and 81 uncolored flowers. Each day one flower is painted, and once the indoor blooms are complete the early buds appear outside.
Art Prescription: Find a yin activity that brings you peace. Get quiet and warm.
To celebrate Winter Solstice I am painting a tree a day – holiday countdown. And maybe I’ll start a plum tree with 81 blossoms!!
I love this editorial response to young Virginia’s question, “Is there a Santa Claus?”
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be [grown-ups] or children’s are little.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!…The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor [grown-ups] can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest [grown-up]…that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view…the beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else so real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Art Prescription: Read that again!!!!
art prescription 