Finding Focus, Again!

I recently started a 6 month business coaching group, and we are working on our ‘brand’, and coming up with a version of the ‘elevator speech’. Great, this will be awesome, and so helpful which is immediately followed by the question of ‘which business?” This reminded my of a couple of art pieces I did five years ago, so here’s the story on those.

Income quilt – This piece started from the idea of piecing together an income like a quilt. I had gotten to the point of adding the threads to the piece. My first plan was to use all nine colors of threads and connect each color in a zigzag back to the base color. As you can see below, that didn’t work. It was insanely chaotic.

I tried four more ideas, none of those were going to work either.

     

    

 

 

 

 

 

  By this time I realized this idea wasn’t working in my life as well. There were too many different things, no focus, no cohesion. I needed to get back to my focus, ceremonial cloths and my connection to spirit. I needed to let some things go, and for the piece that meant to leave some of the pins and pieces unconnected. I thought about starting over, decided that this was a transitional piece, and it had become about Finding Focus, which is now it’s title.

Finding Focus — Painted jigsaw puzzle, pins, threads, wire, beads, 20” x 16”, © 2013

While I was finishing that piece, I had the idea for the Path to Avodat ha’Lev, which means the work of the heart.

Path to Avodat Ha’Lev, The Work of the Heart

Path to Avodat Ha’Lev, The Work of the Heart

The gold and silver puzzle pieces represent Spirit. The twisted threads are following the path created by Spirit into the center. As you follow the path inward, colors are left behind, it becomes simpler, more harmonious. And in the center is weaving, a web, the web of life and a heart. Spiritual weaving, the work of my heart. A few months after finishing this piece I finally had the courage to tell someone “I make sacred cloth”.

Now I get to figure out how to distill all of this into a marketing message for my business.

For anyone who was following my “Art Story”, this post skips ahead in the timeline by almost 3 years from the last installment which was published in Jan. 2014. Sigh…

Happy Jewish New Year

Happy Jewish New Year everyone.

Detail of Path to Avodat ha'Lev, the Work of the Heart.

Detail of Path to Avodat ha’Lev, the Work of the Heart.

My wish for the new moon, new month and new year: May it bring Peace, Prosperity, and Loving Relationships based in pure heart desire and intention for the highest good of all. And may we each find our way to the work of our hearts.
Shana Tova (a good year) Blessings to all.

Mind the Spirals

Tiny Tales posterI was very pleased to be invited to participate in this show, the second creative challenge sponsored by Seattle Handmade. “Tiny Tales and Small Stories” is at Stunningly Strange Gallery, 407 Main Street, Edmonds, WA. You can go see this great little show for about one more week, until Sept. 17, 2014.

The challenge was to create a piece of artwork that was no more than 6” in any direction and it had to be accompanied by an original story of 200 words or less. My first couple of ideas weren’t going anywhere, I couldn’t find the materials I wanted, they wanted to be bigger than 6”, no story to go with them, hmm… now what? I had been ruminating on my swirly thinking, and the beginning of this story came to me. Ah… here was an idea, and a visual in my head to go with it! So here it is:

Mind-the-Spirals_P11_webMind-the-Spirals-Detail44_webMind the Spirals
Her mind swirled leaping from one thing to the next. Landing in one spot and staying only a short while before the next place called her on. At times she felt like a squirrel randomly leaping from branch to branch, her thoughts leaving a trail of mental bread crumbs.

She traveled the multi-verse, looking for connections between the random pieces she Mind-the-Spirals-Detail25_webfound, and then it came to her. She was a Time Lord, like the good Doctor. Who?

Materials: Painted plywood base, acrylic paint, copper wire, jigsaw puzzle pieces, thread, scale model figures at 1:100 scale. Notes: The scale figures were white, I liked the paint job I was able to do and they are between 5/8″ and 3/4″ tall. The base is 6″ x 6″, and overall it’s about 5″ tall.Mind-the-Spirals_P31_web