Thankful

I am so grateful for the abundance found in small things....my daughter's bright smile...this pile of apples gathered from our tree...enough for pie to complete tonight's dinner with friends. It is Thanksgiving Day and gratitude is in the air and definitely on my mind. And so I thought I would share a few resources on that topic here.

• The Arts and Healing Network's current issue of AHN News is dedicated to gratitude and includes a review of CD set by Angeles Arrien on Gratitude which has touched me deeply -- her use of storytelling is captivating.
• Jennifer Lee's recent e-newsletter was also full of gratitude resources including this iPhone App for tracking gratitude and this great web site.
  
• Christine Carter has a great blog post about inspiring Gratitude within families and teaching it to children. I love some of the ideas she has for creating gratitude calendars and using photographs to honor people.
• Shopping at the Paper Source yesterday, I saw that Chronicle Books has published a new Gratitude Journal - a nice way to track daily one's thankful moments.

Wishing

I just completed my piece for the Bolinas Museum's 21st Annual Miniatures Exhibition. I love the scale of this show - everything is 6 x 6 x 6" or smaller. It's for a good cause - 50% of all sales go to support the museum which is a charming space in West Marin for gathering art and creative people.

The piece here is titled Wishing and is 6 x 6" framed. Lately I am really interested in how art can be used to capture one's wishes, hopes, and aspirations and anchor them in a concrete, visual way that makes the wishes more likely to come true. It is a theme that resonates throughout my series Milagros and is likely to continue in future work of mine.

You could see my piece in person at the Bolinas Musuem from November 21-January 3, 2009 at 48 Wharf Road, Bolinas, CA. For more information, visit www.bolinasmuseum.org.

Above My Desk

I spent some time this week re-doing my bulletin boards – making sure that all the images and quotes above my workspace best match what I need for inspiration at this time. In the center is lots of bright white space for new items as I find them. Now I can look up while I am working and see…

• My daughter’s inked footprints at around 3 months old
• A photo of the ocean I took just north of Muir Beach
• A CREATE necklace by Kelly Rae Roberts
• An image of butterflies nailed to a wall by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison
• A photograph of me around age 5 making art in my dad’s studio
• An old rusted door hinge that feels like a portal to me
• The sign language alphabet spelled out in hands
• A Joseph Cornell puzzle and a Frida Kahlo puzzle produced by SFMOMA
  
• Key words like GENEROSITY printed in red ink by the Paper Source
• Several poems including the following one by Rumi

You’re a song, a wished for song.
Go through the ear to the center
Where sky is, where wine, where silent knowing
Put seeds and cover them.
Blades will sprout where you do your work.

• And this quote by Agnes de Mille

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never really knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”