The Wolf is Here!

I am so excited to share that The Wolf Who Ate the Sky has been published by Heyday Books! 

When my daughter Anna was 3.5 years old, we created this story during car rides to and from preschool. In telling it again and again, it grew into the story that is now in this book. My father, artist Charles Hobson, did a fabulous job illustrating and designing it. This 3-generation project is now on Amazon, heydaybooks.com, and in local bookstores. Signed copies will also be at my next Open Studio on April 25 & 26 in Muir Beach.

Here is a taste of the plot: "A very hungry wolf eats the sky, plunging the whole world into darkness, but a brave boy and a menagerie of animals are determined to bring back the light."  

To learn more about the book and the illustrations in it, please visit Charles Hobson's web site.

Below is a very sweet video of Anna at 3.5 years old telling a version of the story. Enjoy!

New Year, New Life

We celebrated the arrival of 2011 with the birth of our second daughter - Jessica Ann - born on January 2. Since then we have been living in that tender space of nurturing a newborn - not much sleep, but lots of grace. I love how well Andrea Sher describes this time in this quote from her blog, The Superhero Journal...

"There is a way that birth opens you up, not only physically but in other ways too. This birth cracked me open, not in a traumatic way, but in the sense that I am more open now than I have been in a long time. The feeling that this is a window of opportunity is almost palpable-- a crack letting more light in, more love, and more healing than I ever could have imagined. I am treading lightly with it, not wanting this window to close, wanting to be as conscious as I can to take advantage of all this moment has to give. I almost don't want to say too much about it, just to acknowledge that this time feels sacred and fleeting, and that the possibility of miracles feels unbearably close."

Art Everyday Month Starts Today

November 1st marks the beginning of Art of Everyday Month! I have never participated before, but was intrigued this year after listening to Leah Piken Kolidas, the founder of Art Everyday Month in an interview with Britt Bravo for the Arts & Healing Podcast. The premise is fairly straightforward - do something creative everyday for the month of November - no matter how small or what the form. It need not be serious Art with a capital A, but rather any creative process you choose. For example, one woman kept it simple and purchased an itty-bitty sketch book and put at least one line on a page per day.

If you like, you can share the resulting art online. Leah offers options to sign up on her web site as a participant, to share your daily art on a Flickr page, or to track your journey on your blog. You can also make it a private commitment and just work away at it knowing that many others out there are engaged in the same practice this month. If you get stuck, Leah has a great advice in the her "Art Everyday Month Survival Kit."

For me, my life is so full right now that finding the space to be creative has been challenging. I am taking inspiration from Art Everyday Month to add some little doses of creative expression into my life. The first step today was to set up some art supplies (pictured here) in my sun room where my daughter and I could work together, playing with colored paper, scissors, glue, and more.

Inspiration from the Open Studio

My Open Studio earlier this month was one of my favorite I have ever done. The weather was warm and bright. There was a steady stream of almost 100 terrific folks who inspired me with their interest and appreciation of my work. Above all, having the Open Studio at my home studio in Muir Beach allowed me to integrate my home/family life with my art/professional life. My mother signed her books on the deck. My daughter played and laughed in the yard with the other young children. My neighbor sold her wonderful plants. I felt so wrapped in the spirit of community and family in the midst of being a professional artist. It was a magic day for me.

I hope to keep that magic alive by offering another one of these events in October, partnering again with Wendy Johnson and her Dragon's Bend Nursery. I will keep you posted as soon as I know the date - we are thinking late October when the pumpkins and apples are ready for picking.

While preparing for this last open studio, I could feel my creative energy rise. I wanted to share some of that enthusiasm. So I printed up copies of my 11 favorite quotes on the creative process, folded them, stamped them with a red butterfly, placed them in the white basket picture here, and added a note that invited people to select one as a gift of creative inspiration. It was my way to say to visitors that day "thank you for coming and inspiring me to keep going on this exquisite & challenging path of making art, and may you too be inspired to follow your own calling." Many of these quotes I have shared on this blog before. I share one more now...

You’re a song

A wished for song

Go through the ear to the center

Where sky is, where wind, where silent knowing.

Put seeds and cover them.

Blades will sprout where you do your work.

-Rumi

October Open Studio

Anna helped me deliver my piece, Sanctuary #2 (in the center of this photo), to the annual San Francisco Open Studios exhibition at SOMArts Main Gallery. This show features work by all the artists participating the in the city-wide annual open studios event sponsored by Artspan. Each weekend is dedicated to different neighborhoods where artists open their doors to the public and share their art and process.

I am getting my studio ready for the weekend of October 16-18. This time in addition to a wide assortment of my work from the past ten years, there will also be trade edition books by my father, Charles Hobson, and a chance to view recent publications that include my work, like The Map As Art and Mapping the Journey. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area it would be great to have you stop by.

OPEN STUDIO
Reception: Friday, October 16, 5-7pm
Saturday & Sunday, October 17-18, open 11am-6pm
3069 Washington Street (at Baker), San Francisco, CA

Lost

I have been feeling rather lost lately – my mind scattered by the unpredictable rhythms of new motherhood and the attempt to pursue (perhaps too much of) what I did before I had a baby. Today I found myself a quiet moment under our apple tree, on a blanket with my daughter who takes endless delight in staring at light filtering through tree branches. A poem I memorized years ago floated back into my mind and gave me comfort.

LOST
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

-David Wagoner
(published in David Whyte’s The House of Belonging)

Preparing for Open Studios

I had a helper in the studio yesterday - Anna kept me company as I hung and labeled artwork, cooing her enthusiasm. My next Open Studio is just a week away - see details below. This one is part of the city-wide event sponsored by Artspan. I love the idea that just as I was at work in my studio yesterday, so are countless artists throughout San Francisco - all of us polishing our work spaces for this big event. It would be wonderful to have you stop by and say hello if you are in the area.

OPEN STUDIO
Saturday and Sunday, October 11-12
11am-6pm (or by appointment)
3069 Washington Street (at Baker), 415-939-5842

Gifts of Art and Advice from Kay Bradner

Kay Bradner came to visit when my daughter Anna was five weeks old. She brought with her a copper plate and etching tools in order to make a portrait of Anna as a gift for us. I was so touched by her thoughtfulness. The true gift she gave me that evening was the way she demonstrated living in the world as an artist. At the time, I was (and still continue) to be very sleep-deprived and all of my creative resources had been channeled into parenting. So Kay drawing Anna was an especially sweet gift – both honoring my daughter at five weeks old and reminding me of my own creativity.

Kay is a wonderful painter and printmaker who has raised an equally creative daughter. That night I asked Kay for advice about being both an artist and a mother. Kay shared how over twenty years ago when Claire was born, Kay was a single parent running a printmaking studio out of her home. Each day there were about eight people who arrived to work with her there. She would just slip Claire as a newborn into the front part of her apron and carry on her business. She even taught a workshop with Claire sitting in a bouncy chair. She says she did all this out of necessity – there was no option to stop working. As an artist mom, she gave me this advice…

1. Find creative projects that can be done in very small intervals of time. Long, sustained periods of concentration are impossible to come by in the beginning – but anything that can be done in small snippets of time can be really rewarding.
2. More than ever it is important to make art that fills you back up, so that you are replenished by your art endeavors and can bring that energy into parenting. Have fun.
   
3. It’s really ok to step away from an art career for a long stretch time. It will always be there to return to. But your child will never be such a youngster ever again. Give yourself permission to take as long as you need to get back to your artwork.

Stretching into Uncharted Territory

I have been deep in the initiation of new parenthood - a whole new terrain. Eden Steinberg describes this state so well - I share with you here her quote from the book Finding Your Inner Mama.

“A few weeks after I gave birth to my first child, in the thick of my exhaution, worrying whether I was doing everything right, whether or not my baby would live through the night, I realized something. I realized that if I was going to survive this thing. I was going to have to grow and change. First of all, I was going to have to let go of a lot of things I felt entitled to: uninterrupted sleep, things going as planned, a feeling of being in command, the master of my circumstances. I also saw that I was ultimately going to have to let go of my very self concept, my idea of motherhood, and my expectations of my child. All of it had to go.

The idea of shedding these burdens was exciting. The thought itself was a relief. And it suddenly dawned on me that my whole concept of motherhood had been wrong. I thought that as a mother I would carefully mold and shape my children. If I did my job right, they would turn out to be well–adjusted, loving, thoughtful and interesting people. As it turns out, motherhood is molding and shaping me. At the end of all this, I am the one who could end up well-adjusted, loving, thoughtful and interesting.”

(Image: Evocation #008, from the series Evocations, ©2007)

Anna Isabel

I have been swimming in the sea of new motherhood and am finally surfacing just enough to write this post and share the news that my daughter, Anna Isabel, was born on May 11 (Mother’s Day). Time has had a whole new rhythm since she has arrived – it has become so fluid it pours through my fingers most days. I look at the date of my last blog post and am stunned that it has taken two months to write again here. Those days have been filled with nursing, rocking, walking, sleepless nights, and napping days as well as a whole new understanding of my body as the source for another being’s life. I know later, when I can find sustained time in the studio, this new awareness will fertilize new artwork. For now, I surrender to this experience one moment at a time.