The flood's intention.

So. In the area of progress, the winter has brought distraction, and opportunities to reconfigure.

Work that resides inside me was shown in parallel, when driving with a winter full moon.  By myself, I remembered: music still allows me to separate from the internal environment. 

How could I have forgotten, from yesterday, when I danced in the kitchen?

Here, the work is done for me. Floods in. Fills. Moves past.

Floods hardly stay in one place. Never for a cup of for tea, rather at its own pace and desire. Oh, convince me to live otherwise, for I am not so easy to sway. If only for 3 and a half minutes or so.    

This is the what.

Maira Kalman for Art Club

Why pick an artist? In my volunteer work with Picture Lab, I think a lot about choosing artists to enlighten a large community. Artists have messages to tell, or maybe I have a message to tell through an artist. You'll never know.  I have the honor of attracting people's attention to those particular topics. 

Given the construct of the women artist, by Art Club, I had a variety of ideas that were rising to the top, until I had a conversation pertaining to my own work. This past summer I had my first show in years at AMO in Waitsburg.  Art has risen to the top of my priority list like sweet cream. The last few years as I settle into my back seat chair at Art Club, I have been experiencing, and exploring this reengagement. After what seems like a great hibernation, and a Quantum leap. I am artist again.

So, when it was asked whom I looked to for inspiration, three artists came up. Kiki Smith, (maybe a future talk). David Shrigley, a dark witty illustrations, and Maira Kalman, a designer first, or is it writer first? or is it painter first....?  An avid producer of the illustrated "snapshot." She has flipped the viewers experience, through "narrative drawing and expressive illustrations." I had only been a viewer, and I needed to delve into what she considers, and the world behind the claim that she, Maira is a life-ist.

Carnegie Picture Lab

Six years ago while working in my garden, I made the radical decision to give the next several years of my life to bring art to the schools. Taking privilege out of art, every child every class, making it accessible to all.  All meaning children and their volunteers, in elementary schools, in Walla Walla.  

Hardly a day goes by when the effort was not considered. How to make the program better, have the volunteers happier or how to best blow the minds of the young and unexposed. Oh and the possibilities are endless, what with partnerships and field trips and books? And then there is the structural work, how to invent a board, a non-profit or a working studio. With parents, many heavily educated adults who had given their attention solely to children, we pulled them out of their comfort zones. Reintroducing the idea of working for all the children, dishes and laundry can wait, we must volunteer for art.  

All of these things have a life of their own now. My bullish ways have been replaced with people who talk politely, interact correctly, expect accordingly, and present outstandingly, all in the honor of art. 

And now although my responsibilities continue, my lioness ways are directed at that which I would beseech others to do. 

Can you believe this phoenix?

http://carnegiepicturelab.com