Greetings From Uncle Sam - July 1941

My Dad in 1940

"Dear Folks,  I got a greeting from Uncle Sam today.  I will have to go into the Army.  I report for duty on July 11th in Sacramento.  I was wondering if you would mind keeping my dogs for me while I am gone.  I have the 10 dogs that I use to pull my sled in the winter.  They are good dogs.  I shouldn't be gone very long.  Please let me know.  "Adios" Vic."

On this Veterans Day - let us pause to remember all the young men past and present who have given up so much - the innocence of not knowing carnage, the nightmares they wished they could forget and for some, their lives.

   We were all born of moral men who never questioned the need to save their world.  Let us hope that we will someday learn that killing is never an answer to anything and will never be an avenue towards Peace.







 
By the way - his dogs chased and killed chickens so there was only one left when he got home.  Grandpa Leonard could only afford so many chickens....He was discharged in June 1945.  He was gone a little longer than he thought.

Either You've Got It Or You Don't

Lillian as a young woman

I've been cleaning house today.  I like it when things are neat and tidy but honestly, I think you are either born with the neat gene or not.  I think I missed the genetic boat on that one try as I might.  I can clean with the best of them (when I get around to it) after all, I had a grandmother who cleaned for sport.  Sport you might ask?  Yes she actually was one of those people who loved to clean.  So when my house gets (ahem) a wee bit out of control, I swear that she shows up, clucking her tongue and chastising me for being so slovenly.  This coming from a woman who actually turned the easy chairs upside down to scrub the springs under the seat and had (lovingly) scrubbed all the gold off of our prized set of World Book Encyclopedias.  I wish I actually cared that much but honestly I don't.  There are too many wonderful projects to work on and chores (besides cleaning) to be done so I clean when I really need to but I never was good at keeping on it all the time.

"Tiger Lill" - The Queen of Clean

Now, my mother couldn't do it either when we were kids although she talked about how clean her mother's house always was and how her job on Saturday mornings was to pull up miles of carpet tacks, take the rugs out, hang them on the line and beat the dust out of them.  I guess she thought that that should inspire me not to complain while dragging an upright vacuum around.  She finally got a handle on her own house after she retired, moved, and gave all of her stuff to Me.  I am still moving a lot of that stuff around because they are family heirlooms and I do cherish them but I'm beginning to think about sending some of it down the path to my kids....

The Place Where Imagination and Spirit Met - part 2

Now, on to the details - or what I consider the "bling" part of the piece.  This picture shows the detail of the face rough-in and the gold leafing on her crown.


The next step is to start drawing in her features, her face, neck and the detailing on her hands.  I did this with special pigmented colored pencils made just for doing skin tones.

Next, I added the gemstones on her crown and necklace.  Her crown has an amethyst surrounded by Swarovski  crystals with another crystal on her forehead.  Her necklace is Malachite and mother of pearl.

In this picture you can see the detail of the lotus flower made of shell.  Her prayer beads are made of mustard seeds to give them added spiritual significance along with Mother of Pearl and another red crystal.  When all the details were added, I finished it off by adding several birds signifying one's request for peace flying off toward heaven.  The the whole piece was sprayed using several coats of lacquer.  My first foray into fine art pictures in veneer.

The Place where Imagination and Spirit Met - part 1

Kuan Yin

When I decided to do something with my Marquetry besides covering hat boxes, I was enamoured with the Goddess Kuan Yin and what she represented.  Kuan Yin is the Buddhist Goddess of Compassion and Mercy.  For many years I thought having compassion for someone meant taking on their problems as my own.  But I found that if I take on someone else's emotional trauma as if it is my own, then I become overwhelmed myself and can't offer up love and support.  I think it goes more like this:

                                                Never give up
                                                No matter what is going on
                                                Never give up
                                                Develop the heart
                                                Too much energy in your country is spent
                                                Developing the mind instead of the heart.

                                                Be compassionate not just to your friends but to everyone
                                                Be compassionate.
                                                Work for peace in your heart and in the world.
                                                Work for peace and I say again
                                                Never give up.
                                                No matter what is happening,
                                                No matter what is going on around you,
                                                Never give up.

                                                                    -His Holiness the Dalai Lama

So what does that have to do with Marquetry or artwork in general?  Sometimes when you begin a project, you have no real idea of how it will go, what the steps will be to get there but you have an idea born of inner sight (imagination) that I believe is my spirit wanting to make what it knows manifest into the physical.  So even if I have never tried to create in that medium, in that way, I know that the way will open to me if I just let it flow through me, never give up, and the answers to potential creative issues will just come when I need them.  Creativity on faith?  I have never doubted the solutions to dilemmas will come.  Art is a reflection of life.

 

 This is where I began this journey.  A simple line drawing.  Once I am happy with that, I transfer the design to a piece of quarter inch plywood using graphite paper.








Then I began by putting in the larger background pieces and blocking in the figure of the Goddess.  The background is done in Rainbow Poplar.  Her veil and kimono trim is purpleheart.  Her kimono is in bleached white Anagre.

Here you can see that I have started putting in the dragon.  The dragon's mane is pear wood.  The main body of the dragon is done in walnut.  Each scale of the dragon was hand cut and then layered on one at a time like making a shingle roof.  I then inlaid a thin band of shell veneer incorporating it into the base of the mane and tail.  I used a different shell veneer to make up the petals of the lotus flower in her hand.

At this point, I added the copper and 24K gold leafing to the sun behind her head and on her crown.

dragon head detail

dragon tail detail

I was having issues with the picture placement so I opted to continue this by dividing it into two parts.  I hope you will continue on by reading part 2.

Spinning My Wheels

Superwash Merino top in dye bath

   "I Plow and Sow (sew) and Reap and Mow and the Usual Sit and Spin..." 
                                                                                    - traditional Celtic folk song

Have you ever been listening to a song for years and then all of a sudden a line hits you right between the eyes? Well that's how I feel about the line from the song, "One Misty Moisty Morning" from the album "Parcel of Rogues" by the British Band, Steeleye Span.  If ever a line from a song described my life to a "T" - that one is it!

  If you live on a farmstead your life is governed by the seasons and how you spend your time is dictated by the weather.  Winter is coming - and the preparations involve a lot of cleaning up.  You know the drill, raking leaves, picking up pine cones, raking the loose gravel to get rid of any wayward loose rock that might become a weapon in the snow blower, sticks the dog drug in that might become a harpoon and general buckets of frozen plant material on to the compost pile.  By the end of the day your hands are bright red from the cold, your back isn't at all happy and guess what?  It's only 4:15 and it's dark already.  Welcome to Washington.  Every time you walk out the front door the sheep all yell at you from a distance "Hey - it's cold today, surely we deserve more hay even though it is too early, right??"  Yeah, right....

So, how does one find balance in all of this.  How do you make yourself put one foot in front of the other when your body says "Are you really sure you have to do this?"  I have to admit, I don't know how I make myself do it - you just do what needs to be done.  After all, there isn't really any other option.  I wouldn't trade the lessons I've learned about how strong I truly am in the face of a crisis.  I wouldn't trade the whole experience of living with the seasons and being in touch of my source of supply.  Sometimes when you are so exhausted that you think you can't take one more step forward, the Universe sends you a moment of grace that takes your breath away and you know without a doubt that no amount of city conveniences would be worth missing what ever gift it may be.

At the end of a long day when everything is finally done and (hopefully) there is no more demands on your tired body you get to balance your spirit again - you guessed it, I get to sit and Spin...

Spinning singles

Plied yarn

As the fiber flows through my fingers and my foot tap, tap, taps the foot pedal in time with the beating of my heart, the tiredness fades away and the energy flows through my being and the Universe begins to make sense again.  Like a piece of music, the rhythm sooths the kinks in my spirit away.  Another moment of grace.  Like the release of breath when one sighs with relief, the energy of all the women who came before me flows through my fingers connecting me with them.  That circle of women that made the yarn, wove or knitted it and sheltered their families in that caress of the soul.

finished yarn

Of Hat Boxes, Dirt Roads, and How I Got Started With Marquetry

Dust clouds on the horizon

Welcome to country living!  Now for those who have the good luck to live on a paved road, that faint haze seen in the background of this picture will be an unknown factor.  Sometimes I think about the dust bowl of the '30's and although my dust issue isn't that bad, there are days that it feels that way.  We always joke around here that we have three seasons, Ice, Mud, and Dust.  In the past few years so many "refugees" from the city have moved out here that the road gets huge amounts of stock car mamas racing down the road and raising huge clouds of dust.  I still haven't figured out why they want to beat their vehicles up driving that fast on a road that is like driving on a railroad track it has so many chatters and pot holes, but they do and so every evening we have this haze that looks rather picturesque along the horizon - so misty, dream-like, blurring the view with it's caress of fog, that is until you realize it is dirt.


So what's a girl to do?  You can't store anything that isn't wrapped in plastic or it gets so dirty that it becomes unusable.  Now, I am a hat lover.  I love all manner of old vintage or vintage inspired finery and keeping it clean and wearable became a nightmare.  So....I bought some real kitchey Hat boxes covered in a really nice paper with a sprigged floral design on them.  Only problem the dust made them look horrible in a very short while.  How do you keep paper covered boxes from getting just grim?  Simple.  You cover them with wood.

Now I had never tried to do any marquetry.  I had a cabinet shop for years and we used lots of veneer on cabinet end panels and finished backs but truthfully - large pieces of veneer put on with contact cement was one of my own personal "boogie men" and I always hated it when I had to help stick veneer.  Now I had this brilliant idea of sticking it on a box.  Add into it that me and a kraft knife never got along all that well either.  So for the first try, I cut the veneer scraps that I gleaned from the shop with a scissor.  I'm a seamstress, I have lots of practice with a scissor.  I could cut with a scissor, but it was nearly impossible to get the seams between the pieces tight enough.  I had to finally take the plunge and make friends with a kraft knife.  That was 10 years ago.  The kraft knife has almost become an extension of my hand....who knew that something I was really not that good with could become such a part of me?

tools of the trade

Now I collect veneer like many people collect stamps.  All kinds of wonderful woods waiting to become beautiful, functional storage that can be dusted like fine furniture.

Hat box side view

newest hat box ready to spray

In the book, Callings written by Gregg Levoy, he writes about how sometimes callings are things that make no sense to us at the time - like me having to cut veneer with a kraft knife or even work with veneer at all since for a long time it was my nemesis.  Sometimes - that's just God having a sense of humor!!  Although I consider art itself as my calling in all of the myriad of expressions I've jumped into, Marquetry just sort of tip toed into my life without my intending to pursue it.  Now it has become a true passion.  What possibilities can come into your life, sneaking in without you even noticing?  Possibilities you never dreamed of?

Playing The Game

Zorro at the end of a long day

I was watching the end of the movie "The Legend of Bagger Vance" this morning and one of the characters asked the question, "Why do we continue to play a game that we can't win?  All we can do is to continue to play and do the best we can."  Of course I am paraphrasing the movie but that is the just of what was said.  It hit me as a "lightbulb moment" to use an Oprah term.  Now I am no big sports fan and although my kids played at it somewhat when they were in school, I have a whole stack of abandoned sports equipment to prove that they weren't really big on it either.  So the fact that a sports analogy even caught my attention is one of those times that I think the Universe is trying to get an idea through my thick head.

A lot of folks I know have been going through some really tough times.  The hard knock, life and death kind and the struggle to make ends meet kind, and the "why is life such a bummer sometimes?" kind of tough times.  November is not my favorite month either having my fair share of losses and problems in this month in the past. It just seems like everything has come to a head for a lot of people all at the same time, all at once.

I look at life as the Game that we came here to play.  We choose our roles, we choose what rules we want to follow, we roll the dice and keep moving forward.  Every once in awhile the Moderator throws down a challenge - "today you get a record blizzard" or "some one you love gets to have a terminal illness" or "today you got that new job promotion" or "today you win the lottery" (who doesn't want that one...?) and on and on it goes.  Now, we don't get to influence what the Moderator chooses to do.  But----(there's always one of those isn't there?) we get to choose the rules of our game, how we are going to play the role now that there is a script change in the wings, and who our character will develop into as it incorporates those changes.  We can choose to let sorrow define us, close our hearts to joy and only concentrate on the struggle but that option sure limits what our role can do.

Or - the BIG OR - we just keep playing on.  We keep putting one foot in front of the other, creating our role with an open heart and sing our own song no matter how much things are altered by circumstance.  It doesn't take any money to sing a song, it doesn't take any physical strength or prowess to hum when things get bleak, it doesn't take anything but heart to whistle while you are shoveling the snow.  It only takes being present in the right now even if the song you are singing is a sad one.

So come on everyone - no matter what happens, lets just keep playing on.  The rules in my game say that we are all in this together so we might as well give it our best shot.  I'm game - how about you??