"Black & White"

Some students had a hard time in our college philosophy class.  We were told in the first lesson we couldn't use the Bible to prove anything.  You can believe it, but don't use it as a verifiable source.  "It's the Word of God!"  How do you know?  "The Bible says so!"  That's a circular argument.  Our Buddhist teacher said she didn't care what religion we practiced.  She cared about our logic.  It was the first class I'd had that taught thinking.

I watch too much news and see a lack of thinking going on in politicians, reporters, and the rest of us.  We get our talking points from the party of our choice and just accept those points to be true.  How do we know they're true?  Because our side told us so!

My friend in Florida chuckled over the miserable winter I've been having.  I don't know when he last lived here, but he was amazed when I told him I only shoveled my driveway once this year.  "Climate change is happening faster than anyone is acknowledging", I said.  I told him about getting bitten by a mosquito a couple weeks before.  I think he feels lied to by the national weather reports, but they're correct in a way.  I have had some nasty weather this year.  It just doesn't last.  A few days of freezing misery, then the temps bounce above freezing again.  Back and forth, but never cold enough, long enough to kill the damned mosquitoes.

I don't want to be cold, but it takes 10 days of solid cold to reset trees and animals.  I want to eat apples so I'm willing to be cold for 10 days.  How are we going to make that happen?  Black and white answers regurgitated from political parties aren't the solution.  We need to honestly address the issues we face and be open to other people's ideas.

I dated a Republican attorney who was pretty high up in his party.  This obviously didn't last very long, especially when he pressured me to go to an Ann Coulter lecture, but I've long remembered him for some of the things he said.  For example, I wanted people to drive fuel efficient cars but noticed the vehicles around me were getting bigger and bigger.  He said that was going to continue to happen until we taxed gas more.  I said that would punish the people who couldn't afford it and the people with money would keep buying big vehicles.  He cited European taxes.

I heard him.  I didn't like it.  I don't want to spend $10 or $20 per gallon of gas.  I sputtered and tried to think of better rebuttals to him while conceding he'd made some good points, not enough to convert me, but I learned something.

We need logical discussions outside of our preferred groups.  We need to get along, think, and learn or we aren't going to eat apples or nuts or anything else that grows on a tree.  If we don't save the pollinators we aren't going to have bread or corn or most other kinds of food.

It's happening faster than most people are noticing.  I got bit by a mosquito in February!

"Beginning"

This feather was my first blog post.  I gave it away recently, and somehow felt like it flew to the right home at the right time.  I don't give things like this away very often because it represents two firsts.  First blog post and first art after a long break from creative things.  I like to keep firsts like this because it reminds me of my mental and emotional state at a different time in my life.

I really don't need things to remind me of the past, but sometimes a thing, or smell, or taste can bring that past up quicker and closer than just mentally trying to regrasp it.  I can imagine the sound of Grandma in the kitchen stirring cookie batter with a stainless steel spoon in a heavy glass bowl, and the metallic tink can remind me of the warm sunlight streaming through the white bordered windows in the turquoise room and the smell of vanilla...

When I was laid off, I had a lot of time to relive those kinds of moments.  I liked to write about them, and it seemed like people liked to read them to remind them of their own memories.  Since I've been working all the time lately, now I enjoy hearing about other people's happy childhood memories because it's a short-cut to my happy feelings.

Different pictures flit through my mind of crayfish hiding under algae-covered rocks, Mom's Chanel #5, Dad carving in the garage, my sisters laughing in the yard, red Kool-aid... the pictures come and go in my mind without any real pattern or story, just the bits of color in the pattern of my life.

Today, I told friends about being pushed into a 3rd grade math class when I was still in 1st grade.  I cried when I told the principal "I'm not emotionally mature enough for 3rd grade!" and surprised myself today when my eyes filled with tears again.  Maybe I'll never be emotionally mature enough for 3rd grade?

In the grand scheme of things, this was a little moment -- but it was a first moment too.  The beginnings of feelings of being out of step with the world around me.  I think everybody has them in one way or another, and we don't always get to go back to first grade and learn to adjust as I had the chance to do, with friendly, happy kids accepting me back into their flock.

I don't know how to understand "beginning".  The world is infinite, and infinity is beyond me.  I don't know where the beginning of space or time or God is.  The acorn is the beginning of a tree, but it's a bit of the tree that dropped it, so maybe the beginning of the tree isn't the acorn or the whole line of acorns and trees before it, but something that is so far beyond my sense of reality that it all blurs into... okay, this is probably why I get told to quit thinking so much?

The word for the week is "beginning".  The feather was my beginning into blogging.  'Nuff said?

"Stay"

My family drove past a mostly frozen lake in early spring. A doe and her fawn were crossing the thawing ice, but the ice broke and the mother fell into the freezing water. She thrashed and splashed her way to firmer ice and scrambled up, but the fawn was stranded on the far side of the open water. It was too far for the doe to swim back, and she stood on the ice in an agony of separation. The fawn skittered around on the brittle ice, but wouldn’t attempt to swim to his mother.

I can’t remember exactly how we rescued the fawn. I do remember getting long branches just in case Dad fell in. Maybe my sister was sent across the ice because she weighed less than Dad? The important thing was that we rescued the baby and found a tiny barn to put him in. My Mom and extra siblings went inside a big building, but one sister, our Dad, and I stayed in the shed.

I can’t remember how we got the shaman either, but if someone could find one, that would be my Dad. The old man came into the tiny barn after the sun was down and saw my sister and I playing with the baby. He laid out some interesting things on a rough table and told us to quit taming the deer. I was given the job of keeping it quiet, but told not to make friends with it. My sister and Dad sang and chanted with the shaman according to his directions.

It’s a pretty sing song cadence in American Indian prayers. The shaman rocked back and forth with his eyes closed, but my sister’s bright eyes took everything in while she played her part in the song. Dad seemed controlled and focused, and I held the fawn in place with the negative magnetism of my hands. Nobody told me how to do it. I just knew that my hands had energy to make him stay without touching. I was very serious about it.

This went on a long time. I had a lot of time to look at the fawn’s spots, eyes, ears, tail, feet, fur… I was lulled into the chant and both asleep and ultra alert at the same time. The fawn eventually laid down in the straw, and I sat beside him in the glow of the Coleman lantern.

I don’t know what nation the shaman was from (maybe Iroquois?), and I definitely didn’t know his language. Just the melodic syllables repeating in choruses, dried plants smoking in the air, waving feathers, more smoke, more singing, with the flute and a drum in between.

It could’ve gone on forever, but the doe appeared at last in the light cast through the open doorway. She was too nervous to enter, but the fawn knew she was there and stood up. The shaman gave me a nod, and I released him to his mother. They stood in the light for a moment and looked at the shaman before sliding into the dark woods.

The next day, I looked at a map and realized how far the doe had to travel to get around that huge lake. There were many inlets, and her path wasn’t easy. It’s no wonder it took so many hours for her to find her way to us.

I had a relationship with a shaman many, many years later. When I told him about this experience, I admitted that I always felt jealous my sister got to sing and pray for the doe’s return. He responded, “Did it ever occur to you that you were given the harder job?” Well, no, it hadn’t. But I like that idea, and feel very privileged to have had a place where I could observe magic.

This scratchboard art is small, 3 ¼” x 2”, but then, the fawn was small.

"Warning"

I've gotten a lot of warnings in my life, usually with that sick feeling in my gut that all is not well in the world. I've been thinking about that quite a bit this week because I've been trying to collect money from someone who doesn't want to pay, and I keep thinking of that moment when I set her key down on a table while my insides screamed to hold it hostage. I want to think the best of people, but I've seen this kind of thing before.

When I was a kid, a handsome young man pulled up near me and waved me over to his car. He looked as fresh and perfect as any image I had ever seen of the idealized All-American, but my insides spewed acid, and I didn't trust him. He talked me over, but I also hung back. "Closer! I've got something to show you!" he said, and I angled behind him so he couldn't grab me. More requests and demands to get me closer, and I eventually saw over his shoulder a porn magazine on his lap. He tossed it aside and was naked underneath. I ran.

I wasn't hurt by this event, but I've thought of it through the years. Trust my gut when it says "Warning!" I don't know how I knew the guy was dangerous. I don't know why I knew Stacey was going to rip me off when I turned in the key. I just knew it.

Maybe I should say that I know about contracts, and clear agreements are always a good thing. I've written lots of them. Most people behave decently, but there are those who seem to think the rules don't apply to them. I did web design for a guy with a clear contract, but didn't know his working methods would end up as a raw deal for me. When I tried to renegotiate, he was unavailable, but still managed to send more work while I kept saying "We need to talk!"

I'm imagining a very hot volcano where we can push these people in to save humanity, and artists in particular.

I'm also trying to push these thoughts out of my mind because I have an opening at a gallery this evening. I'm trying not to think about previous patrons who've tried to rip me off in a different way by negotiating prices down. The gallery gets its cut, the companies making frames and art supplies get their cut, and the only one who loses in the negotiation is the artist. Do plumbers have to deal with any of this? They work. They get paid. Nobody says that since the plumber loves his work he should give his time away.

Even so, my gut is peaceful today. The opening will be fine. I guess I needed to vent a bit, and I'm shoving these negative thoughts aside because it's like dwelling on the last bad boyfriend's behavior and projecting his actions on the new guy. Each boyfriend and job has been a learning experience, and in the end, each painting needs to find its home.

This illustration is on scratchboard. I added the red in PhotoShop because I felt like having some red today, but I'm thinking about hanging the original in my office as a reminder to get the money before turning in the key!

"Ripple"

There is a really nice fundraising effort going on to help with the BP oil spill, and artists can help by donating an image pertaining to the gulf on a 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" card. Jpegs of the cards can be submitted to ripplesketches@verizon.net.

Cards are available for a $10 donation (each) to either The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies http://www.imms.org/ or The International Bird Rescue Research Center http://www.ibrrc.org/ . When the cards sell, artists sign the back of the art with thanks and mail them to the buyer's address.

The Ripple blog is http://ripplesketches.blogspot.com/

I'm grateful to Penny at http://illustrationfriday.com/ for choosing this worthy cause as the inspiration for this week's word, and encourage other artists to contribute to the effort.

These seashell pictures are on scratchboard because I think the black backgrounds feel like the black oil, but I'd rather focus on the beauty of the gulf, and what's prettier than seashells?

"Detective 1"

Woodpeckers bang on trees to discover the insects inside. My experience with detectives is that they are just as hard-headed – but no long stories this week. I wrote too much last time. The woodpecker is 3” x 5 ½”, scratchboard with pen and ink, printed with brown ink on ivory stock.

Scratchboard Feather

I love working with scratchboard, but it seems like a lot of people don't know what it is any more. It is a heavy paper coated with a clay-like surface with ink on top. The image is created by scratching off the ink to reveal the white surface below.

The thing I enjoy most about this technique is that it's like a treasure hunt. You have to look in the dark to bring your art to the light like digging up buried gold in a cave and bringing it into the sunshine.

I tend to do very detailed pieces with this method, but it has also been used to do very simplified wood block kinds of styles. It's a good method for reproduction and also a good method for coloring over the top of the finished piece.

This is my first attempt at blogging, and invite you to look at my website: http://www.artbyhensley.com/index.html for more samples of my work.