June, 2022
Summer finally came, in kind of a bi-polar way. Some glorious days, some sweltering days, but all were welcome.
We started to take advantage of the Morton Arboretum in suburban Chicago last year, and continue to visit it for beautiful morning walks through hundreds of acres. What is the difference between a walk and a hike, anyway?
It’s become our custom to follow those trips with a garden lunch at Piccolo Sogno, which I highly recommend as the closest thing out slow Italian afternoons on the Amalfi Coast.
June also included a trip down to Atlanta and a reunion with Chery Baird, my amazing art teacher, for a three day collage workshop. Even better, I was joined by my bestie Deb Lehman. I’d been stocking up collage fodder to start a new series called All My Dream Flew Out the Window – in the best possible way. Each piece is based on a beautiful view out of windows around the world and across time –
– the collage posted here is the view from a bathroom window – yes, a bathroom window- at a restaurant called Torre Normanna in Maiori on the Amalfi Coast, a spectacular place.
June, 2022
Another in my series of view from windows I’ve known. This one is a loose interpretation of the view from my bedroom window in Grosse Pointe Michigan. It was a small room with a view at the roof of the house next door and and an alley beyond. The house was a busy one, but since I was the only girl, I had my own room and spent a fair amount of time there. Just as I was planning this one, I learned that a lovely woman I knew as a child had passed away. She was always very kind to me and always used to tell me that I didn’t have to try to chase my future or happiness, I could just look out my window and I would see it coming to find me. I think it was a way to reassure a kind of socially timid girl, but I did turn away from the window, leave the room, and chase my future, and it’s turning out great.
June, 2022
Here’s another in the new collage series – this one is based on the view from the yoga studio at Miraval in Tucson, Arizona. I’ve had photos of this view for years, it’s such a striking vista – I usually meditate with my eyes closed, but this view always tempts me to keep them open and just get lost in those mountains and that sky.
June, 2022
All those new collage papers I made in Paducah set me off down the rabbit hold of fodder techniques. Time to put the big stash of new goodies to use – this is the first in a series called All My Dreams Flew Out the Window – in the best possible way. It’s the scene from the balcony window at the condo we’ve visited for the past few years in South Walton County, Florida. We go in November, when it is still relatively quiet and we get to enjoy beach walks, sunny days, and spectacular sunsets. The high top table on the balcony is my favorite place to create while I’m there.
June, 2022
Two of the most common questions I hear, or hurdles people seem to anticipate, center around time.
The first challenge is finding the time. There is no question about it, I’m fortunate in the sense that I have space and I have opportunities for privacy. That takes away for me a lot of obstacles that many other people face.
I first wrote this piece in 2020, so the challenges that people had at the time with sharing space exploded, trying to accommodate work at home and school. Maybe, though, it has also led to more explicit negotiation around time and space for a little privacy if you live with other people. In a perfect world, it’s nice to pick the same time every day, and the same place is nice too, but if that’s not possible, there are a lot of people that jump in the car, drive to the edge of a parking lot somewhere, and just sit there. Or walk outside and sit under a tree. Or literally disappear inside a closet.
The real issue is setting aside the time, giving it a priority. It isn’t really that different from finding time to work out, and for some it is just as painful, but like any other habit, if you can just stay with it for about 30 days, you will probably get a pretty good imprint. You can find the time for at least five minutes, you know you can, just decide.
That leads to the next issue, how much time? I started at 15 minutes, I think, then moved to 20, and a couple of years ago to 25 minutes a day. There are a couple of other things that are part of my personal ritual that make it about 30 minutes start to finish. But there is nothing magic about that, no specific time that makes it successful or not. You can start with one breath, then three breaths, then five minutes. There is an Arthur Ashe quote that comes to mind: “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can”.
