Creative Play

I am reading the book "In My Fathers House," by Mark Arax. When Mark was 15 his father was murdered by two hit men in the bar that was the dad's business. The murder was never solved. Over the years Mark's need to find the murderer's grew until finally he took leave of his reporter job at the LA Times, and moved back to Fresno with wife and two year old child.  Reading the book is interesting, just Mark's story alone, keeps me turning pages. But there is so much that taps into my life experience that I am totally captivated. Many years back when I lived in Badger, Synanon, we took in a bunch of teenage boys from Fresno. The courts sent them to us. These boys were the most damaged children I had ever worked with. I had in the past worked at a home for delinquent teens in San Diego. They were mild compared to this crew.  These boys had no sense of morality. They had almost no emotional affect, except rage which took very little to provoke. I remember daily feeli...

Learning technology is a challenge. The latest is Photoshop and Twitter. The amazing part of the process is how long it takes, how many failures I must experience before that ah-ha moment when I realize how easy the procedure truly is.  Elsah Cort, the organizer of the Three Rivers Artist's Studio Tour, wants the artists to join Twitter. Being that Twitter is the latest rage in communication, or so the NYT's said, she thought it might help us do a little marketing for the upcoming tour March 19, 20, 21, 2010. So far a handful of the artists have jumped on board. How it will play out is hard to tell. But for me, it has pushed using this blog since there is a way to link from Twitter to here.  I had started with Facebook since a few friends included me, and especially when I realized our daughter Delia using it, I jumped at the chance. Uploading images is easy and the way Facebook is organized captured me. Twitter, 140 words an entry, whereas Facebook you can write more. But Twit...

For years, I have awakened before dawn to write. I scratch black ink on white paper with a special fountain pen. The only rule, keep pen moving. In a half dream state I write, starting with the mundane of yesterday. Layers unfold. I find my own mind. I started this after 20 years of living in Synanon, as a wife, to living alone in one room. It was an avenue to explore where I had been, where I was now, and what kind of future to design. It served me well.  Change is in the wind. I am now an artist. I work in clay, creating masks. Not sure why I obsess with faces, but I don't question, just make them. I do less writing than I used to. The first draft of the memoir has been waiting to be attended to. Does it need a rewrite or is it ready to be sent out? I do not know. But it calls me. And the Ink Quilts, an art form I invented, one for every chapter of the memoir, to be completed. They illustrate in collages of images, drawings, and "ink" quilting, instead of cloth and thre...

Last Saturday I was in bed before 9, reading with husband, friend in guest room, her door closed. Bruce turned out his light but I continued to read for a few minutes. Then I turned out the lights. I closed my eyes and for some reason opened them again in the darkened room. The color orange filled the picture frame on the wall opposite. I thought, "Natasha must be doing something with lights?" But her door was closed. Then fear seared through me and I turned to the window behind. The barn was filled with fire. "Bruce and Natasha, up. There is a fire," I yelled. I jumped out of bed and headed to the phone in the living room and called 911. She transferred me to the Fire Dept. I rushed outside to find Bruce and Natasha grabbing hoses to wet down the fence, bushes and the edge of our house. We are about 20 yards from the two story barn, a container, a wooden fence and plants between us. The fire was three stories high, reaching out of the skylights that had burst. Expl...

We are beginning the process to prepare for the Three Rivers Artist's Studio Tour #9, March of 2010. One of the suggestions is to Twitter, logging your artistic process along the way, thought to be another way to market our event. So I am in the learning process of how this blog and twitter connects. Will I have time to do both? I write every morning in a journal, scratching black ink on white paper, the old slow, messy way of putting thoughts to paper, searching to find my own mind on the life that unfolds each day, pen in hand, moving constantly the only rule. I cannot imagine a day without this pleasure. The brain and hand keep moving across the page, pulling out the mundane to find the important below it. When I take the writing to the computer, typing on a keyboard, it is different. It is work. It is editing to make it perfect, something others will see.

Nadi Spencer and I were admiring her piece of art during an artist's reception at the Tulare Historical Society. It was a rendering of a finished mural done at the Three Rivers Elementary School. I had watched the students work on the mural each time I drove by and wished the students at my husband's school, La Sierra Charter High School, could have such an experience. Nadi told me what she charged and when she was free.  Less than a year later, after receiving a donation from the Phylon Foundation, and a Grant from the Board of Supervisors of Tulare County, we completed two murals. The students worked along side this Master Artist, producing something beautiful for their school, learning to complete a complicated project, working together as a team, "Even with people you don't like," as one student wrote in a paper about the project.   These students are at risk of drugs, gangs, and poverty. Horizons were broadened, 51 students hands made the murals, and had fun ...

...And a New Year begun. It's hard to wish everyone happy new year with two wars that we are engaged in, and one in Gaza, the economy tanking, and so forth. But hope springs eternal, and with the new administration maybe some of the negative will move in more positive directions over this new year.  I have gone back to my regular middle names A. Blair and will leave Hussein to those whose mothers gave them that name, first, middle or last. We voted in the President I so wanted and soon he will be official the one and only. Right now the old is still there, and things feel headless, and worrisome. He keeps adding as many devastations as possible, and then throws in something good here and there. It will be a relief when the old guard goes.

From this day forth, until the election is over, I have added a middle name: Hussein. I am sick to death of the racism, sexism, and religious bigotry, all of which is coming to the surface in this election. I think the fact that true feelings are being expressed is good. We don't change until we face what needs to be changed. But I must weigh in, along with the bigots. Barack Hussein Obama looks like my sons. That is the first reason I decided to vote for him. But being a thinking person, I knew I must read and look into who he is. There are plenty of bad people in the world that look like my sons! I read both his books. I searched the internet for articles about him from the right and the left points of view. I do not discount people from the right, even though I mostly view the world from the left.  I read about his mother, a woman who had her mixed son around the same time I had my mixed sons, when segregation was still the law of the land.  More than just a gut feeling that I a...

This evening is the Artist's Reception at the Arenas Gallery in Visalia. Kathy and Steve Diamant, Kay Gaston, Jeri Burzin and I will be showing our arts and crafts. We mailed postcards and fliers to friends and art patrons. And we each have been told by many there will be a good response this evening. The Arenas' usually provide a very good spread. Laurel and Jay Bergman from Redwood City are coming specifically for this event, staying over night in our home. We will have a brunch for friends tomorrow and they return to the Bay Area in the afternoon. So all indications this will be a "party." I cannot shake a negative cloud around my head. Only nine days ago my sister died. She was my younger sister so her going before me is out of turn. With she and our parents gone, too, I am the only person living who grew up in our small family. I do have an adopted brother and step sisters and a half sister, whom I love, but I didn't live with them growing up. Of course, I...

A friend spent time showing me a little about the Internet this morning. She has a website, and a bloggers site and is further along than I am in understanding how all the parts fit together. So here I am trying out what she taught me. Adding images, and journaling and playing. It is a puzzle to me how all of this will evolve but I am excited about following this path to see where it leads. March 29-30th we will host a Three Rivers Artists Studio Tour. It is the 8th in the last sixteen, held every other year. Last time I was invited as a writer. When we held the artist's pre-tour, and visited one another's studios, the artists filled my studio, and were less interested in my writing, and more in the Ink Quilts lining my walls. To my surprise they considered them art. I hadn't really thought about. I made collages that were inspired by a dream. I had written a story about my ex-husband's grandmother. When I went to meet her, the first things she said to me was, "...

Yesterday I found a website about a group of orphans who were spirited out of Vietnam just before the U.S. got out of the war. There were people who had been working in the orphanages that feared for the children's lives. A network of people who wanted to adopt, were either all ready in place, or set in motion. I was thrilled to find this site. I read the entries from many thirty-something adults, who were the children that came through the Presidio, San Francisco, on their way to homes all across the country. For all these years I have wondered what happened to the chldren. Once or twice over the years the headlines would tell of an abusive adopted parent of this group of children. It left me with the impression that maybe the kids would have been better off left in Vietnam. Reading the stories of the young men and women about their adopted parents who loved and cared for them was such a relief to know that dozens and dozens of them found good homes. It sounds like many didn...

This is the beginning of learning how to use websites, blogger sites, and creative play on the Internet.