Free (as the wind)

While most of my assemblage or Mixed Media works feature objects found by me, on occasion, I am gifted with objects found by others. The pieces they inspire always surprise me. FREE (as the wind) is one of those pieces.

My little sister, Me-liss, is a writer at heart and in spirit. In practice, she has written numerous short stories. She has two masters degrees pointing towards her command of the written word, but she lacks (for now) the publishing credentials that she yearns for. I believe with everything in me that they will come in time, but there are some steps she needs to take before the rest falls into place. “All good things in time…”. We all have our hurdles over which we must jump before our big picture dreams can become reality, right?

Me-liss gifted me with a really unique piece. She’d found it at a thrift store in one of those odd grab-bag sort of things from which one has a 50/50 chance at finding something interesting. This old man was very unique, so she gifted him to me for my birthday a few years ago. I had recently acquired a funky wood frame that was painted green in an antiqued style. It reminded me of an antique corner hutch Me-liss had for years that had been painted in a rustic milky green.

My metallic friend reminds me of a cross between Han Solo in his cryogenic chamber and Don Quixote, and I imagine he had some amazing stories to tell. He is made of some low-quality pot metal and was very fragile (aka broken in several places). I imagine his character was too grand and his stories too plentiful to be contained within his form, so he simply burst out. It was the most reasonable explanation. Perhaps inspired by the giver of the gift, I imagined that the metallic form forever trapped in his chair would find freedom in a place where so many of us do… in the pages of a good book.

I must digress…

I have had a love/hate relationship with books my whole life. It comes really naturally when ones’ diagnosis with dyslexia was delayed until college because, as I later learned, my adaptability and creativity outweighed my learning deficits enough to be categorized as an ‘Honor Student’. It will always bother me that no one thought to look at why I was ‘deficient in three major areas’ as the school psychologist who administered the ‘honors’ test told my parents. As I ‘more than made up for them in the four other areas tested, no further investigation’ was deemed necessary. That I got visually so fatigued trying to read because it usually took three passes at a paragraph before I could decipher what my brain had creatively interpreted the characters on the page to mean notwithstanding. So assigned readings of Johnathan Livingston Seagull or Benjamin Franklins’ Autobiography ultimately ended in me asleep at the dining room table until the middle of the night when I awoke startled and dragged myself to bed. Teenagers are supposed to be tired all the time, right? Ugh!

Again, a life-long love/hate relationship with books. I DO love stories. You may have noticed, I really enjoy writing. I have published a short and heavily photo-based children’s book. One of my first ‘jobs’ was working in our high schools library. No, really! Books are RAD, and I imagine those who can read them without audio-assistance get a whole other level of connection with them without the voice inflection put into the story by someone not typically the author. Don’t get me wrong! I am grateful for the audio assistance I started receiving towards the end of my freshman year of college after I was finally diagnosed with dyslexia and a processing disorder. Thanks to my brother who arranged the testing when he realized I planned to drop out of school. He had just received a nearly identical diagnosis at his college and he and I had always talked about how our struggles to learn seemed disproportionate as compared to the effort our friends and other classmates put out.

So, about the artwork…

My fine metallic friend, sitting in his chair with what I’m sure is a stack of books around his feet and one arm up towards the sky with a book in his hand, is liberated. Here, in my artwork called FREE (as the wind), his upstretched book-clad hand sets off a spray of flowers made from printed pages. He is, naturally, sitting upon a colorful stack of rocks with ripples all around. In the middle of the the flowers is a copper tag that says in a fine cursive writing “Free as the wind”. No matter what chains (or thick pool of resin) bind him there, he can always escape into a book. As anyone who has ever been lost in a really good book can attest, that is exactly what a reader is.

FREE (as the wind)

Heart Beat

Ever since I was knee-high to a grass hopper I have had the same recurring dream.  It may come once a year or it will show up every few months, but the dream is always EXACTLY the same.  Visually, it’s a HUGE black calendar with white numbers.  There is a serious wind blowing that, with a specific rhythm, tears off the calendar pages.  In the background is the sound of a heart-beat.  It’s rhythmic, and consistent. Nothing seems to speed it up or slow it down, but it is ever-present.  I’ve had this dream regularly since I was at least eight years old.  Perhaps I watched too much Hitchcock growing up?  I don’t think so.  My parents weren’t really fans, and his movies were a bit before my days, so probably not.

Knowing I’ve had that recurring dream since I was a wee child, it shouldn’t be surprising that I am so very focused on TODAY.  It’s important to me that I make memories for my kids.  It matters to me that my partner remembers positive things I’ve done rather than simply the neurotic.  NO!  I don’t believe my time is meant to end tomorrow.  I do, however, have an ever-present sense of TODAY.

I can’t pretend that my ‘sense of today’ stems from the premature loss of my brother.  The fact of the matter is, I’ve always had an unusual sense of ‘IMPACT’. As if I knew that what I did/touched/impacted today would ripple through the future.  No…I don’t believe that in the big scheme of things my presence on this planet was HUGE, but I am very much aware that my movements and actions DO matter.

As an artist, the best I can do is to recreate my ‘vision’.

As a mom, the LEAST I can do is to ensure my kids know how to tap into their imaginations.

This summer is starting out both hot and cold. We’ve had some AMAZING moments exploring on area beaches.  Our best moments within the first week and a half, however, have been exploring and interpreting cloud formations while laying on the hammock in our back yard.  My babies (now NINE) and I all squished together on the hammock looking up at the crazy NW sky…using our imaginations…sharing the wonder and enjoying the moments as they come before the wind tears them away.