It feels like years since I've actually created something with my hands, with my words, or with my actions. I miss my studio practice.
Between preparing myself for this life transition, which involved a total dismantling of my adulthood, I seriously have had no time to create a studio practice. However, amongst the few opportunities I have had to play in the spaces of others living in my beach village, a deeper level of art making takes hold, guiding me to another phase.
Between preparing myself for this life transition, which involved a total dismantling of my adulthood, I seriously have had no time to create a studio practice. However, amongst the few opportunities I have had to play in the spaces of others living in my beach village, a deeper level of art making takes hold, guiding me to another phase.
I've been a professional artists as long as I've been an art therapist, and Ive been an artist for as long as I've been alive. I never worry that I will lose my skills. The visual language is a safe haven. I can talk up a storm, but if you really listen to my words, you will begin to see snapshots of the life, attitude, or opinion I have given voice to in my visual artworks. Although writing is a beautiful substitute, words never fully embrace me in the same way that an image will.
On a more generalized level, finding our former joys, reaching for ways to integrate the pieces of ourselves that we cherished and nurtured, are the very aspects that create a sense of peace in the hectic havens of our new lives abroad.
When I first bought my ranch in West Texas, I was fortunate enough to have a guide that knew the land. On our first walk, he pointed out signs in the natural environment that would allow me to walk my own land without fear of getting lost. Simple knowledge, like realizing that tall grasses grew in the lower regions, while a bluff revealed the creosote electrical poles, indicating the direction of the entrance road to my cabin, gave me enough information to explore further, alone. Transitions are processes involving many small steps leading to an undiscovered path. The path isn't fully known, as it holds no memory of its' own, yet, it is covered in clues that you left behind on your former path, one crumb at a time.
Here is my list:
On a more generalized level, finding our former joys, reaching for ways to integrate the pieces of ourselves that we cherished and nurtured, are the very aspects that create a sense of peace in the hectic havens of our new lives abroad.
When I first bought my ranch in West Texas, I was fortunate enough to have a guide that knew the land. On our first walk, he pointed out signs in the natural environment that would allow me to walk my own land without fear of getting lost. Simple knowledge, like realizing that tall grasses grew in the lower regions, while a bluff revealed the creosote electrical poles, indicating the direction of the entrance road to my cabin, gave me enough information to explore further, alone. Transitions are processes involving many small steps leading to an undiscovered path. The path isn't fully known, as it holds no memory of its' own, yet, it is covered in clues that you left behind on your former path, one crumb at a time.
Here is my list:
- Reduction of plastic waste - HUGELY difficult in a country that worships plastic in all its' array of color and possibility. Single steps include reinstating a compost pile, taking along market baskets and cloth produce bags on shopping days, buying q-tips with paper sticks versus plastic, larger bundles of toilet paper to reduce the overall amount of plastic packaging, and hopefully, remembering to bring a box of linguine pasta to my office for all to use as coffee stir sticks!
- Loving my inner nerd - Researching the methods used by the Maya to create the most stable blue pigment in all of the ancient and modern world. Fascinating historical information about this ancient culture is giving me a solid sense of place. I am so overjoyed to have been given this opportunity to live in the Yucatan.
- Peace with nature - Creating my own cleansing products, body lotions, and insect repellents. Chemistry with respect for the Earth as the main ingredient. Oh, and it segues nicely with the reduction of plastic waste. As well, I have collected small samples of plants to bring to my renovated home once it is complete. The images of my next garden fill me with joy, and help me learn the seasonal differences, however subtle, between Texas and Yucatan.
- Friends and family and pets - I've found that my attention to friends and family has taken on new importance, and requires of me a re-commitment to those who have contributed, directly or indirectly, to my success in this new life. In my older friendships, I can find my historical self, while in my newer friendships opportunities to be seen without historical filters, forces me to examine my own ways of listening to what I bring to those relationships. My family relationships are strained and simultaneously re-fueled by my move. I can observe my children as competent adults, with amazing resiliency skills that help me continue to see them as my life long teachers. I have adopted, accidentally, a reddish brown frog! It lives in the rooted soil clinging to a vanilla orchid. My traveling cat, Mimi, with her long furred tail, brings all sorts of seeds into the casita, while my rescued dog, Pecca, does happy dances upon my return home.
Always, News From A Broad
