some recent work.

This poor neglected blog...I wish I had more time to take pictures and post about the artwork and creations I am making in my little art studio. At the end of July, I painted thirty-five mizuko jizos for grieving women, and mailed them out all through the world. It felt incredible to do this again for International Kindness Day Project for the MISS Foundation. I made some videos about my work, but I also did a how-to on how I paint them. I wanted to post it somewhere, but ended up skipping it. Maybe one day I will show it, because people think I am crazy to do 35 paintings in one day.

 

Anyway, here is a mix of the work I have done in the last month.

 The Virgin of Guadalupe, watercolor, 9"x12" on 140 lb. cold-pressed paper.

I recently had a reading by a woman who channels ascended masters and angel. Archangel Gabriel came through for me, which was amazing, and then my spirit guide, Lord Lanto, the ascended master. I had had another experience hearing his name, so this was not a surprise. But I was still humbled and honored to hear this from her. She channeled him and I was blown away by what he said. Things she couldn't know...things he clearly has guided into my life experience. For example, he told me that he comes to me in the form of mourning doves, which if you have read my work, you know I have written about hearing the mourning doves before writing. After the channel left, I googled my spirit guide, which is probably the most American thing in the world to do. I know people are probably cynical about this sort of thing, but what can I say? I am who I am. Lanto is a bodhisattva. Drawn to Eastern religions and philosophy, I absolutely resonated with his approach to life and spirit. I absolutely know why he is why I have been so drawn to painting bodhisattvas for grieving women. One evening, I was meditating and felt this absolutely overtaking urge to paint him, and the little mizuko jizos popped up behind him. I love this piece and it is going to be an inspiration piece in my studio to help guide my work. I have such strong love for Lanto, as my guide, mentor, and artistic and spiritual cheerleader. So grateful to have made his acquaintance.

I have a few meditating and yogi mamas in my shop for sale. You can check out some of the other work I have done there. Looking forward to autumn and setting up our Mabon altar and doing fall crafts and fun things...this summer has been go go go. and melt. melt. melt.

some recent projects

 I've been needlefelting a shitload of stuff. Ornaments, mostly. There is more, but they are gifts for my niece and nephews and my sister reads this space. I like the aggression release of felting. It helps. I have also been trying to construct a felt bag, though I am terrible at sewing. Maybe it will just be my needlefelting bag.

The red piece is going to be the flap and the other pieces are going to be the long handle.

And then, I am at the end of this painting. Not sure if I really like it. It was supposed to represent the duality of spirituality and grief. Mizuko jizo is a joyful bodhisattva, yet grieving. The tower of stones is supposed to represent all the babies. Perhaps I should have continued them up, up and up. Maybe I still will. This piece is 36" x 48", so larger than both my kids standing next to each other. It is acrylic on canvas. And I think I will be showing it at the show five in January. I am in two minds about it.

I'm also wondering if anyone can give me pointers for making prints or postcards of my work. Do I photograph it? And if so, is there a trick to photographing artwork that I should know. Has anyone used anyone in particular that they like? Thank you for any information.

open house and jizos

Yesterday, I had an Open House for other families who have lost children, really it was to display the travel journal. I cooked and cleaned last week, like a fullhouse deep cleaning, which was nice. I do that every Fall and Spring, Summer and Winter. It is like a seasonal change thing, but I spend a week just scrubbing the tiles I don't usually scrub and spit shining the faucets. Okay, not really. But this one was for my homies, so I took time. I also hung lots of my babylost art around my house, pieces I never display in open. These three I painted for a show next January. I shared them here already, but I hadn't seen them together.

From left to right they are: I Wish You Understood (But I'm Grateful You Don't), She's Not an Angel. She Was My Baby. the last one is untitled as of yet, but it is me holding a picture of Lucia. I think it might said, I want my baby, instead of a picture I can't show anyone. I'm taking suggestions.

This morning, I needed to meditate, so I painted some jizo cards. I just needed to sit and clear my head after all the week of busy.

And I started a jizo wall in my studio, since I have so many dang jizos around. I have some in my lounge, so I need to get them on the wall...fun, fun, fun.

repainting the jizo.

Watercolor is notorious for fading in the sun. And as I approach three years since Lucy's death, I am finding my earliest of post-Lucy watercolors sun-damaged and faded. Take for instance one of my first mizuko jizo. I used to paint two styles of jizos, now, I paint about five. But my earliest jizos were either clusters of jizos, each with a prayer. And the other was more of a pop-art kind of jizo. It just depends on the mood I am cultivating at the moment. I remember painting this one, and the joy I felt at painting Lucy alive and playing peek-a-boo.

Here it is faded out of its frame. So, maybe this is not gauche, or something, but I repainted it very carefully. Now it looks like this.

I'm happy I did it. I was nervous to ruin this painting, but it was undisplayable before, and now, it looks like it did. I even got to tone down that obnoxious signature. Yay.

Today is picture day at Beezus' school. So, she suggested we take a picture of us. We tried.

This one, I was holding the camera, and then Thomas Harry was angry with the entire situation.

This one is the one we set the timer for.

Beezus didn't like the timer one, so she decided she would just take a picture of Thor and Mama.

Have a lovely day. We finally have some fall weather. It is beautiful outside, and so we are going to go play.

jizopalooza

So, you know, on International Kindness Day, I felt like I wanted to connect with Lucia as part of my kindness and then I ended up putting it out there on the My Face that anyone who commented on the thread would get a handpainted, original jizo from my tonglen for grieving parents and families. Yeah. So, I got twenty-three responses. Well, more actually, but some people said they already had one, which didn't matter to me, but still, twenty-five 4"x6" paintings. I began wondering what I was thinking. I did the first meditation session the first night, and you have all seen some of those paintings. But I realized when I sat down to do them in the next few days, that I kept obsessing about perfection and they were getting worse. I ended up not even photographing like eight of them.

I am a busy woman. Doing even one painting is a luxury these days, and here I was throwing out eight of them. Oy, vey. AND I had twenty-three to do. So, I decided to sit with it for a few days, and then I remembered the joy and calm I felt doing the mizuko jizo gesture paintings, which was the intention, to do the paintings as meditation and shed the self-consciousness of painting. That is Lucy's gift to me after all--to paint for healing, for joy, for calm, for peace, for suffering, for others. And so I meditated and painted this series of twenty-two mizuko jizo paintings for grieving women and men in our community and across the world. Each painting did not take very long, because I wanted it to be an instinct, a movement of my hand, like a jizo enso or something. A study in jizos. Mizuko jizos are supposed to be happy little bodhisattvas, but sometimes I make them contemplative or grief-stricken. I think when I am in the thick of suffering, but mostly, I make their expressions full of the love and joy I want to impart on the parent or family member who receives it.

If you don't know about tonglen meditation, it is a meditation where you literally take in the suffering of another being and blow out relief of the suffering for that person. Pema Chodron talks of it extensively, though I was first acquainted with it in therapy with a Buddhist therapist who suggested it as a way of understanding and forgiving my own grief. Because I know the pain of early grief, I connect with that feeling of chaos, anger, hopelessness, sadness, aching and blow out the compassion and peace that I have come to in my own life. So, my process is that I set my space up, clean it, light a candle or incense, literally a pillar of smoke, which rises like a prayer to G-d. Then I breathe in the suffering of the grieving parents. Sometimes this is an overwhelming feeling to take it into me, which sounds hokey and new agey, but whatever, ifyou have lived through that grief, you know the kind of oppressive weight it can feel in your chest, then I breathe out my own peace and compassion, and consequently, that helps me, because see I am one of the grieving.

Anyway, then I begin painting my jizos. In total, I did four sessions of meditation and painting over two weeks. Here are some pictures from this morning, when I hung them like prayer flags around my studio, and there is one of me posing in front of them with my new Android phone.

And here they are one by one.

So, this was my last day or so. Now I have to mail them off, which is a process but I am more than halfway there. Thank goodness for my mother coming this week to help me with the kids. I have been in the studio for days...love to all.

Random Act of Kindness Day

Yesterday, July 27th, was International Kindness Project Day(tm) by the MISS Foundation. As most of you know, I am a MISS Foundation HOPE Mentor. A few weeks ago, I had the great fortune with another blogger and HOPE Mentor CLC to meet the Executive Director of the MISS Foundation, Kathy Sandler. She is a compassionate, loving soul and being with her was easy and wonderful. She invited me and CLC to tell our stories over some dinner with another non-profit director to explain why the MISS Foundation is so important. It was wonderful to be in a place where our birth stories are listened heard and our babies are honored.

This year, I wanted to do something special for Kindness Project Day, and I was drawing blanks all day. Beezus has been taking gymnastics camp all week from 9a to 1p, so this is kind of the lead up to pre-K, which she starts in the fall. (gulp.) She was fine. She walked into the room and didn't think about me again until I showed up waving on the other side of the window. Mama, on the other hand, was a little beside herself. If this week wasn't so dang busy, I probably would have been emotional. As it was, I couldn't wait to pick her up, scoop her up in my arms, and gobble her.

Yesterday, I suppose, I was a little emotional already when I dropped her off. Then Thor and I headed to Starbies for my first random act of kindness. I know STARBUCKS??! The Evil Empire of Coffee?!?! Go ahead, get indignant. Sadly, Starbucks plays a role in my grief as perhaps the only place I would go that wasn't absolutely necessary. Perhaps because it was a corporate, anonymous place where I could walk in, have a latte and no one was going to ask me about the baby. So, in that way, Starbucks kind of became a bit of a wooby. I should also add, apropos of nothing, that it was the first and only place I have gotten hit on after Lucy died. Yes, it was by a lesbian. And yes, it felt damned good, and helped my mood immensely.

Anyway, yesterday, I went in and asked for my iced latte, my sister's coffee, and a fifty dollar gift card. And when she was going through everything, and I was paying, I asked her if she could keep the gift card and buy the people behind me in line, and all the next few people who came in, coffee with it, until it was gone. And then I eeked out, "My daughter died, and I'm doing it in her name. Here are some cards to explain." And by that time, my voice was breaking up, and my hands were shaking, and I realized that even though I have said it many times, in many different ways, it sometimes still knocks the piss out of me to say that my daughter died, because some days I still cannot fucking believe that this is my life.

I ran out of there, even though the lady cried too, and gave me all my coffees for free, and doubled my giveaway, which they did last time I did this in a Starbucks, which is what is also cool about Starbucks.

I went to my sister's house to cry, and help her sew something, which got me out of my head. I am counting the helping sew as part of my kindness project, because I suck at it.

Then I called my husband and he told me it wasn't kind at all to just spend money on people, particularly money for our family. We had the discussion beforehand a few weeks ago, but I guess the fifty bucks came as a shock, because who spends fifty bucks at Starbucks? And why is it related to Lucy? And I just cried and hung up on him, and was feeling very not kindly at all. In fact, I felt like I caused more pain than not.

I came home and realized that I needed to do something for other grieving parents, and so I put a call on Facebook to paint free mizuko jizo altar paintings for anyone who wanted them. I received twenty-five requests, which is amazing. I started immediately last night, and began with my friends who lost their first baby Luna, and then between their second and third baby, they lost a set of twins all after twelve weeks. And both of them were so present for me after Lucy died, that it was an honor to paint for them. And really it is an honor to paint for everyone. It feels selfish that I should get to paint so many jizos and be in a state of meditation for so long. I am grateful for the opportunity to spread kindness and hopefully I inspired someone else to pay it forward in Lucia's name.

First five jizo paintings for International Kindness Project Day.

Catching up on CED, and heART swap.

Well, I recognize how lame it is that it has been a very very long time since I posted with my CED projects. I have been sketching here and there, and doing art, some needle-felting. It is ironic that this month's theme is home, because I have really really been focused on my home the last two weeks. My husband had surgery, then my daughter and I got the vomiting/stomach flu/norovirus. I am also 32-33 weeks pregnant, so I am exhausted after taking care of people and my home all day.

Still, I have thought about CED everyday, and sometimes I get to sketch, even if it is just crayons and paper with Beatrice. As most everyone that reads here knows, I maintain a daily blog called still life 365, which is a blog for parents who have lost a child through pregnancy loss, stillbirth or neonatal loss. I post a piece of art every day from a different person. It is amazing, and I feel incredibly privileged to be privy to art in this way, and to share it with our little community. So, even when I don't get to do some kind of daily creative, I help spread the art-y love around. One of my favorite features of still life 365 is the newly started section called Artist to Artist. I interview a grieving artist about their art and grief. This past Sunday, I interviewed Kara Jones aka Mother Henna. You can read that right here. She is also participating in the CED challenge. The previous interviewee was Ines, again, she is also participating in CED. I promise that it isn't a conspiracy. I just am familiar with their work and their sons and their grief. I just love those conversations, and wanted to share them. When I think about home, I think about good conversation, comfort food, relaxing, art and ease.

Speaking of Ines and Kara, yesterday, I received my three cards from the the amazing heART swap. The awesomest part of the package was receiving work from some of my favorite artists--I knew everyone! I received a beautiful painting from Mother Henna herself:

 

The second one I received was from someone who has submitted a few times to still life 365, Amy McCarter. Her work is so moving and important. Her paintings are amongst the most commented upon on still life 365, which means she is resonating with a lot of other grieving parents. I personally had my breath taken away with this one.

And lastly, but certainly not leastly, the amazing Ines' carved heart rock found its way into my home. I feel so blessed.

I am in love with this heART, and now have to find a beautiful place for them. Has to be the altar, but we will see...My three contributions are needle-felted cards, which I have posted about before.

Beyond that, yesterday, I had a jizo commission. To be honest, I have a few commissions waiting for inspiration. I can't tell you why I haven't quite been able to muster the emotional strength to paint them, I just cannot. But jizos, I also paint them immediately. They require all my attention, my meditation strength, and my grief-focus. This one in particular was from a woman to her brother and his wife after the loss of their twins at 19 weeks. I couldn't let it sit in my inbox, so despite the constant cooing for Mama, I closed the door, meditated and painted. Here it is. The words represent the six realms and are also a haiku. I feel more inspired to tackle the other ones. Now, if I can just find the time...