Tag Archives: art journal

The Heroine’s Mandala Journey Begins

On Friday, April 19, 2019, two lines of possibility crossed over out of the nowhere into the Now Here: my friend Merrill offered me the chance to join an emerging group which would be a women writers support group.

I was tempted, but then within a couple hours, I got a text from another friend, Sandy O’Brien, inviting me to join an on-going Heroine’s Journey Mandala Class.

This is a completed mandala by my workshop leader, Sandi O’Brien. Every detail has a story, a dream, a memory or reflection behind it. I particularly love the central iris image.

I’ve had a long standing love affair with all things Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey progenitor, and Maureen Murdoch, who wrote The Heroine’s Journey. 

I have done mandala and shield work before, but nothing as in-depth as this promises to be. I said yes to this opportunity because it can include writing but focuses on, as Jung says, “memories, dreams, reflections.”

I arranged to meet Sandi, and on the way, I saw I was following a car with the license “OBrien” on it. 

Robert Moss, author of The Three Only Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, says that “the world is a forest of symbols” (113) and like Jung, encourages us to trust the unexpected coincidence and to allow “those patterns to reveal themselves” (114). 

The license plate that only flashed before my eyes for a few seconds, appearing then disappearing out of the chaos of traffic, seemed to me an exclamation point that I had chosen the correct path of the two that had appeared to me.

Gouache. Personal Mandala made in a Heroine’s Journey Class by Sue Teutschell Davis.The process begins with the outer circle, which is called “The Fire Ring.” If you compare the Fire Ring on all of the mandalas, you can see the wide variety of possibility with just this one element.

On Saturday, I met with Sandi O’Brien in her beautiful, art-filled home in Creswell. Oregon, and got to know her and the class materials better. 

The physical object to be created is a mandala like the ones by Sandi O’Brien shown here. The process is long–she says up to eighteen months or two years. 

Each ring and sub-section of rings is a separate meditation or inward reflection or dream recorded, considered, discussed,  distilled to its essence and added to the piece.

Each mandala is a journey by the artist through a period in her life where she is looking back, looking into the Dreamtime, looking forward and drawing all the threads of her life together.

At our first meeting, she and I split a large sheet of Arches watercolor paper. If you mingle blood and take an oath, two people become “blood brothers.” The two Sandies have split a piece of paper to make our mandalas on; we are “mandala sisters.” The two halves of the paper will continue to speak to each other over time.

The very last element to be added to the mandala is the centering image, which is called forth in meditation or dream by the artist at the end of the long process of bringing the piece into being.
Gouache mandala by Sandi O’Brien.

Threshold

For every change in my life, I have stood on a threshold, momentarily paused in my forward action. Birth is the first threshold, and death is the last. In between are a thousand moments of transition where I stepped from into a new stage, times when I left an old habit behind, or moved beyond old ways of understanding, experienced new gowth, or achievement.

I wanted to do a series of photos inspired by these threshold emotions. I knew I wanted some dreamlike effects, so I chose a lens that would be variably sharp and blurry (Lensbaby Sweet 80 on Olympus OMDEM 5 mio 4/3rds).

I also wasn’t up for any self-portraiture, so as I often do, I turned to my doll collection to see who wanted to stand in for me: a very old Apache woman with a dark, dried apple face stepped forward, as did my small carving of Dzonoqua, the Wild Woman of the Woods, my muse and mythic persona.

On a day when I was very tired, after a long drive home after Spring Break, I took dolls and camera out into the back yard. I had some ideas, but both the camera effects and the dolls themselves took over the shoot. Here’s what happened.

Inside every child is the full grown adult on the threshold of birth. (Detail of a painting by my husband Peter Jensen on the side of our house called The Anasazi Grill.)
She stands on the threshold of the Longhouse waiting to enter the Winter Dances, the Realm of Heightened Power.
After a long winter hibernation, she stands on the threshold of spring. She is stunned by the light, her mind still swimming in the shadows of dreams.
We are as children to the gods, and we caper on the threshold of Dream/Not-Dream (Image: Detail of house painting by Peter Jensen)

 

 

She is Very Old Age and waits on the threshold of the future. She has no face because the Very Old are not seen. Their faces have changed so much, they often don’t see anything of themselves in that murky mirror, behind which waits Death, that patient Black Dog.

 

This one is my favorite because she is most like me right now. She stands, as I do, on the threshold between the last spring snow and the adventure ahead. She is old yet still strong and eager for what is to come.

What threshold do YOU pause on right now?

You Mustn’t Be Frightened

This is a full double page view of my art journal.
This is a closer view of the right hand page.
This is a closer view of the left hand page.

“You mustn’t be frightened

if a sadness rises in front of you,

larger than any you have ever seen;

if an anxiety – like light and cloud-shadows,

moves over your hands and everything you do.

You must realize that something is happening to you,

that life has not forgotten you,

that it holds you in the palm of its hand

and will not let you fall.”

–Rilke

This is from Sandy Brown Jensen’s current art journal. It is being featured this week on Tumblr’s Journal-Inspirations site.

What Are You Thankful For?

As my Meditations on Gratitude online class with Laura Valenti continues, we are encouraged to look around us at everyday moments and objects as worthy a moment of gratitude.  I have been taking photographs around the property to celebrate this little corner of the world one quiet corner of June 2016.

I am very grateful to have married into this house 22 years ago. Here, I am outside shooting through the living room window with a close up on a grouping of masks and other sculptural objects. The window glass is reflecting the trees behind me.

I like this shot because it conveys the sense I always have of our house being like a longhouse, full of mythological beings, adrift with stories and dreams.

When we were having our car breakdown and accidental extra nine days of vacation in Carmel earlier this year, Peter bought Bunny for me. I have become very attached to Bunny, and sometimes she sits in the living room window and waits for me to come home.

Cheshire Cat: Oh, by the way, if you’d really like to know, he went that way.

Alice: Who did?

Cheshire Cat: The White Rabbit.

Alice: He did?

Cheshire Cat: He did what?

Alice: Went that way.

Cheshire Cat: Who did?

Alice: The White Rabbit.

Cheshire Cat: What rabbit?

Alice: But didn’t you just say – I mean – Oh, dear.

Cheshire Cat: Can you stand on your head?

Alice: Oh!

Perdita in the Window. My sister Cheryl gave me Perdita for my birthday, made by a Mexican doll-maker. My photography teacher said she looks like a visionary or seer, and I agree.
This is the exterior of our house, guarded by a Native American Sisiutl or double-headed sea serpent, which is the Guardian of the House of the Sky People, painted on there by Peter one fine day. 

Using my Go Pro, I shot from the outside of our living room looking in, accentuating the fish eye quality. I like this picture because it is odd and yet sees right through the house.
I love this photograph of our house from the living room window straight through the airy spaces to the garden.
Peter’s totem poles out in the garden are starting to settle into their places ever more deeply, here disappearing into the fennel.

What is around you in your everyday world that YOU are thankful for?

Canvas of the Soul

This little drawing was done first in the Paper 53 app then moved to Bazaart to add the image in the upper left and the text.

In today’s Daily Create, we were asked to draw our childhood home. I have done this drawing many times over the years, and I notice it has gotten less and less specific as time wears away at the bright stones of memory, polishing them down to their glowing centers.

Now it is mountains, trees, tracks, river, house.

I grew up on the Wenatchee River in the foothills of the Enchantments. The image of me upper left is from an underwater shoot a couple of days ago and seems to me a face full of memory.

Even a rudimentary sketch like this seems beautiful to me, and I stare at it falling into a reverie of a time both long ago and yet still a room I can walk into that is as close as breathing.

The Mysterious Night Journal for me used to be gel pens or Prismacolor on black paper, but as I work in my art journal and so often disappear into the many rooms of memory, I see it is the canvas of the soul.

Your Art Journal is the canvas of your soul.


 

 

Frogs, Cats n Grats!

Gratitude wells up

like fresh water in a green pool.

Heart, be a frog!

The Frog and Cat poems and photographs on the left page of my Gratitude Art Journal

Cat curled around stone

announcing “POETRY! in case

we had forgotten.

A view of the Gratitude Art Journal double page layout.

 

Gratitude Art Journal page with my “Gratitude Jar” poem. The Tumbling Jars sketch on the right is a Prismacolor pencil drawing I did in 2011 that I suddenly remembered and retrieved from my Flickr account, where for once organizing my photos paid off!

Canning Grats

After canning peaches, I had one

clear jar left. I put my grandmother

in there along with the apples

she was peeling. I added a sharp

handful of mint from my husband’s garden,

a tube of Opera Pink Paint

and the shadow of a summer

fern on a slate rock face.

The sound of a train,

dawn light over the Three Sisters.

I found five memories that would fit

and slipped

a whole head of garlic down the side

along with a feathery branch

of dill and something

like a song. Pressure

cooked by time,

labelled, shelved, ready

to be given away.


NOTE: In a previous post, Creating a Gratitude Art Journal, I posted a short video explaining that I am taking a Meditations on Gratitude Photography class online with Laura Valenti. She asked us to find a repository for our “grats,” or items for which we feel gratitude on a daily basis, and I began with the Gratitude Art Journal, although I’m not sure how I’ll go forward. She suggested a Gratitude Jar, which gave me the idea for the poem “Canning Grats.”

Example of a Gratitude Jar. Image: Cathy Colangelo, Clarity Coach

METHODS AND MATERIALS:

  • I use a large Moleskine watercolor journal.
  • The pages were first prepared with white gesso
  • then a watercolor wash background laid down
  • then a sheet of yellow tissue paper to cover most of it to add texture.
  • Across the top I carefully stamped “Meditations on Gratitude; Poems N Pixs N Such.”
  • I drafted the poems in my regular journal then wrote them directly on the prepared surface.
  • I printed out my photographs, and they came out looking a bit sketchy, but I thought that added to the “folk art” quality of an art journal.
  • I used Mod Podge (sealer, glue, and finish) to glue the images down,
  • and then I covered the entire page with Mod Podge. BIG MISTAKE! And I knew better! I should have used a spray fixative first but forgot and the ink on the stamping and photos ran. I replaced the photos and started over, but the stamping was a write off. So…
  • I re-did the photos
  • Added strips of tissue paperand sprayed it with Windsor Newton Professional Satin Varnish
  • THEN Mod Podged the whole…letting it dry between stages
  • Sprayed it a few more times and called it good…

 

I was reminded of the value and fun of a List Poem by Natalie Goldberg in her book The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language.


Where do YOU collect gratitudes?

Tell us in the comment box directly below!

Creating a Gratitude Art Journal

I am documenting my journey through Laura Valenti’s Meditations on Gratitude Online Photography class with short videos. This one introduces my art journal as a place to collect my moments of gratitude.

My favorite moment in it is when I totally serendipitously video my cat Pookie curled around a stone called “Poetry.” I took a screen shot of it, and I’m going to put it in as the first image in the journal.

My cat Pookie curled around the Poetry stone. She will go in my art journal.