The Scented Garden, the Magic Swamp Fish

For the last year I’ve lived in a city, and somewhat naively assumed that finding a nice, densely wooded park would require a long drive. Tired of that old excuse, I made a search online and found a park only 11 minutes’ drive away.

The park, called Wegerzyn Gardens, was full of wonderful smells. Chamomile (or was it feverfew?), lavender, and other flowers I have yet to learn to identify filled the air with their fragrance. I was surprised how soothing the effect was; it made me think of people long ago, noting how a flower’s scent made them feel… doesn’t the smell alone suggest that chamomile, brewed, would make a gentle sedative? It’s been a long time since I walked among the flowers.

There was a trellised archway leading to a raised walkway through the wild swamp forest, and, with seeming folkloric significance, a big, beautiful orange goldfish drifted slowly in the shallow waters. It occurred to me he shouldn’t be there. I spoke to him, offered to find someone to get him out, if he liked. But the answering thought came immediately: why should he want to leave this place? For the safety of a tank, for a longer life of a limited quality? His days are numbered, and idyllic. I stood watching the magic golden fish until the mosquitoes came to claim their territory. I did not know the right questions to ask him, to make him reveal secrets in a human voice; what could he have said to me?

Trellis with Vine and Rose

Entry to the Swamp Forest

An Old Dream

From a scrap of paper dated 4/4/8:

night before last- Dream- colors, things melting together. Everything becoming formless. Basic thoughts melting back to chaos.

Last night-Dream- as falling asleep, dream insisting relevance to waking- made me open eyes repeatedly to check validity. Each time so real as I was beginning to fall asleep- opening eyes I couldn’t remember if accurate or not. Dreams demanding meaning & relevance?

Cloak is Finished! :D

Ta-Da! After procrastinating for days and days and days, I finally did all that boring nit-picky work of tying loose threads, securing the bottom corners of the shell and lining, and finally, sewing on the clasp. OK, so after half a year working on it, the finish ought to be anti-climactic. But you know what? I still feel smugly pleased with myself.

This is way better than the first two cloaks I made, and I got to do some problem-solving along the way that’s made me into a more confident sewer. What did I just call myself? OK, seamstress then, though I think that word implies a career.

The clasp I used is the “Elven Clasp” from cloakmaker.com (somewhere in the middle of this page), and the trim is the “Jaquard- Gold and Red” on this page (they’re listed alphabetically). These supplies were a little more expensive than I will buy for my own purposes, but since I wanted this cloak to be a special gift, I shelled out. Not before, however, comparing prices extensively, and finding cloakmaker.com to be fair. I found the trim elsewhere with a cheaper per-yard price, but with shipping factored in for both places, it cost about the same. Cloakmaker has just about all of the standard clasps that you find on Internet shops, but also has many unique hand-made offerings, including gorgeous sterling silver, jeweled dragonfly clasps… I have them bookmarked for someday! They were a little slow in answering e-mails, but I was grateful to be dealing with a small company run by real people that offers products I can’t find anywhere else. I should mention that their main product is hand-sewn period and fantasy clothing. I want to ask how many people they have sewing for them, because they seem to have a huge inventory!

Faery Wings!

http://fancyfairy.com/fancyfairyhome.html

These are faery wings as I expect them to look! With modern materials, it was only a matter of time. The wonderful thing is that they weren’t created by some big company, but by one woman entrepreneur, who tried many different methods to create convincing wings for her job as a “Party Fairy” (She graces children’s birthday parties).

My only complaint is that they are not waterproof, but I will leave it to all the creative wing-makers out there to find a solution to that one day…

Another pair of wings, more amazing than the above (and not for sale), is displayed at The Avariel Site. This lady created, after five years of research, a pair of realistic bird wings with a wingspan, oh, about twice her height? And most wonderfully, they move, furl and unfurl like real wings, by way of a pulley system. I sigh for the sheer artistry…

The Bagels are on the Wrong Shelf

I think beau has tried to hide the last cinnamon-raisin bagel from me.

The more I learn about the Meyers-Briggs Personality Types, the more enthusiastic I am. Today I came across an INFP message board, and I am positively thrilled to see how balanced, thoughtful, grammatically correct, and considerate the majority of the posts are. (I haven’t seen an all-caps post yet!)

INFPs with blogs?

Do What You Are, by Paul D. Tieger & Barbara Barron-Tieger, is, I think, a rather more helpful self-help book than most. I like how it is structured. It is based on Personality Type, and while my inclination is to be suspicious of any formula for categorizing people, this seemed to make a lot of sense in reference to details of my interactions with beau, who is INTP, as well as life decisions.

I am INFP. INTP and INFP, according to this book, each constitute 1% of the population, which makes me a little proud of our rarity.

Also, as someone whose main dialogue occurs naturally between myself and I, I necessarily must question keeping a blog :I

A Hippie No More…

I’m at a crossroads. Have I mentioned that lately?

I need to decide on a career. I’m done trying to live as a threadbare hippie. I know it’s sad, but I’ll try to explain why.

I’m not much of a capitalist in that I get by fine without new clothes, without knick-nacks and jewelry and video games and cable tv and cell phone charms and fast food and all the other junk. I know how to live within my means. It’s the other things that I don’t like missing out on- guitar lessons, Pagan and genre festivals, art workshops, nature retreats, going home to Crete. I’ve experienced what people refer to as the freedom of poverty- realizing just how much I can get by without, and accepting how much is beyond my control. I’ve also missed out on a lot of experiences because I didn’t have money. I regret not having been able to see my grandfather one last time for lack of a plane ticket.

For the three years since graduating with my BFA, I’ve lived on a shoestring in order to do things my own way; I sold paintings, figure modeled, and quit jobs that didn’t suit me. Every decision was meant to support the goal of becoming a professional artist, which as I child I stubbornly decided was my birthright. But I find myself unable to paint another stroke with so much weight on the brush: “Will I sell this???”

On the subject of making a living in art, having found frustration in my own attempts, I’ve consulted many sources- books, art magazines, and enough websites to make my butt go numb for a year. I’ve also talked to several people who make their living doing the fine art fairs, and my mom who does lower-price craft fairs. This adds up to all sorts of knowledgeable advice, lots of general encouragement, but no solution to the problem: how do I make a living out of this?

And the reason there’s no solution, is that almost all the advice hinges on a simple premise: “You have to have money to make money”. Entry fees. Slides. Travel. Tables and tents. And of course, the hourly work and the materials are done and paid for in advance, with no guarantee of compensation. Most of the people I talked to have, or at least had in the beginning, another steady source of income besides.

I have no money. So how do I make some? I’ve considered this thoroughly. If I take a low-wage job, making a profit above living expenses will be a problem; the living wage for a single adult in Ann Arbor is $9.25/hour, and I don’t expect to make much more than that as my resume stands. (see The Living Wage Calculator). So, unless I want to grow old living from paycheck to paycheck, the most obvious thing would be to get some useful training. My tentative plan is to do general office work while I wait on college applications, then take out loans and get yet another degree. Maybe a degree in commercial illustration can prepare me, or maybe I’ll go the other way and do something non-art related, perhaps accounting. I considered, of course, a master’s degree in art; it would prepare me to be a professor, but weighing the difficulty of securing such a position and the humbleness of the pay, with the investment of time and money that would go into the degree, I think not. (Last I checked, the average starting salary for an adjunct art professor is $32,000, or $15.38/hour)

To me, the scariest thing about starting over with schooling, is the suggestion of wasted time, and the possibility of wasting more time. At least though, I’ve narrowed it down a bit.

(Any career suggestions for a highly trainable, low-key creative type?)

I think of all the mistakes made in trying to live a life of good–all those inadvertent harms, which surely cancel out the good that’s being worked towards.

As I live and tally up the damage for which I’m responsible, I become more understanding of the mistakes of others. Perhaps there’s good in that.

A Late Christmas Present

Today is a sewing day, and so was yesterday. Poor Matthew has been waiting patiently for a Christmas present for months, and I have been putting off its completion. What present is this? A regal cloak! We probably won’t make it to any Renaissance Festivals this year, but maybe he can wear it at GenCon. It’s almost finished now; all that’s left is to hem the lining and add the clasp. Hemming the outer layer involved binding tape, was accomplished by hand-stitching, and took me a little over four hours for the four yards of stitching. I’m still a relative beginner at sewing, so I don’t know if I made good time or not, but it wasn’t anywhere near as grueling a task as I thought it would be.

On to the next four-yard layer!

“The Star and the Fool”- a painting in process

Once upon a time, I began with a drawing:

Then added a lovely pale green background, but marred it with an attempt at shading around the Star-woman:

I tested out a different background color in Photoshop, closer to what I’d had in mind when I started the drawing– as well as different skin tones on the two figures:

I layered on another background color and lightened up the shading on the Star:

I darkened the green scrolls, and began work on the hair and skin tones:

More shading on the unicorn, more work on the Star’s hair and face:

Added warm flesh tones, refined highlights and shadow in the face, evened out hair tones and added outlines and strands in metallic gold ink, as well as gold swirls at the lower right:

And finished! I had reworked the face several times, and spent far more time on it than I had intended to. Finally I found that point where I needed to leave it alone or risk spoiling it. I still had the prickly urge to go in with a tiny brush, but when I looked at the painting again weeks later, I was very pleased I had left it alone! Here is the detail: