I’m strangely wordless as I face a New Year rolling in. 2012 was a beautiful year, for many reasons both creatively and personally. I’ll detail some of that in an upcoming post. But I feel a sweet hush around me as I contemplate a new year ahead. The possibilities. The unexpected. The dreams. The hopes. Even the fears are all a part of my reverie. No resolutions. Only to keep on looking around me with my eyes peeled for Beauty, both evident and not-so-evident. I sit with some yarn in my hands. I have desires to put more of my designs out there for others to knit and crochet. If you’d like to peek at my knitting blog, or follow me over there, please do! But these things always morph and change with the seasons. I’ll go where inspiration takes me, drawing it along the way.
Thank you. Thank you so very much for visiting here. For checking in on the crazy things that run in my head and down through my arms to pens, paints, paper and yarn. You just don’t know how I appreciate your presence here. May 2013 bring you beautiful days to draw and paint and create!!
If any creative act, (be it visual, musical, theatrical, written or otherwise), is a definitively spiritual endeavor, then there are certain qualities to that activity that are common to all of us. For one, there’s a sense that a battle is going on. At the very least, the effort involved in climbing to the tippy top of the tree to pull down heaven is hard work and can be very exhausting.
Lately I have felt, alongside the exhilaration of creating, an increasing weariness. Participating in an art show, painting commissions, looking for and recording beauty can be very tiring in a manner different than other work tires. My husband read one of his incredible short stories to the students and faculty at my school where I teach. He recounted how exhausting that was, to offer his work “out there” in the world. As we drove home from this event, the weariness was palpable. Every time we talk to our daughter at college as she studies music, she is exhausted, pulling long hours in the practice room, theory tests, exams, and an unbelievable performing schedule. And my music educator friend, Sheri, told me in our swim team conversation, how tired and worn out she is at the holidays teaching music and performing in various holiday events in the area.
I am learning from a wonderful book by Steven Pressfield, that art is war. His book, titled, The War of Art, affirms the spiritual nature of our creative commitment to bring beauty into the world. He speaks in a martial tone, rallying us as if we artists are, in actuality, soldiers fighting a cosmic war. He outlines the weapons needed to pull down deep heaven, though he does not use that specific phrase.
The effort involves showing up to the page or canvas, doing our scales, honing our craft, working on technique, practicing, preparing. And then we must offer it, share it, put it out there, get in the ring or out on the dance floor, run the race, fight the good fight, never giving up no matter how beat down we may feel by critics, reviews, circumstances, or our own thoughts. We are to fight the resistance that comes in any form it may throw at us to keep us down, or out of the playing field.
Being engaged even on a small level in pulling down deep heaven is no mere trifling. It requires a soldierly mindset mixed with childlike mirth as we place one foot in front of the other up the tree, climbing ’til we reach the tippy top. The climb down may be harder…carrying what we have gathered there from the heavens, and then summoning the courage to share it with others. It requires miles and miles of walking or riding on a donkey to an unfamiliar town, to give birth to our heaven-sent burden in less than ideal surroundings and circumstances. We are to write, draw, paint, make music in and around our messy lives. None of it seems to go the way we imagined or think it should. I have a hunch Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have thought this as well. Yet we are to continue on this journey, like Mary and Joseph, until it is time. Time for what heaven wants to bring to us and through us, be it a babe, a sonnet, a drawing, a song.
May we have the martial spirit of Mary in our hearts and daily lives this season. May we be encouraged by the thought that our exhaustion in creative endeavors is due to the fact that we are in the fight: the calling and work of pulling down deep heaven.
I wrote the above several days before Friday, December 14th, the day someone entered a school in Connecticut with the express purpose of killing. Children, adults, his aim was all. If ever there was proof that a battle is going on, and that we need to engage in that battle to bring down the light of Deep Heaven to shine in these dark days, it is now.
Rise up, oh Artists of all kinds…Rise up and wage battle with the darkness! For we do not fight in vain!
Whilst knitting lately in between drawing and commission works, I’ve developed an itch to blog about knitting. So I’m thinking of swinging a bit over on Drawn2Knit. If you’re interested in all things knitting, crocheting, yarn, etc….please join me! I will still post here as well!
I recently went through a phase. Ha! One of many I tend to move in and out of. It keeps things fresh. It keeps me on my toes. Different ways to view and then capture a place or a person.
All of my Flexi-Sketch drawings are done with multi-colored pens and Neocolor II crayons added in. I used both of these in the first drawing, as I sat downtown Kernersville at the Factory. You get a whole different feel when you switch up your mediums. The above portrait drawing was done at Barnhill’s Bookstore where I sometimes draw with other artists who love drawing people.
My teens are fond of a phrase I will use here: Pens, watercolor, crayons, pastels, whatever…”It’s All Good!”
Today we take our oldest child to college. A small truck and a van are packed full of her things. And I’m wondering if it will all fit into her dorm room at Wingate! A host of emotions have been flurrying around our house and in my heart lately. But this morning, I’m thankful.
Thankful for this beautiful daughter that we were given the privilege of parenting and watching her grow up into a young lady.
Thankful for the incredible opportunity she has to study the beauty of Music at Wingate University.
Thankful for family and friends who will be supporting her in their thoughts and prayers.
Thankful for all the new friends and “family” at Wingate she will meet, and who will become her lifelong friends.
Thankful for the unbelievable miracle of provision for her to go to this marvelous school.
Well. I don’t know if I’m crazy. But it sure does SEEM crazy that when the goin’ gets tough, the drawings pile up! And with the drawings piling up, and my blog time diminishing, I thought I’d go Flickr for a while!
You see, I got this cool little sketchbook, 6″ x 6″, recently on a trip to my favorite art supply store in Boone: Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff. Last week as I was facing teacher workdays and the crazy busy start of a new school year for myself, our college-bound daughter, and our other two kids(one high school, one elementary), I thought it would be fun to begin working in this little book for several reasons:
*One, to have a small space in which to work. Not too big. Not too little. For little sketches.
*Two, to limit the type of medium I use in it. My usual MO is to flit around with every kind of medium, from pens to watercolors, to oil pastels, to crayons, to collage, etc. With this one, I wanted to fill it with just ONE combination: colored pens & Neocolor II Crayons (the watercolor ones).
*Three, to set myself the challenge of filling this little book, all 240 pages with the above mentioned medium choice.
*Four, to allow myself the few minutes, here and there, to make a little drawing for my own sanity. To either sketch the lines on the spot, “from life”, OR to go through our awesome photos my husband and I have pooled together on my ipad, and draw from them.
*Five, to NOT blog about them…but just Flickr them! I don’t know how much time I’ll have to write blog posts in the coming weeks, but I thought I could upload the little drawrings to Flickr for you to enjoy if you want to. I WILL NOT be tweeting about them OR posting on Facebook, after this, so…
*…IF you’d like to have a notice sent to you that I’ve uploaded new drawings to Flickr, you can subscribe to my Flickr account. I already have 14 drawings there, listed in the Flexi-Sketch category.
Meanwhile, I’ll be off drawing in the margins of my crazy life! If you see a lady with untamed hair and a little orange sketchbook in her hands, you’ll know it’s me!
Here’s my guy being goofy! What’s that you say? Randy being Goofy? Yep. His inner middle-school-child loves to joke around with unsuspecting people! So here’s the story:
We have a restaurant here in Kernersville (K’Vegas to locals) called Terri’s Deli. Randy loves this restaurant and eats there frequently, lingering with his laptop to “work”. In summer, the owner’s young son helps out in various ways. This young man was the recipient of Randy’s goofiness this day.
While making his order, Randy picked up a fridge magnet with Terri’s Deli logo on it . Randy says to the young fella,”If I place this magnet on my head, do you think it will stick?”
Boy responds, “Not unless you have metal in your head.”
Randy proceeds to place the magnet on his forehead, and amazingly, it sticks! The boys jaw drops.
Randy’s surprised too, “Well, I guess I do have metal in my head…and that would explain a lot!”
I sit beneath the dreaming tree
letting heart run wild and free.
The path to here is long but sure.
For crazy days this is my cure.
Lean and long, grow and gaze,
Wonder at how beauty plays
On dappled thoughts here and there.
My tree whispers love and care.
-jpe (jennifer pilkington edwards)
My Dad’s Poem in response to this one:
Your Dreaming Tree means much to me
Because of it I long to see
My own dazzling Dreaming Tree
To sit beneath and once again a poet be
For time and care and pain, all three
Have robbed my soul of dreams of He
Whose very soul made my tree.
-edward lee pilkington 8/4/2012
And then, my response to his poem:
Dear dad, be assured of thy dreaming tree
For it grows beside my own, so tall and willowy.
Though many storms have bent it low
It sways in the breeze with graceful flow.
Knots and scars have made it strong
Weathered bark withstands the throng.
Within its willows live countless ones
Who through its branches have seen the Son.
I know one day you will once again be
dreaming under your willow tree.
When time and care and pain is o’er
We’ll sit ‘neath our trees on that glistening shore.
And write our poems of the Beauty we see
Then dance the days together, just my daddy and me.
Maddie and I are enjoying visits to the new Joslin Diabetes Center. The beautiful bright colors make you forget that the reason you are here is because your child has a life-threatening disease which requires ongoing management and education. This morning, we met with the wonderful Kathie Cooper, our diabetes educator. I say “our”, because it really is education for ME (maybe moreso) as much as it is for Maddie.
The start of each school year brings all kinds of preparations and a bit of anxiety. There are forms to fill out, meetings to “educate” her teachers, sorting out her daily schedule and when things will happen, like lunch, P.E., recess, snack. We are so thankful for how her elementary school has worked with us in caring for Maddie and assisting her with her diabetes. This year, she and I are wanting the school to allow her more independence in the management of her Type 1 Diabetes. This might be a little tricky…so I am now armed with the legalities of what school’s should provide by law. It is both daunting and liberating to work toward my daughter, eventually, being completely independent in her diabetes care. Maddie is ready for the next steps in this. I am ready too…I think.
The other thing I have on my radar right now (along with far too many other pressing and huge matters such as, oldest going off to college, mother starting radiation, my own teacher workdays beginning soon…) is the Walk to Cure Diabetes sponsored by JDRF in Winston-Salem, NC on October 27th!!! Maddie and I missed this last year (largely due to my own overwhelm), but I am determined to not let this year pass us by! It is such a wonderful event: so encouraging to Maddie and all of us who are affected by Type 1 Diabetes in our families. I’m hoping to design t-shirts for our team, gather some friends to walk with us, and raise money for a Cure.
Word has it that a Cure could be within the next decade. That would be a dream come true!
