Simple, Simple, Simple

I did it! I did a home yoga practice for 21 days straight with the help of Yoga Journal. Then I did another 21 days all on my own. And ... I’m still doing it.

In early January I saw an article in Yoga Journal announcing a home yoga practice challenge January 10 through January 30. The article was intriguing, but I was doubtful. Then I found the two-page spread on a “simple everyday practice” by Kate Holcombe. I noticed right away that there were no down dogs, back bends, or hand stands. It was all done lying or kneeling on the floor – simple – simple - simple.

I cut out the spread, taped it into a file folder for easy reference, and gave it a whirl. It was primarily spine, leg, and arm stretches. It was just what it said - simple. Afterward, relaxed and refreshed, I signed up for the challenge.

The first issue was, WHEN am I going to do this? I had imagined doing it first thing in the morning. But I already have a morning journal writing practice that occurs before breakfast and dressing for work. I knew trying to get up earlier was not going to work for me. Then I realized that I go to a yoga studio two nights a week after work. I decided on the days I didn't go to the yoga studio I would do the home practice immediately upon arriving home from work.

During the challenge, I received a daily email with a 20-45 minute video.  At first I tried to watch the video and then do the sequence. But it was too hard to remember all the poses, so I switched to setting my laptop on the floor and following along with the instructor. After one 45-minute sequence, I determined that 30 minutes would be my maximum. Since all previous videos were still available, if the one for a particular day seemed too much, I would repeat one that had worked well for me. There were plenty of down dogs and sun salutations, but no backbends or hand stands.

During the 21 Day Challenge, I found that the daily yoga practice became a ritual for marking the end of my workday and the beginning of my personal time. I remembered how years before, when I was teaching in Singapore, I would arrive home in the heat of the afternoon and take a shower to mark the conclusion of my workday.

When the challenge ended I had enough momentum to keep up a daily practice using Kate Holcombe’s twenty-minute sequence. After about a month, I began to notice a decrease in the pain and stiffness I have had in my right arm and shoulder for over a year. That victory has spurred me on. I am now committed to maintaining an ongoing SIMPLE everyday practice.

Mystery

Birth is a mystery. Life is a mystery. Death is a mystery. When we stand present to these realities we experience awe.

Green leaves of summer turned red and gold, fell from their branches, and were replaced by falling snow as one of my dear friends fought an aggressive cancer. Three weeks ago the cancer took a final ferocious  turn.

For the last twelve days of her life, almost a hundred colleagues joined our friend in an around the clock and around the world prayer vigil, giving her support and comfort. Set to New York time, colleagues in Australia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, India, Africa, Italy, Canada, Costa Rica. Mexico, and all across the United States selected an hour in which to pray or mediate with our friend and send her uplifting energy.

At every hour of each day there were three to nine persons accompanying our friend by lighting candles, singing songs, ringing bells, saying prayers, repeating mantras, clapping hands, remembering her gifts to humanity, meditating, and sitting in silence.

As our friend’s time for transition to pure spirit drew near, her husband requested that we send short prayers, brief poems, and messages to be read aloud to her. Via email, an amazing collection from varied traditions and cultures was compiled and sent to New York. The global vigil continued.

On the morning of the final day of her transition, with family and closest friends assembled around her bed, the reading began. Throughout the day, names evoked memories, prayers occasioned wonder, poems released tears, phone messages brought smiles, and hand holding gave comfort. Late in the afternoon, a friend arrived to give Reiki and to guide a meditation.

Both my friend and her husband were transported into awe. Each experienced that, “Darkness is just a curtain and when the curtain is pulled aside all that exists is Light, Energy, and Pulsation.”

A few hours later, embraced by her husband and lifted up on a wave of love, my friend slipped quietly away to become one with Infinity. Those who accompanied her on the journey are filled with the extraordinary lightness of her new being. Mystery is everywhere.

Winter Solstice 2010

I love to celebrate that wonderous moment when darkness has reached its apex and the return of light begins. After over twenty years of snail mail labor and expense, this year my Solstice greetings are digital.

First Museum Show

2010 was packed with activity and change. Early months were taken up with three back-to-back solo shows of my Pilgrimage paintings. Every spare minute was crammed with:
• Photographing and framing 19 paintings and 8 studies
• Designing installations for three starkly different spaces
• Framing and labeling accompanying photographs and artifacts
• Creating all the information for wall tags
• Lining up volunteers to help me transport the paintings, install the exhibition, and later deconstruct and move to the next location
• Creating, printing and making covers for a Pilgrimage Gift Pack of 17 cards, envelopes, and stories.

My relationship to these paintings changed once the first public exhibition took place. It was a bit like seeing one of your kids leave for college. I had the awareness that these works were no longer me or mine. While I am responsible for getting them out into the world, they now have a life of their own.

The high point of this period was having my first museum show. As I gave various artist talks and discussed my work with viewers, I began to use the phrase “narrative abstraction” to describe my style of art. It was wonderful to finally come up with a name for what I do, but it has also launched me into further reflection on what I mean by this term.

Spring morphed into summer as I packed up the last show at Grants Pass Museum of Art and began to contemplate shows outside of Oregon. I know the work has a powerful impact because a frequent comment made by Pilgrimage viewers to gallery staff was, “This is the best show you’ve had here. “ Please let me know if you have connections to cultural art centers or local museums of art.

Recreating My Space
In a moment of insanity, I decided to paint the interior of my home this summer, something I had contemplated many times in the seven years that I have owned it. Color choices made two years ago were revisited and altered as I clarified that I wanted the downstairs to be warm and inviting, the entry and stairwell to reflect journey and movement, and the upstairs to be calm and meditative.

I made a big mistake by employing a neighbor’s friend to paint the areas requiring ladders. What should have taken a week took over a month because the painter left in the middle of the project and had to be sought after to return and complete the task. Plus, my color changes required meticulous edging that, given the limitations of the painter, I had to do myself. More frustration ensued when the painter overcharged without providing proper documentation and invoices. I won’t go into my anger and disgust when this person left loaded paint brushes and rollers in my refrigerator.

Thank goodness I had a grand adventure to divert my attention from disruption at home. A weekend of kayaking the Rogue River with my yoga teacher and nine other women was totally exciting and exhilarating. Kayaking tested my willingness to take risks and set the stage for me to launch into a new series of paintings, Children of Eve. You’ll be hearing more about this in 2011

Opening to Change
Even though I’ve navigated many changes in my work at the university - my office moved seven times in ten years and the director who hired me moved to greener pastures - I was not prepared for the impact of having both the current director and academic secretary retire and go half time. Since the other two persons on my team were already part-time, that means I am the only fulltime person. After a couple of months being overwhelmed with trying to keep everything together, I set some boundaries and clarified work hours and duties for all team members.

The loss of my team as I had known it triggered memories of other losses – my daughter, former colleagues, a special workmate, organizations and meaningful missions. I suspect that each deep loss we experience must be renegotiated as circumstances in our life change. I am grateful that counseling and stress management are available as a job benefit. Although I still feel somewhat fragile, I think I’m handling the angst a bit better now.

Another big change is the transformation of my granddaughters from little girls into a teenager and young adult. Haley turned 17 in November. As a senior in high school, she is making applications for college next fall. Merron turned 13 early this month. She and I will be taking an international trip this summer, our destination to be selected in the next few weeks.

In 2011,
May hope infuse your daily life,
Courage embolden you to make changes, and
Care for planet earth become a focus of your actions.
Peace and love to all,
LiDoña

Be Inspired

In my August blog I mentioned that my open studio group in Ventura had decided to publish a book presenting our art and the intentions behind it. Art: Twenty Ten is ready now and I want to share the process we used to create this inspirational gift. Perhaps you will find clues about how to make one of your dreams a reality.

Art: Twenty Ten was born when Katherine Chang Liu, advisor to our open studio, asked if we thought publishing a book showcasing the wide variety of our work would be a good idea. Two persons in the group had already self-published art books and told us how “relatively” easy it had been. One volunteered to put us in touch with the graphic designer who had prepared her work for publication. We calculated how much it would cost each of us to purchase this person’s assistance. It would be between $15 and $25 per person. (It was $20.) Thus encouraged, we voted to take on the project.

After the open studio, one of our members began floating title ideas via email. After a few rounds of input – for and against a variety of titles – we arrived at Art: Twenty Ten. The title initiator, Carole Gardner, has a lot of graphic and computer skills and in short order she was trying out sizes and cover designs. After another few rounds of email, we agreed upon a square format, the cover page she designed, and the basic design for each artist’s two-page spread.

After contacting our chosen graphic editor, Carole reported that if we got everything to him by mid-October, we could have the books in time for Christmas. We decided to go for it. The graphic editor felt it would make everything easier if he only had to deal with one person rather than twenty-seven individual artists. Carole volunteered to field input from all of us, check to be sure it met specifications, and forward approved work to him.

As project director, our appreciation of Carole grew by the day. She recruited a committee that included Liu to provide ongoing feedback, editing and proofreading. Each individual artist selected three images of works from one of her series (one to be large and alone on the right hand page), wrote a brief statement of the intention behind her work, and acquired a portrait to accompany the statement.

Carole’s diplomacy came to the fore. Sometimes what an artist wrote was too brief or too long. Sometimes the three images didn’t show well together; images were not sent in the correct format; or information was incomplete. Once all of an artist's information was correct, Carole sent a proof of the two-page spread to be confirmed or edited before production.

There were foot draggers. One artist had photos with background distractions that had to be removed. Another had to locate, unpack, and photograph her work. One suggested, “You really don’t need my work, there are plenty of other painters.” One didn’t know where she put the CD with her images. Nevertheless, with help from friends and using her own computer graphic skills, Carole brought all twenty-seven artists from twenty-seven different locations into the fold.

Each artist received a mini-proof of the whole book before it was sent out to possible publishers. You would think that after working together in open studio, some for many years, there would be no surprises. Not so. When writing her statement, each artist opened her heart and shared her most profound intentions. We found reading the statements and seeing the images inspiring and we weren’t even seeing the color version! We shared how blown away we were by the power and beauty of our book.

Our graphic editor got quotes from two publishers, Lulu and Createspace. He and Carole decided to make both versions available. The Createspace version is slightly smaller (8.25 x 8.25 inches) than the Lulu version (8.5 x 8.5 inches) and less expensive.

You can order Art: Twenty Ten directly from Createspace at www.createspace.com/3497717 and get a 20% discount ($8.20 - 20% = $6.56) plus shipping by putting in the code RPG886A7 on check out. At amazon.com Art: Twenty Ten is $8.20 plus shipping. The Lulu version costs $17.10 plus shipping. You can order Art: Twenty Ten by going to http://www.lulu.com/ and entering the title. It will not be available on amazon.

If you or someone you know has ever wondered what goes on in the head and heart of an artist engaged in the creative process, or if surrounding yourself with beauty inspires you, I highly recommend Art: Twenty Ten. And, of course, my work and intentions are included in the book.

Trip of a Lifetime

I stood at the end of a long dirt road that reminded me of the TV series Gunsmoke, except that the soil was the russet red color found throughout eastern and southern Africa. I could feel my blouse sticking as the July sun sent sweat streaking down my back. My hands were clammy and my fingers were swollen so much they felt like small sausages.

At twenty-three this was my first trip abroad and everything about it was virgin territory for me: the flight from Chicago to New York, crossing the ocean by ship, taking a ferry from London to The Hague. We’d made a whirlwind trip to the medieval city of Bruges, a brief stop in Communist controlled Prague and then on to view the acropolis in Athens. We had been given a brief history of mid-east tensions by a Jordanian scholar in Aman, visited the pyramids near Cairo, and eaten highly spiced goat meat in Addis Ababa. We had received an overview of Africa in Nairobi before landing in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanganyika (present day Tanzania).

In the mid 1960s Dar es Salaam was a frontier town – rough and raw – starting from scratch to build something. The dirt road seemed to disappear into cavernous open space blanketed by an impossibly blue sky. A new signboard read Nkrumah Street, recently renamed in honor of the highly celebrated leader of Ghana. On either side of the rusty ribbon road stood low wooden buildings - unpainted, ramshackle, with corroded tin roofs.

Advancing along a row of these wooden sheds, I spotted ahead of us a rickety sign with FRELIMO scrawled in chipping white paint. We arrived at the office of the Mozambique Liberation Front and my heart skipped a beat as my then husband knocked on the shaky door. After a moment, the door creaked open and I could see three dark curly heads hunched over maps on a battered teacher’s desk.

Our research into African liberation movements had begun. We hoped to find clues in post-independence Africa for our work in the black inner city ghetto where we lived in Chicago. I stood among the guerrillas that day and listened to their stories of using community theatre to awaken villagers to the evils of colonialism. My stomach registered so much fear that I felt I might melt into a puddle at any moment. But my head was exploding with electricity.

Looking back, I recall being vaguely aware of Leakey’s discoveries of ancient human skeletons in this area, but I was oblivious to the fact that those dark skinned young soldiers were my distant relatives. We continued to Northern and Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe and Zambia), Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Nigeria, almost to Chad, Ghana, and almost to Timbuktu. At the end of the summer we flew from Accra to Paris and thence to New York and Chicago.

It would be another twenty-five years before mitochondrial DNA research would establish that all humans have descended from one woman in East Africa. It would take another thirteen years after that for the Discovery channel to produce The Real Eve and explain how DNA tracking reveals the migratory routes taken by our ancestors as they left Africa and traveled to all parts of the globe.

Since that summer decades ago, I have traveled all over the world and that first trip had receded into the darker recesses of my memory. It took an event last spring for me to realize it was the trip of a lifetime. Not because it was my only trip to Africa; I made several trips over three decades. Not because I was repulsed by steak ala tartar in a town on the border of Nigeria and Chad. Not because I flew around the continent in six-seat planes and nearly died on the way to Timbuktu when one of the two engines failed.

The significance of that primal trip was revealed when I did a DNA sample for the genographic project of National Geographic. The results of the test showed the migratory route of my maternal ancestors. The trip I made as a young woman had essentially retraced the journey of my mother's ancestors back through Eastern Europe, through the Near East, back all the way to their origin in the Rift Valley of East Africa 170,000 to 50,000 years ago.

I have been to the birthplace of all modern humans. I have breathed the red dust those first humans breathed. I have gazed at the same stars my ancient relatives followed. I know from whence I have come. I am humbled by knowing in my breath and bones what awesome courage it takes to live as they did, in harmony with nature.

The Practice of Self-Affirmation

Many years ago I created a ritual to handle my anxiety over the first Christmas without my daughter. Called 12 Days of Christmas, for each of 12 days I gave myself a gift. These were as small as a $5 teapot from Goodwill, as costly as going to the ballet, as sweet as a box of chocolates, and as spiritual as a set of Mother Peace Tarot cards. It was one of the most self-affirming things I had ever done.

In the years since my first 12 Days of Christmas, I’ve used that ritual to navigate difficult periods of my life. I realize now that performing that ritual has developed into the practice of self-affirmation. In the last year I performed the following acts of self-affirmation.

To care for myself:

1. I set aside time every week to talk with my best friend.
2. I walked thirty minutes a day and did yoga or Pilates at least two days a week.
3. After owning my condo for seven years, I painted the interior in colors that nourish my spirit.
4. Knowing my tendency to become absorbed in a book and read all night, I held off reading The Help until my most intense period of work had passed.

To respect my creativity:

1. Despite early rejections of my Pilgrimage series of paintings, I persisted for nine months in creating and sending out an exhibition proposal that resulted in having three solo shows.
2. In spite of having limited resources, I invested in spending two weeks studying with my art mentor.
3. I purchased a professional easel so as not to harm my neck and back by leaning over a table for long periods of time.
4. I reorganized the studio to accommodate the easel and have all my supplies close at hand.

To challenge myself:

1. I went kayaking and refused to give up just because I didn’t get it right in the first half hour.
2. Despite not being a science fiction or fantasy fan, I read Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy because both of my granddaughters loved the books. It turned out that I thoroughly enjoyed them.
3. I committed to doing my Children of Eve series on wood panels rather than paper, a support with which I am very comfortable.
4. I wrote a blog every month – even if it was in the last wee hours of the last day of the month.

In listing the above items, I’m not bragging about myself. I am giving you examples of what the practice of self-affirmation might look like. I challenge each of you to take up this practice because the interesting thing about self-affirmation is that it does not lead to self-absorption. On the contrary, it opens us up to care for that which is beyond ourselves. For example,

1. In my care for the environment, I choose not to own a car. (See my blog on E to the third power.)
2. A friend and I have traded our gift exchanges for making contributions to groups doing critical work in the world. Some of these include Central Asia Institute, Ophelia’s Place in Eugene, Partners in Health, Doctors Without Borders, Heifer International and Institute of Cultural Affiars.
3. I am a member of President Obama’s Honorary Kitchen Cabinet – meaning I gave generously of time and money to elect a visionary leader.
4. I’m out canvassing for Democratic candidates who will move our country forward - out of the slide into oblivion where we were previously headed.

If each of us cared for ourselves, nurtured our creativity, and challenged ourselves to move out of our comfort zone, I suspect that not only our economy but our civic life as well as the arts and education would blossom in exciting ways. Why not give it a try?

2010 Ventura Artists Summit

A cardboard woman with a skirt of white netting, a hollow left leg, and overflowing shopping bags presided over twenty-seven artists working at an array of tables. easels, chairs, and stools. Judy Levinson's wacky take on figures set a magical tone for two weeks of serious studio work in the company of artists intent on producing meaningful work. Bell Arts Factory in Ventura, California was the venue for our gathering.

Ranging from thirty to eighty years in age, we artists were Swiss, English, Canadian, Asian American, East and West Coasters, South Westerners, and a sprinkle from Middle America. We came bearing the wounds of divorce, cancer treatment, high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, motherhood, grief, broken hearts, exhaustion and exclusion. Each artist had extracted herself from an easy or difficult situation in order to produce her best work and take it to a new level; no eye, ear, neck, back, leg, or emotional ailment could extinguish her will to create.

Katherine Chang Liu, leader and mentor for the two weeks, presented thought-provoking slide shows, gave individual critiques, cheered flagging spirits, and extracted commitments from those who have kept their creations away from the public eye. But it was the energy of the individual artists that created an electrifying atmosphere conductive to high performance.

For me personally, the summit was an opportunity to launch into my new Children of Eve series of paintings after months of research and data collection. I needed a concentrated period of work to release the visual language of Pilgrimage and find something fresh and specific to the story of our human migrations out of Africa 70,000 to 50,000 years ago. Hopefully, producing four pieces has built enough momentum to keep me going on the remaining eighteen.

Together we artists committed to publishing a book that will showcase the range of work we are doing. Twenty-seven artists are doing one-of-a-kind: cardboard creatures, imagined topographies, lithographs via computer, textural histories, collaged self-portraits, off-the-wall assemblages, genealogical constructions, distorted spacial arrangements, bold and lyrical abstractions, outrageous and gestural figures, and paintings of sculptural forms, color-field shapes, feminist antics, pointilistic skulls, moody environments, color frequency settings, surreal and composite images, calligraphic landscapes, garden vegetation, symbolic narratives, and social commentary. There are no duplicates.

Until the book is ready, enjoy these photos of Katherine commenting on another of Sand Poland's stunning assemblages, my easel in the studio, and the beachside view from my balcony in the Crown Plaza Hotel.