Peach Blossom

“…the long work

of turning their lives

into a celebration

is not easy. Come 

and let us talk.” 

The Sunflowers. Mary Oliver

Peach Blossom Jim Wiegle

 

My Butterfly Self

By Catherine Marsh

Since retiring I have been going through a process of reinventing myself using dreamwork and art. I have loved and collected masks for many years so as I began my journey into expressing my inner self through art, masks beckoned me. 

When I invited a group of friends to make masks with me, one of them picked up a cocktail napkin I had provided to keep our drinks from staining my table. She started cutting out the napkin’s scarab image for her mask. I squealed with delight. She didn’t understand my excitement. 

Scarab, Bumblebee, Dragonfly, Cicada Masks
Catherine Marsh  2023

I exclaimed, “It’s a scarab.” As I explained the mythology behind this Egyptian symbol, I realized it would be a perfect symbol for my own rebirth – all that new life emerging from the ball of dung rolled by the mother throughout her life.

My scarab mask inspired me to continue making insect masks to represent birth, transformation, and renewal. I made a bumblebee, a dragonfly, and a cicada before attempting my most recent, the butterfly. 

Butterfly Mask Catherine Marsh 2023

The mask is paper mâché covered with a base of acrylic paint, mixed to create a deep blue. I found the butterfly online, printed it and applied it to the mask with Mod Podge. I enhanced it with gold acrylic paint and purple and blue metallic lines and squiggles applied with Crayola metallic markers. I painted the rest of the mask with acrylic paint mixed to match the purple in the butterfly and added copper-colored crystals to bring out the copper color in the butterfly.

Finally, I crowned the mask with a mix of purple-colored butterflies on a fascinator I found when searching for craft headdresses.

Modigliani Nude

 It's in the reach of my arms

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

(Excerpt from Maya Angelou’s poem, “Phenomenal Woman”)

Modigliani Nude Gale Goldman 2023

She poses peacefully, and she is phenomenal. 

She embraces her vulnerability

 with the courage to be seen, naked and strong. 

She knows she’s worthy of love and connection. 

I dedicate my latest painting,

 an interpretation of Modigliani’s “Female Nude”

to phenomenal women everywhere. 

 

 www.goldwomanfineart.com 

Gale Goldman

Originality

 The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect 

but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. 

The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

C. G. Jung

From Resignation to Possibility 2022 Nancy Golden

Culminating a series of creativity classes, Nancy Golden made this playful piece as a visual representation of her recent dreams and experiences. 

 

Her ‘cutout’ appears to be a skein of multi-colored yarn rolling forward in cycles of time with herself in the center wearing a yellow coat (hopeful), blue pants (purpose) and red shoes (passionate walker) that have delicately drawn laces. The word ‘Resigned’ with dual meanings of ‘feeing resigned about something’ and ‘submitting one’s resignation’ appears on a straw stuck into the rolling skein on her left side, like a knitting needle. Similarly, the word ‘Possibilities’ is placed to her right in the rolling skein of time. 

 

Nancy loves to knit and has done so both during her 49-year career in education and since her retirement in June 2022. She finds it calming and centering. When sharing this art piece with others she talked about how her feelings and perspective about retirement have shifted over the last few months.

Seeding Our Imagination

  

SEED PODS LiDoña Wagner 2022

Terry Bergdall

Three songs on my playlist are about being awake on life's journey and taking an affirmative relationship to the realities one encounters. 

 

A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

Kurt Elling

Album: The Questions

 

In the final verse, after describing many troubling encounters, his crucial point is to notice and pay self-conscious attention to it all:  "I'll know my song well before I start singin'."

 

I Can See Clearly Now

Holly Cole

Album: Don't Smoke in Bed

 

It is as if she's proclaiming, "this is precisely where I should be, and I am extremely grateful for it." It strikes me as courageous. I find her delivery of this song to be profoundly inspirational.

 

Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

Album: Live in London

 

There are no rose-colored glasses in this song. "Our love is not a victory march / It's a cold and it's a broken 'Hallelujah'." But "hallelujah" none-the-less and all the more powerful because of its clear lucidity with wide open eyes. 

Reawakening the Muse Within

TIFFANY SHLAIN is a multidisciplinary artist working across film, animation, video, and performance. Her advice for those looking to make a career in the arts is relevant for all of us.

 

Shlain’s feminist history tree ring, Dendrofemonology
is at the center of her new solo exhibition, 
Human Nature, at SHACK15 in San Francisco. 

See as much as you can. You are a sponge to absorb every idea and thought you can then build on and reference as you create something that only you can bring to life. And like anything, you must focus and home in on your craft. I believe everyone is creative and just needs an environment to foster that creativity and focus. So see and create as much as you can!

 

And one other key piece of advice that I think is the special sauce to all of this: One day a week, turn off your phone and all your screens and look instead to what is around and inside you. I have been doing this practice for 13 years, and my day without screens is literally the day all the best creative ideas come to me.

 

 

From Winter 2022 volume of CLIO
The Magazine of the National Women’s History Museum
with photos courtesy Tiffany Shlain. Tiffanyshlain.com/art

 

 

 

 SEASON OF REST & RENEWAL

December 21, 2022 – February 5, 2023

  

 

Spirit Hears Women Singing to Pine Trees

 LiDoña Wagner 2022

 

From the Winter Solstice 

marking the incremental return of the light

to the conclusion of the Lantern Festival 

celebrating the Lunar New Year,

I declare as my personal season of rest and renewal.

 A time of appreciating the darkness 

while Simultaneously 

welcoming the lengthening of daylight hours

 

Patiently awaiting 

new potentials now hidden from view

Trusting resurrection 

from old, outdated patterns and beliefs

 

I am Nature 

And Nature is Me

 

PEACE and JOY TO YOU!