below the surface, Monotype of the Day #643

Day 273 of Year 2 (Actually Day 278)

Something is ready to shift in my work, but it's below the surface. I can feel it bubbling just out of reach. Often when I hit a rough patch, like the last few weeks, it's because something old needs to crumble to make room for something new. It's uncomfortable to say the least. No one likes to make work they don't feel good about. But every artist will tell you this common experience: they hated their work at the time but looking back, they find it was actually okay and sometimes even good. Our way of seeing is shaped by judgment and expectations. Our inner world has to shift and our narrow sight has to open to bring work to the next level. Change is uncomfortable, letting go of expectations and desires can be painful. But a deep embrace of whatever discomfort we are going through brings deep transformation and healing. This healed energy is what comes through in the new work and elevates it from the old. I know this will come. Patience Sybil, patience.

tree of life, Monotype of the Day #640

Day 270 of Year 2 (Actually Day 275)

I'm focusing on setting my house in order. Each day my family and I are spending an allotted amount of time stripping away the clutter of 7 years in this house. It feels liberating. The alchemists believed that every external act of healing has a corresponding internal one. I usually feel this effect in my studio. The studio is my great teacher and the lessons learned there spill out into my life, And this goes both ways, strides made outside of the studio inevitably show up in my work. So although I would love to be spending every minute in my studio, I must follow the energy and trust that it all serves my work. At the very least, I will finally have a clean and organized home, I hope! :)

messaging, Monotype of the Day #627

Day 257 of Year 2 (Actually Day 262)

I thought I'd show a few pictures for scale and process. Tomorrow I'll take a picture with ink on the plate before printing. Right now, the urge to simplify is strong so I find myself using just one color. I'm also back to meditating twice a day and it's like spring cleaning my brain! :) My show in February already seems like a millions years ago but really I'm just getting my grove back. With everything going on in the world, I'm grateful for any grove at all. I'm in the studio each day because I love it, but also because I need the healing and generative energy of the creative act. The centering moment of clarity that comes with making art balances and me. And studio teaches that though it's not easy, it's okay not to know what's coming. We are here now and this present moment is sacred and has the power to transform. My love and prayers to all those sick or suffering.

windows, Monotype of the Day #618

Day 248 of Year 2 (Actually Day 253)

Is this a sunrise or sunset? I wasn't sure until I realized it is both. One way of being is ending as another is coming into form. Now is a moment of deep surrender and trust. It is a moment of unknowing. Our old ways have, at least for the time being, come to an end. The studio teaches so much. In the studio the artist learns to let go and embrace the unknown, to let life force run through them and into the world. By doing this, the artist is changed and healed, enveloped by the greening, generative energy that undergirds all of life. What happens in the studio then spills out and effects the world. If you feel helpless think of the artist. There is little we can do right now to change the outside world. We must stay home, we must wait. But we can look inside, we can find kindness for ourselves and others, we can heal and reshape our internal world and thereby create ripples that positively effect everyone around us. We have lost a lot but all is not lost, we can still make these moments count. Sending prayers for healing and love to all those who are sick or in difficulty. xo

the keyhole visits the beach, Monotype of the Day #595

Day 225 of Year 2 (Actually Day 230)

Tonight I made muted seascape after seascape. In the final one, a keyhole appeared. I grew up in Los Angeles and spent a lot of time staring off at the ocean. It was a meditative, healing experience. I guess I need that calming regenerative energy right now because the image I planned to make disappeared the minute I stood in front of my plate! My show has been a wonderful experience. I have been spiritually filled and nourished but physically depleted. I'm fine with that. When you live with illness, you learn there is a fine line between conserving your energy and strength and unnecessarily losing opportunities. It's really tricky because it's next to impossible to be certain how much energy you will have on a given day. You don't want to push yourself so far you get into a mess, but you also don't want to be so timid you miss things you might actually be able to do. It's a constant quandary. Some days 5 minutes in the studio is overdoing and some days two hours or more is overdoing. The key is accepting where you are and what is possible at the present moment. I just take it one day at a time and know that even 5 minutes a day adds up to something real over time. One foot in front of the other and eventually you arrive. I'm feeling incredibly grateful for my show, all the amazing visitors, the outpouring of love, & my ability to continuing working. xoxo

Even if You Have Trudged
By Dorothy Walters

It is never too late.
Even if you have trudged
through snow and ice
for a thousand miles
and still have not arrived.
Even if the map is lost
and the compass broken.
When the eagle who is
supposed to guide you
goes off on a tangent
of its own
and you know you are,
once again, deserted
do not fall into
the pit of despair.
It will return,
brighter than ever.
There will be feather tokens
falling down.

Nothing is irredeemable.
Nothing is lost forever.
Be guided by the stars.
Let the moonlight
direct your steps.

There will be a path
which will open
in the forest.
The treasure which is yours
is waiting.
Claim it.

From her blog: http://kundalinisplendor.blogsp

the forest at night: reaching, Monotype of the Day #533

Day 163 of Year 2 (Actually Day 168)

The forest is such a mysterious place, so much happens there we are unaware of. Like the creative process, we can catch a peak but not really experience it deeply unless we enter in. The veiled nature of the creative process has been the centering theme of my life. Often it's felt like an ascent, like climbing a ladder. But recently this has changed to feel more like a journey deep into a forest to find a mystical place, a true home. Before I strove to heal myself to be a better vessel for creativity. Now I accept we are all imperfect vessels and it's through our cracks that that the Light comes in as Leonard Cohen so beautifully puts it. This change is huge because it removes another control from the process. Even a good goal like healing acts to limit possibilities. I am longer trying to make anything happen, I am just here to welcome and partner with the unceasing flow of creative energy as it enters into the world to transform everything it meets.

you are held, Monotype of the Day #496

Day 130 of Year 2 (Actually Day 131)

Tonight's piece is a perfect example of how making art can change you. I first made the images of the person falling. But every time I looked at the print, I felt myself clench up with anxiety. This was a feeling in me than needed to be healed so I went back to the studio and added the hand catching the top figure. I instantly felt that anxious feeling slip away and a new feeling of trust and optimism creep in. We can't always change the outer world, but there are so many way to shift the inner world and those changes ripple out.

the rescue, Monotype of the Day #482

Day 118 of Year 2 (Actually Day 119)

I am rescued everyday by my work. Especially on a day like today when most of my time was spent sleeping, making my print brought meaning. Hopefully I will be fully recovered soon because there is so much to do for my show in January. I also need more time in the print studio to develop my ideas. Once again my mantra must be patience. It's easier to accept that than it used to be. Small movements forward do add up. Trust, faith, hope- I never understood the dearness of those words until recently. They are not just concepts, they are salve to the heart and grease to cogs that keep me working everyday. I am grateful for their gifts.

the view from inside the cave, Monotype of the Day #480

Day 114 of Year 2 (Actually Day 115)

I actually fell asleep twice during dinner! I guess I'm still recovering from the studio tour this weekend. 😊 Somehow though I managed to get up and made my print. It was tough physically, but mentally I'm raring to go. Something about doing all those demos reinvigorated my excitement for printmaking. We shall see how this unfolds. In the meantime, after making tonight's image, Plato's allegory of the cave immediately came to mind. The idea that we are trapped in a cave just seeing shadows of ideal forms always struck me deeply. In the past, I thought of these shadows as somehow dark or broken, lacking beauty. Now I see them as beautiful reflections of Light. I guess that's a fundamental shift in my perspective on the world. It's brought about by the healing nature of illness, like a water carving away stone, it has washed away so many darker emotions. In some medieval texts, forms in the world are described as vestiges or footprints of the divine. I like that more than shadows. All forms in the world are like keyholes, we can look through them and get a peak beyond the veil. It takes the right mindset, but it's a beautiful world and the veil can be very thin.

the spotlight, Monotype of the Day #456

Day 90 of Year 2 (Actually Day 91)

This was tough to make tonight. I had an opening and when I got home, I literally could not keep my eyes open. It took about an hour of battling my eyelids until I was able to drag myself into the studio. Then miraculously, and as is always the case, somehow enough energy came to do a print. As I am typing I feel that energy slowly draining away.

This puts me in mind of the renown cellist and amazing exemplar, Pablo Casals. Casals was famously asked at age 93 why he continued to practice. “Because,” he replied, “I think I’m making progress.” I once read that in later years, he woke up as a stiff old man, but as he practiced each day, his body would straighten up and his energy return. When he finished, he would slowly deflate like a balloon until bed and wake up the next morning to start again. On the day he died, he had already practiced for several hours. The renewing force of creativity gives bountiful gifts to those who partake.

Emanation, Monotype of the Day #429

Day 63 of Year 2 (Actually Day 64)

The trip really took a toll on me. I'm moving like a snail around the studio. One of the many gifts of studio time is that when I am working, it's not that the pains go away, but they cease to matter. For that creative moment it's just me, the ink, and the energy flowing through, nothing else matters. It's such a privilege to be in that sublime energy. Strangely, it is as much an earth energy as it is a spiritual one. The two worlds exist at once. While working, I feel completely rooted in the earth and the present moment while feeling the hand of The Artist moving through me. the artist (me) and The Artist working together, master and apprentice. I will sleep and hopefully tomorrow I will feel better, but if not there is still the studio to nourish and heal in the loving embrace of The Artist. (Poem below the title)

Logos
by Mary Oliver

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

From Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver https://amzn.to/2LUFsqu

internal sunrise, Monotype of the Day #379

Day 14 of Year 2

It is comforting to remember there is a rhythm to the world that beats on whether I am there to hear it or not. The sun rises and sets without needing me at all. It takes so much pressure away to know the world doesn't revolve around Sybil ☺️, sometimes that's easy to forget! I can continue to do my best to be loving and kind in the world, but if I fall down and fail to meet my own standards, it's ok. Life goes on. The sun rises again and tomorrow I get another shot. As the alchemists taught, as above, so below. The internal rhythm echoes the external, energy/vision/will/satisfaction, you name it, rises and falls. In those falling times, I only have to look out and remember that just as the sun rises each day, my inner life will cycle back. Every ebb leads back to a flow. So I take heart and always wait for my internal sunrise.

Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches --
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead --
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging -- there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted -- each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

sunrise, Monotype of the Day #365

One year! And something totally different again, a sunrise, full of optimism. It's been quite an adventure of late in the studio. I have no idea at all what will come out. One year of prints everyday without fail through all my ups and downs, through hospital stays, trips and grumpiness, feels like a big occasion. But I'm treating it like any other day, a chance to get down to work and see what will happen. Tomorrow I'll be back in the studio again. Year two, day one.

As I look back over the year I feel such intense gratitude for all the changes this project has brought to my life. I've grown as an artist and a person. The constant wash of creative flow through me has worn away so many rough edges like a river smooths a stone. I've felt the immeasurable power of showing transform my life and open opportunities and connections. I have formed a deep faith in the value of working. As those of you who follow me regularly know, I had a difficult spring with 3 hospitals stays. It was working that carried me through, even as fever and an operation pulled me down. Touching the creative flow healed me and brought me back to life. Over the course of this year, I've had an intimate, life changing conversation, artist to Artist (the source of all creativity). It has been profoundly private and also more public than anything I've ever done- two opposites almost mystically coexisting in one moment. I've experienced great beauty, sorrow and joy while working and now I am filled with gratitude. My profound thanks to everyone who is following my journey and all the support I have received from you. The comments, likes and sales mean the world to me. If you are not a commenter, know that I feel and value your support. Although I would still be in the studio without you all, your presence this year has made everything so much sweeter and you are dear to me. A special thanks to Barry Echtman, without whose support so much would remain undone and all my artist friends!

As once the winged energy of delight
by Rainer Maria Rilke, Trans. Stephen Mitchell

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions… For the god
wants to know himself in you.

———————

See you tomorrow

xoxo

Peace, Monotype of the Day #358

After finishing photographing all my prints, I've moved to the next phase- sorting and inventory. It's an interesting process to revisit my work. I find that some images repeat. They evolve, but some same core structure is there. This is true of tonight's print. Several years ago I made a similar series. At first I was bothered, but realized this image is a key to unlocking certain feelings in me, in this case peace. Some of the images that come through are an expression of my feelings and some, probably most, are a message, a transfer of energy and they change me. I needed this image tonight and definitely am more at peace since making it. Although some pieces are more successful than others as works of art, they all play a roll in my own growth and healing. When I see an image has evolved, I take heart. Progress is being made even if it hasn't yet shown up outside my work. This brings me a great deal of peace, knowing I've found my place and my work is progressing.

Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

xo

the whispering moon, Monotype of the Day #354

Feeling more relaxed than last night! Something interesting came up while working. I had the urge to put the large circle on my image again. Immediate resistance came up, "people will think I'm repeating myself". I almost didn't notice it at first. Luckily, I have a practice of sitting quietly before my empty plate and opening to the inner messages of where to go. The circle kept coming up. It is so important for me to listen deeply and act upon the direction received. If I had let my ego rule and worried about the perception of others, this image and it's message would have been lost. It was important for me to experience this message, something shifted inside. I felt healed. Maybe, hopefully, it's meaningful to someone else too, but that is out of my hands. I wish my work to be like a jar overflowing into the world with the energy of healing and transformation I feel while working, just and the Universal creative energy overflows into me. But I can't know the result of my work, only the process. So, back to the studio ... 😊

From moon wreathed
by Matsuo Basho, Trans. Stryck

From moon wreathed
bamboo grove,
cuckoo song. -