Day 135 of year 3
“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver from Evidence: Poems
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For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here.
it goes both ways, monotype, 12 x 16”
Sybil Archibald
Day 134 of year 3
Something more simple today. When I printed this layer on top of the ghost print from a couple days back, I fully intended more layers. But this feel complete so I am listening to that instead of continuing on. I've switched up my studio time in an effort to keep growing. I'm trying to knock myself out of any unconscious ruts. So I'm working in the morning instead of the dead of night and I've replaced my usual audiobooks with music. It feels very different. I'll keep you updated as this experiment unfolds.
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
By Rumi, Trans Barks & MoyneToday, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
From one of my favorite Rumi collections, Open Secret https://amzn.to/39dqjy8
For the first 24 hours after posting, this piece is 10% off and can be purchased here.
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here.
rising, monotype, 12 x 14”
Sybil Archibald
Day 126 of year 3
Sonnets to Orpheus Book II, 1
By Rilke, Trans Barrows and Macey
Breath, you invisible poem!
Pure, continuous exchange
with all that is, flow and counterflow
where rhythmically I come to be.
Each time a wave that occurs just once
in a sea I discover I am.
You, innermost of oceans,
you, infinitude of space.
How many far places were once
within me. Some winds
are like my own child.
When I breathe them now, do they know me again?
Air, you silken surround,
completion and seed of my words.
From In Praise of Mortality https://amzn.to/3f9QeYu
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here. For the first 24 hours after posting, this piece is 10% off and can be purchased here.
dawn, Monotype, 12 x 14”
Sybil Archibald
Day 120 of year 3
I printed on top of a demo I did on the studio tour this weekend. It's good to work quickly from time to time as I do in demos. It keeps things fresh and keeps the brain quiet (poem below the title)
Your boat, they will tell you,
cannot leave the harbor
without discipline.
But they will neglect to mention
that discipline has a vanishing point,
an invisible horizon where belief takes over.
They will not whisper to you the secret
that they themselves have not fully understood: that
belief is the only wind with breath enough
to take you past the deadly calms, the stopped motion
toward that place you have imagined,
the existence of which you cannot prove
except by going there.
From Writing Alone and with Others https://amzn.to/3lo9OSX
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here. For the first 24 hours after posting, this piece is 10% off and can be purchased here.
see me, monotype 12 x 14”
Sybil Archibald
Day 111 of year 3
We want the world to see us for who we are, but often we refuse to see ourselves and our fundamental goodness. We like to focus on our brokeness, but what of our light.
Oremus
By Pádraig Ó Tuama
So let us pick up the stones
over which we stumble, friends,
and build altars.
Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies.
Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices,
of our own names, of our own fears.
Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug.
Let’s lick the earth from our fingers.
Let us look up and out and around.
The world is big and wide and wild
and wonderful and wicked,
and our lives are murky, magnificent,
malleable, and full of meaning.
Oremus.
Let us pray.
From https://onbeing.org/programs/padraig-o-tuama-and-marilyn-nelson-a-new-imagination-of-prayer/ Also see Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community https://amzn.to/3mCfzN0
boat, monotyoe, 12” x14”
Sybil Archibald
Day 108 of year 3
I added ink directly onto the plate on top of the left over from last night’s print. I like the effect.
KEEPING OUR SMALL BOAT AFLOAT
By Robert Bly
So many blessings have been given to us
During the first distribution of light, that we are
Admired in a thousand galaxies for our grief.
Don't expect us to appreciate creation or to
Avoid mistakes. Each of us is a latecomer
To the earth, picking up wood for the fire.
Every night another beam of light slips out
From the oyster's closed eye. So don't give up hope
that the door of mercy may still be open.
Seth and Shem, tell me, are you still grieving
Over the spark of light that descended with no
Defender near into the Egypt of Mary's womb?
It's hard to grasp how much generosity
Is involved in letting us go on breathing,
When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.
Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for
Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat
When so many have gone down in the storm.
Source: Robert Bly's Facebook Page
mystery, monotype on paper, by Sybil Archibald
Day 102 of year 3
The Moment By Dorothy Walters
And not once,
but many times over,
again and again,
how we disappeared
into that deep well
of darkness, shuddering beneath that load of silence,
clinging to our narrow ledge.
Yet the darkness, sometimes,
unfolded as light.
Our atoms dissolved in it,
each separate molecule opening
into a radiant disk of feeling.
How still we became,
witness and thing seen,
spectacle and observer,
each point admitting an untrammeled flood.
From Marrow of Flame https://amzn.to/3krhJOP
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here. You can purchase this monotype here.
interior view. monotype, 12 x 14”
Sybil Archibald
Day 98 of year 3
Tonight's poem is from a really lovely book of poetry, Iron String, and is a new discovery for me. I hope you enjoy.
Enough
By Annie Lighthart
Sometimes the birds like the bare branch, and later
the cover of leaves. And so it goes: a day of sun, then two
of rain. We are easy with the world and then can no longer be.
And the space between — what lives there? In the middle
of the in-breath and out — where are we just then?
Is there more than silence between chorus and verse?
Is it a compressed galaxy? A pocket of time? Or perhaps
it is more like the comma, dark little hook
on which many things turn. Sometimes it’s enough
to slip into that darkness and just stand there, looking around.
From Iron String https://amzn.to/3oinBMS
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here.
You can purchase this monotype here.
Day 93 of year 3
Sonnets to Orpheus, Book II, XX
By Rilke, Trans. Barrows and Macy
How far it is between the stars, how much farther
is what's right here. The distance, for example,
between a child and one who walks by—
oh, how inconceivably far.
Not only in measurable spans does Fate
move through our lives.
Think how great the distance between a young girl
and the boy she avoids and loves.
Everything is far, nowhere does the circle close.
See, on the plate upon the festive table
how strangely the fish is staring.
Fish are mute, we used to think. Who knows?
We may, in the end, find that their silence
says more to us than our words..
From In Praise of Mortality https://amzn.to/37euSXE
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here.
You can purchase this monotype here.
congregation. monotype, 12 x 14”
Sybil Archibald
Day 90 of year 3
I finally cleaned my studio up about halfway. Such a relief! Mess is good for creativity up to a point and I crossed that point long ago. 😊Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, everything in an artist's life is linked. Get out of balance in any area and it effects the studio.
Effortlessly
by Mechthild of Magdeburg, trans. Jane Hirshfield
Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings --
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound. –
From Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Cebturies of Spiritual Poetry by Women: https://amzn.to/2GMmQuk
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here.
You can purchase this monotype here.
Day 85 of year 3
A Cloth of Fine Gold
By Dorothy Walters
You may think that first lit flame was the ultimate blaze, the holy fire entered at last.
What do you know of furnaces? This is a sun that returns again and again, refining, igniting, pouring your spirit through a cloth of delicate gold until all dross is taken and you are sweet as clarified butter in god's mouth.
From A Cloth of Fine Gold https://amzn.to/3iD4WHt
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here.
You can purchase this monotype here.
Day 82 of year 3
Tonight's poem is from a beautiful collection of Zen poetry. I ordered this book years ago from a used bookseller. It came dog-eared and stained. I love it, it feels like being a guest in a musty old library filled with ancient books. It takes me out of present time and place and immerses me in the experience of its poetry. Many artists hope their work will shift people's experience. This book shows that work doesn't have to be grand or perfect to do that, only an authentic expression of self.
Reflected
by Kobayashi Issa, Trans. Stryk and Ikemoto
Reflected
in the dragonfly’s eye —
mountains.
From Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter https://amzn.to/30wjse1
For more information about the process of monotype and the Monotype of the Day project click here.
You can purchase this monotype here.
Day 77 of year 3
My printing plate is literally falling to pieces but somehow, miraculously, it keeps producing monotypes. I had planned to try my hand at making a new plate using gelatin and vegetable glycerin instead of the one I get at the art supply store, but the supplies never arrived. I began to get irritated so I tracked my package only to find I had never placed the order. Everything was still sitting in my cart. I chose to laugh. Every moment is a choice, not so much in the physical world, but in the mental world. How will we choose to meet the moment? With excitement, acceptance, peace or with irritation and upset? It's up to us. I write this to remind myself of the lesson I learned while in the hospital last year and throughout all the years of my illness, happiness can be an inner choice not a set of situations in the world. Poem below the title.
Halleluiah
By Mary Oliver
Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!
And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.
Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.
From Evidence https://amzn.to/3n4ezT8
Day 68 of year 3
Day 800, that's a nice number! I spent the day making color prints. Most of them will end up as under layers for future black ink prints but I liked this one. There is a special kind of freedom in making work you know will never be seen. It's a good way to oil the cogs so to speak. It loosens you up and relieves you of internal judgements. I haven't done this in a long while and it felt really good. (Poem below the title)
Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?
By Mary Oliver
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.
And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree–
they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.
At least, closer.
And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.
From Why I Wake Early https://amzn.to/3mAFLII
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fire, monotype, 12 x 14”
Sybil Archibald
Day 66 of year 3
My printing plate is just about out of gas. I've been using it every day for a couple of years. The paper is sticking to it and the ink is rebelling. I can't get a solid field of black. It's an interesting texture but I think I'll be replacing this plate soon. To be an artist often means being at the mercy of the physical world. The push and pull of materials is an active force during creation. Materials have purpose and desire, they have moods. Sometimes you get along with them and sometimes you fight. Tonight I fought a bit but in the end I let the ink and plate have their way. This evening, one of my favorite all time poems below. I've posted several time before and used as inspiration for my solo show last winter. I never get tired of reading it and the fire in this print is a good excuse!
This work is paired with "A Fish Cannot Drown in Water" by Mechthild de Magdeberg translated by Jane Hirshfield from The Enlightened Heart https://amzn.to/3hGQDRQ