gathering, Monotyope of the Day #812

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Day 80 of year 3

The supplies came to make a new printing plate, finally! I'm excited to experiment this weekend. It's always wonderful when an artist can make their own art supplies. It gives you more possibilities, more room for play and more room for mistakes. Mistakes are one of the most important parts of the artistic processes. It's easy to get attached to what you want to happen, but I try to never get upset over a mistake because mistakes are gifts. They are cracks that let in fresh air and light to guide you on your way. They wake you up and help you to change. Change is the essence of being an artist. Creation is fundamentally an act of changing the world. An artist brings a new physical form into the world and with that form comes transformational energies. Like a drop of water in a well, these energies ripple out. Without mistakes our ripples would grow small and our journeys narrow.

dream of climbing, Monotype of the Day #809

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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

the artist surrenders, Monotype of the Day #808

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Day 76 of year 3

I am grateful that 2 of my monotypes found wonderful homes today. It is always a moment of great joy to put a piece into the hands of its new owner. This is an interesting process, letting a piece go out into the world. Artists put so much of themselves into their work all the while knowing that it must leave them forever and irrevocably. So the artist must learn detachment. They must learn that although they have poured themselves into that piece, it is not them. It sounds like an easy concept, but it is a hard lesson every artist must learn. It effects an artists ability to sell and also their ability to discuss their work. Praise or blame for a piece, critiques and criticisms are not critiques of the artist as a person, though it can sometimes feel this way. When the work goes out, sometimes it is as cherished as the artist desires and sometimes the world has other plans. Once a frame shop burned down with my piece inside. So what is an artist to do? Let go our need to control what happens to the work and trust. Trust in the meaning and purpose of working. Have faith that what you do matters though you may never know the why, where, or how of it. Be grateful for your amazing collectors and get back into the studio where you belong.

For the next 24 hours buy this monotype for 10% off here: https://www.sybilarchibaldart.com/daily-monotype-sale

After that, you can purchase it here: https://www.sybilarchibaldart.com/monotypes-for-sale

as a fish, Monotype of the Day #806

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Day 74 of year 3

This print contains many days of ghosts layered over each other.

The Oldest Thirst There Is
By Rumi, Translation Coleman Barks

Give us gladness that connects
with the Friend, a taste of the quick,
you that make a cypress strong
and jasmine jasmine.

Give us the inner listening
that is a way in itself
and the oldest thirst there is.

Don’t measure it out with a cup.
I am a fish. You are the moon.
You cannot touch me, but your light
can fill the ocean where I live.

From The Essential Rumi https://amzn.to/3kRKPaa

For the next 24 hours buy this monotype for 10% off here: https://www.sybilarchibaldart.com/daily-monotype-sale

After that, you can purchase it here: https://www.sybilarchibaldart.com/monotypes-for-sale

i can hear you, Monotype of the day #805

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Day 73 of year 3

I've updated my website. It's taken a lot of time, time away from the studio, but necessary time to give. Being an artist doesn't just mean working in the studio in blissful isolation. It's paperwork, websites, social media, taxes, bookkeeping, networking, reaching out to galleries, sales, and more. But I for one, gladly give this time because I'd rather be doing this than almost anything else. My website is updated with new work including the entire monotype of the day project, a video section, and the ability to purchase work. I'm excited announce that from now on, for the first 24 hours after posting, the monotype of the day will be on sale for 10% off. www.sybilarchibaldart.com/daily-monotype-sale.

Look for the light in this world and you will find it. xo

choose, Monotype of the Day #802

Day 70 of year 3

One of my favorite websites is www.poetry-chaikhana.com/. It contains a wealth of sacred poetry from around the world. Every time I visit, it seems I find something new. Tonight I discovered the poem below. Art feeds art and creativity is generously contagious and enriching. It's so important to the creative process to be exposed to different forms of art whether poetry, music, dance, etc. Cross pollination.

Elbows By John Fox

The sacred quality
of arms, particularly
elbows that make
each of us working class,
put us here for a purpose.
Look at elbows
and what they say:
elbow your way
into the passive crowd
to do what is needed,
give it your elbow grease --
this is enough.
Elbows, no one can
possess them because
they can disappear and
you move them
into action by choice.
And that choice
is prayer in action.
The deepest current of love
is not found in the heart.
That is the certain spring,
the natural ease, the flow
from the mountaintop.
The greatest current of love
rushes forward in the choice
to make a cradle of the body.

Found on https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/F/FoxJohn/Elbows/index.html I could not find the book source for this.

partners, Monotype of the Day #800

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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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