Where I Find Creative Inspiration

The question artists and writers seem to get most often is, "where do you get your ideas? For me I think the issue is an overabundance of ideas. I shift from genre to genre, medium to medium, never sure which direction I will journey. Here are just a few of the places I find inspiration.

1. NATURE
Just walking in nature, around a calm lake or into the dark wood, can jostle poetry and painting ideas from the crevices of my brain. My senses come alive and life seems exciting. Ideas and poems reside among tissue paper thin flower petals, between the ripples on the lake, the tides of the ocean, and interspersed in grains of sand or beneath seashells. The song of a lark, the bark of a dog, the amorous play of the ducks in spring time, offer up all kinds of poems that I must record in any way I can before they dance away on the wind.

2. PHOTOGRAPHS
An offshoot of nature's inspiration are the photographs I take back to the studio with me. The birth of the iphone affords me an easy way to take photos of inspiration as it comes to me on a walk in a botanical garden, rose garden, or oceanfront. I get them printed from a free print app and keep them tucked into my artist inspiration journal.They become prompts for poems, or studies for water color art. 

3. MY OWN ART AND POETRY
Sometimes one of my own poems might trigger ideas for watercolor art. Or a painting, its composition, color palette, or subject, might bring to mind a verse and then I can blend the two on the page as the photo above of a page in my Watercolor Poetry Journal.

4. BOOKS
This book "Writing Poetry from the Inside Out: Finding your voice through the craft of poetry" by Sandford Lyne has been a wonderful resource. I have two copies of the book and have read it several times. Many books can motivate the writing of new poems and help the poet craft there gems. This book has as its focus a system called word groups for prompts. At the back of the book are pages and pages of groups of 4 words each to use as a launch pad for poems. I have gone through them many times, writing longer poems as well as tanka and haiku and have even used them as prompts for flash fiction.

These are just a few places where inspiration sleeps, just waiting for you to awaken them. Although sometimes its the inspiration itself that awakens the poet or artist to new destinations, new paintings or poems and perhaps enlightenment to what is out there is the world for those who choose to wander.

Watercolor Poetry

I consider writing and reading poetry as my form of prayer and worship. I lean toward nature as inspiration for my short poems and enjoy most the kind of poems that describe or respond to nature as Mary Oliver's poetry does. I consider natural settings, like the woods, an open filled profuse with wildflowers, or the ocean, my church. Anyplace where the sky arcs above me and the breeze dances on my skin are where I need to be to connect with myself, my poet, and Mother Nature who I consider to be my higher power.

A lit candle, the music of silence, a pen and a notebook are how I write poetry and connect with my SELF.

Recently I've begun to incorporate watercolor floral painting with my poetry and here I share two pages from watercolor poetry journal. It's a work in progress but it comes from my heart and soul.  

I've been away from blogging for a long time but now I want to connect with other poets and artists through various social media forums and it's time to get this blog underway.

I hope you will join me. Share your own art and poetry and leave some comments. Though I cherish solitude, and each of us works mostly in silence and solitude, communication can ironically bring us closer to our selves and to our individual creative expressions.

Wading into Watercolors

My creative journey has taken me on a long winding road with many unexpected side trips. It began as a child when poetry and art grabbed my spirit and burrowed in. No medium was out of reach. There were crayons, paints, chalks, colored pencils, charcoal and sketching pencils. From stick figure people to trees with a round head of leaves and rudimentary sketches of bowls of fruit I made my way in the art world of childhood. 

Poems erupted in my heart and onto paper at a staggering rate. Poor as they may have been they fed my creative soul.

Eventually, as I grew up, art seemed to slip away and I focused on writing. I journeyed from poems to short stories and onto novels and settled for many years only on writing. Then slowly my creative mind wandered down meandering paths not taken in many years.

It began with a foray into scrapbooking. I was looking for a visual way to express my creativity and happened upon a scrapbook magazine in Barnes and Noble. I bought one. Found a local scrapbook store, took a class or two and was hooked. Writing settled into the nether recesses of my brain and I created scrapbooks for each of my children along with other albums for various occasions as well as random ones. I even started selling framed scrapbook pages of new baby photos and wedding invitations.

One night at the now defunct Borders book store I discovered a magazine called Somerset Studio. Published by Stampington and Company its pages are filled with all sorts of mixed media art. I graduated to acrylic paints, stamping and stencils. Messed around with paper collage and a variety of other techniques. Where once my scrapbook supplies fit inside a shoe box sized plastic bin, my art supplies exploded to fill an entire room, including the closet!

Today, all those supplies still fill up my space and for the passed few years I have been hooked on art journaling. With its lack of rules and its use of so many different materials it is the perfect way to let myself go and just play.

But now I need a bit of focus and have gotten into watercolors. It's a difficult medium to work with as it seems to have a mind of its own on the page, but the challenge is wonderful and the process is meditative which fits in well with my need for simplicity, meditation, and writing simple Japanese poems like haiku and tanka. I will practice and practice, watch You Tube videos, take some online classes and let my skills grow as they will. For now my focus is painting abstract flowers and here is a sample of one of my first attempts.

Adding poetry to my paintings allows me to combine my two creative loves and to make this blog exactly what it claims to be, a marriage of poetry and art.

So join me on this creative journey. I have ended up where I never intended to go.

Devoted to Mary Oliver

I have been a fan of Mary Oliver's poetry for years. Her poems are detailed and heartfelt images of nature, the humbleness of being human, and a clear indication that writing poems is a form of prayer. Her newest collection, "Devotions," is a compilation of poems from nearly all of her other collections and I keep it on my reading table and dip into it each morning. The title also gave me the idea for the art journal I've been toying with creating for a while now.

I have wanted to create a journal that honors Mary Oliver and includes some of my favorite lines from her poems. I've been lately intrigued by these 6 x 6 inch disc bound journals and I think it's the perfect style for this new journal.

I will create mixed media, art journal style, layouts and incorporate lines from the poems. It is my way to highlight the lines I love and to pay tribute to the poet who inspires me to write poetry and to experience and witness nature in all its beauty and tragedy with not only open eyes, but with open heart and spirit.

Artist Exhibit

The Temecula Theatre Foundation is sponsoring an art exhibit at the Merc in Old Town Temecula. The exhibit will run from April 6 to April 30. Artist receptions will be held on April 6 and April 27 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. I will be present for the reception on April 27. I hope you will come out and see this special exhibit. All art work is a donation to the Temecula Theatre Foundation and funds no-cost field trips for 4,000 students.

These are the three pieces I will be exhibiting. The art work for this exhibit is no bigger than 6 inches by 6 inches. I like working in this small dimension so it was a perfect fit for me. I created mixed media work on canvases and included lines from my poems in the pieces. I hope to expand my artistic realm by finding more ways to incorporate poems with my art.

Although this is not a juried exhibit it is always an honor to share my art and poetry with the world. As a writer and artist I spend many hours alone in my room playing with paint and paper or swirling words on the page in a poetic stupor. Art and writing of course are forms of self expression as well as forms of communicating to others what lives inside our hearts and minds. A poetry reading or an art show are ways to bring what is inside me out into the world. It is a pleasure to share myself with others in these ways and to hopefully bring some peace and positivity to the world.

Please come join us at the reception, or just go and visit and see what I and other artists have created from our souls.

Never Alone

I've been art journaling for years and it has lately become my most favored mode of self expression. I can see as I look back on my old journals how much I have learned about art and how to use various mediums and supplies in my work. I would never show anyone most of those old pages and hate looking at them myself, except in order to see my creative growth.

I am still very much interested in incorporating poetry into my mixed media art but I am also looking to expand my art journaling to include more writing, more exploration of thoughts and feelings. Many times that writing will be covered with gesso or paint as it is only for me, but I am working at using art as a starting point for journaling and vice versa. I'm particularly in search of ways to use an art idea as a means to write. 

In this particular piece I began with a coloring page from Stampington's publication "The Coloring Studio," which sadly is no longer being published. I colored and cut out the woman, not using the background in the book but creating my own. The sentiment "never alone" was part of the original picture and though I hadn't planned to use it, as I created the layout it called to me and I thought of two way to interpret it.

Never alone, can mean that you never have to feel alone. That can be due to having family and friends around all the time, or because you have a spiritual belief that some higher power is an eternal escort in your life. It can mean that somewhere, somehow, there is always a person or group you can turn to.

But it can also mean something else. It can mean that you are bombarded by the noise and company of other people and that you are literally never alone. And that can be a stressor. Solitude is a necessary and welcome state, especially for writers and artists who require large blocks of alone time in which to create. Never alone, can mean you never have the quiet you need in order to go deep into your soul and figure out what your true life purpose is.

Like anything, "never alone" has its pros and cons. Its good points and bad. It opens one up to interpreting for your own life and perhaps is a door to discovering more about your heart and soul. A simple sentiment like this can be a creative opening for art or writing and lead me to think in new ways.

Open doors are entries into the creative mind and how lucky that a short phrase, a poem, or a picture can be your open door.

Happy Art Journaling

Many poets, journalers and art journalers begin this practice in order to process difficult times and emotions of their lives. And what a perfect way to slowly explore where you are and where you need to go, what to change, or what to keep. It was that way for me in poetry and journaling but not with art journaling.

I am a typically happy, optimistic and Pollyanna-ish woman and when I think of art I think of art I think of my childhood and hours spent drawing, coloring with a huge box of crayons, painting by number or coloring with a Venus Paradise colored pencil kit. Those were hours of pure and joyous creation with no particular investment in the outcome. And that is how I approach my various art journals.

These two pages are examples of how I express my happy moods. Not to say that sadder emotions don't creep up but I prefer to tackle those feelings with words on the pages of spiral notebooks. I leave my art journals for fun, happy and whimsical splashes of color, image and words. I work in several journals at once all with mixed media pages so that they can hold up to the weight and wetness of paints, inks and gel medium. But they are in different sizes. Sometimes my choice depends on the images I want to use and other times I choose a size to reflect my mood. Am I working tight and small or loose and intuitive. 

I came to art journaling in my fifties and I'm glad I discovered this wonderful way to express myself and to play.

Tribute to a Poet

Several years ago we took a trip to Amherst, Massachusetts and visited the home of poet Emily Dickinson. It was a wonderful experience to see where she lived and wrote her hundreds of poems cloistered in her room all alone. Artifacts of handwritten poems, notes and letters, her iconic white dress with lace collar, the garden outside the door. As a poet and lover of poetry I was touched and inspired by merely being in the same house she had once been in.

I do enjoy incorporating my own poems into my art but many times I like to make an art journal layout that honors a favorite poet. Here is one I did in honor of Mary Oliver and my favorite poem of hers.

Today I made my Emily Dickinson page because the need for hope is strong and crucial right now. Here is her poem about hope.

And here is my art journal in tribute to the solitary poet, the Belle of Amherst.

Making the Most of Every Moment

Before dawn raises her sun striped arms in the sky I gaze out the window, stretching awake my muscles and bones. Hummingbirds flitter outside at the feeder and butterflies hover over the flowers. Each day is a gift and we cannot let even one go without stopping to witness new growth and creative ideas. We cannot pass one moment not observing beauty or being grateful for Mother Nature's gifts.

butterflies
do not waste time
on idle hours
this life graces us
with moments we must cherish

I take to my art journal in order to spend my moments creatively and to wash my soul of the chaos in this world. I look for images and quotes, or create my own poems, that bear witness to the good in the world.

No matter what I am in the process of creating I feel a thrum in my soul that lets me know I am fully alive and witnessing all that each day holds. I am not idly waltzing through life, but taking advantage of its gifts and appreciating everyone and everything I come to know.

Finding Myself in Poetry and Art

The morning is born in silver and blue, calling to me from the slats of light between window blinds. Black crows squawk, demanding attention, the way my mind demands I rise from the bed and head to my desk. A pen with ink the color of a mid-morning sky and a blank page of notebook paper await. The pen will dance my thoughts across the white page, curling dreams into letters and joys and sorrows into verse. The conduit from my mind, through my arm and my fingers, through the pen and on to the paper is a golden ribbon that unfurls from my soul. And here in morning silence I find myself.

Poetry touches the heart. I read poems and a fire lights in my head, birthing flames of new poems. I write and the fires are staunched for the moment only to burn again at the sight of flower blooming or the song of swallow.

If I feel lost, I can open a collection of poems and find myself in depictions of happiness and nature. But writing poems or even stories can act as a mirror to my soul and show me what is important in my life.

Once the poems are written images of paint emerge to be danced across a canvas or art journal to express the parts of myself I have newly discovered. Life begins in the lines of a poem and the swirls of a paintbrush and my spiritual practice unwinds like a song.

Blogging, Art and Networking

I know, I know, I said I wanted to blog more often. Well I'm working on it. We did go away for a few days to Paso Robles, another one of California's wonderful wine country regions. And we spent some hours walking on the trails along the coastline at Moonstone Beach. But with the mobility of electronic devices travel may no longer be an excuse not too blog. Though too much food and wine might suffice.

Well I'm back now and ready to talk about art and all that.

Frank and I attended a meeting of the Temecula Valley Art League last night and my discussion with the current President of the organization prompted this blog post. It's related to networking and publicity.

The TVAL monthly meetings are a lovely blend of pot luck dinner, business meeting and artist demonstration. When we moved to California from New York I researched several arenas for networking with artists and the Temecula Valley Art League came up. We've only been to two meetings so far and just became official members but already I see the potential. Not only for networking with local artists but also as a way for me to get involved in something that I feel passionate about. Besides art making I am very passionate about promoting the arts, especially for children.

TVAL is presently looking for new board members and that announcement prompted me to talk to the President and find out how I could volunteer my services. Aside from taking on some responsibilities for doing tasks the organization needs to be done I also want to brainstorm ways that I can offer new skills and services to the league. They need a new publicity person and I might take that on if I can do enough research about how to go about it. I want to promote art for everyone not just promote my own art making which is more of a personal hobby than a profession.

I'm taking it on, along with other clubs or groups that sound interesting and I hope this blog will also be a forum to publicize events and happenings at the art league here in beautiful Temecula.

Why a Marriage between Poetry and Art?

Many might ask why I choose to marry art with poetry. There are two answers to that question. The simple answer is that I needed a way to combine my two favorite creative outlets. For a long time I struggled between wanting to make art and wanting to write. Being a very black or white person I operated under the false assumption that I could do one or the other but not both. Having little creative time back in those years of full time work I felt that doing both well was an impossibility since I could barely find time to one or the other. If I was writing it was in slivers of early morning, or late at night when my brain could barely function. I needed all the time I could muster to get any worthwhile writing accomplished. There was no room for art.

Yet, art kept singing her siren song, luring me into the deep waters of mixed media and art journaling. It was a lovely place to drown except I kept feeling I needed to be more focused and responsible about my writing. After all a novel doesn't get written in snippets of time. It could take years just to create a first draft.

But then poetry came tiptoeing back into my life. From the time I was a little girl I loved reading and writing poetry and who can't write a short poem in a few corners of the day? So I immersed myself in reading poetry again and began to write more poems. I took a few online poetry classes and started sending poems out to literary journals. But still here was my muse tossing paintbrushes at me and smearing bright colored paints into my thoughts.

And then came the "aha" moment!

Sitting in a garden at the art museum I began to see art journals and canvases that married my poems with art. How the words could swirl through a design or sit humble but strong as an element on the page. I had found the answer to my creative dilemma. I could write poems and make art and put the two together and never worry again about where to put my creative focus.

And that is the simple answer--just finding a way to enjoy my two creative loves at the same time.

The more complicated answer is that art and poetry are a spiritual practice for me and giving up either one was like praying to a demi-god. It just didn't fulfill my need for spiritual connection. In order to embrace my feelings for spirituality I needed to enjoy both art and poetry.

That longer explanation for this marriage of poetry and art is for another blog post. And definitely some more art to show you.

Turning Poems into Art

be still
be silent
wait
for your heart
and soul
to sing

As words swirl across the page in blue ink I can't help but imagine what they would look like incorporated into a piece of art. I've made attempts in the past to add my own poems to my art work and some of them have actually turned out okay. One problem is that I use different styles and I need to refine my style so my work will become familiar.

In the image above I worked out something in my art journal in hopes of getting as style down that I like. I believe working out the plan in my journal before committing to canvas will be a big help.

For this page I used Fresco Finish chalk paint applied with a brayer and added a few stamped designs to bring more interest to the background. For the focal images I stamped them onto various mulberry papers and cut them out. Once adhered with gel medium I used bush markers to add shadows and highlights. I printed the poem on mulberry paper too and attached it with gel medium. I was happy with it mostly for the colors. Even though my paintings have become more bold and bright, when creating art for my poems I prefer softer muted tones.

I was happy with it so I did it again on a canvas.

This time I printed the poem on deli paper and I believe in the future I will use deli paper to print all the poems and to stamp the images as well.

I feel challenged to create a series of poem-art canvases for an exhibit in May. I like the idea and this will give me two different art modes for exhibiting. My bold and bright abstract paintings and these softer pieces with poetry and art. The particular canvas above is 8x8 inches which I like but I ended up buying a bunch of 10 x 10 inch canvases that were on sale at Michaels so I will use those for the exhibit.

So much going on in my mind right now about poetry and art so hopefully that will encourage me to post more often on this blog. 

Have a bright and poetic day.

Art and Poetry as Spiritual Practice

I grew up with no religious training or spiritual practices. Holidays like Christmas and Easter were celebrated because they were fun and were reasons to bring family together for good food, laughter and card games. I didn't attend church or synagogue except for rare transitional events like weddings or funerals. I grew up fine but always with the feeling that something was missing.

Over the years I tested a few religions, tried them on to see if they fit but they required too many alterations to be the right style. I had been told so many times that religion was silly, or wrong, or so much nonsense that I just couldn't find one to suit my needs. And yet, I kept searching for a spiritual practice that would make me feel complete.

I tried yoga, tried to learn meditation and Buddhism, and even spent a weekend at an ashram with a friend to see if there was anything there that could become my spiritual practice.

Over the years yoga and meditation gave me some peace of mind and an excuse to enter the solitude and silence I so desperately require in every day. But it didn't seem enough. And then I discovered something. As a child I had a spiritual practice but didn't know that's what it was. I had poetry and nature and art. I would lie in the cool morning grass of summer and watch the clouds roll by. I would observe the plants turning green in the spring and flowers exploding in an unbelievable variety of colors and shapes. At some subconscious level I must have absorbed all of nature for being the miracle that it is. Mother Nature was my goddess but I didn't name her as such until well into midlife.

Slowly I came back to my childhood passions. First it was poetry--reading and writing poems became my expression of spirituality. A connection to emotions and thoughts that sleep beneath the heart and are difficult to recognize and arouse until I spent many quiet mornings sinking into the rhythm and meaning of poems or watching my own feelings sprawl across the white page in waves of blue or purple ink. 

In later years I discovered I still had a passion for art. I started out scrapbooking then moved on to collage, art journaling, mixed media and painting. I learned techniques through online classes, books and magazines. And finally I had a spiritual practice I could relate too.

Ultimately I needed a way to combine these two creative modes of expression. And though I'm not quite there in a consistent way I started this blog in the hopes I could develop a daily practice of art that incorporated my own poems--or lines from poems by poets I love like David Whyte, Mary Oliver and Mark Nepo.

Here are two samples of my attempts at adding my own poems to my art work.

I'm trying to develop an artistic style that will work and can be consistent so people will recognize the art as mine. I have long since refined my poetic voice and I believe it's fairly recognizable to those familiar with my work. This is definitely an ongoing project but it has become my spiritual practice and I am grateful for that.

It's raining here in southern California and I hear that's unusual but since we just moved to the west coast a few months ago I have nothing to compare it to. So I am taking advantage of this gray Sunday to formulate my plans for blogging.

I had considered starting a whole new blog based only on poetry and calling myself the Zen Poet but that presented a few problems. First of all I would lose all the art I've posted here and second it would limit what I could include. So I've decided to stick with this blog because I can write about poetry and art and just sort of follow my heart. I hope to have more informative posts and to blog more frequently.

Today's post is about stepping out of my comfort zone in relation to art. I typically have a simple style with soft colors or neutrals and not too many layers on my pages. Doing many layers in one piece just never appealed to me. But I began taking some online courses with Mimi Bondi, an Australia based artist whose book "No Shenanigans" inspired me to get creatively uncomfortable. There are e-classes that match each chapter of the book and Mimi is an amazing teacher. Her free youtube videos are amazing and very accessible and I recommend them.

These are two new journal pages that I created with guidance and inspiration from Mimi. I'm not totally pleased with them but I am pleased with the stretch I made to work in new ways with paint and ideas. I even managed to let my fingers do the painting and get pretty messy in the process!

I encourage you all to step outside of your comfort zone and create something using new materials or techniques and if you have't made an art journal page or painted the way you did when you were a child I certainly encourage you to try it out. It's lots of fun and it makes a rainy Sunday brighter and more colorful.

Making Poetic Adjustments

I changed the design of this art and poetry blog and would love opinions about the new look.

I also want to revamp what I do here and focus a bit more. My other blog reneeiswriting.blogspot.com is all about short story writing while this blog is all about my art and poetry. But I have played around so much this past year that I need to narrow my focus.

I want to include images of my art journal pages because that is the kind of art I am into right now. Not art for sale or display but the artistic and poetic ramblings of my crazy and tangled mind. Art journaling is a combination of images--photos, free images from the internet, stamped images and images cut from magazines. It combines an image or two with various background techniques and allows me to experiment with different media like watercolor, acrylics, inks, collage which I find so pleasurable.

All of this visual stuff is then translated into words which can be stamped from phrase stamps, cut from magazines, or written in my own handwriting (not my preferred addition to art journal pages.) For this blog I want to add poems to the art. The poems will either be incorporated to the journal layout or posted separately. It all depends on what comes through when I'm in the process of creating.

I look forward to working more in this blog. Sharing poems I create in online classes and discussing the craft and process of poetry writing. 

It's all a learning process for me and I hope it will become a learning journey for you as you read and share my blog posts.

The Diversity of Creativity

Today seems to be about finding myself--yet again.

As most of you know my creative projects veer off in many directions. It could be art journals or mixed media, it could be poetry or short stories, or it could revert to novel writing. My desires seem to shift from day to day and sometimes from minute to minute. Today I am torn between each of these endeavors and the urge to return to fiction--novel or short stories is strong.

Part of the reason I feel so torn I suppose is that the blank page or a white canvas does not intimidate me. Rather it inspires me as I feel it holds, in its vast blankness, a world of possibilities. Once a few words are written, or some color laid down limitations automatically arise. Though things may change in the creation of the story or painting there is already a directed commitment. 

I want to learn how to accept that I am a divergent creative person and I will never settle into any one form but that always brings up a lack of focus that makes me uncomfortable. If I can become comfortable with that I will be okay.

But in looking at my various forms of creative expression I have noticed something. While my fiction tends to lean toward the dark side of life and people my art seems to be all about happiness.

This art journal layout says it all. While my writing tries to expose the problems in life and show how my characters overcome it, my art wants to shout to the world that there is beauty all around us. 

I am the kind of person who stops to smell the roses, pauses to watch a sunset or sunrise as its colors change from second to second, or stills to hear the songs of birds in the morning. I want my art and poetry to show all the beauty in the world and encourage others to stop in the middle of their hurried lives to witness it all.

Art Journal Fun

So while Frank and I are delving into this exciting business venture I still will find time to art journal. Journaling is a way to express the feelings in my soul but writing my 3 pages every morning wasn't enough anymore. I needed to add art to the mix. More and more I am finding that art is my preferred expressive mode. So in between researching esty information and other online selling sites I finished the layout I started last week.

These art journal layouts won't be something I can sell but it's a way to practice techniques and mediums that I can use in mixed media pieces.

the seet aromas

set senses spinning

thoughts awaken

nudging creative muses

to share what they know

A POETIC NEW YEAR

As Christmas slides away I begin to ponder the coming new year. Hard to believe it will be 2016 in just a few days. Just the start of a new year and a fresh new sequence of 365 days ahead can prompt a string of creative ideas that I know I can barely keep up with. Despite being retired it seems I am extremely busy.

I look forward to the coming year because of my retirement and because Christmas was rather depressing as none of our family was around to enjoy. So we look forward to a couple of trips to see family in the coming year. We also look forward to time for creating art. Yesterday I played around with this art journal page.

artists create from emotional truth

Using gelatos for the background and decorative napkins for the flowers as well as a Donna Downey stencil I played around with a color scheme I've always liked.

I like the saying--artists create from emotional truth--because it seems that when I am creating art I am expressing my creative truth. I am most "me" when writing poetry or playing in my art journal and this year I hope to focus more on trying to combine those two creative avenues. I want to add more of my on poems to my art and develop a particular artistic style that is unique to me and recognizable as my work.

I've signed up for a few online art classes and some poetry classes. I also need to create art for the poems I have and start submitting my manuscript. 

I am very excited about the coming year, the freedom from a full time job and a chance to direct my creative ambitions in a more focused way.

I hope you all have a creative and inspiring 2016!

PEACE ON EARTH

In this holiday season I see a lot of dichotomous images and sounds. Shoppers scurrying from store to store lugging tote bags laden with festive gifts. Store windows are festooned with bright lights and tinsel. Children are singing carols and making lists; checking them twice. There is an atmosphere of joy and gaiety in the air. And yet . . .

It's hard to feel gay what with all the death and destruction spreading throughout the world. Mass shootings, homeless men and women hunkered against buildings along New York City streets while those around them, dressed in the latest haute couture, race from Broadway theatre to exclusive restaurants to dine, while others go hungry. 

I'm not meaning to bring everyone down, I'm simply saying let's make the most of this season. Share what you have and be grateful for the little things. It doesn't matter how well you eat-but that you eat. You don't need a mansion--just a roof over your head and some heat. You don't need designer clothes--just something warm and some shoes for your feet. And let's never forget those who don't even have that and perhaps share a little from your own overflowing bags.

Yes, let's be joyous and merry. But let's not forget. 

And so my wish for everyone this season, and always, is peace on earth and that you all have family around you and good health. 

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!