Elementary, My Dear Thea

5th Grade Art in the Gym

I just completed my 3rd year of teaching 5th grade art in public schools funded by Idaho Commission on the Arts. It is such a rewarding experience and I am feeling especially grateful this year that the project is completed.  My classroom teacher, our local art's commission director, and I decided on a very large project this year that demanded a lot from everyone involved. The theme was Stream Restoration and Trout. The project was a 3' x 5' banner involving the topic and yards and yards of fabric, hand sewing, machine sewing, and lots of fast moving hands, elbows, and crawling around on the floor. Thank goodness, an empty classroom provided the space for all of us to get down and get to it. And thank goodness for all the people who donated time, materials, and encouragement! Yikes. I had one very scary moment at the beginning of project construction. Preliminary sketches were done (I'm always so impressed with the variety and imagination shown in my student projects), all the banners were stretched out on the floor ... big, blank, muslin 3' x 5' canvases waiting to be covered in colorful, large (yards and yards and yards!) swaths of fabric. I panicked. I did NOT have enough fabric to cover 19 such large projects! I started searching for donations as soon as I left the school that day and was humbled and gratified by the generous response. Particular thanks go to Granny's Attic here in McCall, Flight of Fancy in Donnelly, and Keep Me in Stitches, also of McCall. Without you, this project would have gone through a redraft or two!

On Night's Plutonian Shore

Each year, too, I am reminded of the enormous responsibility our school teachers have; not only to provide their students with an education, but also to guide and assist them in all manner of topics and situations - often on the fly - that require flexibility and creativity in their responses. What an accomplishment it is to complete an entire school year!

Plutonian Detail

During my teaching time, I kept my own art projects small and just did things spontaneously. I had always wanted to do a piece based on Garrison Keillor's annual Halloween reading of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" - when Garrison says the phrase, "... on night's Plutonian shore..." in his low, gravelly voice, I just swoon. This image is what I came up with - no preliminary sketch, just making it from: commercial prints, hand dyes, glitter flat ribbon, black leather sequins, charcoal glass beads, mica chips, and some hand stitching in black pearl cotton. It was more fun than should be had!

Another project made me feel just plum happy to be working on it - bright springy colors and a photograph printed on fabric that I took last summer canoeing up the North Fork of the Payette River:

Hollyhock Detail

Hollyhock

 And this next one? Don't know yet! Just know it will be really fun to do because I have been wanting to use pieces of hornet nests in my compositions for years - now is the time. This will be a warm up for a much larger piece I have in mind. It's good to practice with new materials a bit before you go whole hog. The photograph is one I took in my yard last fall and you can just see a hornet nest swinging in the upper right corner in an aspen tree - that same hornet nest is now in my studio, a piece of which you see in the lower left of this photograph. Beautiful, gray, striated papery stuff that just yells to be used in my fiber art!

Fabric and Nest Material

Solar Squalls and Snow Storms

Today, our little planet was hit with a huge solar squall - I watched video tape of this squall yesterday morning and held my breath as I watched a section of the sun's surface bunch up and gather itself together for a grand expulsion into space of energy particles, heedless of any repercussions... It seems that nothing dramatic will happen, and I am grateful. I hear via NPR that we may be graced with some lovely northern lights, courtesy of our Sun and its most recent temper tantrum. I have been fortunate enough to see northern lights from my bedroom window three times this winter - one time in particular I remember because it came immediately following another solar storm which I suspect also took out my 2006 edition computer (one of my excuses for not blogging in so long a time).  So while I appreciated the light show, I was very unhappy about this unexpected and very costly side effect of our Sun's "off gassing". It made me stop and think a bit more yesterday when I heard of yet another approaching sun storm. It is easy to take for granted the lazy loops through space we make every day. I'm beginning to appreciate that our existence is incidental and precarious. Dependant on the steady behavior of a distant star.  My daughter and I were driving home from a hot springs soak yesterday afternoon and heading west with the lowering sun beaming directly into our faces. We talked about how everything that happens to our sun, happens to us. We are utterly reliant on this dispassionate relationship. As large and rock-solid as the mountains seem that surround us here in Long Valley, they could be gone in one vast solar burp - and us with it. I found myself thinking of a phrase I love from The Book of Common Prayer:  This fragile earth, our island home.

Scott & Ethyl dig us out

View from bedroom window

Not discouraged by these reflections, I find myself  leaning into new challenges and sharpening my eye towards equanimous resolution to life events - even snow storms that bury us when friends of ours are gardening a scant 40 miles away.  Encouragement came in the form of robin song while at the hot springs yesterday - just one short little trill; and while I couldn't spot her, the familiar song is undeniable and is a harbinger of spring. Even though it was only 6 degrees this morning at my mile high house, I know for certain now that the season is turning towards warmer sunnier days.

A snowstorm seems like a minor challenge amidst life's storms and squalls.  What happens when our own bodies bunch up and ready themselves for their own expulsion of particles, heedless of its inhabitants reaction? Health issues are rather like our reliance on the sun - dispassionate in that our bodies do what they do with or without our given consent. Yet we are utterly reliant on this imperfect vehicle to carry us through our own lazy loops that we make through the space of our lives.

For many years, I have suffered odd joint pains and muscle spasms. Not having any other experience of bodily inhabitation for comparison, I was unclear as to what significance these manifestations had. I did know better than to go very far without Ibuprofen. In my back-country wanderings with my late husband, I would sometimes wonder if I would be able to make it back out without a big production. I became balky about making hiking and athletic commitments. The last two years, these symptoms have blossomed into full time and sometimes debilitating pain. I am grateful to my doctor for putting a label on this condition: fibromyalgia. 

Giving something a label, or identification tag, helps me grapple with what it really is... for me. What does this disease mean for me?  How will it shape my life? What steps do I need to take to make my life better given this new circumstance? Will I make the decision to follow my doctor's recommendations?  This may seem like a given but it is, in fact, a choice and one that is not always easy to make. For others in similar circumstances, or facing a new physical issue, you know what I'm talking about. When your doctor looks at you and says, "..this is life changing.." your senses go on high alert and you know decisions are coming your way.

Things are sorting, sifting, and reorganizing themselves in my soul's pantry.  I am figuring out what I need to add to my general provisions and what I need to throw out. My "equanimity" is being challenged and I hope to maintain grace and composure as I face skepticism and doubt.  Fibromyalgia and many diseases/disorders are not readily visible to others. During my late husbands last months, I was sometimes approached with a questioning, "...but he looks fine!" Not quite an accusation, but an expression of doubt that anything was truly wrong.  

 We humans are funny creatures. Often quick to reach a conclusion about someone else, we forget that each of us has our challenges.  And to each of us, these challenges are significant, requiring thought and decision. Did someone offend or snub you today? Behave in a distant manner? Consider they may be mulling over their own dilemma.