Jenny Mendes

I went to visit the cleveland museum of art on Friday and saw so many amazing things I wanted to share.  I love the concept of this bowl, male and female joined with the universe between them, an offering to each other, this beautiful space carved out of two becoming one. 

Have a great Thanksgiving wherever you are.

http://oz-zingaro.jp/category/works/index_otani/

Yesterday was a tough day for me and I am feeling quite down, but then I remembered this essay below that I had read a few days ago.... I thought I would share it.  Somebody else's beautiful story, but a sentiment I share none the less even on a very bad day. Gate A-4 By  Naomi Shihab Nye : Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well— one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her . What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.” I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck, habibti? Stani schway, min fadlick, shu-...

In the heavens I see your eyes. In your eyes, I see the heavens. Why look for another Moon? Or another Sun? What I see will always be enough for me. ~ Rumi

My show with Scott Parady at TRAX gallery will be live online as of 12:00 pacific time Sunday 23 November! and  featured in an article in American Art Collector Magazine this month! see it HERE

Working with my hands gives me the opportunity to do something else with my mind while I'm working and while often I like silence, a good audio book, or long delicious conversation, this week I was also listening to music.  Predominently Joni Mitchell who I was introduced to in college by my roommate who played her albums and sang with them.  My way of experiencing music at that time was primitive. I would listen over and over again to an album taking it in like breath through the sounds of the music rather than the content of the lyrics.  I have strong auditory memories of her music, but not really what she was talking about.  I've been revisiting her melodies and lyrics lately, and experiencing them much more deeply and differently than I would have back then, because of time and life experience.  Some are incredibly sad, she seems so very exposed, poetic, and articulate in her sadness.  I found an interesting CBC interview of her that is quite long, but...

opens today!!!  http://traxgallery.com/

I know I've shared this before, but I often want to remind myself how important it is to be open to the awe of something you might not have had the capacity to imagine until it greets you.  Have a great week!

never leave

listen:

This is part one.. I thought it was really great, and I highly recommend  listing to this interesting conversation between two potters and friends that I admire.  The conversation flowed into all kinds of different topics, always circling back to clay... I even took a few notes on things I wanted to remember...  Maybe I especially enjoyed listening because I know both people, so the conversation was full of personal nuance that I then witnessed on a new stage.... Or maybe you don't need to know either of them to be eagerly awaiting part 2.  I'm going to listen to that now, but you can start here and I hope you will enjoy it:   http://sawdustanddirt.libsyn.com/episode-4-nick-joerling-on-the-sawdust-and-dirt-podcast-part-1 I know I will be listening to more of Michael's podcasts in the future after having my first taste Mike Nick .. it was the perfect thing to listen to while I was working today.

Someone wrote to me on instagram today @misterclaudey (that's me) if I had heard of the French/Austrailian artist Mirka Mora.  I hadn't, but I looked her up, and wanted to share my new discovery with you.  She narrowly escaped being deported to Auschwitz during ww2 and emigrated to Australia with her husband after the war where she and her husband quickly became key figures on the Melbourne cultural scene.... you can read more about her here:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirka_Mora I'm always happy to learn about artists I had never heard of :)

FORGIVENESS is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, the act of forgiveness not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw center, to reimagine our relation to it. It may be that the part of us that was struck and  hurt can never forgive, and that forgiveness itself never arises from the part of us that was actually wounded. The wounded self may be the part of us incapable of forgetting, and perhaps, not meant to forget…stranger still, it is that wounded, branded, un-forgetting part of us that eventually makes forgiveness an act of compassion rather than one of simple forgetting. Forgiveness is a skill, a way of preserving clarity, sanity and generosity in an individual life, a beautiful question and a way of shaping the mind to a future we want for ourselves; an admittance that if forgiveness come...

Deeply touched by a painting, and then words, and then again the painting.  Sharing this: her story and painting.   "Here is the story. I have always been a lone path walker, inside relationships or out. Lone searching for meanings, lone processing them through me, lone discovering the self, even lone loving. But now I am just starting to realize what a true touch really means. When you really SEE another, when you see their wholeness when they feel at breakdown, and see their innocence when they crush under shame and guilt, and see their softness when they harden themselves, and see their beauty when they’re ugly, and their sacred purpose when they are lost.. And through that, you SEE all that in yourself, too. And you celebrate it. And you giggle and dance in a deeply present way, and even when the rest of the world looks like f***ing devastation and chaos, you SEE all that in the rest of the world, too. You have your eyes open to see the reality and stay put in it, but...

Carl Sagan

from Charlotte's Webb by E.B. White