Jenny Mendes

“The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me. I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight...

I saw this on the internet yesterday and here is the website for the company   http://www.ocean-sole.com/ from their website: Passionate about the ocean, its ecosystems and marine wildlife, we recycle flipflops that are found littered on beaches and in waterways of Kenya. Every single Ocean Sole product is handcrafted to protect the oceans and teach the world about the threats of marine debris. As a bizarre and yet very real phenomenon, thousands and thousands of flipflops are washed up onto the East African coast creating an environmental disaster. Not only spoiling the natural beauty of our beaches and oceans, the rubber soles are swallowed & suffocated on by fish & other animals, they obstruct turtle hatchlings from reaching the sea and are a man-made menace to our fragile ecosystems. Our creative team of artisans transforms the discarded flipflops into elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinos, dolphins, sharks, turtles and more. These colourful masterpieces come ...

This was fun for me.  Drawing Hands has always been a challenge for me but the more I work at it, the more I learn.  I painted 8 of these over the past few days.... Now I'm out of these little shapes so on to the next series.  I have a few larger plates which I will tackle next.  Sometimes I added details after I took the photo as in the hand with the bee.  There is a bit more honeycomb now.  Never did that before, but really like the way it looks!  Hopefully these will look even better once they are fired, but of course you never know with ceramics!!

I watched this show last night...  http://www.hgtv.com/shows/ellens-design-challenge/ellen-s-design-challenge--meet-the-season-two-contestants   It is on Monday at  9:00 p.m. EST.  One of the contestants is Vivian Beer who used to be my neighbor and fellow resident for a few years when I was at Penland School of Crafts.  Basically she is totally awesome and did a great job on the first night.  I'm hoping she wins the challenge and I think she has a good chance.  She is a great designer, super hard worker, fearless, and so deserving.  My favorite thing about her on the first episode was that she seemed very confident, and when one of the judges questioned her design saying it looked like she couldn't make a decision about what she was doing so she did it all, she said "this is exactly what I intended".....  Really showed his shallow comment for what it was.... an opportunity for him to grandstand, and not SEE what she had conceived and built....

It’s the energy of mindfulness in us that allows us to write a real love letter and reconcile with another person. A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion.  Thich Nhat Hanh

"But some of us have found the secret to making everything full. It's called love, and an endless ocean of it lives in our hearts. The ones who know the secret say we are supposed to pour our love into all that is empty. They say that you will know that you are poring your love into the world because it will feel effortless." ~  Rolf Gates   Rest in peace dear Abbey, the warmth and love you shared in this world will be dearly missed but also often remembered in so many small ways  as your ease in sharing it did indeed seem effortless, you left an impression with me of absolute kindness.  58 years young.

A winter's day, in a deep and dark December I am alone, gazing from my window to the streets below On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow I am a rock, I am an island I've built walls, a fortress deep and mighty that none may penetrate I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain It's laughter and it's loving I disdain I am a rock, I am an island Don't talk of love well I've heard the words before It's sleeping in my memory And I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died If I never loved I never would have cried I am a rock, I am an island I have my books and my poetry to protect me I am shielded in my armor, hiding in my room, safe within my womb I touch no one and no one touches me I am a rock, I am an island Songwriters SIMON, PAUL

"If we learn ways to practice love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, we will know how to heal the illnesses of anger, sorrow, insecurity, sadness, hatred, loneliness, and unhealthy attachments… Love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are the very nature of an enlightened person. They are the four aspects of true love within ourselves and within everyone and everything." ~ Thich Nhat Hahn (painting by Whitney Freya)

Started out so beautifully.  Not sure what happened, but they were a hit and tasted great.

Everyone was sleeping so I had time to finish this off..... A special visitor just arrived.  Looking forward to introducing her to American culture!  Her visit inspired this plate.  

It's really windy this early morning... Here is something I ran out of time on yesterday... I will finish it later this morning and add the finished image later today.

listened to a great interview today as i worked on my first image of the year in a special place.  here it is: Carrie Newcomer  "On Being" musical, beautiful, generous, open hearted, like a gentle breeze caressing my brain. https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/unedited-carrie-newcomer-with-krista-tippett?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=email and here it is... inspired by a photograph initially...... but as in all things it became on it's own..  

Once again, we are completing one cycle and beginning another. Life is but a mysterious  series of simultaneous and sequential cycles, from personal cycles to universal ones, from  daily to annual cycles, from one system of accounting for the passage of time to another.  This transition from the “so-called” 2015 to the “so-called” 2016 is a major transition for  many of us – and becoming increasingly so even for many peoples and cultures that barely  a hundred years ago didn’t really care about this particular New Year. Nonetheless, this  particular convention, this particular marking of passage of time has become an important  one. And so we acknowledge it. And so we celebrate it. And so, I wish you, a “Happy New  Year,” and pray that 2016 will be a year of growth blessed with wisdom, a year of prosperity  partnered with generosity, a year of achieving goals of happiness for self and others.   In the spirit of celeb...

From the dawn of time people have speculated about the existence of the soul. In ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the soul was demonstrated by a bird with a human head, the Ba; the essence of the individual, post-corporeal form.