Category Archives: SoulCollage

Dark and rainy Sunday

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I fled to the basement. Power sanders, power saws, and illegal gas-powered leaf blowers were insufficiently blocked by my special head phones.

But then I had fun. I actually forgot what it’s like to get lost down there. Put together one collage — it speaks to memory and Saharan dust (even if those are Asian elephants. Are they Asian elephants?) — and added to an old crab quilt. The addition of indigo dyed moons will, I think, make it gift worthy.

Thank you for all your kind sentiments yesterday. K is writing an obituary and cleaning out the gutters and switching out the water in the fish tank and marking out the circle for our new patio. Acting like his Dad, in other words. His father cleaned the gutters well into his 80’s.

Pressure production

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New collage made on Day 63.

Finn barks at compost pick up truck. K talks about pressure consumption. “I took the 5.6 and divided it by… ” And then pressure production. “The factor goes down, not that it goes up.”

Dog needs a walk. I need a walk.

Busy day yesterday and week feels cluttered going forward. How is this even happening?

Collage made today, below. The word I pulled out of the thesaurus as I started was “tabulate.” As in tabulate the damage done.

Brain damage. Chalk board counting quarantine days. Exotic luxury cupboard cut in half, never to go back together again. A clothes line reminiscent of domestic life during the Great Depression.

Seeds keep arriving in the mail! We have two quotes now for the backyard patio project. Some things continue apace.

I am finishing this garment tomorrow! Next up: something without pleats or plackets! Pieced a strip from mask scraps to use for collar and front edging. I like the idea but it may not follow the curves of the robe properly.

I raised the blue skirt an inch and a half and the proportions are much improved.

Saved up words

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I went looking for a quote about how areas in our life that are the messiest are often the areas where the most progress is being made. Couldn’t find it. Here’s what I found instead. Enjoy!

“Good writing begins where there is a knot.”
Margaret Atwood

“Art is not about telling our secrets… but it does have to be free to go wherever it needs to go and usually our pain comes out first.”
Pat Schneider, Writing Alone and with Others“We are large enough to encompass our losses. We are brave enough to dream again, risk again, love again. We just need the assurance that we really can do so, and this assurance will come to us in a thousand forms, large and very small, if we ask for it. But ask we must.”
Julia Cameron, The Vein of Gold

“There is no courage without vulnerability.” Brene Brown

“It is not what we do which makes us holy, but we ought to make holy what we do … ” Meister Eckhart

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”
Denis Levertov, as quoted by Pat Schneider

“Any life will provide material for writing if it is attended to.” Wallace Stegner

“Anger is loaded with information and power.” Audre Lord, Sister Outsider

“We pick and choose what we think is most important, forgetting that it’s all important.” Jude Hill, Spirit Cloth

All SoulCollage by me. Some fairly old.

So much ness

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Today, the wave of collage continues and I shall let it but I have other things to attend to early this week, so the blogging time needs to shrink. I’ll let the pix speak for themselves (Links later) except to say the prompts provided by Acey that were floating in my mind while working: three circles, figures that compel you, trees, diagonals and conversation. Reverse chrono order here.

A word about optimism

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From a Medium article entitled, How to stay sane if Trump is driving you insane: Advice from a therapist.

“There are times when optimism is not appropriate or possible, and this is one of those times. Our President is delusional, lying, or ignorant; disastrous climate change and war with North Korea loom; marginalized people in our society are suffering. Faced with these calamities, catastrophic thinking is a rational response.”

She recommends:

  1. Radical acceptance. Clear eyed acceptance. Seeing things as they are now.
  2. Feeling the inevitable grief.
  3. Practicing mindfulness, in particular countering bad news with good (because pessimism is not useful either).

“You may object, “But I can’t just forget all the terrible things going on!” You are right. Mindfulness is not about forgetting. It is about shifting focus to what is most immediate and most helpful. We help no one by staying in our anguish for long. Bernie Sanders said it best: ‘Despair is not an option.‘”

These are digital collages that I made at four this morning. They incorporate quilts and photos of collages, so the layers are numerous, sometimes past counting.

The images speak for themselves but to name a few: the virgin atop a cathedral near Assisi as well as an Italian stone archway, an antique bird cage for sale in Essex, Mass. Quilts on the line in the backyard, a woven cloth painting, and another close up of patchwork. A SoulCollage (r) card made from magazine pictures.

As usual, I used Diana photo app for double exposures and Prisma app to create mosaics.