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I have moved!

You can now find me at:

http://inspirations-studio.com

Thanks for visiting!

Cheryl.

Dressed for the Studio...Begin again.

Finally getting my studio to a place where I can work in it...a bit.  Still have my torch table to finish, gas and oxygen hook-ups to be completed as well as my venting system to build... and a few things that still need to find a home too.  But, I have managed to uncover a couple of surfaces to begin work on. 

I have been working on illustrations for a children's book and a couple of art journal projects.  Here's a peek at one page I'm working on for the Airdrie 7 Art Journal Exchange project:

The image is my interpretation of the Stained Glass Rose Window at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.  I visited there a few years ago when my sister, Julie and I were there for Nike Women's Half Marathon.  Walking the Labyrinth there and touring inside the cathedral was a spectacular experience.

Hip...AND Enlightened Truth

Never Doubt...

There really is no room for doubt, even in what seems impossible.  We just don't know what we don't know...and the stars are busy aligning for us in the midst of our unknowing.  The end of this clip truly made me weep with hope...

What are we FOR?

This quote from Mother Theresa, which I have known for a long time really holds more wisdom than the simple meaning of her stated words.

I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.

This may help create a deeper understanding of her words...



It's difficult sometimes, especially if you are a worry wart, to focus on what you envision for yourself when the things that scare you most shout so loudly in your head.  The importance of learning to be in stillness; to silence those fears and worries is then paramount.  It frees us to actually create what we most want for ourselves.
My gift today is a snow day.  Not much is moving here - so I am spending a few extra moments in my room to meditate and visualize before I go find a shovel, (which will become the day's exercise.)
How can you create a moment of silence for yourself today?

Golden Moments

Ahhh...lost in the holiday bliss and continuing to live as though we are on vacation here.  Just before Christmas we packed the family up and ventured west to the other side of the island near the town of Port Renfrew.  There is a lovely beach there where the locals surf.  In fact we met a few of those brave souls on the walk down from the parking lot.  Who knew you could surf in December in Canada?!!  Along the way, Dan captured footage and later headed to his studio to put together his latest video.  I'm so proud I just had to share.

Golden from Daniel Martin on Vimeo.

Community

I'm participating in a 31-day blogging challenge called reverb10, responding to writing prompts that are designed to elicit reflections on 2010, and hopes for 2011. You can find out more about it here.

December 7 – Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? (Author: Cali Harris)

Most recently I have begun to find elements of community within the African Dance class I have been taking.


Lynn Weaver at Moon Dance has been working hard to build community in several projects she has organized (including the Shawnigan Lake Street Festival) and for that I am grateful.  It has made finding people easier for me here in a new place.


Also, Earth Traditions of which I am a founder is all about building community, reconnecting us to each other, to ourselves, and to the land.  This labor of love as at it's core vision the idea that community is deeply important to all of us and to our planet.

You Are Worth The Time

Some wisdom from Jan Phillips:

Wonder, Letting Go, and Creating

I'm participating in a 31-day blogging challenge called reverb10, responding to writing prompts that are designed to elicit reflections on 2010, and hopes for 2011. You can find out more about it here.

December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (Author: Jeffrey Davis)

I have always been very good at noticing beauty in nature.  I stop for sun rises, sunsets, color in the clouds, rainbows, etc.  My boys often have their breakfasts interrupted by me encouraging them to come to the window and look at the color of the sky in the early morning sun rise.  I always wonder how I might paint such wondrous colors.  So for me, this year wonder has most recently been found in nature in our new locale.  The trees here are tremendous giants.  Beautiful and moss covered.  A stroll is like walking through an emerald fairy land.  It is so stunning it sometimes doesn't seem real.  The ocean is tremendous and powerful.  The fog settles in to the valley making you feel like you are floating on clouds.  And, will you just look at the paint job on that chicken!  I bet the egg she came from looked just the same.....well, maybe not, but it could have!

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

Lots this year.  We left behind a house we had designed and built, a life in Airdrie, all our friends there, but with that we also gave up all the chaos of the big city madness too.   We gave up the fast pace, and the jammed-full schedules.  Thanks to technology we can still connect with friends and family.  So....the trade off has been more than worth it.  Why?  Because it was important to slow down for our health and for our connection to our boys and to each other.  And it is also important for our boys to experience something other than the lifestyle we had created up to that point.   Busy, busy, busy, go, go, go isn't life sustaining.  So now we are focusing on experiences rather than stuff and timetables... and free weekends and evenings allow that.

December 6 – Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it? (Author: Gretchen Rubin)

The last thing I created was this digital print.  Not my usual mode of creating, but I guess that would qualify as the most recent.  It is a scan of a painted background I did some time ago with a quote from the book "Marry Your Muse" by Jan Phillips.  I sent it to some friends to print and hang in their studios.  It was put together in Illustrator so completely a computer generated project.  I have a few things I want to get to next.  I bought a small piece of felted wool and some colorful merino wool fibers to make a flower hair piece for myself.  I've been saving mandarin orange wrappers and candy containers for a recycled journal project I've got in my head.  That one will most likely become a tutorial I will share later.  And I have several journals that I have lots of ideas for that I want to get to very soon.

The Year in Review

I've never been very consistent with this blog...or anything for that matter.  I guess I'm not the "consistent" type.  Whatever that might mean.  Other words:...diligent, disciplined, stick-to-it-iveness, etc.  I'm more of a "fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" or "when-the-Spirit-moves-me", or "I'll-do-whatever-the-hell-I-feel-like...Gosh!" kind of girl.  It's handy sometimes, but it can often be a liability.  As an attempt to do a bit of "brain rewiring" as it were, I am participating in #reverb10.  It is an online project designed to reflect on the year 2010 and to manifest going forward.  Since I stumbled upon it three days late I have a bit of catch up to do.

December 1 – One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you? (Author: Gwen Bell)

Crab with a heavy load

 Overwhelming.  Period.  With our family's move to Vancouver island recently, the year was dominated with all that goes in to making the decision to uproot a family, fixing up and selling a home, purging and packing, finding a new home, moving, setting up in a new place, attempting to make a new community a home, worrying about all that needs to be done, how everyone will be affected, and trying not to forget anything.  We left good friends and old careers behind and looking ahead could only see the unknown.  It was just plain...overwhelming...from March clear to the present day.

A door to restoration: Demali Lavender Farm

Is it any wonder then that my hope for 2011 is something at the far end of the scale from that experience.  Peace, Health, Balance, Settled, Connected, Focused, Stable, Content, Stillness.  Any of these would surely apply.  I think in all of the "noise" of life, (and this year for me was VERY "noisy"),  one can very easily become disconnected from oneself, from one's own intuitive guidance, from the Wisdom within that tells us what to focus on, and what might be the best move in the moment, and how to feed ourselves, and where to go, and how to simply BE.  So, for me I want to find that stillness within me again that makes me feel grounded, free of anxiety, and more sure of where I'm going, what I'm contributing to, and who I am.  To do that requires a daily conscious choice and an awareness.  It is an action...to plug back in to Self.  In one word?  Restore.  It's time to restore my soul..the HOW of it is a long laundry list, but all of it sustaining and nourishing.  From THAT place one can make an authentic and meaningful  contribution in the world.  From THAT place one can support and love a family deeply.

December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (Author: Leo Babauta)

What don't I do?  My distractions are numerous.  Far too many to list here.  Some can be eliminated and others can't.  The trick for me is to be mindful enough to catch myself when the thing I am engaged in is not a valuable exercise.  Mindless email, web-surfing, TV, even house cleaning, when not the most important thing to focus on in the moment, is a barrier to writing or creating.  There are obviously times when all of the above is necessary, but there are limits.  Observing the limit and moving on to more meaningful activities is the precious choice to be made.

December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Author: Ali Edwards)

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

I distinctly remember a day this past July.  Our house had finally sold.  A HUGE stress lifted.  I had arrived in Victoria to house hunt with Dan and had actually taken the time one sunny day to stroll down to the ocean and sit on the rocks at Songhees.  The spot has long been considered a sacred space by the indigenous people who had many gatherings here in years long past.  No wonder I was enjoying the energy there.  I spent a long time just watching boats and float planes come and go out of the harbor.  The smell of the sea was fresh and cleansing, the sun warm on my skin, seagulls flying overhead and calling out to one another.  I spent a good deal of time sketching the buildings on the opposite side of the harbor in my journal and as I did I remembered a trip taken 2 years prior.  We had brought the boys to this very spot when coming to visit friends.  The boys loved the ocean and we talked then about how wonderful it would be to live here.  Realizing that here we were, 2 years later,  having manifested a dream without really recognizing that we had, I was filled with gratitude in the moment.  I felt blessed and completely content both by the stillness in that time of solitude and by the opportunity to live in this new beautiful place.

Painting with Friends

There really is nothing like sharing a creative adventure with good friends.  This past weekend I got to do just that at the tail end of my friend, Carolyn's two week visit to the island.  We thankfully stumbled upon local artist, Alison Watt's weekend class in Surfacing.  So we bundled ourselves up and headed to Nanaimo where we boarded a very small ferry to take us over to Protection Island, home of Alison's studio.  Truly a wonderful experience.  It reminded me of being at my folks' cabin in northern Saskatchewan.  It's quiet and isolated.  Cars are few while golf carts and bikes abound.  Alison met us at the ferry dock the first day to guide us on our walk across the small island to her place.  Six of us met on the ferry ride over and another from the island joined us and we cozied-up together in the studio for 2 days of painting fun and exploration.  After a few warm up exercises we all tackled our personal version of poppies over a textured background.

It was fascinating to see how everyone's painting turned out. They were all absolutely fantastic, (a testament to Alison's instructional style), and all had very different "personalities", even though the subject and reference photo was the same.  Great way to spend the weekend.  Thanks ladies!

Art

Spectacular Advice

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

~Vincent Van Gogh

Celebrate The Divine Feminine Today

Today, November 3, 2010, is a significant day according to the Mayan Calendar.  I watched a video today of Dr. Carl Calleman speaking on the topic.  He said that specifically it signaled an end to domination, and in particular "male" domination.  So, we truly step into a time of growing feminine energy and a re-balancing of the masculine and feminine energies.....in all it's forms.  Moving away from destruction and consumption and toward creation and nurturing.  Moving away from left-brain dominated thinking, and toward a balanced right-brain / left-brain process.  That can only be good for all on our planet.   Time to embrace all that is Divinely feminine with-in us....the Goddess calls!

This video is a celebration of 500 portraits of women in art over the years.  Created by Philip Scott Johnson.  The music is Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma.
Enjoy!
Women In Art from Philip Scott Johnson on Vimeo.

Yes....I'm finally giving those dreams a whirl...

dream whirling... from goose42 on Vimeo.

How about you?  Ready to give your dreams a whirl too?

Studio Video made with Animoto

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Stumbled upon this great little online program that creates video using your uploaded pics, video clips and sound or you can use their stuff as well (sound is particularly handy).  30 second clips are free.  Comes as an App for Itunes as well.  Such cool stuff available now...it's crazy; this techie world we live in.  Go on, try it out.  If you do, please comment with a link to what you've done.....I'm curious.

Manifesto from a Wise Elder

This is Bishop John Shelby Spong. 

Before tonight I would have told you I didn't have a clue who he was.  Thanks to Patti Digh, he has been brought to my attention and I feel his sentiments are worth sharing and long overdue.

Despite being raised in a Christian church which I attended on and off throughout my younger years, I have long since abandoned any institution who historically spent far more time engaged in condemnation, hatred and murder than in love and compassion.  Thus I have made my spiritual journey my own daily, moment-to-moment practice, and I am typically completely ignorant of any debate going on in any religious group for that matter.  Quite frankly, I find it asinine that there even IS a debate on this topic anywhere on this planet.....about as unfathomably ridiculous as refusing a woman to vote or a seat on a bus to someone with dark skin.  Huh??!!  I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how it is possible for such ignorance to ever have existed at all.  Really.  What the hell is the matter with our brains?....Oh yes, they only function when open.

From my perspective, (and I'm sure this will ruffle a few feathers), if Jesus were alive today, I pretty sure he'd stand and cheer, "Amen, Brother!" after reading this.  He was after all a "shit-disturber" in his own right way back in the day....and above all he recognized and lived with uncompromising love and compassion. 

In the words of Forrest Gump, "That's all I got to say about that."

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!
-Bishop John Shelby Spong


I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone...


In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.


I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.


The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.
I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union.  I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.  I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

Flower...Bed

OK....please excuse the terribly blurry photo taken in haste with my phone.  But, it's just suck a kick I had to share anyway.  Sometimes a literal interpretation is the best!

Flowerbed

Wisdom Is Sometimes Found In Strange Places

This past July, while house hunting, I came across this little piece of wisdom framed and hanging on the wall of a lovely log home in the woods.  While some might be offended by the sentiment, it made me chuckle, and I had to snap a pic.

You Know You're In The Right Place When...

 

I recently attended the Shawnigan Lake SLAM Street Festival, wanting to perhaps meet a few people and connect with my new community.  This festival was, after all, about bringing the community together. I thought I would just jump in and get involved so I offered to help.  While setting up, a chalk drawing broke out on the street in front of me.  I had to laugh - my instant thought was, you know you are in the right place when...there are grown adults laying in the middle of the street playing with chalk.  Not exactly the sentiment for all adults maybe, but for me it's a perfect fit.  I was delighted even before the event got started.  We've most definitely picked the right place to call our home.

I'm curious - how would you finish that statement: "You know you are in the right place when..."?