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Saturday, August 25, 2012

And so the transition comes

It's time
It's Time.
To fly the nest.
To stretch new wings.
To step into the unknown with courage.
To trust.

I'm signing off and officially, officially packing up the house.  We've had a wild, nutty, jam-packed week of house guests and friends, cooking and consuming over five dozen homemade falafel (that's the kind of house guests I'm talking about), a week of doctoral appointments and the running of every check-up test I could be squeezed (heehee, pun so intended) in for, and now it's time.  The house is quiet and the skies are grey, and we're noticing all the lasts.
The last time we'll have a leisurely breakfast on this deck overlooking the river.
The last time I'll buy a house plant from the shady corner market (it was an aloe, and yes I bought another plant just this last week).
The last time I'll fire up my torch in this studio, the last painting I'll dance my brushes over here.
The last time I'll take the dogs running on the river trail.
The last time we'll make the 20 minute drive into town for espresso.
The last time we'll live in this house.

Honestly it feels, well, whole.  Bitter-sweet but sweeter with every day.  I feel like I've had more time to say goodbye to this place than perhaps ever before in a move, and thusly I'm more ready than ever to finish those last couple lines, slowly and gratefully, and turn the page to a fresh new chapter.  And this next chapter?  I've got a thousand glittering butterflies beating their wings in my stomach, knowing that what comes next is big, bolder, and exactly where we are suppose to be.

With that,
I'll see you in a couple weeks, once we're settled into our new home, once I've found the mokka espresso pot and the stemless wineglasses, and once the studio is taking new life.
I'll miss you!
But I'll be back!

See you on the north side,
~ Umber ~
* * *

p.s. For those who have written in this past week, know that I'm running dreadfully behind on interwebular correspondance but will do my best to catch up before the move!  If you haven't heard back from me soon, please do resend your note!  It's highly likely I've lost it in the chaos!

Saturday, August 18, 2012

A Solid Day's Work

Now that's what I call a solid Friday's work!
Equus Ring
(sterling silver and kingman turquoise)
Navigate Ring
(sterling silver and kingman turquoise)
Elevate Ring
(sterling silver and larimar)

I had a funny revelation the other day as I worked on, ehem, TWELVE paintings that may or may not be part of a yearly project.  I took a long look at the creatures and themes who have been springing from my pencils, paintbrushes and silver bench of late and realized they all have something in common.
Moving, moving, so much movement.
An interesting shift when I look at work done just a few short months ago, where every beast slowed, stood still, and just looked.  It's the kind of shift you are utterly unaware of until hindsight grows full in the review mirror and then suddenly your vision clears.  The wild little beast that is me is moving; not in the "packing up and physically moving location" but moving through the invisible mental-spiritual landscape.  Striding out, gaining momentum, reaching inside to a new well of energy, and naturally, accompanied by all these creatures I love.
We're moving and shaking over here.
Shimmying and twisting.
It's like a furry, feathered, hoofed, curly haired party.
I'm glad you're here for it too.
~ Umber ~

(p.s. this little pocket full of rings will be flitting into the shop at random over the weekend, in-between farmer's marketing, salsa canning, studio-ing, and basically anything else that I can find to do that DOES NOT involve packing.  HA!  And whatever your weekend may be looking like, I hope it treats your fabulously!)

Thursday, August 16, 2012

To Cradle the Remains

To Cradle the Remains
A few months back I found this doe, laying quietly on a hillside, returning to the earth.  I asked (always, always ask and then gift in return.  I like to sing little wordless songs to the remains of a life), then took her skull and a handful of vertebrae.  This morning, after allowing nature to do the dirty work, I finally finished cleaning her to a luminous glow.
(p.s. if you ever move into a new home and see your neighbor whistling to herself out on the porch whilst straddling a bucket full of bleach and bones, scrubbing away with a toothbrush, just come over and say Hi.  Because it will probably be me)
I have loved bones for, well, I suppose forever.  There is an elegance to the swoop of an eye socket, a creativity to the curving lilt of a jaw, a wild, alien sculptural form to the cranium.  I think skulls are one of the most beautiful things in the world, but when it comes right down to it, my obsession is with vertebrae.
* * *
When I was two days shy of my twentieth birthday, I got into a terrible car accident (one of those 1:00 AM-hydroplaning-across-the-freeway-hit-by-a-car-going-70-miles-per-hour terrible accidents).  Truly it was pure miracle both I and the other driver survived.  I ended up fracturing a couple of my vertebrae and spent quite a bit of time laying still and stretched flat, thinking about those spinal building blocks.  I started looking up anatomical images; something deep in me needed to know the exact shape of those damaged pieces.  I began drawing them, first little sketches, then bigger charcoal ones, then painting them into the base layers of my larger works, then stitching their outlines into paper and fabric.  And from the first time a lumbar vertebrae slipped out from the point of my pencil, I felt in my very bones that they could fly.  That the delicately stacked column in our body was full of these beautiful hollow flapping forms that could play Icarus on us at any moment.  That the central opening was a liminal portal through which the secrets of life and death slipped, grew wings, and flew into the sunset.
* * *
To Cradle the Remains

Monday, August 13, 2012

What's This?

What's this?
Someone has replaced my shower beer with chlorophyll!

Friday, August 10, 2012


Well it's official.  All those little well wishes you sent out last week, all ten of my fingers tightly crossed, all the breath we've held hoping to find the right home?  It all converged at the right time and place in a way that was nothing short of miraculous.  

Upon arriving in Seattle last week, I attended a few frenzied open houses, weighed the pros and cons (I was almost terribly swayed by a clawfoot tub and a breathtaking sun-porch in a very unpractical house), but in the end listened intently to my intuition.  I think sometimes our bodies are wiser than us, that somewhere deep in our solar plexus a compass spins with absolute accuracy.  And when we pulled into the drive of this charmer, my compass spun with the fire of the sun.  I knew it would be right even before I stepped over that 1920's threshold.  

First though, I need to come clean.
The last few months have been rough, and I confess to being the small wounded beast who hides in private, shadowy corners when life turns upside-down.  I've vacillated between a light heart and nimble fingers, and a black crush of anxiety.  I've been wrestling with a fear-demon and there were days when the flame of light in my chest sputtered and dampened.  Truly, never has an impending move felt so strangely full of symbolism, hope and threat.  It's been a mess of illogical terrors that the mind concocts to explain away the bad things in life (i.e. cancer.  Shitty, shitty cancer.  What has happened to me, what is happening to a dear friend, and what had happened to a recently departed).   In the name of authenticity I want you to know this: no life is always easy, and no life is always full of butterflies and rainbows, and mine is certainly no exception.  I suppose really what I'm trying to say is that sometimes, life is damn gritty.  And it hurts.  And that sometimes, you'll wake up in the morning and that ball of panic that has been rolling around in your stomach will have rolled right out the front door and the only thing you notice are the birds singing in the dawn.

For me, that open door was the thing.  Nearly a quarter acre, hemmed in by ancient cedars, somehow still smack in the middle of the city doesn't hurt either.
* * *

Other bits of interest and education?  I heartily recommend that one DOES NOT eat an entire pound-and-a-half of cherries during the course of an eleven hour drive, topped off by a large grapefruit.  I thought I was immune (in fact, after the drive up, I may have uttered those exact words with smug pride), but apparently, everyone has a threshold for fruit consumption.  Who knew?

When returning from the Camelot of Coffee, from the land of milk and caffeine, from the seventh heaven of sweet crema, to a house devoid of a single coffee bean know this: dirty, dark beans clearly roasted sometime during the revolutionary war, from the shady little corner market will taste like motor oil and you will cry exactly three tears before dumping that crap down the drain.

In other news, if you haven't yet seen THIS, well then let me regale you now.  BC and I had that hat stashed away before we even knew if our new "niece," Bowie Andromeda was a she.  We're totally going to be the cool aunt and uncle who keep her in sci-fi-geek-wear, teach the little lady words like "mullet" and how to fist bump grandma.
It feels good to be home, but even better to know that "home" is waiting just a few hundred miles up the coast for us as well.
Cheers birds,
~ Umber ~