Grab your brooms! Happy New Year 2011!

The past week has been frigid and overcast.  This morning, I awoke early, and was greeted a few minutes later by a beautiful sunrise.  Some rosy pink tinges on a few remaining wispy clouds, surrounded by the brilliant blue New Mexico sky.  Storms and grey all blown off to other lands.

It's garbage day, and while playing backgammon online with a new Italian friend who was already anticipating his New Year's Eve festivities in Naples, I heard the sounds of our morning, the recycling truck pounding away at the glass and plastic bins.  So, I was too late to be a responsible recycler again in 2010, but off I went to put on my boots and take out the trash.

It is still bitterly cold, and the garage door opener cannot manage to haul the door up all the way.  I stood there a few moments, pushing the button, up down up down, and at least I got it far enough that my car could squeeze out.  I looked out onto the bright snow, and became obsessed with the idea of cleaning the garage floor.

First I took the trash out - lucky me, the trash truck had not come!  So, the last of this year's detritus waits for the dump, and I thought about it going to live for years, perhaps thousands of years, with the muck that couldn't be recycled.  I will try to be more thoughtful about that in the days to come.  Then I shuffled over the icy drive of stones back to my house, and I turned the car on, and pulled it out, so I could sweep.

All kinds of dirt on that cement.  Old wrappers, old spiders, old stencils from an art project with my Little, old shreds of whatever.  Bits of broken eco lightbulbs from when the hazardous waste recycling tipped over.  Even fragments from last year - I collect glass Christmas ornaments in the shapes of foods, and while I didn't put up a tree this year, I did last year.  I remembered that the box containing my set of golden walnuts had slipped open, and one had fallen out and shattered.  It was hollow, and it was odd to look at the molded smooth shapes of the shell from the inside with its jagged edges. There were still broken bits of gold walnut amidst the dust and the grime scattered across the floor.

It has been far too long, since I have swept out the old.  Today is a great time to start again.  My toes and my fingers were frozen from the biting of the cold, but I set to work.  There was the broom, propped in the garage corner, part of its bristles missing from when I cut them off to try a casting experiment, which failed.  But the broom has plenty of bristles left, so swish swish swish, all the dirt and past and sharp edged bits are pushed easily into a pile.  The sweeping reminds me of the artist, Daniel Brush, who makes sweeping with a broom a part of his artistic routine.  A trip inside the house for a dustpan and a paperbag, so the glass doesn't cut the garbageman - and I think about the garbageman and how cold his hands must be on a day like today.  My hands warm up from the work, maybe his hands warm up, too.

There is more dirt than I expected, most of it grime, dust, and sand that nature has driven in through cracks in the walls and the door.  In the piles, I find gum wrappers and weird bits of hard plastic of unknown origin and then I find a penny, and then I find a second!  And I welcome them as a harbinger, to becoming one of two this coming year.

Not long ago, I wrote a letter to someone.  In it, I warned to be careful of what is created.  We all create things - we are human, we create things all the time.  The warning was about creating something by omission.  Something new is always coming along, and if we decide to do something, or not to do something, that creates something new whether we intend it to or not.  It is the way of the world - a new year, a new moon, a new obstacle, a new wish, always.  It is life.  But, by deciding not to do something, or even by not deciding, we may unintentionally create something we don't want.

These piles of dirt and dust were something I created.  I didn't put the dust there, but I hadn't shoo'd it out, either.  And that's fine, I am not judging myself, and now they are gone.  As I look forward into this New Year, I want to remember to carry my broom with me, sweep away the old, and create the new, with intention and not by omission.

Let's grab our brooms!  Let's poke around in the dusty corners, get rid of the cobwebs, and create something new for ourselves!  And this time next year, we'll be looking back once again.  Much will be the same, and much will be different and new.  Here's hoping that the same and the new will all be for the good, our best intentions worked on and worked out and realized, and that we enjoyed the journey that we start now - ready or not! - and again! - to create for ourselves.

Happy New Year!

hmmmm

I didn't realize it had been that long since I had posted!

I have been taking a class, and my teacher Diane wanted us to come up with a project.  Inspired by something I read in "The Seed Handbook" by Lynne Franks, I decided upon seeds.

Here are the results of the project so far:

I had a lot of fun experimenting with the different shapes - these are the pieces just after casting.  The sprue in the back I include, simply because Diane made the comment that it looks like the tree one would find outside a hobbit's house.

I would like to continue with the seeds idea - I greatly enjoyed the boundary of "what is a seed?" and trying to develop a vocabulary of form.  As you can see from these examples, I went all over the map.  But so far, I think I have nine in the series that are cohesive.  Or slightly cohesive.

I'll show the finished product soon - I'm excited about making these into earrings, bracelets, and pendants in various combinations.