miscellaneous sights and thoughts

I woke up about 2:00 and couldn't get back to sleep because I was thinking about how to keep the kids moving forward and ending the year at the same time. I'm initiating a postcard project with the 5th and 4th grades to express issues around the oil disaster. I'll encourage them to mail the postcards to an appropriate person. I decided on postcards because of their size and completability in the short time we have left of school. Several media work with that size also.

I did finish reading the latest "Surface Design Journal". Katey Schultz's article about Lisa Klukak's work has some well worded thoughts about the artistic process and the artist. I was caught especially by her saying, "after releasing any personal agenda, an artist's truest self can emerge through the work created in this spirit - work that at once taps into universal themes but still carries the seed of its maker." I have had moments of working when the personal agenda got in the way. Those are moments when the solutions to completion are unclear. When I let go, I get to creating and I wonder why the solutions were seemingly impossible.
The more I stay with the work as a discipline, the more I am able to work from my truest self and not be directed by a personal agenda.

Today, I was busy with walk ( I saw a lady's slipper beside the road), vacuuming, going to the vet's and lunch with a friend. I did not photograph the new pages ... tomorrow.

DAILY HAIKU 2009 May 17

This entry consists of torn pieces of a scrapbooking paper. It is a varied grey green color with a painted effect. It has thin lavendar lines. I quickly drew the general shapes of the jack-in-yhe pulpit with a green gel pen. The verse is on a piece of vellum written with a green Sharpie pen.
jack-in-the-pulpit
a unique, mesmorizing
plant in the shadows

I find this plant marvelous and am honored they thrive in my various gardens. I feel sorry for anyone who has not seen them, but they are rare. Only on the largest of plants, the seed pods consist of red berries grouped together - the seed of the maker.