Wednesday, November 7, 2012

isle royale



i mentioned in my last post that i would like my boys to spread 1/2 of my ashes  on isle royale. the island is one of two of my favorite places on the planet, the other being on a beach next to an ocean or sea. i started visiting isle royale when i was a young girl, it is a national park on the north end of lake superior. my mom and dad bought a ferry boat that brings people to isle royale national park and our family has been operating it for 40 years!! the operation is based in copper harbor (another favorite spot of mine). i have hiked the entire island (or almost) a few times, i hope to do it at least once more in my lifetime.  this special place has the most returning visitors of any of the national parks, does that tell you something?  i really can't write to much about this because i'm not that good of a writer. i guess, the closet i can come to a description is that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you walk into your first home after being away for a long time. when i first arrive again for a visit after a 50 mile crossing, the boat maneuvers into the harbor, nothing in the island's essence has changed. the trees may be a little larger and a few are probably down, but there it is, perfect, again!  there's no place like home!

Sunday, November 4, 2012

votacus atque non votacus deus aderit

i love this latin quote, translated (sorta) "summoned or not summoned, God will be there". 
I think it is kinda funny how some quotes sound better in another language, and i wonder why? when i first saw that latin quote i immediately felt a connection to it. of course it is difficult to get an accurate translation, maybe that is why it's good to know the latin version? somehow it just sounds better to me. i was researching the quote and found out that carl jung the famous philosopher has it engraved on his tombstone. carl jung is one of my favorite philosophers, i agree with many of his theories. if i had a gravestone i would engrave that latin saying on it. when i die, i want 1/2 my ashes to go onto a beach near the ocean or sea, and the other half on the shores of isle royale, so i guess in another lifetime?

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

WOW! I had no idea........

how hard it is to "build" a website!!! I got a quote from an artist/friend who creates websites and i thought to myself, wow, that's quite a bit of money! a few of my artist friends told me about "other people's pixels" a business that let's you build your own website using built-in templates. they charge about 16.00 a month after a 30 day free trial. well, i thought to myself, that's the way to go! after spending at least 50 hours on it (i'm still not nearly done), i now understand why my friend quoted the price he did (maybe even a little low). it's still kinda fun doing it "myself".

Sunday, October 14, 2012

"i love my life, i love the life i live"

that quote was from a commercial several years ago that i loved to watch. i really can't remember what the ad was about? it featured a very old african american man in front of his garden in downtown detroit. he was talking about how he loved his life and the life he lived. i thought to myself, wow, he is one cool dude! here he is in the middle of a lot of chaos happening in detroit, yet, he can find happiness within that place. i say that quote to myself many times, i say it when i do love my life and when i don't. i have so much to be grateful for, i have nothing to complain about and yet i still do manage to complain and bitch about seemingly little things! i like to complain about the weather. i live near the shores of lake superior and in the month of nov. we average 73% cloud cover. the rest of the year doesn't seem much better, we average over 200" of snow a year! yet, it is an awesome place despite the weather and i have a great life!
when i say that quote to myself i think about that man and what a wonderful attitude he had about his life an attitude i would like to share!!

Monday, October 1, 2012

yes, i really am an artist.....

i remember (way back when), thinking to myself, when can i legitimately call myself an artist? first, i seemed confident in giving myself the title when i earned my BFA. when i earned my MFA i became an official expert in the field of ceramic art....i guess? i know of many people who haven't been educated in the visual arts yet are better artists than myself. what do i mean by better, you may be asking yourself? i have always been a creative person but not so skillful. my ideas seem to be never ending but the challenging technicalities in making the work sometimes prevent me from accomplishing a satisfactory piece. i don't just work in clay i make art out of; plaster, wax, crochet, bronze, fiber, found-object, pen&ink, etc. when i decided to get degrees in ceramics it was because of the smell of clay. my grandma was a china painter. she bought chinaware and painted flowers, birds, leaves and that sort of thing onto the ware, fired each piece many times before it was completed. almost every sunday all her children (eunice, marge, don and jim) and her grandchildren (tommy, bobby, donny, benny, gail, me, laura, mike, david, stevie, jojo, kevie, lisa, katrina, danny and john) would gather at their lakeside home in pontiac michigan. we all had such a blast together!! we would swim, boat, look for turtle eggs and snakes, pick berries, apples and other fruits and veggies in the summer. my grandpa built us a skating rink and sled hill in the winter. christmas eve was our special holiday as one big happy family. all the youngest grandchildren would look out the window after dinner and wait for santa to come and bring us presents. it was an extra special day because we were rarely allowed into the upper story of their home (i guess they thought we might get into some kinda mischief?). we would sing christmas carols to santa and he would leave as swiftly as he came. what happy, happy times those were for me!! sometimes in the year the weather might be too bad to skate or to cold to swim so many of us would make artwork in their "back room". sometimes we would make little things out of clay and grandma would fire them for us. three of the grandkids went unto higher education in visual art but i would say there wasn't a one of us who isn't creative! we were allowed to explore and have fun making stuff even though both my grandparents were quite strict (especially my grandpa). my grandma was way ahead of her time! housework came second, art came first. she loved to laugh but she was not super warm (if you know what i mean?). i miss my grandparents, all of them! i wish they were here, right at this very moment so i could give them a big hug, tell them how much i love and miss them!! they created my wonderful parents who learned from them that it is ok to be creative in all that you do. it's ok to be and think differently than everyone else. my mom went to high school at cass tech in detroit to learn art, she later took classes at the center for creative studies. my dad doesn't think he is an artist, but he is one of the most creative people i know! i think i was born to be an artist and i don't need a degree to know that! some of my students think clay is dirty, they don't like it when it gets on their clothes. clay isn't dirty to me and the smell of it is almost always wonderful.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

today is the first day of the rest of your life...

or...."take it one day at a time"or...."all we have is 24 hours". have you ever been annoyed by these cliches? i don't think i was annoyed by them but i never really understood the concept until i was about 36 years of age. i went through a big crisis in my life and i remember looking at the clock on the 1st day of my crisis counting each minute. it was then that i truly understood the meaning of "one day at a time", that first 24 hrs. felt like an eternity, but it taught me how to live in the moment, that those sayings aren't cliche it is reality. we spend so much of our lives always looking forward. when i was about 10 i couldn't wait to be 15 then 21, then i couldn't wait to be married, then i couldn't wait to have kids, couldn't wait to graduate from college, couldn't wait to have a good job, couldn't wait, couldn't wait, couldn't wait.....argh!! i stop myself from regretting those feelings of looking forward so that i don't spend my time looking back. i feel it is good to set goals while maintaining a sense of the here and now. i don't want to miss out on the beauty that is right here before me!!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

i suppose if your reading this you may wonder why i titled my blog, blobbermouth? i don't really consider myself a blabbermouth, though sometimes i do tend to ramble.  i  have always wanted to do everything that went against the trend. for instance, when i was a young girl in 7th grade, i really wanted saddle shoes (do you remember those). my mom let me buy a pair and i was so excited to wear them to school. it wasn't long before almost every girl my age owned saddle shoes. boy, when they became a trend i wanted nothing to do with my saddle shoes. i have so many similar stories i could tell throughout my life. it's not that i don't like blogs but why do we have to call them that? i wanted to call mine something different, like, blob instead. when i started to create my website i decided i wanted a "blob" but i realized no one would really understand what that was and i didn't know how to make a "blob" and don't have the time to figure it out. i just decided i would title my blog, blobbermouth instead.