Artist Date 9 Make an Idea Line
Finding Balance in My Life
I haven’t written or posted much on my personal blog this year. There are many reasons, but the biggest reason is that 1+1=1 Gallery is now over 2 years old and is going strong and requiring a huge time commitment from me. I love having the gallery. I haven’t been happier for many years and it feels like I finally — in my 60s — have found what I am on this Earth to do.One of my challenges continues to be finding balance in my life. Most folks who have started their own businesses know, that you pretty much have to work 60 hour weeks or more in the beginning. It’s equally as important to me to create my own art, have a successful gallery and teach art to children and adults.
I am gradually figuring out how to say no. How to be more focused when I am working as a gallery owner vs. working as an artist. How to spread out and limit what I want to do with what I can do. It’s working pretty well. You may not see new posts here often, but when I do post, it will be because I have something to say.
On running an art gallery: the most labor-intensive task is definitely managing the gallery. When we started, we were just the two of us — it was a way for us to show Tim’s exquisite furniture locally and for me to get the word out that I made art for my whole life. If I wanted to take the day off to hike in the mountains with my camera and Charlie, I just put a sign on the door, “Closed for the afternoon to go make art.” We weren’t worried about being fair to 14 other artists, which is what we took on when we moved to our current location. We are expanding to representing a total of 18 to 20 artists in the next two years. That’s a lot of responsibility to promote and sell their art, and to help them in their careers. We’ll be looking for a gallery manager next spring!
1+1=1 is not just a fine art gallery. We are a gathering spot. A warm, welcoming space where visitors feel included no matter how much or little they know about art. A place where children and adults practice creative expression in classes and art gatherings; a place where new artists have a chance to be exhibited and learn to work with galleries and promote themselves professionally. And lastly, a place where locals can listen to experimental music and jazz performances in an intimate atmosphere.
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to this blog and reads and comments. I will try to be more regular about writing. Thanks for sticking with me.
Artist Date 8: Color Hunt
Artist Date 7: Stretch It Out with Yoga
Falling is Easy – Staying in Love takes Work
I had the wonderful and memorable privilege three years ago today, to participate in a wedding ceremony of a very dear friend and young woman whom I already loved and respected, but whom I have grown to love even more over the years. Oddly enough, she left shortly after the wedding to live in Chile with her new husband and daughter and I have not seen her since then. I miss her mightily. So do lots of other people who saw her through some trying times, and helped her learn and grow into the amazing superhero mother-wife-woman she is today.
This is a young lady who endured some of the worst childhood trauma I can imagine, yet whose heart keeps expanding wider and wider — like a perpetually blooming rose. She is beautiful although she sometimes thinks she is not (don’t we all go through that?) She is a loving, attentive mother with a strong bond to her child. She loves her husband with all her being, and she knows what it meant that day when she promised to love him through thick and thin.
I witnessed their marriage at the courthouse and helped them write their vows. Along with many other people who helped them both along the way, I talked to them about the things they’d stumble upon as the years go by. Money issues, cultural differences, language differences, child rearing philosophies, boredom, times of inequality, communication problems.
We all also reminded them to notice and look forward to JOYS that would be theirs because of their commitment.
Now, three years may not sound like a long time to some of my readers … but for this couple, as for any couple who marries in their teens, it is a great accomplishment. Today they celebrate three years of promise. Three years of growth. Three years of growing closer together in spite of differences in culture and language and upbringing. Three years of loving their daughter and being a family. And three years of welcoming others into their lives, of stretching their comfort zones and what they thought might be their limits.
So, Naomi and Cristian, I salute you for coming this far. I salute you for going beyond what you thought you were capable of. I honor and respect you for sticking with each other, for being kind to each other, for apologizing, for making repairs, for building a new life together, and for always. always. always remembering what brought you together for life.
All my love,
Maureen
Artist Date 6: Visit an Art Museum
Artist Date 5: Sound Painting
Visual Poetry … Words Conjure More than Meaning
My post for today is about two things I think are related. Poetry — visual poetry. And how I feel about aging. I originally published this post on April 12, 2007 and the photos are from an exhibit in 1987 in Helena, Montana at the Third Eye Gallery.
I used to be part of a weekly online poetry group and originally wrote this post for the writing prompt, The Body Knows.
Fragments of an Ancient Poetry
Imagine a word such as moon. When you say moon, your lips curve. The word itself has curves. It conjures: round and old, and traveling on a long, slow-sounding journey. It’s interesting to me, that along with the sound of a word, the visual aspect of the word affects its meaning.
As a sculptor, I’m fascinated by the shapes of language and as a writer I’m drawn to the meaning of shapes. This is a natural merging of two of my primary interests.
Fragments of an Ancient Poetry is a three-dimensional page of my sketchbook-journal, revealing the increasingly refined and complex strokes of a thought process, or poetic idea. ~ excerpted from my Artist’s Statement for Fragments of an Ancient Poetry.
I completed the majority of the pieces in this exhibit (along with some working studies, sketches and paintings also exhibited) while attending a paper-making intensive at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada.
The other major piece in the exhibit is titled Sometimes Breathing Feels like Dancing. There were 10 large figures comprising a series of yoga/dance poses. I made the figures with handmade paper and willow branches, and had access to a live model (a dancer) at the Banff Center while I was doing my studies for the sculpture.
Now for some thoughts on aging and how that is related to these sculptures …
2007 (when this post was first published):
- I’m 20 years older now. Maybe 20 years wiser, though that’s arguable. As I revisit my artist’s statements and photographs of my work from that period of my life, I realize I have a different perspective now. I hope it’s a broader perspective. I still love these pieces and wish we lived in a house with walls large enough to display them. I definitely feel differently about my body these days. And I know my heart and head are different.
- I look at the figures in Sometimes Breathing Feels like Dancing. I see my youthful body bent gracefully, supplely, just like the willow branches I used to form the dance. My life has taken some twists and turns … in many ways I am still dancing with life. And death. With joy. And sorrow. And grief. Feeling the grace along with twinges of pain, love, longing … feeling bent, slightly dried out, though still beautiful.
- Will I ever truly know the steps of this dance? Enough to look ahead, to feel confident that I will not trip over my own feet? That I will be able to glide over the dance floor without regret, with my heart open to the music, to the senses, to the love of the one whose body sways in rhythm with mine?
- Looking back on the experiences that have brought me to this threshold, I would also say, that “Sometimes Dancing Feels like Breathing.” ~Maureen Shaughnessy, April 2007
My thoughts in 2015, 8 more years later:
- I’m 60 now. I am happy to be this age. My body, my face, my hair all look very different. I have gained weight, have wrinkles (duhhhh) and my hair is really short, silvery (and cute.) My body is shorter too — almost 2 inches shorter. Geez!
- And… I am still beautiful. Sometimes I hate looking in the mirror. Sometimes I love the way I look. Sometimes I feel bent and do not feel the grace. Other times I just do a happy dance. I revel in stretching my muscles on a walk or hike. I have less sorrow. Less heart-pain. More joy. Lots more joy.
- I think I am wiser. World-smart. More engaged with others, though content to spend long hours alone.
- My heart is full with the love of my partner, Tim, our 5 children and 5 grandchildren and all of my siblings and mom.
- I have lost some people who are important to me. I have gained new friends. Really good friends.
- When I had that solo exhibit at the age of 33, I did not know I would become a full time artist. Or that I would own a gallery with my husband whom I had not yet met… I had no idea of the trajectory my life would take. The ups and downs.
- I am grateful for every single moment I have had and every feeling, joy and loss, every person whose path I have crossed.
Sometimes Breathing Feels Like Dancing. Sometimes Dancing Feels Like Breathing. These days, in gratitude, I Feel Like Dancing and Breathing. Namaste´
All of the black and white photos were taken by my dear friend, Robin Leenhouts. She is a wonderful artist and art teacher, now living in Milwaukee.