Plinky asked, “Do you have a favorite work of art?”

artist

No, I don’t have a favorite work of art. My favorite artist is a young lady named Katie Armis­tead, and I could­n’t pos­si­bly choose just one of her works as a favorite.

Oth­er than her work, I have sev­er­al favorite artists, from the well-known ones like Mon­et to less­er-known peo­ple such as Carl Lund­gren and Lucy Synk. I’ve gone into more detail about them at http://technomom.com/sff/art.shtml .

I also enjoy Susan Sed­don Boulet and Susan Van Cam­p’s work, and Ansel Adam’s pho­tog­ra­phy among oth­ers. Some of the Raphaelites also appeal to me.

Such a word that is, indica­tive of choic­es big and small. I’ve faced more change than choice in the past 30 days or so, thanks to a major rela­tion­ship change.¹ But there have been choic­es, and there will be yet more choic­es in the future—choices that I will be mak­ing alone, for the first time in many years.

Choice, reflect­ed in that word, is the NaBloPo­Mo theme for March. And I’m mak­ing a change, by mak­ing a choice to return to blog­ging.

I’ve been jour­nal­ing pri­vate­ly these past weeks as a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice and have found it reward­ing. I’m not quite doing writer’s pages à la Julia Cameron, but per­haps I’ll return to that dis­ci­pline at some point. To be hon­est, my spir­i­tu­al life has suf­fered great­ly in the past six years, and my writ­ing has suf­fered along with it (as well as my music, needle­work, and every­thing else).

So, per­haps I’ll write about choic­es this month. Or about changes. Or about any­thing else that strikes my fan­cy. I’m just mak­ing a com­mit­ment to post­ing a bit each day, for now.

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
What is the first thing you see when you walk in your house?

Right now, the first thing any­body sees is Sam’s desk. No, that isn’t pre­cise­ly right. If you’re look­ing straight ahead at the wall, you see a col­lage by Katie, which is much love­li­er.

No, noth­ing like that!

I’ve been look­ing at Word­Press themes. Again. Lots of them.

I have lots of tuto­ri­als book­marked about cre­at­ing your own themes, too. I even have a cou­ple of books on the sub­ject.

One is quite new.

Dan­ger, dan­ger, Will Robin­son!

I received the NaBloPo­Mo newslet­ter today and learned that this mon­th’s theme is Art. On the one hand, I thought, “I have noth­ing to say! I’m not an artist. Blah.”

On the oth­er hand, I’m com­ing to real­ize that I must have order in my life or I start dying, bit by bit. “Ene­my of Entropy” isn’t just a fan­ci­ful blog title. Dis­or­der is painful to me. Dull col­ors, harsh light­ing, loud sounds, poor ven­ti­la­tion, and per­va­sive odors can drag any­one down, but they make me ill very rapid­ly.

If you find me sur­round­ed by chaos you can be sure that either I haven’t been in that space long enough to impose order, or that some­thing is very, very wrong.

I’m health­i­est and hap­pi­est when I’m when I find ways to increase the amount of har­mo­ny and beau­ty around me. There is beau­ty in order, and art, for me, involves order — some kind of order, even if it isn’t always obvi­ous.

I’m nev­er going to be an Artist in any clas­si­cal sense of the word. I have, how­ev­er, estab­lished peace­ful, joy­ful spaces for my fam­i­ly and friends to live in and vis­it. I put togeth­er fab­ric and fibers to cre­ate unique works of embroi­dery. When I sing, alone or with oth­ers, the result is no less beau­ti­ful for its ephemer­al­i­ty.

I’ll be try­ing to explore my own kind of art this month through blog­ging, my iden­ti­ty as an artist. And I’ll be work­ing on get­ting back to blog­ging reg­u­lar­ly, obvi­ous­ly. This is a new sort of blog post for me, more intro­spec­tive. We’ll see how that goes.

Sam start­ed a meme!

There was some­thing spe­cif­ic I was going to post. I know it. I remem­ber think­ing, “Oh, yeah, I want to blog about that!” But I did­n’t do it imme­di­ate­ly and now, of course, it’s gone, gone, gone. Blah.

So, instead, you get a lit­tle hodge-podge update of books and pic­tures.

I don’t know which. But it’s love­ly!

From Perseus in the Wind by Freya Stark:

If love­li­ness is so engaged, as I believe, in the skein of our uni­verse, it is sad that it should be lit­tle cared for in our schools. The whole of the indus­tri­al world pro­claims its unim­por­tance, and mil­lions and mil­lions of peo­ple spend their lives look­ing almost exclu­sive­ly at ugly things. This sure­ly will pass. What is more insid­i­ous­ly dan­ger­ous at the moment is a timid heresy which believes that the igno­rant can be trained to beau­ty by the sec­ond-rate. The fal­la­cy of our age main­tains it bet­ter to do things bad­ly than not at all. As a mat­ter of fact there is very lit­tle harm in doing noth­ing: to do things bad­ly is an active get­ting in the way of the few nec­es­sary peo­ple who might do good. To adapt beau­ty to “the man in the street” is to use the bed of Pro­crustes with a vengeance and to muti­late divin­i­ty: it is bet­ter to remem­ber that the man in the street him­self was made in the like­ness of God. To him beau­ty is sim­ple and easy, a nat­ur­al hunger which all can assim­i­late in ele­men­tary or com­pli­cat­ed form, pro­vid­ed they are not clut­tered up with medi­oc­rity already. Medi­oc­rity will nev­er lead to beau­ty: the two roads are not even par­al­lel; they are diver­gent.

There are times when being graph­ic-impaired real­ly does annoy me.

I’m final­ly mov­ing for­ward with port­ing the Heart­song Hand­i­crafts site to Word­Press. It should­n’t be a big deal. I’ve done the same many times before with oth­er sites.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t have a logo. I mean, I have a sim­ple logo, but it isn’t very good. It does­n’t sing, that’s for sure. I just want a nice, sim­ple logo that isn’t ter­ri­bly busy, but that does­n’t look (like the first attempt) as if I made it from clip-art and stan­dard fonts. My utter and com­plete lack of draw­ing abil­i­ty is a seri­ous hand­i­cap in this endeav­or.

I did sor­ta cus­tomize a WP theme to match the crap­py logo, but that part is easy. The hard­er part is hav­ing some­thing to give the site visu­al inter­est, and that does­n’t exist right now.

On the oth­er hand, the cross-stitch pat­terns them­selves involve graph­ics, so I don’t want things to get too busy. It’s a bal­anc­ing act.

I may have to throw myself on Katie’s mer­cy, or some­thing. She’s pret­ty busy, though, and prefers to draw what­ev­er she feels like draw­ing rather than cre­at­ing some­thing to suit a par­tic­u­lar theme.