I belong to a woman’s group and we call ourselves the Empress League. It is made up of local women in our area, many of whom are creatives and energy workers, artists and writers. We often talk about spiritual matters and do creative activities, but what it really has become is a safe container for middle aged women to feel comfortable being vulnerable.
This summer we started reading books together. We have done this in the past with varying attendance and participation, but this year has been different. We have shown up, we have read our chapters, and have come armed with opinions and questions. We have brought our heart and souls to the table and revealed things about ourselves that we would normally keep inside. This is healing work.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron was the first book chosen as we made our way back to books. I remember picking this book up 30 years ago when it first came out because I was very interested in finding out what sort of artist I could be and bought it without flipping through it. When I got it home, young and impatient, I realized there were no art instructionals, no pictures, just a bunch of words. Who had time for that? Even though I was a voracious reader at the time, this book felt like a trick, so I never actually read it. I didn’t keep around either. What I discovered reading this book at 53 was that I would not have understood any of it at 23. I had not gathered enought life experience for the book to affect me in the way it is supposed to. It isn’t to say that you can’t read it when you’re young, maybe it would help steer your life, but the power comes from untangling a lived life and reclaiming the artist inside you.
One of the major tasks of this book is the Morning Pages. Every morning I sit to write and empty my head of the garbage it carried around the day before. It is sort of cleansing. It jumps from topic to topic and none of it feels too terribly deep. There is a lot of complaining that I would never do out loud. Harsh judgements of myself and others, aches and pains, anxiety over how much there is to do in life and not enough time to get that all done. I have been journaling since I was 10 years old and these morning pages didn’t feel much different except they are done first thing in the morning. But there is something about wiping the slate clean when you first get up that changes the day.
This blog post is only happening because I have no journals left in the house that are clean and I finished my last journal yesterday morning. I frantically searched the entire house this morning, then reset myself to calm down, and searched again. Twenty minutes of my life crawling around in all the books and crannies looked for a clean bound journal. So hear I am doing morning pages a little differently. What I did learn is that I have a lot of half done notebooks or what I call everything notebooks. They are full of ideas and rabbit holes of information gathering. I am not sure I even go back and read them again but I bet they are full of awesome facts, recipes, and knowledge.
To me, The Artist’s Way was twelve weeks of reconnecting with a more playful and whimsical side of my life that I am less apt to tap into. I learned a lot about how my abusive youth informed my life now, how it was sort of gatekeeping my art. I think this book is perfect to read in your 50’s because as a woman I have arrived at the land of I Don’t Give A Fuck Anymore, meaning you are likely to see me wandering around looking mildly feral with grass all over my shoes and not trying to impress anyone with how I look. I really wish this phase would have come sooner but as I have come to learn, the time has to be right to receive information.
I found that I approached most of the tasks in the back of the chapters as homework assignments and because Julia Cameron doesn’t require that you do all the tasks, I often skipped the ones that weren’t easily completed. When I went back to see what I had missed, these were the tasks that I most needed to do, the ones that would have made me the most uncomfortable in my skin. Now and then I take on one of those tasks and really sit with it. I am learning that the child in me just wants to make colorful things that mean something to her, not to anyone else. It isn’t to say that the pieces wouldn’t resonate with someone other than myself, but what I realize is that I don’t need them to like it or approve.
So I am going to use this space to share some recently completed projects and some works in progress. Writing has taken a seat at the back of the bus since Spring and though it has always been my go to for everything, art has really stepped into the driver’s seat. So please enjoy some art, or don’t, but I sure did.
My first ever linocut prints. My friend Dave taught me out and gave me all the supplies to do it while we stayed at his house this spring. Yes, it looks like a field of boobs. I have no idea what I was doing.
This is a prototype chicken pin cushion. My friend Amy owns a creative reuse shop in town called The Fabric Chicken and she was looking to do something for charity. So I found a pattern, made a chicken and now we work together on Chicks for Charity where all proceeds benefit the Corning Meals on Wheels. We are both passionate about feeding people and this worked out great. I get cool scraps of fabric from her shop and turn them into these darling chickens. So far we have raised 205 dollars in just 2 months. It’s pretty awesome.
At Grassroots this year they had a booth where you could paint pre-printed images with different kinds of soil from around the United States and a few from Europe. I was very interested in this idea and this old dung beetle is completely painted with mud. There isn’t a more kid like activity than that.
My friend got married this summer and I made this for her bridal shower, but to be honest it wasn’t done until way after the wedding. I found this beautiful applique square at The Fabric Chicken made by a local woman named Pat (she gives quintessential grandma vibes and I just want to put her in my pocket and take her home). I did all of the bead work being careful to not disturb her creativity and talent, so in essence we collaborated and she didn’t even know it.
This piece is part of my “Judging A Book By It’s Cover” series where I recreate the book covers of books that I have finished reading or listening to. My hope is to submit them into a local art show (you have to be selected) next year. I was going to do it this year but I knew I would not have them all done in time to submit them if I was chosen due to garden season. But this one is from a series of books I read that are all non fiction called “A Very Short Introduction……” This one was about Carl Jung. It is still in progress.
“In the Sediment” is a trash art piece that I created and submitted to a Trashy Art exhibit for possible selection. It is put on by the Chemung River Watershed conservation group to help bring awareness to the amount of garbage people dump in the river. All of the items in this piece were collected from the Chemung River bank except the corn silk. That was from Addison.
This year for Clemens and the Pen art show at Community Arts of Elmira, I chose to teach myself macrame. I chose the most simple thing I could do. My intension was to weave through the open spaces but they were too loose so now I am tying Larks Head knots with cut pieces of wool and wool adjacent fibers and also doing needle felting (first image). The whole thing will depict my rendition of the cover of Mark Twain’s book “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
This here is the Selfie Coat. Again, I found a pre-made jacket in a bag of fabric that was given to me years ago and started sewing randome scraps on it. It got put away for a long time but I have started working on it again. Sometimes the true meaning of piece needs time to build. This originally started nearly 10 years ago when my friend Brian called me a selfie whore because I was always changing my profile picture on FB. But now I understand that this was meant to be an interactive piece at a member show where people try on the coat and take a selfie. I am going to have them tag me in the photo when they post it and people can enter to win the piece at the end of the show and the cost is just a donation to the arts council of whatever they want to give. I do not have room to be keeping all these projects around.
This was a long one. Thanks for hanging in there. Make art. Laugh. Sing. Trust your intuition. Do some morning pages. Remember we are all born to create. Be kind to each other. Support local art.
Aleathia
Aleathia Drehmer 