The Art Drawer

Today, a soggy, wet, cool, cloudy day, I cleaned out my Art Drawer.  This was a huge undertaking, for many reasons.  The Art Drawer is a very large box on wheels beneath the bed, and holds an astounding amount of stuff.    Not only papers, sketches, pencils and markers, sponges and the like, but memories of the different stages in my life.  (Yes, this drawer has not been properly gone through for years).  There was the shadow puppet era, when I performed elaborate puppet shows with handmade puppets, music, a screen with a black curtain and lights.  The stories were written by me, and each puppet had moveable joints, making them come to life behind the screen.

And every puppet was alive to me, holding so much of myself within it.  I loved doing the shows, and probably could have made a career out of it.  But it was an incredible amount of work, and I was moved in other directions by other forces, so the puppets got put into the Art Drawer, where they have been lying asleep for many years while more and more things got stacked on top of them.  Today I dug clear to the bottom of the drawer and got out the puppets,  I knew this day was coming. They are now in a bag on the back porch, where they'll sit for awhile, until I get around to recycling them.  How can I say goodbye to all that?  And yet I already have.  There were more layers to go through, hundreds of sketches, each with a story to tell.  Why is it so heart-wrenching to look back on the past?  Would I want to go back?  No!  But there is a sadness about things that captivated you for a time and then faded, like an unfinished song.

So I'd best look forward to the future and wait to see what it brings.  There is always a herald out there if we take the time to listen, and always something new to broaden our horizons.

Hoping for sun!



The Road to Fairyland

Do you seek the road to Fairyland?
I'll tell; it's easy quite.
Wait till a yellow moon gets up o'er purple seas by night,
And gilds a shining pathway that is sparkling diamond bright.
Then, if no evil power be nigh to thwart you out of spite,
And if you know the very words to cast a spell of might,
You get upon a thistledown and if the breeze is right,
You sail away to Fairyland
Along this track of light.
    -- Ernest Thompson Seton

No time to draw these busy spring days, only time to dream now and then between chores, of hidden worlds just between the gusts of spring wind.  I can almost feel myself sailing there sometimes.  But with my hands in the earth the fairies draw quite near to my world, helping rouse all the green growing things from their winter slumber.  It's succulent potting time, and if ever there were a leprechaunish plant, succulents are it!

Fairy Doodles

Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,

You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,

You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,

Attend your office and your quality.

William Shakespeare

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Spring still has not fully arrived at On The Wind.  Outside chores must wait, as today it's sleeting with a biting wind. I scrounged around and found some fairy watercolor studies to post.  The wondrous thing about fairyland is it can be anything we imagine it to be.  Each person's imagination is a rich and boundless sea of ideas waiting to be made manifest, and I know no greater joy than bringing a character or a scene to life on paper.  Once the pencil begins to make marks on the paper, magic happens.  The results may not be what I anticipated; sometimes great surprises happen, which only adds to the excitement.  But always the lure of fairyland beckons me.  Maybe it's a sickness!  But I don't care, it brings me, and I hope others, comfort, joy and a sense that life is always surprising, always changing, always mysterious.

Here is a quote by author James Hollis that I love:

- “I have no vested interest in our becoming saner, or mentally balanced, or even useful to society. If you, the reader find a neurosis that works for you, and gifts others as a bonus, then ride it for all its worth. We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being.”

Till soon,

Heidi