please come on over to our new home at www.helenofmemphis.com !

Tangly Bangly Mess

I've been absent from the blogging world for way too long, and its time to step back in. I'll start by sharing some of what I've been up to. I moved into a treehouse! The elf and gnome share a small bedroom and love love love their bunkbed. Mama's futon on the floor is their "stage" for ballet performances and the building site of what they like to call the Tangly Bangly Mess which consists of piling all the blankets in the house, their big box of fabric, and any other soft thing lying around. Then they hide each other. My requirement is that they leave an air hole...ahh, the freeplay of childhood. My bed is in the main room (it can be folded into a bohemian couch during the day) , and the bedroom is my studio. You can see where my priorities are.

I've been busy in the studio lately, with four commissions and lots of sewing. Today, I am sewing eye pillows and soft props for a yoga studio. When I'm done, I envision my own sort of Tangly Bangly Mess, falling into a heap of pillows and floppy bolsters. I am working on Art for the Walls, a series of mixed media collages on canvas, inspired by quilting and origami. I need to take a bunch of photographs of my work and put them up somewhere. My Etsy shop is pretty bare, and I would love to have a gallery of previous work on my very own website...anyone know a good website designer? I need some help organizing this mess.

I love all things

I love

all

things,

not because they are

passionate

or sweet-smelling

but because,

I don't know,

because

this ocean is yours,

and mine:

these buttons

and wheels

and little

forgotten

treasures,

fans upon

whose feathers

love has scattered

its blossoms,

glasses, knives and

scissors--

all bear

the trace

of someone's fingers

on their handle or surface,

the trace of a distant hand

lost

in the depths of forgetfulness.

--from Ode to Things

Pablo Neruda

this moment

rain music

A slow, rainy, soak cycle in the studio sort of day. My soundtrack includes music by Mazzy Star and Megan Reilley, the kind of music I like to categorize "rain music." Music conducive for artmaking, reading, or staying in bed; those lingering sorts of activities. For afternoons of drinking English Breakfast tea with milk and honey having nary a care in the world. For pondering, soaking, breathing deeply, being grateful that this world is so alive and I have hands to make things.

I recently took a test online for an in-person psychology class. I was so frustrated with the formatting of the thing, and hated that I could not work my thoughts out on paper. I realized that I actually think through my hands!! Through writing, I pull words from the ether of the unconscious. In Latin, the word for this is poesis: the physical act of making a poem. In college, I made little handbound books of poetry under the imprint Poesis Press. Through making, I understand my materials, and somehow articulate a formless thing into the physical world. There is an element of alchemy involved anytime we use our hands to create something; be it art, music, writing, whatever.

I've been uploading and editing artwork to transform into cards this rainy day! The image above is one of the collages that will grace the front of one of my little notecards. There are so many more pieces to come, eventually they'll end up in my store. I love making cards because I love the thought of someone writing a note to a dear friend, or to say thank you for a beloved gift, or to express condolences over the loss of a loved one. I love being part of that process. We are all so far away from each other these days, and can be far away from ourselves. Writing a note can be a way of reconnecting with the slow side of things. A rain music sort of experience.

my destiny...

This sign stood in front of the most elegant of women's specialty shops from my grandmother's generation in Midtown Memphis, TN for many a decade. It closed when I was a small girl in the 1980's, and I was certain that one day I would buy the beautiful coral colored building and reopen the shop. My name is Helen. I am from Memphis. It seemed perfect! The building stood vacant throughout my youth, but by the time I got to high school, my hopes seemed dashed when the building was razed to make room for an ugly, inelegant concrete box of a Rite Aid. I was crushed.

I was studying in my second floor bedroom on the back of my parents house one night, I think it was the night before the scheduled demolition, when I heard rocks being thrown at my bedroom window. Who could be pelting rocks up! And aren't those ADULT's voices calling my name?? Peeking out of the window, I saw a most amazing sight. My father and three of his friends were holding this sign up and yelling "Oh Helen of Memphis!! Look what we got for you!!" They had liberated the sign by cover of darkness and transported it by pickup truck! It has been there since. One day, inevitably, the sign will make a trek to Upstate New York to live outside my home and art studio. Not how I imagined it at age 9, but my destiny has been fulfilled. The building is long gone, the sign faded and weathered, but I have opened the Helen of Memphis!! Come by the Etsy shop to see my handmade goods, and come on back to the blog often and set a spell with me while I spin a good yarn.