I have Flannery O'Connor with me for my travels in Europe. I haven't read her before. I resonate with her fierce earnestness in wanting to clear her mind, to find her place in the world, to be able to do her work. But not just any work– the work that belongs to her, and connects her with spirit.

One of the paradoxes is that to find your place in the world you have to set down your fears and ambitions, at least for the moment. She writes in A Prayer Journal: 

Please help me to push myself aside.

I have the opportunity in teaching, at moments, to forget about myself and find the presence in the room. This would not be possible without the students who show up– willing to give full attention a try, to see what arises in an atmosphere of creativity and silence.

All across the country there is an opportunity to pause together, and be united by watching the solar eclipse on August 21. The scientists have named the trail where the complete eclipse can be seen–spanning from Oregon to South Carolina– the path of totality.

We are sustained by the bigger picture, by a source that is invisible to us. When this presence becomes felt in any way, our reaching is touched by what is timeless. Looking upward, seeing the vastness of sky, takes us out of our small world and into the unknown. Seeing a shooting star flame across the vast desert sky puts my achievements, and my losses in perspective.

In the case of the coming eclipse, being on the path of totality refers to being able to observe the full event, to be enveloped in darkness in the middle of the day. We get to witness a profound image of the dark being circled by light: the corona appears as a golden halo around the black sun. What an image of wonder this evokes– and the inevitable force of the necessity of both the darkness and the light. 

If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why is
could be muted, and the neighbor’s laughter,
and the static my senses make–
if all of it didn’t keep me from coming awake–

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.

The Book of Hours, I,7 – Rilke

To be creative, the not quite right voice must be muted. The critical voice paralyzes experimentation. The perfectionist mind forbids stumbling– and stumbling is necessary for discovery. If you want your work to be alive, to be authentic, to come from the seed that is yours–the dragon of perfectionism must be slain. As makers, the key is to participate fully, to lose ourselves in the act of creating. There is bravery, and perhaps even faith, in being willing to fail. 

I have decided upon the theme for my classes next year (Taos and St Meinrad are posted: http://www.lauriedoctor.com/new-events/). For a workshop to be meaningful to me, and hopefully, to my students, my teaching has to address fundamental questions about how to operate: How does one work? How do you paint? How do you know where to begin? What holds your work together? How and when do you put together image and text?

The theme for next year is absence and presence.  The blank page, the white canvas– these are universal symbols of absence for the writer, painter, calligrapher, or maker. Fear and doubt often rise to the surface. It is humbling. How, I wonder, can I ever improve on the possibility inherent in this nothingness? 

The urge to fill absence with presence impels every urge to write, draw, perform, paint and tell stories. Absence is the creative force, the initiation, the spark, for the making of anything “new". Without this, we are just “cranking things out”– which is a temptation, as it seems much easier, and often quicker. Still, I know that cranking things out depletes me– while allowing something to emerge from the presences that gather around absence is confirming on the deepest level. It is this that leads to an (albeit unpredictable and fleeting) effortless flow in my work.

For over six months I have been writing letters to an artist in Colorado. The rules were that whatever we sent had to be in a seven inch square format and the actual piece had to be stamped, canceled and sent by Pony Express– the Post Office. During this period we were allowed no other form of communication– no email, phone, or social media. My partner and I agreed on a monthly rhythm of sending correspondence that included time in each of our respective woods, without even a camera, and parallel uninterrupted time in our studios. We were propelled by curiosity– about discoveries in the natural world, and about how this mid-1800's way of dialoging would work. (The telephone was invented in 1876).

Exhibit opening June 2 at the Project Shop Gallery: http://max.ink/

http://www.deborahjonesart.com/about/

This week I am thinking about spring– the unquenchable return of the warblers, the eastern bluebirds making their nest, and the first glimmer of color in crocus and wild iris. On a walk in the winter-woods in March, when song was absent, there was all at once a noise in the air that was new. It was too early for cicadas, and too late for sleigh bells, what was it? The spring peepers! Those tiny tree frogs that begin their chorus in early spring. And what follows are the robins, cardinals and mockingbirds that begin to sing again.

The exultation of spring was partnered by the sudden knowledge that someone dear and close to my heart had fallen seriously ill. How do I hold both of these experiences? What did William Stafford really mean when he said welcome whatever comes? 

Do not measure in terms of time: one year or ten years means nothing.
For the artist there is no counting or tallying up; just ripening
like the tree that does not force its sap and endures the storms
of spring without fearing that summer will not come. But it will come. 
It comes, however, only to the patient ones who stand there as if all
eternity lay before them– vast, still, untroubled. I learn this every day
of my life, I learn it from hardships I am grateful for: patience is all.

– Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

What do you do with the push against time? How do you ripen like the tree?

            In this short life that only lasts an hour how much                                               how little is within our power  

                     – Emily Dickinson

The 2017 classes and travel began in St Louis this month. William Stafford said of his students:

It is not my job to praise or blame, but in the end, to be envious of their work.

This is what happens, in the end, I get to be envious of what my students have done. I only have a few photos– and so this is merely a glimpse of the work done in three days. Here are some samples of work with the "Greek" alphabet I am developing– and exercises in mark making and abstract painting. All of the images below are from the books the students made and stitched in class. The materials we used are watercolor, sumi ink, china marker and graphite.

Variations of this "Greek" alphabet have been developing over ten years– and more recently because the St Meinrad library– where I spend time on retreat– has many wonderful old books. Dozens of the books and manuscripts were carried over the sea by ship from Europe more than a hundred years ago, and date from a much older time.