Back on Blogger

effective in 2020, I will be back on Blogger!

Friday, July 31, 2009

Juliana Coles (Creator of Extreme Visual Journaling) and I have been working on setting up her classes in an online setting. We have been playing around and this is just a snippet from Julaina's Extreme Journalism 101 :Initation. We filmed during this class that she gave on July 25 at her magic studio in Albuquerque. If you think this is interesting, stay tuned as we will have more!

this particular snippet was about Replication.

Finally some art!





I was early to a birthday party at El Pinto last night, so I did some quick and dirty sketches of the foilage.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Not much art today


but this is a gorgeous picture my friend W. took at the Lotus pond at the Lavendar Festival in Los Ranchos. It is a very special place, and is only open to the public once a year.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Living on the side of Love

I do have a serious issue that I want to make sure eveyone hears about. I am Unitarian-Universalist, and this Sunday was the anniversary of the shooting in Tennessee. A deranged individual (who happens to have my last name-so we are probably distantly related... but that is another story) came into a Unitarian church in Knoxville during a program (with the children of the congergation present) and killed two members and wounded others.

In reaction to this, the Unitarian church is starting a "Living on the side of Love..."campaign.

The pledge is:

I believe in the inherent worth and diginity of every person. No one should be dehamanized through acts of exclusion, oppression, or violence because of one's identities, including immigrant status, race, religion, gender and sexual orientation, or political view. I pledge to stand in solidarity with people whose humanity is demeaned just because of who they are. I will stand, speak, pray, march and live on the side of love.

There is really no organized web site or anything, but please join me in taking this pledge.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

OFFLINE FOR A WHILE

My modem died and instead of buying a new one, I am going to upgrade to highspeeed. Unfortunatley, they will not ship me the modem until next friday. I am having to go to hot spots to get connected, so will probably not be back on blogger until next Saturday!
WITHDRAWAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Archetype cards from Consulting the Oracle class with Juliana Coles

This weekend I took a great class from Juliana Coles
called Consulting the Oracle.
We made archetype cards, and these are some of mine
My wanderer card. Quote is "Not all who wander are lost" J.R.R. Tolkein


Back of my wanderer card


This was my innocent card, but it morphed into a combination of innocent/orphan. This was one of my "wounded cards" - Juliana had us use the fallouts from other cards to put together a new card (see the masking tape "bandages"). Words are innocence, lost, waif, cold, wet, hungry



"The back of my combination Innocent/Orphan card. It has a transparency of my great-niece Amber and a picture of "little shari". My words added to the card are ebmryo, innocent and little shari


Martyr Card, words are I am high and mighty at work- not sure where that came from, as I was certainly low man on the totem pole today! Back of my wanderer card


My Hedonist card, just started. This is usually my main archetype card.





Back of the heodonist card. I tried to make them uniform, but different colors??





My Magician card. It started out as the warrior (and thus my power color- Red) but it morphed into the Magician. You may have to enlarge to see the three magical figures dancing across the magic carpets. That was the deciding factor.



Back of my magician card


My warrior card (and not a trace of red to be found.) We needed to write our strenghts, and I did not want to write on my card, so I attached another page.

Back of the expanded Warrior card

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Consulting the Oracle with Juliana Coles

Consulting the Oracle class with Juliana Coles, July 18-19, 2009. Albuquerque NM

I found a fascinating book called "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Sex"
Copyright Date 1950.
Just could not resist this at a Book Sale.
This is the inside cover. Note the pocket we constructed
on the left hand side of the page containing our Archetype Cards.


Juliana wanted us to make an "ugly" page. I followed directions, but everyone else made theirs pretty. Oh well. This is alcolhol inks on wet paper with a piece of burlap on the right hand edge. This was supposed to be our introductory spread.



This is my spread for the Orphan card. I felt like paper dolls were appropriate.


Intermediate page in the introductory section.



We listed our Shoulds, then our should nots (which were very similar, amazingly). I wrote mine, then washed them with white paint, obscuring some of the writing.


One of the dividers that we had to create.
My spread for the Innocent card. This was a representation
of what it was like before I was born. I wrote "embryo" and "Little Shari"
with my non-dominant hand and used red alcolhol ink and purple marker.


My representation of the Warrior card. We listed our shortcomings,
and then were supposed to destroy them with great gusto and violence.

We traded letters to the Universe about what we wanted to accomplish,
and then had to answer someone else's letter as if it were our own.
Jule's letter could apply to me to, so I just plowed ahead.


All in all, it was a very interesting experience.

Messy, but interesting.
Check out Juliana's classes

Friday, July 17, 2009

Long time since my last post...

Things have been really tough at work, with a huge project, short timeline and lots to do. But I got it finished (keep saying that I am not going to do that, but I do it anyway...). It is HOT here this afternoon (you will note that I am just commenting, not complaining! When it was cold I promised that I would not complain about it being hot!)

I had an interesting morning today. I am in my car, open the garage door, and it opens, then immediatley crashes back down. Luckily (due to misadventures with other garage door openers in my past) I had not moved my car. I got out expecting to see a broken spring (that happened about 16 months ago and was $200) but it was the bracket that hooks the opener to the door. Looks simple to do, but I have not been able to find a bracket. I looked at Lowes and may have to go to a garage door installer. Hate to pay them to fix it, but I may have to.

I have a new laptop and it has Vista on it. We are going to have to support it at work, so I figured that I would bite the bullet. I have avoided it on purpose for all this time.... So far it is not bad, and the whole system is MUCH faster than my old desktop. I have not put much on it yet, but that will happen. Luckily I have a setup where I can have two machines. Never enough time to do what we want!

I am taking a class with Juliana Coles this weekend, working with archetypes. I can't wait

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Wind Farm




They are building a wind farm on the way to my Mother's house. It is on a high bluff southeast of Albuquerque. I am impressed with how slow and deliberate the blades turn, it is almost a dance. I took a short video, but will not be able to upload tonight.

This is my Mother, sister and I. We all have the same chin!

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Cutt off all of my hair!

Since it has been hot and muggy for the last week, and I have been down this week, I went and had all of my hair cut off! I am going to try to go spiky, but may not be able to pull it off! Anyway, I needed a change, and this is it!
No picutres yet, as it is too much of a shock!

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Here is another experiment, a slideshow

Fourth of July Celebration and Fireworks watching party

Pamela (our hostess) has a very charming courtyard
with grass, flowers, birds and animals.







After dinner and before fireworks, a large storm blew
through and left this gorgeous rainbow behind. It
was a full arc, and very intense, with a secondary faint arc.
The whole group.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Happy Fourth of July

What is independence? Freedom from all laws
or bonds except those of one's own being, control'd
by the universal ones.
- Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1871

Thursday, July 02, 2009