Joy of Food

Joy of Food

Tomorrow evening I am facilitating the Equinox celebration at a beautiful place called Picollo Pastures down in Elk Grove. Before that, tomorrow morning, I am hosting the “Grandmothers” – the women that get together consistantly many times each month to plan, support, and hold space for the circle of women – at my house for final planning and breakfast.

I decided to fix a really nice vegetable, potato and egg thing. I worked for a good hour putting all the components together, put it in the oven and was carefully timing it, when my husband called me into the other room to look at something. One of the not-so-efficient things of being completely in the now is the tendency to get totally involved in whatever you are doing. Well…

Tomorrow I will be joyfully serving the brownest egg dish I’ve ever seen! It smells good. I so thoroughly enjoy fixing food for those I love. And I get great joy from playing with food.

The picture here is at the Agro Art Festival up in Lincoln California, which is put on by the Arts Council of Placer County. They have me (aka Ruby Grapefruit Pearl) come up there and teach children how to play with their food. It’s right up my alley! The kids and the kid in many adults create all kinds of creatures and other things out of raw vegetables and fruits in the Play Garden while sculptors and teams of artists work on more involved agro-art pieces. It is great fun.

The Joy of Tea

My friends and I enjoy doing High Tea up in the mountains every year. One of my best friends has a cabin at a private lake with a clubhouse. It has been in her family for generations. I have many great memories of going up there in the alpine forest, camping, hiking, sunning, visiting and having High Tea, with all the ladies.

One year we invited men too. Husbands and boyfriends dressed up and hung towels on their arms. They waited on us, serenaded us, and generally treated us like queens. It was an exciting year.

I have not got to attend for a time or two, and I have missed it. So, today, Oh Joy, I am headed up for the annual Ladies High Tea. We will have little fancy scones and things, fruits and treats. We will have at least half a dozen different fancy teapots with different flavors of tea. Mostly, we will have some time away from the hustle and bustle of our lives, separated by time and space from all the daily concerns. Time to visit in peace, time to sit joyfully by the peaceful lake and reconnect.

And, time to play! Big hats and feathers, dressed up or down as much as each decides, we will fill up our hearts with the camraderie and sisterhood. It is time to fill my creative coffers, renewing the connection to the artesian well of Joy in my heart. Off to tea!

The Joy of Mining Images

The Joy of Mining Images

A big piece of Joy for me is mining images.

I am still going through boxes from storage, even though I moved in here over 4.5 years ago. Every box of papers that I bring in has to be gone through and filed (Most of it goes in the big round file marked “recycle”). It’s a bit of a stretch to find the Joy in that job. A big piece of Joy that does stem from that job, though, is mining images.

I have been doing art all of my life. I have lots and lots of old sketchbooks, paintings, ideas and photos. Years ago I took yet another photography class so that I could figure out how to create my big .5mm pencil drawings using photographs and darkroom magic instead, in a sort of chemical montage process that I was inventing. I had to back away from the project when I got pregnant as there was no way I would risk my babies health with exposure to a toxic chemical soup.

When computers came to be more available, I kept imagining that there would be a way to create my vision with them. Years later now with a scanner, a digital camera, Illustrator and Photoshop and Painter, the tools available for my palette are so far more sophisticated than anything I could have imagined back then. I am so grateful for programmers and technology! YES!

So I mine images in my files, redraw or repaint them, add pieces, cut out pieces, scan or photograph them, pull them into Photoshop or Painter and have at it, emerging in a short while from the instantaneous creative flow with another jewel to add to the treasure of images I have available for my work. What a joy!

A few samples of prints created from images that I have mined in this way include: Fanny, Kady, and Remembrance:

Fanny - a mined image print
Kady - a mined image composite print
Remembrance - a mined image digital collage

Some Challenges of Website Design

I find it curious that I make a good part of my living doing website design. Why curious? Well, even though the “D” word (design) is right in there in the title, in reality the job only entails about 1/2 what I would call design and artistic creation – the part of the job that I naturally shine. I can create new ideas and original art easily all day long.

The other half of the job, however, has constantly been a major challenge for me: writing code, trouble-shooting geeky computer stuff, and learning about SEO matters. Yikes, it makes my hair stand on end just thinking of it, yet it is absolutely critical to the success of my business and the businesses of my clients.

Someone pointed out to me a while back, “Dena, what good does it do for you to design a beautiful looking site, if no one sees it?” Good question. One that we should all pay attention to. We’ve all seen the really pretty sites with all the flashy flash splash, and no content. All dressed up and no place to go.

I’ve worked a long time studying all the different online gurus and implementing what I learned, while battling my urge to close my eyes or grimace at the blatant sales pitches housed in the ugly, garish layouts that rankle my artist sensibilitys.

Recently, I have been working with a woman who is a real SEO specialist. Finally, it’s all making sense. When there is the elegant combination of quality solid website design AND dynamic SEO understructure – AH! Now we have a true winner!

What Kind of Joy?

In my book, there’s joy and there’s JOY.

The first arises spontaneously out of doing something I enjoy: preparing raw food, hiking in the woods on a brilliant spring day, or creating custom illustrations for someone’s book. It’s a great feeling, and I encourage it as much as possible throughout my schedule. This kind of joy can also come from a particular situation I find myself in, like being lauded by friends, getting the opportunity to truly serve someone, or coming upon a field of gorgeous flowers. This is circumstantial joy.

JOY, on the other hand is direct from Spirit. It matters not what the circumstance, JOY keeps bubbling up. I see it as an artesian well, constantly bubbling over into every experience I have – “good” or “bad”. This is a gift from God, letting me know that I am indeed doing diligence, paying attention enough to maintain conscious connection. Once I opened to True Source I was flooded with it. There is nothing else as sweet, except when, like two hands connected by the heart I experience both joy and JOY together. Ah! Now that is another word: BLISS.

May all of your days contain extensive moments of Bliss!

Where do the ideas come from?

Over the years I’ve learned that there is no end to ideas. They just keep appearing in the thoughts. I used to think that I had to act on every one of them. I drove myself crazy for years, thinking that I was somehow shorting someone if I didn’t play out every single good idea I had. Sheesh!

I’ve finally come to realize (slooooooooowly) that just like every thing else in nature there is lavish abundance of everything that is a gift from the True Source. The apple tree is not faulted for producing more apples than get consumed by folk and wormy, furred or flying ones. The beach is not somehow at fault for hosting all those grains of sand. I am ok when I don’t act on all my ideas, and it is natural that I have many of them.

When I am creating for a custom creative job of some kind (art, illustration, graphic design, web design, etc), I am always gifted more than one idea. It has been my challenge to reduce the number of choices, because people seem to be overwhelmed by too many of them.

Today my job is one of a simple kind of creativity: I am doing a calligraphy assignment – hand addressing 130+ envelopes. This is more time consuming than I ever imagine. I don’t have to come up with too many ideas for it though.

Tomorrow my job may just be coming up with more ideas!