Crafting Life

For all of my life I have been drawn to crafting in one form or another. I come from parents who could work creatively with their hands and some of my richest memories involve working with them on a project, or merely watching them working at one thing or another. Our parents fostered in us a strong desire to work with our hands in creative ways, from supporting my sister’s batik work, to teaching us embroidery, or proudly displaying my massive macramé projects.  There was nothing we weren’t encouraged to try and supported in doing and we are truly blessed by the richness of those memories and the lessons hand crafting brought to our lives.

 

As I was working on a purse recently, having been inspired to create with recycled materials, my shoulders ached with the repetitive, hunched over work of needle nosed pliers and tiny jump rings, and I simply had to stop.  I marveled at how it was developing and with my aching shoulders, granted myself the simple stretching and time away needed to be able to go back to it.  Creating a beautiful hand crafted piece of any kind takes a multitude of little steps, many of them not particularly fun at all, often very repetitive, arduous, tedious steps done with a single purpose and intention. When you are done you have a thing of beauty, sometimes you have a masterpiece.  Creating a beautiful life is done the same way.

It is a wonderful thing to witness the fruits of one’s labor, to behold the things of beauty that can manifest from concentrated effort and attention to detail.  Life is no different. There are hundreds of mundane, arduous, and tedious tasks to living one’s life, but they can be done with an intention, a common purpose and a vision. Those daily mundane, arduous, tedious tasks are your life after all. Like the Buddhist saying, before enlightenment – chop wood, carry water, after enlightenment – chop wood, carry water. Life’s daily tasks still need doing and there is grace in doing them with intention, with gratitude for your abundance, with love and affection for the nurturing spirit you embody.

Best Holiday Wishes to all of You as you craft the life  of your dreams-

Passionate about Repurposing

I have become very passionate about recycling and repurposing artwork - For quite a while now I have used recycled print material for collage cards using images from flyers, catalogs, old magazines etc to create the texture or color I want to create a new image.  Now, I have started to re-imagine some of the art I have at home.  To decorate cheaply, I have often bought pieces at Ross or TJ Maxx that have colors I am using. However, now that I am creating more of our art work, I find my self scavenging around the house for pieces I am tired of or not using and using them as a base for something new.   Here I used two 9" x 20" Tuscan scenes I had gotten for $4.99 apiece and collaged a Klimt inspired duet.  Using the Lynne Perella angels featured on her stamps, I enlarged the stamp images and printed them directly onto decorative papers and of course freely used vintage text, tissue and napkins along with paint and gel medium.  Fun way to get a new look, and to experiment with ideas without a big commitment to supplies or canvases.  In my art as metaphor for life thinking, we take what we have and see its value in a new way, layer on the experiences of our lives and make what once seemed useless or less worthy and see it as the foundation it is in the evolution of our selves.

Life expanding

This year has unfolded in so many beautiful ways.  Not only has my artistic expression exploded in untold directions, our family is growing to include a daughter-in-law.  I have posted a piece I made for our newly engaged son entitled Viva Los Novios to the right. The couple has asked me to create the invitations for their July 7th wedding, and I have featured the chosen design here.

We are thrilled to have Erika in our family and celebrate the peace, joy and fulfillment she has brought to Elias' life.  I will be making the 100+ invitations by hand so each has the textural, unique element we are all wanting - and I am thrilled to do it.  What better way to celebrate life than to joyously contribute to a day to celebrate love and life!!

My First Video

Just had the wonderful opportunity to work with dear friend, Carol Hart, on an instructional video.  Simply click on the link here if you wish to see what we did! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ul_bcLNK1s  My artwork has kept me very busy since my cast came off, inspiration is everywhere and there is always some card or gift to be made.  Made the above set of "wish" cards for my son's 33rd birthday. Using imagery of particular relevance to him, or colors he often uses in his art made for a unique and much appreciated way in which I could share with him my hopes for his birthday and his year.  More to come as I explore expanded methods in working with multiple media - but suffice to say I am having a wonderful time expressing myself in this profoundly varied style!

Passion Art

Finally made the leap and opened my Etsy shop ( www.etsy.com/people/janabvargas), listing a few of the collage cards I have been making of late.  Quite taken with using recycled print material, junk mail, magazines, etc to find interesting images, textures, and colors for use in collage, I started a series using postcard style cards with coordinating envelopes, creating a small piece of textured original art that can be used as a card or as artwork.  I have found that I incorporate into everything I make a bit of the message I carry: live fully, live passionately, be present in your present moment, be fully who you are.  Whether I express myself in writing, as with my book, or in art as I have this year - this is what resonates.  In this collection of stamps my friend Carol recently gave me was the quote, "art is a shadow of what a person is thinking", no wonder it comes through because this is what is held in my mind at all times.  As I work through this journey striving to be who I am and live completely and honestly I am blessed to be have the freedom and support it takes to live a creative and authentic life.  I am grateful everyday.

Creating again

My broken arm sidelined me for a while, but really allowed ideas to germinate and my passion to build only to spill over once I was able again.  In between a huge variety of summer visitors and activities, I have begun a series of "Collage Cards".  Pictured here is a collage of the Retirement card series I did for a colleague as I considered how she might spend her week in retirement.  This has led to a multitude of collage card ideas and an explosion of possibilities with this latest medium.  From sets in the fan folders to individual cards with coordinating envelopes, this latest expression allows me to dabble freely and frequently with simple thank you cards, to more involved individualized birthday sets.  These sets will be available through Etsy soon as I build an inventory and expand and explore various methods and materials.

Passion Interrupted

I had every intention of posting at least monthly, following my progression into more artful expression, but life is as ever filled with detours and the unexpected.  April was yet another month filled with artistic interpretation including a multi media book I wrote and created for my daughter using the metaphor of the life of a tree to explain my own life journey.  I dabbled with assemblage and worked on memory stones for my yard in Taos.  Then April 27th simply walking from one room to another in my socks on the wood floors (bad idea) I slipped and fell hard thoroughly breaking both bones of my right wrist.  Ouch!!! - but worse than the pain and inconvenience of a cast was the immediate halt to my artistic expression - it was like hitting a wall.  After the initial series of casts and manipulations of my damaged wrist (double Ouch!!!) I was able to at least decorate the cast with the help of a friend.  As I settled into a very quiet four week stretch, punctuated by two long planned trips, I came to see this as an opportunity to develop other parts of myself as my left hand grew a bit more adept and my right fingers tried to work in ways they had not before.  I am still in a cast, this one I decorated completely by myself - pictured here.  I found ways to work with the pain and started moving my twisted right hand in ways that allowed me to once again hold scissors, paint, write and work.  It is slow going and I am counting the seconds until the cast is off.  I have physical therapy ahead and a long time before I can do full yoga again, but I am curious to see how the development of new parts of me might express itself once I am more functional.  The physcial experience of having one part shut down is a great metaphor for how our lives continually shift and how we must navigate our way through losses and changes. Somehow, we just keep going as we constantly challenge ourselves to find more within and to tap undeveloped potential.  If we are open to it we may find the development of our less used parts leads to a more fully lived life.