Celebrating Your Birthday

...each year, I do it. I light the candle and make a place for you...an outward symbol that your memory is still so alive inside of me. and your humor and gentleness, coloring the way I am with my own children through the years. I look at them and know in the depths of my heart that you would have found such joy just being in their presence. and they would have found such joy in you. I know this, and I am grateful. It is now youngest Jeremy's turn to know you, as I did. To hear the stories of you I hold so tenderly and hold on to so fiercely because I want you to always be present...I want you to live on in the minds of my children even after I have gone on to join you. Yes, they know you, my father, my Jerry. Thank you for your gifts. This is my gift to you on your birthday each year. I tell them the story, of you.

Trinity Earrings

I have been having this love affair with making earrings lately, and I want to keep each pair I create, but I am hoping there are kindred spirits out there who connect with what I make and fall in love as much as I do with each unique pair. These are created with antique glass buttons and antique clothing hooks. I love the aged and rustic nature of them...

Queen Anne's Lace

This has to be my most favorite flower...and it is growing with wild abandon around the house this year...such intricate beauty in the simplest of things. Tiny bees and flowers reminiscent of lace....

New Earrings in my Etsy shop...

www.sacredcake.etsy.com

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

an excerpt from When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

I simply can't remember

...the last time I lay under a tree and listened to the rustling of its green green hands in the spring breeze. So today, I made a memory and I lay in the grass and I took this photo to help me to remember to connect with the earth and to connect with myself more often.

Phi Theta Kappa

I love the way the dappled sunlight falls through

the lace curtains...

I received my certificate for my membership into the International Honor Society today. Not too shabby for a highschool drop out...

Last night I lay under the stars
and in the quiet
I felt the breeze,
like the soft breath of God
wafting over my body and into my ears
assuring me
that everything unfolds
according to his plan.
I am enough.
Then he asked me,
who would you be
without the burden of your story?
and after I thought
I said,
free.
So I gave my past to God
and he cupped it in his hands
and flung it to the universe
to dissipate into
tiny
tiny
pieces
that turned into
bright burning stars.
Beautiful formations
of light
that made me who I’ve become.
And I am enough.
I am.

Ray, a collaborative work

This is "Ray", a collaborative piece between my talented husband and myself. We won Honorable Mention at the Buchanan Trash to Treasure art show last month.
This piece is a collaborative work between my husband Ken, who is a talented portrait painter, and I. The assemblage and portrait revolve around a story that we created about Ray, an African American man in Chicago who marched with Martin Luther King. He lived in an old apartment building there and his nieghbor was Miss Jones,whom he had secret affections for. Each Wednesday,he'd go over to Miss Jones' apartment to take out her garbage for her...she always invited him in for some homemade pie and lively conversation. He repaired radios and televisions on the side and prided himself in his work and civil rights activism.


You can see more of his beautiful portraits HERE.

Apple Blossoms

Today we passed an apple orchard in which the trees were being trimmed row by row by row. It was so sad to see all of the drooping branches in heaps on the ground. We filled the back of the van with the sweetly scented wilted flowers and put them in a sink of cool water when we arrived home. Fortunately the sink is a beautiful vintage deep sided sink, just perfect for such a thing as flowering branches.

As of this post, I have filled every available white pitcher and white vase and old bottle with blushing apple blossom branches and placed them in each room downstairs. When the sun comes out tomorrow, I'll take more photographs. Now, it is time to surrender to sleep and the scent of the blossoms filling the bedroom with the hope of spring.

Mother's Day

....I still wear scarves....always have, even when they are out of style, just because they remind me of you. Did you know that?

My fondest memory? Strange, I know, out of 40 years worth of remembering... my favorite is looking into the rear view mirror from the back seat of our old white car to see your forehead and the fashionable little white streak in the bangs of your perfectly curled shoulder length brown hair. How I loved the colorful scarves you wore and the way you smelled and the color of your fingernails and drinking the last bit of your tea. My God how I adore you still. How I revel in your attention and delight in your eyes... Your boisterous laughter, your sense of style, your intrinsic beauty, boundless creativity and unending generosity are only a few of the things that make me so proud to say you are my own. My mother. In loving you, I have learned to love myself...does that make sense?

What you have given me is such a gift. You gave me this life. How can I ever repay you for the countless glorious sunsets, blushing apple blossoms, the miraculous sound of my children's laughter, books of poetry, rain on my face and chocolate cake? Life has held such indescribable beauty for me and such immeasurable joy and I thank you, I thank you for bringing me here.

Happy Mother's Day Mom, you deserve every happiness and every birdsong and every spring flower and every joy.

I love you.

Semiprecious Salvage Praise

I've been living in Stephanie Lee's book, "Semiprecious Salvage" for a couple of weeks now...staying up into the wee hours soldering and hammering and smiling to myself. Stephanie has been so very gracious answering my questions and even bestowing praise when, in my delirious excitement, I sent her a photograph of my first completed project from her book.

There is something magical and satisfying about creating something you thought you never could...and I have been truly enjoying the process of learning, not to mention the packages that come in the mail bearing gifts of exquisite silk ribbon, beads and wire and even tiny gold colored leaves that I can't wait to play with. All of the beautiful junk in my studio seems to sigh a heavy sigh when I walk by, knowing that my new passion will be taking up much more of my time.

Stephanie creates the most glorious jewelry that speaks to my soul, and for her to share her experiences and techniques in such a beautiful book is such a gift. I feel her magical presence in everything I've been creating.

You can find her truly lovely self here. Prepare to be delighted in what you find there...

My Furry Muse, Oliver

Oliver always hangs out at my "creating space" which happens to be the counter that separates the living room from the kitchen. I think I do my best work when he is laying all over my junk and I have to move a paw or a tail to find something.

The piece I created for the "Taking Flight" book...

No Death...

This is my latest piece. It says, "There is no Death." It reminds me that we are eternal...

Taking Flight

It has been quite some time since "the book" came out. I have been so busy, I haven't had time to post about it. I feel so honored to be a part of this amazing creation! I was a little nervous about what people would think of my work and my words...putting my artwork and my words out there for the world to see was hard for me, because I feared judgement, but I am feeling better about it now. My sister is such an incredible person and for her to actually choose me to be in something so precious to her, well, I am in awe and so blessed...

Remember April, 1969

I am somewhere among the folds of red lanterns in Vietnam
and in the sound of my mother’s moans as you made love.
I linger in the recesses of your mind
like smoke from your very last cigarette.
As long as you live you can never forget me.
I know this;
and in a way it is a comfort.
I am an unwanted nuisance of tangles of memories;
like strings of colored lights after years of Christmases gone.
I am there,
still and knowing.
There are times when I can remember your hands;
large and unyielding and rough, like your heart.
There are times I can remember your voice;
drunken and deep, with a Jersey drawl (if there is such a thing)
and I wish things could have been different,
yet stay the same.
It is a safe place...
one in which you and I know all to well.

In the Leaving

"In the Leaving"
was the title of a poem I wrote once
but never even finished it
or ever began it really,
because I could never
truly imagine
life without you--
an expanse of dark and time;
like being wholly
separated from God.
You are my savior of sorts
and "In the Leaving" fills me
with a silent knowing,
yet it can still mystify me
like the line of a song I cannot remember,
but it's just on the tip of my tongue...

Sweeping Beauty #2

This is the latest piece in a series I am doing...I personally love it...made with a vintage dustpan (that has seen better days), heavy wire and a beautiful multi-colored antique broach. Display your favorite photographs on an interresting conversational piece.

Defiance, an antique assemblage I created

NO WORRIES Clock (sold)

Peaches

The peaches
are never as sweet
as they were
at Mrs. Hahn’s—
among the scents
of coffee and aged upholstery
and dusty metal blinds
and the black rotary phone—
time knew no time.

The hours passed
with the little old German lady;
both of us
carried away
with TV trays and coffee nips—
she in her flowered shift
and I, in my summer youth
and the perfectly ripened peaches
on a little brown shelf.

Convenience Store Poet

My husband says I am his convenience store poet...not a derogatory term really. He likes my poetry because it is usually short and he says he gets his quick fix that way...in and out in a jiff and time to contemplate a little afterwards.
I don't think I really consider myself a poet. I feel like I'm just a dabbler compared to so many others that I read, but then again, don't "they" say that you shouldn't compare yourself to others? Who is "they" anyway? I picture a tall futuristic and reflective building in a huge city somewhere with Large Black Letters that say, "THEY."

the Escape

Chrome

This is a short poem I wrote from a word prompt from Poetry Thursday...

my
elongated face
distorted
in the chrome reflection
of the kitchen faucet--
dishes again,
like a million times before
I practice my religion
of housework
and unholy laundry
and again
the dishes
and my distorted face
in the chrome.

Squashed Bucket photograph holder

Fairest One

I revised this mirror a little bit...I added "Fairest One". I should be sure I am finished before I post!

Magnified Beauty

For Kelly

I can see now
beyond the constraints of myself;
the potential
I always knew i had
but never allowed
out to play in the light
of my spirit.
"Own it," she said.
"Own it."
My sister sunshine
you have given me
so much.

Magic Slippers

She always knew there was magic in her slippers...

Dream Pillow

self portrait

Remember your Divinity

Leaving...

Love in shades of white...(sold)

blessed are those...

This is a piece I made for my sister and her husband years ago...it says, "Blessed are those whose lives you touch...spirits intertwining"

Dreaming Heart (sold)

Time Flies (sold)

An assemblage created with Granny Schott's old clock, wire and my paper wings.

Moments

Sweeping Beauty (sold)

This is a holder for photographs that I made. The photographs on it are for example. Any pictures would work well.

Flying Irony (sold)