Ragdale ~ An Appointment with the Muse.

I have just returned from the most amazing 2 weeks at Ragdale in Lake Forest, an artist’s retreat. Never having participated in an artist residency, I did not know what to expect. This blog is an attempt to share some small part of the experience. (I say this because 3/4 of the artists I befriended at the residency were writers and poets, and I don’t pretend to be one.)


When I drove into the estate, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and awe. It was a beautiful fall day with the trees showing off their full glory. The environment had the feel of a monastery, with signs scattered about saying “Quiet Please, Artists At Work.” There was no person to be found but an envelope in a basket by the front door with my name on it. I quickly learned that my bedroom and studio were located in the converted barn. My studio had been the work place of Howard Van Doren Shaw, the prominent Chicago architect and owner of the Ragdale house. The Shaw properties overlook 60 acres of prairie.


I walked into my studio, a beautiful room with 3 skylights, a desk, table, cabinets and a sink. The walls revealed evidence of other artists being there by the walls pockmarked condition. On the far wall was a single leaf, spotted and folded in on itself. It was truly beautiful. I thought it was curious that the former tenant had left it behind.

After unpacking and before the sunset, I went out into the prairie. It was magnificent. The grasses swayed in the wind as I strolled by so many plants native to the Midwest. A sense of peace and calm pervaded.


It was an amazing 2 weeks. After the initial adjustment, I found myself in a continual state of creative flow. Never before have I had the luxury of 2 uninterrupted weeks to explore my art. What started as a curiosity about my environment became an obsession. I fell into a state of continual excitement as I investigated the world around me. I began my Leaf Studies series, which have been endlessly fascinating. Every time I looked deeper into the essence of a leaf, I am reminded of repetition of form between the macro and micro worlds. What resulted was a body of work that further explores my interest in life cycles and the quality of light.


The creative process needs time and space to develop. It feeds the soul in a way that nothing else can. I am so grateful to Ragdale for the two weeks in which I reconnected with the magical feeling that anything is possible.

Burma

I have been following the events in Burma/Myanmar for several weeks now. What is unfolding is so disturbing. If anyone has not seen the movie, BEYOND RANGOON, I highly suggest you do...you will have a clearer idea of what is happening in the country today. It was one of the more beautiful and haunting countries I have visited. I seems that Amnesty International is THE organization that is trying to monitor what is going on with the reign of terror there. Please consider making a contribution or signing their petitions. The two photographs in this post were taken in Burma in 1999.

Seeing

Ok, so I have been coming up to the same place in Northern Wisconsin for 33 years....always taken the same walk. How is it that today, October 7, 2007, I finally noticed this sign? It makes me wonder just how much of the world we really see. I suspect not much. And what does it mean, anyway, to be ELSEWHERE?
I suppose it means that you are not here and not there. It might mean you are no where to be found...is that how it is?

September 11, 2007

How the world has changed since September 11, 2001. I wish the leaders of the world could
apply the wisdom of compassion to their decision making.
Here is one of my favorite poems by Thich Nhat Hanh which addresses the WE / THEM attitude that afflicts so many of us and leads to such suffering.

Please Call Me By My True Names

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow----
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the eart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
and legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by the sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart could be left open,
the door of compassion.



Thich Nhat Hanh

Accept Nothing, Question Everything

I came across this graffiti in a back alley in Oberlin, Ohio. Hope it stimulates some thoughts and/or discussion.

Also, I do hope that for those creatives reading this blog, that you are setting up some goals for yourself that you would like to accomplish this fall. The end of the summer is a great time to plan and visualize what it is you want to do with your creative energies.

Have a great labor day weekend....

The Real Treasure....

Here is one of my favorite quotes from Heimrich Zimmer....
"The real treasure, that which can put an end to our poverty and all our trials, is never very far; there is no need to seek it in a distant country. It lies buried in the most intimate parts of our own house; that is, of our own being. It is behind the stove, the centre of the life and warmth that rule our existence, the heart of our heart, if only we knew how to unearth it. And yet - there is this strange and persistent fact, that it is only after a pious journey in a distant region, in a new land, that the meaning of that inner voice guiding us on our search can make itself understood by us. And to this strange and persistent fact is added another: that he who reveals to us the meaning of our mysterious inward pilgrimage must himself be a stranger, of another belief and another race."

SUMMER PUTS BIG QUESTION OUT THERE

by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune

June 15, 2007
The days are long now.
The early birds wake you up at some insane hour, yakking away like drunks staggering home from an all-night party.
You could get up then too, with the morning light just creeping in and the world still in a lull except for the noisy birds and the air conditioners of neighbors who like summer at the temperature of a morgue.
You could get up and put all this extra light to use. Study. Garden. Bike. Bake. Run. All before 8 a.m. Seize the rays!
Or you could just lie there and watch the slow illumination of the room and think about how to spend these few long days that will never come again.


Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

Those are the final lines of a poem someone gave me one day last winter. It's by Mary Oliver and called "The Summer Day."

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?


There's more to the poem, but it's those final lines that get stuck in your head like chewing gum in your hair, that knock on your mind with the force of a dare.

So, sucker. What exactly are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

Good luck getting that thought out of your head now that it's been planted.

What you're going to do with your one life is a question for all seasons, but it squeezes you in a particular way on these days when there are 15 hours and more from sunup to sundown, with the bonus light of dawn and dusk on either end.

Time and light are related. If you live in a place that's often cold and dark, you don't have to be an Einstein to know that. In places like Chicago , the gift of light feels like the gift of hours.

"Light does not age," I read recently. The line referred to the theory of relativity, and I'm not sure what it means scientifically, but the poetry of it feels true.

The long days this time of year create the illusion that time has slowed down, been stretched, looped back on itself, restored some part of yourself that seemed gone.

The extra light feels like an extended warranty on life.

Every summer I write down -- and occasionally write about -- my summer to-do list. Every summer, the list is a contest between idleness and industry.

To-do:

Walk before breakfast.

Walk after dinner.

Read for pleasure before breakfast.

And after dinner.

Eat outside for breakfast, dinner, lunch.

Find a beach.

Eat blueberries.

Watch the shadows in the trees.

Do more of everything good.

Do less of everything else.

Do more of nothing.

A thing not to do:

Rush.

When the days are long, the nights are different too, and they invite you to act differently.

A few nights ago, a couple of my friends went out. It was late, way too late for people their age to be embarking on the evening, but when the days are long, the night can seem young even when it's not.

They were strolling around their neighborhood when a man rode up on a bicycle. He had a chair on the back and offered them a ride. They rolled through Chicago in the warm night like emperors in a rickshaw, seeing the place they live from a different angle, at a different speed.

That's the kind of thing worth doing with your one wild and precious life.

So consider this your summer challenge. And if you needed more incentive, here's this: Next week, at the official start of summer, the days start getting shorter.

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mschmich@tribune.com
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune