The Dot Com

All Stories Great and Small

Memento Mori

Saturday, August 22nd at The Galactic Sanctuary.

Art opening for Jacqueline Maloney, Maude Glendon and Charlie Ebaugh.  New murals and paintings.

With performances by Matthew Romero, Genji Souren, Gabi White, Jill Jackson and Towne Mouse.

Life After.  section of Memento Mori mural at the Galactic Sanctuary 2015.  Jacqueline Maloney

Memento Mori mural by Jacqueline Maloney Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

oil on canvas by Maude Glendon.  Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

new mural in progress by Charlie Ebaugh. Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

New paintings in progress by Charlie Ebaugh.  Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

work by Maude Gledon.  Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)
art by Jacqueline Maloney

New work by Jacqueline Maloney
Photo credit SoulBloom
(http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

work in progress by Jacqueline Maloney.
Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

work by Maude Glendon.  Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/)

New work in progress by Maude Glendon.  Photo credit SoulBloom (http://www.soul-bloom.co/) 

A romantic review by Graham Langdon:

"Update from the Galactic Sanctuary: Maude Glendon Charles Christian and Jacqueline Maloney are three of the most talented visual artists whose work I've ever had the pleasure of enjoying and having their art fill every wall of the Sanctuary is like a well of inspiration bubbling forth from the earth and pouring out all over my senses. Matthew Romero and Genji Souren and Gabby are such passionate, vivid and artistic orators that not only was an entire room moved, but I got an overwhelming premonition that the seed of something great was planted in the room that night through their orations which were, overwhelmingly, a call to action, to be better stewards of our earth, to the hearts of each other and to love deeper. Amazing how the voice of one can be the voice of many. Town Mouse was my favorite musical artist I've seen this year. What an enchanted, magical wonderful life."

Convalesce. Summer 2013-Summer 2015.

Some stories must be given space an time to unfold.  And a good storyteller knows to be an open gate for the right words and meanings to flow through them on the way into many ears.  These gatekeepers need not grab on to the details of the story passing through--we only do this out of fear of leaving a moment behind.  Rather, all details are already enough, already moving as they will.  Let them pass by into you and out again, as they come.  Inspiration is a synonym for inhalation.  Expiration is another way to say exhalation.  The seed and the death.

 It just takes a steady love and curiosity, a dance into the depth of the story and back out again to it's edge to see the fabric it weaves--the truth and the heart of it.

Augury. June 2015.

This happened over many moons, through many changes of heart.  It hatched from the waters of deep winter, and sprouted brightly with the spring.  Now it tells the story of what comes to pass when one opens an altar to the unknown, listens to its soundtrack, watches quietly, in awe, as a dance unfolds.

Wash

Wash.  July 2015.  8' x 2' acrylic on maple.

This session was total therapy.  I have been thinking a lot about what it taught me of the creative process.

Twas the last night of some needed solitude in a beautiful Mars Hill, NC house on a hill facing the burning summer sunset.  I began shortly after dinner and rode the wave of easy inspiration until the last lines trickled out at 3am.  When I stepped away, body tired and relaxed, I had the pleasure of seeing the whole for the first time.  I am still in awe of the creative process: how it is possible to drop so far inside the work of one's senses that the analytical brain turns off.  In this space, it is the belief in the joy of the experience that guides the work.  It is a reboot for the whole system, like losing oneself in any other practice, and when one steps back from the experience, and the ego turns on again, the moment is rich with awe and near disbelief of the places we went while we weren't consulting our map or double checking ourselves.

Global Gratitude Mural Project: LEAF 2015, Black Mountain, NC

Madison Moore and I have a painting date to finish this 12 foot piece.  Or several, maybe.

What a dance it was to get it started, though, one of us with a can of black housepaint, the other with white, moving toward and away from one another throughout the night, weaving our visions together.  Inspired much by Xavier Rudd's set at the annual LEAF on Lake Eden.  He and his band were making a magic of a similar spirit with their beautiful sounds, enlivening us, giving rhythm to our work.

Gratitude to the soul sister who invited me to share this work with her!  Love to Maddie.

Montford Avenue Arts Festival May 2015

Gather and Release. New works Spring 2015

The Texture of Endlessness.  Mixed media painting on paper.  18" x 24"  

An exploration of the deepening language.  Describing the space between biology and spirit: the origin of meaning and myth.  Finding meaning in myth.   Feeding roots on personal myth.   Allowing feelings to remain unattached to object.   Dancing with the changing landscape.

Gather and Release.  

opening at The Herbiary Thursday April 23rd, 630 pm.  29 N. Market St. Asheville

Many, Many Ways to Love the North.  Mixed media painting on paper.  24" x 18"

Nightlight.  Black walnut ink, acrylic and pen on paper.  18" x 24"

How it Gathers, How it Comes Apart.  Graphite, black walnut and india ink on paper.  Approx. 18" x 15"

Nekhbet's Perfect Storm.  Black walnut ink and india ink on paper.  Approx 24" x 12"

Heart, Hearth and Home.  Pen and graphite on paper.  Approx 15" x 11"

Mechanism of the Phoenix.  Black walnut ink, india ink and collage on paper.  18" x 24"

Hecate's Crow and the Mugwort Moon.  Mixed media painting on paper.  24" x 18"

BLUEPRINT TO HOME

I saw the flames of Beltane on the horizon right on time, at the very beginning of April.  I stood in awe at the glow which promised intense change.  It made me stop to look at myself: could I really keep walking toward that fire?  It burns so tall and passionate!  Would it devour me whole?  I looked deep inside myself, and turned around to take in the landscape through which I had just walked.  

When I look back, I see green shoots growing along my path.  It occurs to me that I learned to grieve fully this winter, and each time I did, I coaxed another ghost from her hiding place inside of me.  I held her hand and showed her the love she had been needing.  She taught me how to love better, and I taught her how to receive what she asked me for.  Until we arrived in the place my body stood.  And put the seed of that moment into the earth.

Wisdom plants?

I saw how, in allowing myself to feel all of me who speaks up in response to each place, each person, each obstacle along my path, I have been planting my ghosts as seeds in the ground.  And I live in each of those seeds.  Each feeling felt becomes a blaze marking the way I have taken, and so when I look back for courage or wisdom, it is there and clear.  We are all always whole, and all always becoming.

The horizon made me turn this Spring because it asked me this question:

"If this fire takes your house, your money, your routine, your vista, your plans, what do you have? Are you still Home?  Are you still You?"

I made myself a promise, to allow my body to be home before anything else.  So long as I am home, my hands have the strength to do their work and my heart has the space to hold my family.  

It's how we can be free to walk through the flames that burn down our structures, our attachments, our plans.  And come out somehow more ourselves each time we do this.  I urge you to draw a blueprint for the home you are building within you.  It is a good tool for taking care of yourself, because you can step back and see all the places you're forgetting to keep clean and nourished.

Gather and Release: solo show at the Herbiary

Please join us on opening night!  I would love to hear stories from your dreams and dreams from your waking life.  I am happy to share a series I began creating when the sun began staying longer with the day.

The Herbiary is located at 29 N. Market St. in downtown Asheville.  Hope you can make it!

Augury: new series in progress

Hecate's Crow and the Mugwort Moon (18" x 24")

Augment (thumbnail, in progress)

With the first thawing of the year the seeds of new stories send out rootlets.  Winding down, feeding on the rich soil winter made of our dreams and hurts and deaths.  They find what they need and hold on tight, breaking out of their capsule now in search of the warm light.  

They are growing into the mythology we need to believe in a new season; to make the most of ourselves in it.  We need only watch and listen for the words, the colors, the sounds calling to be woven into the magic.  

Aurora (20" x 28" approx)

Auricle (in progress, 22" x 40" approx)

Nekhbet's Perfect Storm

Nekhbet's Perfect Storm.  January 2015.  24" x approx 15".  950.
black walnut ink, archival pen, white and black india ink on cold press watercolor paper.

Spent all of dawn frozen-
waiting for the answer-
fearing movement before knowing

and again, I see that Knowing,
like birth and like decay,
comes after courage

trust your toes
to take
a step

out of a step came a few feathers
falling away from the storm
and a few more

it was an entire wing
coming
undone

Spider webs
stretching long, curious roots
toward Earth.

catching the sticky parts of Dream.
empty Vessels overturned,
a moon silhouetting it all.

plans made
seeking to be tethered
to a Hand or Voice or Glance.

The Willingness to wake
and see
What comes.

Nightlight

Nightlight.  Winter Solstice 2014.  18" x 24."
Black walnut ink, archival pen, acrylic and watercolor paint on cold press paper.  975.

It's a clear cold dream
in the in-between
I'm a springtime babe
belly down
on winter's floor
And I can see the fire
glowing still
beneath the door

Awaking warm
to the sun's return
The water-
it took everything
I do not need.
Now my voice
forms from what's left
a single seed.

When we decide to love
Leave behind what never was
Breathe our relief
through mirrored smiles
to each other's hearts
And behind our eyes
we see our souls
have never been apart.

Mechanism of the Phoenix

We humans dance with a constant ebb and flow of darkness and light, surface and depth, elation and grief, contentedness and dissatisfaction.  Often it's the time of year, that guides us through the larger tide of these polarities.  I have found it grounding to plug my psyche and emotional state into the changing seasons, and to take comfort in that relationship as it allows me to step out of my head and see the relevant lesson.  The fire of last summer had me moving quickly, making big changes at no more than a moment's notice, and burned up so many habits that no longer served me.  When the leaves began to fall, I learned how to healthily grieve those habits, relationships, old masks that fell as I had been dancing the sun's furious dance.

Grieving healthily was a beautiful process of embracing the mortality, the brevity of it all--of everything I love and everything I fear.  I  saw how death and letting go clears space for something to germinate and grow.  And I saw how when we do not fear the dying or leaving, but look at that thing with all the more love and curiosity, it (or she, or he) offers to us wisdom, perspective, its story of having lived.   And so, when we embrace the dying and its death, whatever we cultivate in its place can become its natural evolution.

Which brings me to the mechanism of the phoenix.  The moment just before the darkest nights of the year.  When I found love and forgiveness for all that Summer burned up and Autumn taught me to grieve, I found myself in the most deeply introspective space I have ever willingly occupied.  A little frightening (one begins to wonder when one has been painting in silence for enough hours, days on end, if one's frame of reference is to be trusted) but, mostly, a comforting lesson in the possibility of self-validation, self-love, and inner balance.

 Without the constant mirrors of others' faces and actions,  without the option to validate my choices or happiness by watching similarities or differences in that of someone else, I had to trust a voice I am accustomed to pushing aside.  The one that says what I need and when, and if I'm really listening, why.  And I had to trust this voice as the sole dictator of my schedule, day after day after day, finding enough purpose and enough comfort there to stay engaged and happy and healthful.

Do it long enough, and I begin to see what makes me tick.  What my body needs, what my heart needs, what my mind needs, and how I can provide these things for myself (sometimes by asking the right person for help.)  I see how the weather affects me and learn to operate in harmony with that.  To willingly let go the things that make me dim, and to embrace what often I fear but very much need to rise to my purpose and potential.  Guides show up everywhere, lessons in everything.  I suspect this is because when I remember that no one else has ever had my answers for me, I open my mind to really learn from my experiences.  I can pull up a memory and really see it...how it changed me and has continued to change me.  It's not exactly light or warm in this place, but it's often crystal clear and I find strength in its honesty.

Of course, all this is a glimpse.  You can access it when you need to.   It's not the whole year, or your whole journey.  It's the depths of your being, which serve you should you choose to spelunk down to see what's new there once in a while.  It's the dead of winter, when it's cold out and you give yourself permission to rest, hibernate.  It's after a particularly difficult experience, when you just need to slow down and assimilate all that has happened to change you.  It's a brief moment when you get to see what is decaying, what has been hiding in the dark, what you are allowing to pass, see it clearly and without more fear, so that it does not haunt you or tug at you as you quicken again your dance, moving back toward the light.  The phoenix embraces her own death because she knows she will be born of it, stronger each time.