A work of heart

My word of the year is serendipity,

the act of finding something valuable or delightful when you are not looking for it.

So joyous is this word in both sound and deed, that I may choose it again for next year.

2014 is also turning into my year of art. In January I won (yes, won!) this gorgeous Butterfly Sprite. The mixed media piece, created by the generous and talented Pauline of The Contented Crafter. I smile at this carefree sprite every day, and every day she smiles back. Butterfly Sprite lives among soothing greens and flowers and texture that lifts my spirit. Art does that.

Butterfly Sprite by artist Pauline King

Also in January, I took a mixed media art class at A Work of Heart in Willow Glen and dabbled in my own little art project. I thought about Pauline the whole time.

Remarkably, I won another beautiful piece of art, a Bavarian textile knee blanket lovingly crafted by Dani of Teddy and Tottie. I guess this sort of thing happens when you choose a word like Serendipity.

Bavarian Knee Rug by Dani

I discovered another blogger via Dani and Pauline, and because you can’t make this stuff up, Fran blogs at The Road to Serendipity.

Last week my friend Whitney shared an album of photos for her upcoming art show in Gilroy, California. Whitney is a creative arts graduate of San Jose State. We met on Facebook via mutual friends. As I virtually thumbed my way through her online album, this sunflower rainbow stopped me in my lurking tracks. The piece celebrates three of my loves: old windows, brilliant colors and sunflowers. Seren-dipity-do-da!!!

Artist Whitney Pintello

I asked if it was still available, she said yes, and now it’s hanging in one of my garden seating areas.

We like to sit here in the evening to escape the heat

Window painting, front and back

Whitney creates and sells vintage window paintings at a couple of local festivals each year. From her website:

Painting old windows is Whitney’s favorite medium, and came from exploring how to reuse old architectural elements. The process involves reverse painting: starting with the details of the painting first, then the subject, then the background, all on the back of the glass. Patrons like the casual, rustic quality the paintings have and the “found art” reuse of the vintage windows.

Who knew there was magic in a carefully chosen word?

Mixed-media

Some people choose a word for the year instead of making resolutions. I like the idea, but didn’t really plan to choose one of my own. Instead, I think a word chose me: serendipity. I’ve been wading through the Carl Jung philosophical discussion of synchronicity which lead me to the more accurate idea of serendipity: a happy accident.

Yesterday I took a two-hour mixed media class at a local studio, A Work of Heart. We started with three small canvases, and three tag-board hearts. We applied a thick, clay-like medium to each canvas, then used templates to make impressions in the medium before it dried. The template I used is reminiscent of a beehive.

While we waited for it to dry, we got to choose a page from sheets of music, children’s books, or a dictionary. She had stacks of them. I reached for a children’s book, and quickly came upon Alice in Wonderland. Not only was this a childhood nickname, but I still have a few of the beloved pages from my copy of the book, a gift from my grandfather in England. It’s one of only a handful of possessions we brought from Canada.

Serendipity!

The class continued and it was great fun. We mixed our own secondary colors using three primaries, then painted over the medium. We cut the hearts from our chosen pages, in my case Queen Alice. We spent a joyful two hours, layering, painting and stamping till we had the desired effect. When it was time to add the final detail, a couple of words or a quote on each page, I went back to Alice. There, on the second page, was the following quote: “Where do you pick the flower?” “In a garden or in the hedges?”

Serendipity!

In other words, I made a work of art at A Work of Heart using pages from Alice in Wonderland, managing to find a garden quote in the last few minutes of class.

Yep…serendipity!

Oh and one more thing: when I looked up the term synchronicity, Wikipedia cited a passage from (you guessed it) Alice. Here’s the passage:

One of Jung’s favorite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.

‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.’

‘It MUST come sometimes to “jam to-day,”‘ Alice objected.

‘No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every OTHER day: to-day isn’t any OTHER day, you know.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s dreadfully confusing!’

‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first–‘

‘Living backwards!’ Alice repeated in great astonishment. ‘I never heard of such a thing!’

‘–but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.’

‘I’m sure MINE only works one way,’ Alice remarked. ‘I can’t remember things before they happen.’

‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ the Queen remarked.

Queen Alice

Where do you pick the flower?

In a garden,….

…or in the hedges?

Contact Form

I love the blogosphere grapevine, but figured it was time to add a contact form so folks could get in touch. Comments are always welcome, but if you’re looking for a private way to get in touch this is the ticket.

You can add a contact form to a post or create one as a static page. Readers can contact you without the need to publish your email address. My new contact form is in the pages tab, above. If you want to create one for your own blog, here is a quick and easy tutorial from WordPress.