Mood cycles

I'm looking back over my life and seeing all the cycles which I now have words for, that explain to me why they were so hard and why I was never able to just be stable. It's not new; I've always just known reality to be that way for me - ever changing, depending on which part of the cycle I was in. A bit like the Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton, that I read so avidly when I was a child; when different lands would be at the top of the tree and then blow away to be replaced by the next! :) That is how my thoughts and my reality have been. It didn't occur to me that it isn't like that for everyone.

But, actually, nothing has changed from getting the new diagnosis, I'm just more accepting of how things have been, and more compassionate with myself. I like being seasonal and want to be philosophical about that, since that is just how it is. I want to feel my emotions, as intense as they are - living them is very real and in touch. I'm not keen on the extreme poles, which are not constructive or helpful to my life and in addition, those poles are also not good for my daughters, to whom I owe it, to be less erratic. So I'll just be a good girl and take the pills. For now!

Now if I could only solve the "having to make a living" issue - how boring! - I'll be all set!

This season of the mind

Some fun experimenting with free motion embroidery on velvet with fancy yarns and bits of plastic orange bags added later to mitigate against the pink (I dislike pink so it's a challenge to work with it.) This is such fun and so satisfying that I started a green version, having learnt a few things from the one above - green being my favorite colour :)
Having done the background, I am now embellishing with lots of bits and pieces that I have collected and/or made over the years, and have just been squirrelled away. It's a nice feeling of consolidation - and little things are emerging from long-forgotten boxes of STUFF, which are just right for this.

I'm flitting like a butterfly on speed, from project to project, as I keep getting new ideas and want to get to capturing the idea fast. I'm accepting this phase as part of a bipolar high, which has calmed a little (with the medication) from a way-too-fast, very unfocused stage. It will subdue at some time when the pendulum swings back, so I'm making the most of it now. Then ideas will come slower and I will get to finishing.

Working fast is very hard with a medium that demands Slow! - but I remain completely seduced by fibre and what I can do with it. I am including other media more and more, and am having the most fun finding things and thinking of how to transform them into art - a lemons to lemonade thing which is also very appropriate right now.

I am also doing a mindfulness course with a friend of mine. It is proving to be very difficult, with my mind being so flighty, but ahhh, one cannot time the seasons and the course was running now, so I had to grab the opportunity. What a profound concept mindfulness is, in all its simplicity and stripped-down, honest reality. A real refuge from calamity and worry and brooding! When I get into the zone of just dispassionately watching thoughts go by without having to compulsively grasp them, just accepting them and allowing them to exist, without preference, it's just so peaceful and simple. We do make life and our thoughts much more complicated than they actually are!

Professional photographs :)

I took a bundle of quilts and other work in to have professional studio photographs taken, as I want to apply for membership into Fibreworks. So when I get them, I plan to post them to my Picasa web album, so things can get a little spruced up around here. There are cobwebs in the corners; spring has sprung, and I feel a need for renewal and some good ol' cleaning up!

There, I said it, now I have to do it! :)

A word of thanks to fellow art bloggers for their supportive comments and emails: most especially Robyn from Art Propelled, whose work and blog never fails to inspire and also Jackie from Blissfully Imperfect and Kate from Kate's Quilting.

Thank you, gentleladies. I'm getting to a sustained feeling of having regained myself, and am having a creative spurt :) so it's time to focus outwards and not inwards as I've had a long time doing. My massive oak tree has burst out in fresh green, new leaves and my grapevine is also coming back to life after the winter pruning. Isn't nature just so beautiful and inspiring? Last spring I remember posting "Spring is so beautiful, I wish I felt better" so it's been a long 16-month year of winter. I'm just so relieved and thankful for a time of rejuvenation.

More runes

This is another work I've begun (yes, I usually have about 10 on the go at one time, plus a heap of "Never-Got-Any-Furthers" - My attention wanders easily and new ideas keep coming up, that I just have to follow (and now I understand much better why it is so!) ) So, this work continues the theme of runes, this time as spells or charms such as "For balanced Joy", "For good luck in finding a new job" etc, etc. I'm continuing my theme of symbols holding buried meanings

These spells and charms are used today in neo-Paganism.

This idea for this work was conceived in front of the TV, on SABC 2! (Who says TV is only bubble gum for the mind? LOL) They were promoting an upcoming programme on San Rock Art, because Heritage Day is coming up on Wednesday. So I was thinking, hey, what about MY heritage? - which isn't the San, but the Vikings. They did some nasty things we're not proud of, (the cartoon "Hagar" refers!) but they also did a lot of art and poetry. I think I might call this "Longings". I took a close-up, but it's blurred, so as this develops, I'll take another and post it.

It's made from scraps of fabric cut off from the Melancholia work. The scraps were too good to throw away, so I began playing with them... The work is fairly small, I'll measure it and put that in here, when I get home.

Art springs eternal

Here is the next step of this work, 'melancholia' its working title - (doubt it will remain.) Yes, those really ARE holes!
I've developed a fascination with runes! I was looking for symbols to put in each square, as I didn't just want to go with ordinary letters. So I was looking for something that would symbolise what I wanted to say - of course, old alphabets! I immediately jumped to runes, as they would be my ancestry (born in Denmark) and I've seen runestones in Dk, enscribed with the runes.

It's fascinating! Sometimes the runes are used as letters, spelling out words; and sometimes they are used in charms or spells, where several runes are combined in a form that conveys the meaning of the spell.

So of course I wanted to embed a secret message into the work. Depression is deep and dark and holds secrets long buried. Hopefully if decoded they will bring some understanding.

No, I'm not going to say what it says... sorry....!

{evil grin}

On with Creating

New pictures soon. I promise! I'm feeling great, since I've been on bipolar meds and I'm working away at things I'll show soon. Struggling just a little to focus and concentrate on one thing - I flit from one to the other, then to a new idea. I can feel I'm still pretty high. I managed to flood the bathroom yesterday, as I turned on the basin tap and then got distracted and wandered out of the bathroom! I also forgot the iron on. Not Good. Quite a creative surge though, which is wonderful.

A friend of mine is having an exhibition of her quilts next week, so I'm going to ask her if I can take some pics there and post them to my blog.

Edit 1 Oct 2008: I forgot to take my camera, and I forgot to ask her. Eeks, I guess I am still VERY distractible. The exhibition was great and I left feeling very inspired!

So, there it is.

I'm bipolar. Thus spake the psychiatrist. And verily, medication was prescribed, as aforesaith psychiatrist pronouneth that I was manic and he needeth to 'cap' it, so it did not spinneth out of control. And so it came to pass, that amongst other changes, an increase of Lamictin was warranteth, aforesaith medication being the best thing since sliced bread (and much, much nicer than lithium, saith I !)

And thus, was I addeth to the company of illustrious forerunners, such as Kurt Cobain, Richard Dreyfuss, Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul Gascoigne, Sylvia Plath, Sir Isaac Newton, Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh. ...... Ha ha, I wish !!! - instead I joineth the modest ranks of The Common (Wo)Man, since :

"I, being poor have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
tread gently, because you tread on my dreams..."
(WB Yeats)

September?

So August came and went without a single post. I'm sad and sorry about that. I AM making stuff, but taking photographs feels like an Everest. I'm better than I was, but still not well. I ought to be well, I feel, but something is still not quite right.

Oh, maybe it's me!

How weird is it when you have a hundred and one ideas for art and yet you sit and wonder why we bother at all? I'm working on about 5 things because I can't keep my concentration on one for long. My mind flits like a butterfly yet I'm very tired and not sleeping well. I see the Pdoc on Thursday in PE, so maybe he can re-evaluate this madness...