Buddha Abides

I am pleased to report that my piece Opening to a Compassionate Heart - Lessons from the Bodhisattva Quan Yin was accepted in the 8th annual Buddha Abides contemporary art exhibition. This is a highly-regarded show in Santa Barbara and I am honored to be included for the third time. The show includes a dana with 20% of profits donated to Santa Barbara Domestic Violence Solutions and Tibetan Children's Village. The show is at The Frameworks Caruso-Woods Contemporary Arts Gallery at 813 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara. It runs from April 1 - 30, 2008 with the opening reception held Saturday, April 5, from 5-8pm. Hours at the gallery are Tuesday through Friday from 10-5 and Saturday from 11-3.

I saw a lot of great art at the ingathering today. This is one great show and I hope to see you there.

Coming back to bite me ......

Ya know the old saying about your words coming back to bite you? Well, I think I'm bit! Here is a photo of the piece I am working on to enter in the Buddha Abides show. I am pleased with it so far...... but ......

Sometime back, fellow fiber artist Judy Rys and I were discussing the quilting aspect of our work and I told her I felt pretty lucky because the quilting pattern usually came to me along with the vision of the work content. So, dear reader, you can probably guess that I haven't a clue what to do with this. I stare at it for awhile, close my eyes and try to visualize it quilted, picked the threads in the hope that would kick start me, but nooooo, still no inspiration. I decided to just forget about it for about a day and see if anything wafted into my head, but again, no. I came in this afternoon after attending the Santa Barbara Symphony and, I swear, it smirked at me. I don't think it is appropriate for a Buddhism-themed piece to be so argumentative. There's probably a lesson here, I'll keep you posted.

Hands

Last month Fibervision invited Brecia Kralovic-Logan to speak to us about creativity and give a brief trunk show of her beautiful work. Brecia was a very inspirational speaker and left us with lots to think about and ideas to jump-start our creativity when we get stuck or discouraged. And envy of the beautiful garments she brought along.

We did several exercises and for the one shown above, we traced around our hand and decorated it as our heART's desired. While I was working on it, I got very inspired about a piece I would like to create for the Buddha Abides exhibit which will be juried later this month. Here is a picture of the hand I am starting with for this project: