Button Beads and Squashed Creativity….

My Mum came around the other day to paint the button beads we had made for a top she has knitted.
The beads are inspired by regular buttons and we are also making necklaces from them:

…we enjoyed spending time painting them, making a mess, ruining a couple …and talking…

Something happens when you sit and create together…stories begin to flow and memories are remembered as the peaceful, alpha-wave state of creativity inspires the busy mind to slow down … it is a form of open eyed meditation…

Mum was telling me stories from her childhood during the second world war in England. Educated by Nuns who had little time or tolerance for the self indulgence of ‘art’ and ‘creativity’…Mum drew me an image of the only avenue there was for creative expression…to copy a pattern within a pre-existing grid!

Thankfully Mum was able to live a creative life in spite of the repression of teachers viewing creativity close to sinful, artistic passion as selfish indulgence and individuality as yet another flaw in an already suspect Soul.

My two sisters and I are blessed to have both parents alive and well, married 52 years this year…and we are equally blessed beyond measure that our Mother did not lost her creative self in the shaming and vilifying atmosphere of an institution that today is having to face its many flaws and past errors.

Birthday Flowers that Blossomed over 7 Days….

What a wonderful surprise it was when the deliveryman arrived with a big bunch of flowers for my Birthday last Saturday!

Thank you Angelina, Alan and Andrew…and Bodhi… for your thoughtfullness from way over there in Canada.

I kept a little photo journal of the flowers over the 7 days and am delighted to share them here with you…

It’s official….’ProsperArty’ has been named, signed and sealed!

Last year I began the process to trademark the name “ProsperArty”…a name I created to define my ART of Change tools and programs.

ProsperArty = Experiencing Prosperity by using the mediums of Art / Creativity.

Prosperity as I define it, is  to develop, grow  and flourish in what ever areas we value and consider to be  important…ProsperArty is a personal journey on a Universal theme that recognises the balance and harmony of nature and the creative state.

I had an afternoon tea with some of the Women I have worked with in the past, currently work with or have projects emerging throughout 2009…

It was a wonderful afternoon with some great food… unfortunately in  the images below  my ProsperArty guests are absent, as we were too busy nattering and chattering in our talking circle and eating and laughing to remember to take photos.

However I did capture the food!…and the flowers…and a few other things from the day…beginning with the Zebra that pulled up out the front just as we were getting under way…a noisy Zebra that came to trim trees and chomp branches! Before long we were noisier than the tree munching Zebra of course!

 

Sal made chocolate mousse that I decorated with mint and twelve white chocolate buttons…representing the Clock..because “It’s Time” for ProsperArty……

 

Sa’s gorgeous daughter Gemma made lime and lemon tart…I made peanut crunchie biscuits and apricot with white chocolate and almond balls…What a high calorie, yummy launch!

 

I chose the Celtic triple spiral theme (Triskele)  for the ProsperArty gift …we had a lot of fun threading them onto elastic to create a pendant. The 7 purple dots represent the 7 Sisters…that cluster of stars that has birthed  mythology and Dreaming stories right across the planet.. There were 7 Women present at the time, more guests  arrived later …

My recent trip to Matariki bay- bay of the 7 Sisters in Aotearoa (New Zealand) is a significant part of the essence of  ProsperArty…

 

I liked how the river stone-shaped  pendants looked in their circle before sharing them around. (Made with air drying das clay, painted with acrylics and sealed with high gloss varnish. I drew the design with permanet marker)

 

My Trademark Certification…ProsperArty…

 

Pilawuk made a gift of the most breath taking silk wall hanging based on some of my ProsperArty designs…if you look closely you can see the Warrior Woman image in the centre..and on the sides forming “Yesterday, today and tomorrow”…a theme from my invitation…      

Magic!!…thank you Pilawuk…Silk Queen Goddess!

 

Here is a side view…aren’t the colours just deliciously  ProsperArteous?!

 

Thankyou to my former colleagues Cathy, Desi and the Malvern Place team for the flowers and words of great encouragement and good will…

A lovely afternoon with a group of Women who live and breathe the essence of ProsperArty’s highest hopes and dreams…..

Let the Magic begin!

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“ProsperArty” was dreamt and created on traditional Aboriginal Land and I acknowledge the Kaurna people as the custodians of this part of the country and recognise the authority  of the  Dreamtime as holding the key to many of the challenges we are facing in Australia today.

The trip to Aortearoa (New Zealand) was a rather magical time!

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Season

This time of the year is ‘rainbow season’ in Adelaide…a time when the winter rains and sunshine meld and merge to create huge streaks of colour across the skyline.

Last year I was invited to facilitate a Womens Camp in a remote area and unlike much of my work, I had no existing relationships with either the staff or participants so was particularly mindful of bringing in new information and art tools as a stranger to the Community.

The camp site was a couple of hours drive out of the main town in a beautiful, untouched part of the coastline. We all arrived on a hired coach and spent the first couple of hours settling in to the cabins which were very cozy and nestled at the foot of the sand hills.

After settling into my room I stepped outside to gather my thoughts before beginning and held the thought of “Well I hope this is a peaceful, fun time for us all” and I had no sooner finished thinking the thought when the Heavens presented me with a big, colourful confirmation of “ask and ye shall receive”…

Over the Womens cabins my ’sign’ appeared…and it is no surprise that the camp was a great success even with a few unexpected factors arising….

Here is ‘The Sign’….

Ingalalla Falls south of Adelaide- A beautiful place on a wet and windy day…

My buddy Deanna and I were both a bit tired, a bit low on joi-de-vivre… We work in human services / personal development and we know that this kind of tired and hearing sadness all the time needs very specific treatment!

It requires packing the picnic basket, spending hours amongst Nature with a cup of tea in china mugs, accompanied by a piece of apple-crumble cheesecake from the Yankalilla bakery…. taking time out of the city away from the mobile phones waves and relentless traffic….noise traffic, mobile phone traffic, people traffic and the news, news, news…

Nothing else will remedy what only Nature offers the weary 21st Century gals!….(;-)

Here is where we went…and if you look really closely you can see the Spirits of Nature all around…

Ingalalla Falls…nestled in between hilly country that is green and clean and lush….

Lighting the Fire in a room without walls…

Lit the fire for the first time this winter and we sat outside under a windy, wintery sky breathing in the heat and enjoying the warmth of good company and one of my very favourite Elements of all…

The Winter of content…

It was raining yesterday afternoon and after the months of drought and over 10 days where the temperature reached 100oF a few months ago, the winter rains and green-sheen everywhere are very welcome in this desert state.

I was sitting under the back verandah with the two semi-homeless garden cats, Gabrielle- [Gabi] and her daughter Shima. You can see how gorgeous they are:

The garden was humming with rain drops and birds and leaves blowing down from the Cedar Trees
late autumn fall:

…and I remembered back to when I first moved in here and all I could see was a barren, dry patch of soil…

…..and how this piece of Mother Earths blank canvas taught me more about process, time, holding a vision, weeding and seeding, than I could ever have imagined when I first moved here during a trials-and-tribulations winter of discontent….

In our ‘outcomes’ driven, western society I learnt that the answers we are seeking about sustainable change and growth are to be found in Mother Nature’s process of Time, cycles and seasons….

……and how wonderful it is to create a room with out walls and a fireplace whose only chimney is the sky….

Adelaide in South Australia is traditionally named ‘Tandanya’ , home of the Red Kangaroo.

Living and growing and learning and sharing on traditional Aboriginal Land, Kaurna Country has its own special strand of environmental magic and possibility….As my good buddy Nungala reminds me:

“It can happen so much better and so much faster if you acknowledge the Ancestors and remember the Dreaming”…..

ScareCrows and Flowering Eucalypts…

Sal and I were out walking yesterday and discussing a project we are about to embark on.
We came upon a flowering Eucalypt (see below) and Sal drew on his background in botany to offer the analogy of the Flowering tree as a symbol for our creative ventures:
1. There needs to be a dynamic interaction
2. There are stages of development from the seeding to the bud forming to the Flowering…and along the way some of the buds may never Flower.
3. After the manifestation of the Flowers they will die off to give way to the new and ever changing cycle that is always influenced by the weather and inner / outer interplay.

I love the beautiful pink~red Flowers and the sunlight through the tree…it was a very ‘in tune with Nature’ aspect of our project conversation!

Then we came upon a sight I haven’t seen for a few years.
An urban ScareCrow! He is guarding a delicious Nectarine Tree that is only a few days away from fully ripe fruit…which of course the birds flying around the suburbs view as part of their daily smorgasboard!
A whole flock of Lorikeets and Galahs have been eating the Cootamundra wattles seeds in our front yard since late November and last week a huge family of Magpies discovered the dry pods on the ground and have been feasting on them since.
Love the fake-predator bird flying above the tree and oh~so~not~scary expression on ScareCrows face!

A Bush Picnic for Boxing Day…

We decided to spend Boxing Day in the hills around Adelaide and went to Para Wirra (a word made up from two Aborginal [Kaurna]  words meaning ‘water’ and ‘forest’). 

We encountered an Emu, a Kangaroo (look closely in the photo for the ‘roo who was watching us from the bushes)…a Duck who had me eating out of her hand…a big Lizard Rock…

With yummy~delicacies picnic of  Christmas left overs and a thermos of tea and coffee..Sal and I spent the day breathing the Eucalyptus air of the Australian bush.

I was in London a few years ago for the ice~Christmas and would not trade the ‘traditional Christmas’ climate when we can enjoy salads, stone fruits, sea food and crisp cool wine for Christmas down~under!…

This is  the Lizard Rock Story:
  

Sal in the ‘mouth’ of the Lizard… 
  

Kangaroo keeping an eye on us from behind the bushes…  

Very Big Emu casually strolling across the car park on the way to the bushes on the other side…
 

Gorgeous and not-scared-of-humans Duck joined us for lunch…

 Duck was so cool and relaxed that she even took to jumping off the ground to reach the bread I held up for her!