Sorted!

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1024278074/handmade-artist-book-of-quotation-and

It is here! It took me so me time to complete this latest addition to my Etsy range of my handmade books, and it has been a lovely project to do. I showed some of my thinking in my last post, but now I can share some of the finished design. What was most difficult was deciding what to leave out! Having spent a lot of my time with my nose buried in a book, this was a wonderful request.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1024278074/handmade-artist-book-of-quotation-and

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1024278074/handmade-artist-book-of-quotation-and

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1024278074/handmade-artist-book-of-quotation-and

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1024278074/handmade-artist-book-of-quotation-and

So there is a taster! I love to hear from you – are there any quotations you would like to see in a copy of this one? I can include your personal favourites if requested.

I also designed some cards as spin offs from this book and even created three designs for my products at Society6 so there are mugs and totes too!

https://society6.com/product/book-quote-cicero_bag

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So, what do you do?

 

What do I do all day? – I was asked this the other day, and thought about it – how do I  spend the majority of my time, once the domestic chores are completed, or more likely ignored?  I have to admit to the privilege of being able to dictate how I spend the majority of my time once I have discharged the responsibilities of housekeeper, wife, mother and dog walker.  And I love it. I love the space of being allowed to meander amongst the various pathways of my  mind and the plethora of material available on the internet – a real benefit for a curious mind.  I love the opportunity to create my versions of hand made books and to sometimes have the privilege of collaboration with a commission.

Once upon a time I felt somewhat guilty for not having a more productive endeavour, but no longer. Now I revel in the opportunity to sometimes spend time doing what I like, how I want to.

Time – its the most precious commodity we have,  so watch where you invest yours.  And when someone asks me now, I tell them how it is, without apology.  Took me a while, but I got there.

If you want to see more of my creative endeavours, then pop in to my Etsy shop or my Society 6 store page.  I would love to have your feedback too.

Enjoy your day, your week, your life.

Be my speech the beams of the sun

 

BUAINIDH mi an earr reidh,
Gum bu cheinide mo chruth,
Gum bu bhlathaide mo bheuil,
Gum bu gheinide mo ghuth.
Biodh mo ghuth mar ghath na grein,
Biodh mo bheuil mar ein nan subh.

Gum bu h-eilean mi air muir,
Gum bu tulach mi air tir,
Gum bu reuil mi ri ra dorcha,
Gum bu lorg mi dhuine cli,
Leonaidh mi a h-uile duine,
Cha leoin duine mi.

 

I WILL pluck the yarrow fair,
That more benign shall be my face,
That more warm shall be my lips,
That more chaste shall be my speech,
Be my speech the beams of the sun,
Be my lips the sap of the strawberry.

May I be an isle in the sea,
May I be a hill on the shore,
May I be a star in waning of the moon,
May I be a staff to the weak,
Wound can I every man,
Wound can no man me

 

From  Carmina Gadelica, Volume 2, by Alexander Carmicheal, [1900]

Illustration is a digitally altered illustration from the original :

Plantarum effigies /è Leonartho Fuschio, ac quinque diuersis linguis redditae …  by Leonhart 1501 – 1566

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/8050#/details

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Kingfisher Mary Oliver

‘What do the Clouds Say?

More words count less.

Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu – chapter 5

Heaven and earth are ruthless;
They see the ten thousand things as dummies.
The wise are ruthless;
They see the people as dummies.

The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows.
The shape changes but not the form;
The more it moves, the more it yields.
More words count less.
Hold fast to the center.
(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

Visions and revisions with Alfred J. Prufrock.

Today I am concentrating on ‘The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock’, a poem I have mused upon  for a while now.  It embodies the melancholy I appear to have been born with, a vague blast of icy air that swirls around my life.  I love my life, but simultaneously have deep feelings of despair at the human condition, at the vagaries of existence and the inability for me to hold a meaning behind it for any continuous body of time.  All is indeed paradox. But back to T.S. Eliot and his intriguing expression of modern life, containing this human experience of being, feeling, understanding conflicting abstractions, the confusion of being alone in a crowd.

My endeavour is fitting visual imagery to complement the text, and so far I have come up with some ideas that make sense to me.

What always interests me is how other people interpret the same content , and whether my interpretation manages to resonate with anyone.  I choose an intuitive response to his poem, and have avoided reading analyses because I find it muddies my own thinking.  After I have finished, I may go and discover what other readers have encountered in reading it, but I want to be ‘clean’ of influence. It may not be a scholarly approach!   main image An advanced dressing station in France Henry Tonks 1918

 

image   The Brown Tunnel Henry Moore

The Stoics Manifesto Part One

 

I love the Stoics – their attempt to master the meaning of life resonates still.  Let’s not make life difficult by talking about airy fairy concepts like happiness, let’s bring some structure to the existentialist questions that haunt us all, whether we pay attention to them or not.  Ultimately we all face the same challenges of living and dying – just got to pay attention as to how we decide to do it.

Ironing out the detail – what we need to know.

Good to remember , and the thought holds whilst I tackle the daily chores of ironing and domestic doery before I can settle down to the more pleasurable tasks awaiting me on the p.c.

Two commissions to do before Christmas, and one is a delight . I can’t tell you or I would have to kill you. Don’t want to do that.

Thanks St Augustine –  your words are duly digested.

Revering Joseph Cornell.

Above is an assemblage by Joseph Cornell, the New Yorker  who was a genius at bringing together ephemera, and producing assemblage art in a time when the genre wasn’t really considered as art.  A collector extraordinaire,inspired by the surrealists and dedicated to the care of his brother whom he cared for and who sadly died early from his condition of cerebral palsy, this gentleman produced items that inspired a new generation of artists and writers, and well, just people.  His work inhabits the hinterland between the reality we live in, and the dreams we have, the inner realities that can sustain and sometimes seem more meaningful than the exterior lives we lead.  And that is why I love him. And that is why that love propelled me to produce my own small tribute to him.  A mixture of images from some of his work mixed with my own journeys into unreality.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/164010242/hand-made-artists-book-original-and?ref=shop_home_feat