Torso:  5 Minutes to Midnight, slab and hand built clay wall sculpture finished in acrylics by Tammy Vitale.

A further riff on the number 5.  This one unexpected.

I woke this morning knowing I needed to pack work to load in (finally and at long last) at the coffee shop I’ve been attempting to load into for at least 5 weeks (okay, maybe not 5 but hey, it’s got a nice symmetry to it).  Today’s piece was cooked and ready to be finished and I figured I would do the usual:  fast coat of stain, some metallics, onward.  But the minute I pulled it out of the kiln where it has been resting since I fired last weekend, I knew that I was going to finish it in acrylics.  And as I painted, it named itself.  You can’t ask for any more straight forward instructions from a piece’s energy than I’ve gotten on this one.

Here’s the meaning behind the name:  the doomsday clock is ticking around nuclear armament, yes, but in the meantime it’s also ticking for the creatures who live in our oceans.  Our fish are being fished to the point of inability to replenish themselves, invasive species are carted all over the world and dumped in places where they proliferate to the disadvantage of the locals by bilge water in cargo ships, and I dare say no one has any idea how much and just exactly what is being dumped in our oceans, because, like space, we humans just don’t know what’s there and therefore don’t pay attention to whose home we are destroying.  Plus we humans just keep on increasing willy nilly as if we own the planet.  I bet the dinosaurs thought so too. 

It seems that the energy is feeling a bit political today.

Well, the load in was called off yet again so I had time to follow the energy, and yet more time to play with decals, and maybe yet more time to play with making some totems with a new goodie:  Dhyanna made me a batch of cups (discards) with my 2D work on them so I can break them and make them into totems.  I just have to find some wood to do that today (and then probably cut it, outside so as not to make Husband crazy in the garage).

So the load in is on for tomorrow (I hope) and I may have two new pieces to hang.  I think 5 Minutes here belongs in Heron’s Way Gallery so I may switch out the mermaid I just put in (I still don’t have a name for her.  I really should have a chat with her since she’s been around for close to a year, I think, and I still just call her mermaid).

Thanks to all who’ve been leaving book lists for me.  I am surprised to find how many of you read the same thing that I do – which just is part of synchronicity to me and says we were all meant to meet one way or the other. 

Here are some fun blogs for you to read since that about does it for me today:

Christine Kane writes about keeping on keeping on with no effort in Effortless – A Personal Story.  She also has a great analogy on seeds in on Jan 4, The Opposite of Effortless (I don’t see a permalink).  I think you’ll enjoy browsing her site.

Keeping up with the ZList {for some reason I’m being blocked from Mack’s Blog today but you can find him at The Viral Garden) and the W List, is Mindblog who also links to Purple Wren’s art take on the Z List (and I STILL haven’t figured out how to grab it.  She says it’s a try try again thing mixed in with perhaps a bit of luck…so far no luck and perhaps I just need to try again) and the new Wiffiti mutation which I also can’t figure out how to get to work but it’s pretty cool.

thought for the day:  The introduction of consciousness into the cyclic process of creation through which the soul evolves permits the creation of a world that is built upon the consciouness of the soul, a world that reflects the values and perceptions and experience of the soul.  It allows you to bring the energy of your soul consciously into the physical environment.  It allows the consciousness of the sacred to fuse with physical matter.  Gary Zukav, the Seat of the Soul