Mermaid:  Merrow, hand made, unique, clay/ceramic wall sculpture by Tammy Vitale, $160.00 retail

A work theme lately:  mermaids.  Maids of the Sea.  And yesterday I finally hit the internet to get names for mermaids.  Merrow is Irish for mermaid.  It seems that mermaids figure in many mythologies.  So many one has to wonder if, like the unicorn (now the narwhal?) , they might once have existed since they have captured the imagination of the entire world. And oh whatever did we do when we did not have internet to look up all this good information?  Truck down to the Library of Congress?  Well, enough for those of us who live here and have hours and hours to wait while the librarians get around to pulling one’s request – I know.  My junior year’s thesis for High School was on Amy Lowell.  I had to have 3 books and she was rather unknown back then.  I had to go to the Library of Congress and research (and prove that I had) in order to get a grade, so off I went.  Later, when I was researching folklore (much later, 30 years or so) for my master’s work, I discovered that the American Folklife Center is available for walk ins and one’s own search among the stacks.  Now THAT was MUCH more like it!  I spent an easy 8 hours those browsing. 

Great news!  I posted Torso:  Creation yesterday and just like that, her true person came forward and purchased her!  I am hopeful that more of the same will start to occur.   And in the process, I discovered a great website on modern quilts:  Bella-Designs.  If you like the fabric arts, you will love the quilts on this site.  Enjoy!

Today I decided to put up a few more ArtOMatic Artists since I never finished putting up all the ones I gathered during the show.  Unfortunately, I’ve also lost the strand of which pictures go with whom except for some that I had already saved.  Some day I’m going to have to finish that (in all my spare time).  But today I’m going to share with you Taryn Colberg’s Girl in a Window (left) and Emil Bekavac In Hi Hands (right). 

Taryn says:  I work with Fused Glass creating "hot mosaics."  What sets my work apart from other artists is my use of original subject.  I do not use any preformed patterns.  My compositions are a study of the human form.  Positive and Negative spaces are created with various colors of glass.  A few other pieces are painted glass.  I use a specialized glass paint and create the original visions of the fused glass images.

Emil states:  My authentic artistic style calms chaos with the healing flow chi(energy or life force).  My painting and sculptures express the soul’s desire to break free from oppression in all its forms.  They stir consciousness into action and stimulate evolution toward a better world.

These artists remind me of Julia Musengo’s painting that I bought years back (and since have purchased even more of her work)….my favorite subjects:  a tree and the human body.  Julia once told me that my purchase of this painting encouraged her to continue when she was at a point of letting her art go.  How glad am I that she kept going and that I could have even a small part in seeing that this talent kept shining forth!  For me, that is a story that continuously reminds me, every time I look at this picture hanging in my DR, that each of us plays an important part in weaving the web when we follow our heart.  For my own part, I bought this picture at a low point in my own life, working for an organization that didn’t appreciate my work, encourage my creativity or work, in my opinion, for the greater good.  That I walked in, saw this, and walked out with it (retail therapy) told me to pay attention and make some changes.  Which I did within the month and I have never looked back (ok.  Not true.  Sometimes looking at the bank account and the lack of any kind of retirement fund, I have looked back.  But not for long.  And not with longing).  And you can see the influence on my own painting of all of these with Balancing Energy II.

thought for the day:  In every age the Common interpretation of the world of things is controlled by some scheme of unchallenged and unsuspected presupposition; and the mind of any individual, however little he [sic] may think himself to be in sympathy with his contemporaries, is not an insulated compartment, but more like one continuous medium – the circumambient atmosphere of his place and time. [Alfred North Whitehead]

Such presuppositions are the stuff of myth.  They are the lines with which the great narratives of reality are written.  To the individuals that live them, however, they are invisible, as water is to fish.  They live in it and it support them, but they take it entirely for granted.  Needless to say, scientists are no more exempt from this state of affairs than is anyone.  Allan Combs and Mark Holland, Synchronicity:  through the eyes of science, myth and the trickster