Our Adventures: artsy fartsy

Thursday, June 28, 2007

artsy fartsy

i have always enjoyed the arts, and in the past 2 years i have explored a few new art projects. bookmaking was my first new project. two christmases ago i made books/journals for everyone. it was a very ambitious idea and i don't know how it entered my brain...at the time i was working two jobs, so finding the time to hand make journals was near impossible. but they all got finished. i've also made a few "baby books" for friends as gifts when they had their babies. this year i tried my hand at scrapbooking. i wanted our wedding photos in a nice album, and, being the perfectionist i am, every page had to be wonderful. by the end i was thinking, "enough wedding! no more photos!" that took a loooooong time...i am very impressed with folks who scrapbook their entire lives or children's lives...i don't think i would be that patient.

last semester i also took an oil painting class, which was supposed to be my creative outlet from chemistry and biology...it ended up keeping me busier than the other two classes! it was the first time i'd used oils, and i really enjoyed the medium. i'd always used acrylics in the past. i'd like to eventually learn watercolors--that's a medium that scares me a little. with oils and acrylics, you paint layer on layer, with watercolors, you have to think about what not to paint. so my final project in that painting class was painted on a 5'x4 1/2' canvas--not by my own choice, mind you!! i missed the week we built our own frames and stretched canvases, so when i got back, my teacher said i was too far behind to stretch my own canvas--she gave me one from a previous semester the student had never come to pick up. we took his canvas off the ambitiously large frame and restretched my own canvas. i painted a photo christian had taken in murano, italy. i could have sworn it was a photo of porto venere, as i have a very similar photo, so i was telling everyone it was porto venere...it wasn't until after the semester that i emailed my brother a picture of the painting and he told me it was murano...how embarassing! so, for the record...

by the way, christian, i still think you need to become a photojournalist--you have a great eye and write hilarious columns! imagine all the things you'd be able to photograph and write about as a ups driver!! wink wink

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viktor frankl

love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. no one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. by his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. by making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

nelson mandela

our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. it is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. we ask ourselves: who am i to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? actually, who are you not to be? you are a child of god. your playing small does not serve the world. there's nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel secure around you. we are born to make manifest the glory of god that is in us. it's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. and as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. as we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.