Inspiring Women: Lindsey Mead: Awareness

Awareness seems scarcely sufficient to describe the gifts Lindsey presents through her A Design So Vast. Cosmic consciousness may be a more apt description.

It is this appreciation of the moment in every day, in spite of change, pain and at times loneliness, (and what they teach her,) that is so delightful and transformational about Lindsey’s work, through which I could go, to borrow the words of Randall Jarrell, “shouting and pointing.”

However, today I want to focus on consciousness and awareness and what Lindsey teaches me. Quoting Miriam Gates “Bravery is about being conscious of all life,” Lindsey goes on to write “Bravery is staring into the sun, even when the brightness of life – and the brightness is precisely because life’s minutes are burning in front of us – is painful. Bravery is not flinching and not looking away, even when the emotion of a moment overwhelms us. Bravery is not hiding, in a thousand ways little and big, from our own lives.”

Of appreciation of everyday moments of life and phenomena, Lindsey writes: “The most mundane of things, our very own life-scarred hands, are equally as transcendent as the most ornate and soaring cathedral. There is as much power and as much wonder in the simple human hand as in a grandiose cathedral.”

The awareness of the fleeting quality of life runs through Lindsey’s writing, that we are living and dying at the same time. Or, similarly here, where she emphasizes: “My every conscious moment is filtered through this prism of my piercing awareness of how fleeting it is.” She speaks of choice, a willingness to remain aware in spite of difficulty and heartbreak. And how she passes this appreciation on to her children, vastness and imagination, what she sees in an apparently bleak season of winter, as well as the solstice.

This awareness and imagination generate appreciation and endurance, and joy. Through it all, Lindsey, like others I’ve profiled this month, has a remarkable sense of the journey she is on and shares her gifts generously and profoundly.

Inspiring Women: Ariel Adkins: Wearing Art

I love fashion. When I was in college, a friend remarked to me that fashion is “art that people are wearing around.” I had no idea what he meant. Ariel taught me differently.

There are many wonderful fashion blogs; however, what Ariel accomplishes with her art-inspired outfits, her juxtaposition of paintings and photographs that show a range and flow of movements, is something quite extraordinary.

Ariel’s knowledge and appreciation of art enables her to draw out particular colors, styles and poses for her compositions. See the results of her influence from Paul Klee here and here. The paintings complement the photographs wonderfully, clearly demonstrating her inspiration. She shows a range of works from the artist to illustrate the significance of the works for her.

With work from the period typically called Abstract Expressionism and the artists influenced by it, Ariel’s outfits and motions really reflect the dynamics of the artworks. See her piece on Twombly with her fantastic paint-splattered trousers. She draws out some heart-burning colors from Rothko in this series. And Ariel makes a wonderful primary-color outfit reflecting Barnett Newman’s images.

Ariel does great things with early 20^th century painters such as Kirchner and Marc, the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists (see especially her umbrella, shoes and movements and poses by the sea in the former.) Some explore particular themes or subjects of one artist, like Degas’ dancers, Picasso’s guitars, or globes and maps in Joyce Kozloff’s work. It’s a delight to be introduced to previously unknown artists (to me) such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Rufino Tamayo and Ariel’s results are equally stunning.

She’s not limited to painting, as this exceptional series inspired by medieval unicorn tapestries reveals.

At any rate, I’ll leave you with two posts that sum up how inspiring Ariel is. In one, she says, “An important lesson I've learned from art is how to discern color where, at first glance, there appears to be none,” and then goes on to transform the landscape suggested by this particular artist. In another, which may be my current favorite, she quotes Matisse "There are always flowers for those who want to see them," and the flower that is Ariel makes a bold color and texture statement enlivening a grey day.

I also like this short video of Ariel talking about her style inspiration; her voice is sweet and her enjoyment is enchanting.

Inspiring Women: Belle Pirri: Gratitude

A post from Kind Over Matter, pointed me to Belle's gratitude list blog, which was then called Good List Daily, succeeded by We Love Gratitude. What a great idea, I thought, and after lurking and posting as a guest for awhile, I joined the site.

The daily practice of a gratitude list, which I strive at, and which is always incomplete for me, teaches me no matter how bad something is in my life, on balance there is so much is that is good. Furthermore, it is the result of what is before me, around me, how much bigger life is than me, what I take for granted, that I cannot control. There it is for me, the question: What are you grateful for today?

Especially gratifying is encountering a supportive cast of similarly grateful people, complementing each other in our gratitude and offering encouragement as our paths change and turn.

And it is amazing to see Belle’s evolution from her doodles to her discoveries about changing her attitude through practice, and ultimately her gratitude upon giving birth to Ava.

I had the good fortune to meet Belle several months ago when she and Marc, her husband, took a vacation trip to my part of the country. It was great to see she was not only the gal in the picture and also very much the person she presents in her writing and artwork, grateful, inquisitive and open-hearted.

Recently, Belle launched Creative Spiritual Women, another site to inspire and encourage her community of friends by sharing her life lessons and discoveries of wonderful things. What stands out for me right now is Belle emphasizing that it is not so much the things that happen to us as the stories we tell ourselves about what happened and what is. Gratitude (or as Belle writes, “radical gratitude”) goes a long way towards reframing these stories. And courage, as Belle writes here: “It’s an act of trust to yourself to tell the truth.”

I cannot be grateful enough for Belle living in the world.

Inspiring Women: Liz Coleman: Adventure

I met Liz several years ago at her home in Nashville. (Rodger, her husband, is a long time friend.) I was struck right away by how she engaged me in conversation, her warmth, her presence (in the immediate sense of the word,) and her interests. At the time Liz was making a pop-up book version of Finnegan’s Wake. There’s a picture in my mind of a wine-drenched wake scene (or was it also blood?) and there seem to be charcoal grey mourning faces. It was a unexpected delight to discover her blog some time after that, benefiting not only from her appreciative and grateful eye towards her daily life but also learning of Brene Brown and Kind Over Matter and eventually We Love Gratitude. I would not have met many of you except through Liz, who has led me on my own kind of adventure, a regular theme of hers.

Etymologically the word is rooted in the Latin advenire "to come to, reach, arrive at."

I’m moved by Liz’s simple words and images on the theme of gratitude here (where she describes it as “the only appropriate response to so much of my life,” a reminder to me that on balance I’ve received more than I’m aware of,) and here, where she arrives at the upside or the good in the midst of error or difficulty on several occasions, a journey in attitude adjustment, especially acknowledging “just staying simply with how I'm feeling”.

I love Liz’s take on the Kindle Fire, where she admits, considering the electronic medium with respect to antique books, “I guess I'm really a better Buddhist than librarian. Let's just say I have a deep respect for impermanence.”

Liz communicates to me the adventure of awareness of one’s being in this moment, of one’s surroundings, simply breathing, that any moment can reveal such an adventure, but we have to go to it. At the same time, she notes the difficulty of practicing what one has been taught: “I'm so much like the person in Pema Chodron's description of someone who gets a prescription from the doctor and shows it to everyone and puts it up on the wall and never actually takes the medicine.” (I especially identify with this.) I appreciate that she shared this short video of Jon Bernie describing the mind needing some object or activity, but I haven’t watched it lately.

Liz has a keen photographic eye and is drawn toward beauty, exemplified here and here and here.

The sense of adventure I receive from reading Liz’s blog is the course from awareness to enjoyment to love, a continuum of appreciation and gratitude extending through phenomena and people to the whole creation. Her blog is full of delights and surprises that I may never completely mine. See for yourself.