Hear the Mermaids Singing

A tiny faery at the seashore, in Kato Polyclay. She'd stand about 5 1/2 inches tall.

Excellent Advice from a Cookie

Good Hallowe'en to You

Phantoms by Lou P. Rogers, my mother.  We both loved Hallowe'en.

On the Work Table

Creatures pending: two tiny faeries and one tiny Asian ghost, the Hut belonging to Baba Yaga no. 1, Mr. Faun no. 2, possibly another Eros, a Circe. Skeletons of Baba Yaga and Vasilisa no. 2. We shall see more soon. I am also eager to resume the two-dimensional efforts.

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
                                         ~ Thomas Merton

Angel painted

Fiat Lux

(The ribbons behind the ears of Eastern angels always flutter, to indicate they perpetually hear the whisper of God.)

And, with thanks to Lisa S., who sent it way long ago:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

             ~ 'Wild Geese'  by Mary Oliver

Wrestling with Imps

    So  where have I been?
    Battling devilkins, my friends. Long curled cozy in my psyche, they are wakened by these two years’ loss and misadventure, and by this house which proves itself a psychiatric ground zero. As  some of you know, I moved across the country last fall in the wake of my mother’s flight from this world, and now dwell in the little house where she lived.    
    The house, tiny and crouched amongst trees like a proper Baba Yaga hut, contains spectres: my maternal Granny with her red-handled fireman’s ax and tendency to devour, the beginning of a most dreadful marriage when I was 19, and most recently the melanoma that ate my mother. Combined with the sort of remorse soaked self-examination that can follow the death of someone close, it has seemed a delving in an Underworld. Far the most difficult demons to lay are the revenants of my own blunders.
    But such shadowed periods may be fruitful.  One hopes the reward for clambering out again may some kind of renaissance, and the Arts do hand one a form and venue for such, along with an obligation to seek it.
    Even bright art is stronger for wading through sorrow. Sweetness in art with no deep root through darkness can lack sustenance and resonance and remain a thing of the top soil. So perhaps we bring more revealing, higher growing fruits to the Goblin Market for time spent underground. Or, joy with more ballast.
    But alas, I have neglected much meanwhile; not least the many and many kind words from Visitors here.

    State of the Blog

    This blog was launched just a few months before my mother’s diagnosis was revealed and this strange two years plus began, with me in ‘curl up & hide’ mode much of the time. Thank you, most patient Visitors, for your support and words, despite my being so often MIA. It has meant and means a great deal, do not doubt! The launch of the blog was perhaps ill timed for my audience, given my frightfully sluggish responses, but it has been a great asset to me, the knowledge that you, Friends, are out there and care that I keep producing.
    Now, I aim to do better. We shall see, but I venture to bet on myself. There is much work in the pipeline: more of Faeryland, more of Baba Yaga (who will eventually have her very own page when I’ve fully set up the blog here on SquareSpace), a new Mr. Faun, more folk tale  and mythic subjects. Speaking of which, I’d best return to the Table and work on them, so I can show you!

Ever my (somewhat variable) best,
Forest
(The images are, of course, from Hieronymous Bosch,whom I adore.)

A Most Useful Directive

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you  must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”      ~ André Gide

With thanks to Fran, who sent it! 

The Red Horseman

Kind and most Patient Friends,
    Reports of my demise have been at least modestly exaggerated.  Here’s a scan of the Sunrise Horseman from Vasilisa the Beautiful (my increasingly tattered dummy thereof) just to let you know I’m still kicking.  More anon, but for now: