Embracing Pluto

One of my current favorite songs is by You Got Your Way by Alicia Lemke.  At first it was her Alicia's angelic voice.  Then it was the lyrics, romantic and magical, finally it was an identification with what she had to say.  She may have been talking about love, about surrender...about art.  To me art is surrender.  In its many forms and morphs, the callings late at night that find me waking with a fierce need to DO, the trance of paint on my fingers and chalk beneath my nails, the click of a shutter, the waving of a Polaroid.  It's love.  True love.  It truly makes me tick.
It's through art that I've met many of the people in my life who not only fuel my love with their support and friendship, but who push me to try, to DO, to BE the artist I feel inside.  Those same people are the listeners who hear that same song late at night, and who know just what it means to create with your soul and feel the full sense of being when you've listened to the urge and done even a smidge of what you dreamed.
Heather is one of those people for me.  She and I first connected on Flickr.  Both going through 365 projects, kidding around and finding out who we were, what we wanted to say, and how we wanted to say it.  Her open personality, love of all that is natural and all that is reflection and light drew me to her immediately.  I've seldom had the fortune of recognizing the feeling of gratitude for listening to my own heart.  But I feel that with Heather.  She is a dear friend now and when I thought about collaboration again...though there isn't time and I don't need more and blah, blah, blah...I thought immediately of Heather.
Once a week, together, we'll find a way to connect.  We'll have common inspirations, common words to build on.  Each of us will do what we've always done.  We'll find ways to hold each other's hands from a distance...push a little, pull a little, roll things over, and sift through experience to render down the visual.


Embracing Pluto Week #1
Libra is the only zodiac symbol that's neither animal nor human -- but surely that doesn't make you any less human.  Artistically, Libra tries to balance form, content, colors and elements, and for this reason can be drawn toward creative endeavors.

Indeed...balance.  A Neskowin stone, a palette of paints, stolen moments in a busy day of fifth grade madness, an uncomfortable place on the other side of the lens, and a Libra...