my husband paints. he is an amazing painter. i truly love his work. with both of us as artists, it could be interesting to love each-other, but not love each-other’s-work. we are lucky to not only respect the work of the other, but to want to lift it up and out there to others, to share it with the world, to say, “LOOK! this is beautiful!”
my husband paints. his studio is in our basement. sometimes i wander down, sip coffee or tea or wine and watch his dance with canvas. i’m aware of the stacks around me, paintings that have not yet been shown, paintings that need loving homes.
my husband paints. he doesn’t like selling things. it’s not his gig, so to speak. but me? i do like to sell things. it’s a joy, for me, to match a painting with a person (this usually happens naturally…they find each other) or music with a person’s need for music. in my next life (ok, one of the list of my next lives…a horse ranch is up there on the list too), i would love a small boutique shop, filled to the brim with things that people have made, repurposed, pieces of something old or something organic that are now treasured parts of a home.
visit the online gallery. take your time. listen. breathe. if you fall in love with something that speaks to you, let us know. it’s impossible for me not to say, “LOOK! this is beautiful!” my husband paints.
we notice stuff. seriously. little things. we always lean on the artistic side of everything we encounter (although that left brain rears up for both of us, it is in different ways.) so as we walk or hike, we will notice rocks that look like hearts, patterns of leaves on the ground that form beautiful carpets, sunsetting color that illuminates a field with golden light, wildlife that crosses our path – big and tiny. we hear – and stop to listen to – the song of cicadas, the honk of frogs, the call of birds in the woods, the chirp of chipmunks, the rat-a-tat-tat of woodpeckers, the coo of mourning doves. we look for changes in the scenery since the last time we hiked and we notice. little things. and tracks.
these little tracks were in our driveway…in the act of quickly going out to the car to leave we could have missed them. that would have been too bad. the breath that these sweet tracks provided me was invaluable…a pause in a busy day, a moment of appreciating nature around me, a grounding humbleness that i am merely one in a boundless universe, a heart-connection to these small creatures…a part of a whole.
WE live here. on this beautiful planet earth. we have inherited it from those before us and we will pass it on to those who live beyond us. it is our responsibility to leave it as-good-as or better than we received it. (my sweet momma’s teaching…in all things.)
OUR. responsibility. we cannot just take; we must give back. and, as in all things, the things we learn must be applied, even if it’s hard, even if it’s inconvenient, even if it costs us, even if it won’t directly benefit us but will, alas, benefit those beyond us; our work, our diligence, our values, our dedication, our respect will transcend us.
the first thing The Girl did the morning before she drove back to the high mountains was to put her personal stamp on her new vehicle IVY. she planned carefully where to place the two stickers on the far back passenger side window. the POW sticker – protect our winters – a cause she believes in. on their site, “Outdoor sports is a way for the public to understand the consequences of climate change, and what we stand to gain by stopping it, or lose by failing to. We all need winter.”
it’s bracing. the changes OUR beloved planet is experiencing. the changes in weather, the changes in resources, the changes, ultimately, in the way we will each live – all around the world. the questions of being able to grow ample food supply, have enough clean water, and sustain this – what is, by sheer comparison – tiny planet in the vastness of space.
i stood in the living room of the historic mining house My Girl lives in right in the middle of telluride, colorado and saw this poster on the wall. each of the renters in this house, directly or indirectly, depends on the health of the outdoors in these high mountains for their livelihood. who among us does not truly – when you trace all things back to their source – depend on the health of OUR environment? NO SIDES IN CLIMATE.
everything we do or don’t do will affect this good earth. who is it that said, “you don’t know what you have till you lose it”? we take for granted that for which we should have the simplest and deepest of gratitude.
OUR earth. were it not here, where would WE live? how would SIDES matter?
it’s not every day you pull into a parking lot and park next to a potato. even at church. we never considered parking in the same spot as the potato. it was clear that spot was taken. and as two artists living in this world together, we don’t question things like that. we parked in the next spot over. i mean, every potato deserves a little respect.
just last saturday evening, out on cape cod, we lingered over seafood and glasses of wine with jonathan, our bass player. we were sitting around his table, chatting about music.
he told us about a group of musicians he rehearses with on an irregular basis. they play a wide variety of instruments and they all just gather casually together and jam on some “good music”. “…and once in a while we play the same stuff…” he stated. his voice trailed off as he thought about what he had just said and we all laughed. we can picture a whole group of jonathans in the room – all exuberant and, each, lovers of all music, all pick-ready, mouthpiece-ready, reed-ready, hands-poised-over-the-keys-ready. that kind of enthusiasm shouldn’t be curbed or restrained. the sheer joy of playing – now that’s the reason to be all together. it’s not about playing all the notes on the page, playing them all perfectly at the same time, playing them with no mistakes. it’s about heart. it’s about the breaths and the rests of silence, the flip-flop your heartbeat makes when soaring notes come together in a sweeping harmony, the tears you get in your eyes when something you just played or heard is sublimely sweet, dynamically touching, deeply resonant, the belly laugh with the ridiculously dissonant moment.
the ukulele sip ‘n strums are about just that. if we can choose to teach anything at those sip ‘n strums, i would choose to teach just these things. the things of joy. music is all about individual hearts…coming together with the immense gift of twelve notes at our literal fingertips. no matter what we play, we are playing the same stuff.
so. many. throw pillows. and so much design fun. these collections represent a smattering of our two-artists-making-stuff-for-humans product lines, a vast array of tote bags, mugs, prints, laptop sleeves, phone cases, blankets, beach towels, cutting boards, coasters, shower curtains, and yes, throw pillows.
as we rapidly approach the holiday-gift-season, we thought we’d enter the pool of possibilities and just offer up a compilation of some of the merchandise that is available in our names. perhaps it will be just the right thing you need…for you or someone else. either way, it’s a pleasure to look at our five society6.com store sites and see how very many lines we have designed through the time of this melange. the learnings have been vast; the feedback and every single sale deeply appreciated.
happy holidays from two artists who love to do art. xoxo
i had landed in denver, took the little plane for the small airport in the mountains. The Girl picked me up and we did errands in town, because telluride is an hour and a half away and there is no target or starbucks or any chain store there. when we got to the little house she just moved to and shares with three others, i looked for something to cut the stems off sweet flowers so i could place them in a facsimile of a vase. having not unpacked all the way, and knowing she was also not all that familiar with her new place yet, i knew that i should just make do with anything that cuts. i grabbed a large knife off the counter and starting sawing. the only thing wrong with that is that i sawed my left pointer finger as well. ouch! i did everything to make it stop bleeding but it was stubborn and kirsten and i wrapped it in bandaids and paper towels to wander around town. yowza.
i wasn’t going to mention it to d – the cutting-stems-with-a-big-serrated-knife thing and all – but couldn’t resist looking for a little husband-sympathy. so after another hour or so, i texted him. he texted back, “we are twins. my left index finger. i sliced mine hours ago…” what?!?
we have this beautiful print in our home, a simple calligraphy by my big brother….it reads, “when one weeps, the other will taste salt.” hmmm.
i’m thinking this is just a fancy term for procrastination? you know, those moments when you have a list-of-things-to-do and you do something NOT on the list. to be honest, i ALWAYS add the things i ended up doing TO the list so that i can cross them off. there is something i find so very satisfying about crossing things off. even if i haven’t gotten to the crux of what i need to get done.
d says that i work in a circular manner. i suppose he’s right. but i swear it’s a woman-thing. we are spinning many plates at the same time, keeping them all in the air, and, although everything will eventually get done, we move from one thing to the next and then circle back. i know very few gals who – in an OCD kind of way – stay cemented to one task until its completion without punctuating it with others.
when The Girl and The Boy were little i was constantly moving from writing at the piano to reading books aloud to playing with matchbox cars to making business calls and back to the piano….many layers all at once. i remember having a phone conversation with one of the VPs of barnes and noble when they were placing one of my albums on the listening station wall. in the middle of this phone call, you could hear one of my children in toddlerhood – i will not mention which one – in the background, beckoning me from the bathroom, yelling, “i finished! i pooped!” the VP heard it too and he was gracious enough to tell me he would hold on. it’s a mom thing, right? those spinning plates.
we work differently, d and me. we are both productive, but i’m guessing he would oft label me productively avoidant. eh. he just doesn’t see how i accomplish that ever-growing-ever-crossed-off list in my head (or on paper, for that matter.) it’s amazing what i can accomplish when i am “supposed” to be accomplishing something else. i know you know what i mean! #allwillgetdone #whatdoesitallmeananyway?
right at 2:08 in this recording is an ambient sound. it is a sound that my producer and i deliberately decided to leave in the recording, an audible sound of divine, a tiny punctuation in our project from across the barriers of physical being-ness.
we were recording remotely on one of the northwestern university stages, ken (my amazing “it’s fine” producer) having built a small studio off in the green room, separate from the stage space where the piano was. everything was moved or padded so as to avoid interruptions or rattling or vibrations or overtones, anything we didn’t want included in this solo piano album. it was a tedious process and we recorded straight through a twenty-three hour stretch. with me were items – totems of a sort – to keep me company as i recorded this first album. one was a stuffed animal i had given my beloved big brother during his chemo treatments, three short missing-him-years prior.
divine intervention was the last piece up. the last piece of the very first album i was recording, released 23 years ago november 11 on my sisu music productions label. teetering on that balance point, no idea of where i was to go next or what would become of this album, i was emotional and exhausted, determined and vulnerable. i spoke words of prayer and began the next take of this piece.
at 2:08 i heard a sound. it sounded like an old wooden screen door closing, but i didn’t really know what it was. i was sure, however, it would be on the recording since i could hear it on-stage. i kept going anyway, thinking we’d go back and re-record the piece. when i finished playing, tired tears in my eyes, i walked into the green room to find ken standing in astonishment. there was an empty can of pepsi in that little studio, one i had put in there and secured by towels deep onto a shelf. at 2:08, the can somehow moved out of the spot it was nestled in and clattered onto the floor. the sound. even without listening to the cd i can hear this sound in my head every time i play this piece.
we listened back to the raw recording. sure enough, it was there. and so was something else. a feeling that somehow, some way, the divine interrupted. intervened with a small nod. perhaps it was my big brother, in jest, stopping by in the middle of the last take of the very last piece of my very first album, to make a little noise. perhaps it was something else. either way, we knew. and we left it in.
i still have the can.
15. divine intervention (3:16): the feeling i have about this whole project. there really isn’t any such thing as chance. those who are just on the other side sometimes help us to sort and place the clues of our life’s story. (words from released from the heart jacket)
whoa….we saw one on the des plaines river trail and stopped short. it looked like candy on the path, but on closer examination, we discovered it was a spider! an orange spider. it’s called a marbled orb-weaver. and it’s pretty intense. and, i suppose if you are not spider-phobic like me, it’s beautiful.
later that month, we were hiking at bristol woods, one of our favorite go-to places to hold staff meetings as we walk together. out of the corner of my eye i caught the glimpse of bright movement in the air…sure enough, it was one of those marbled orb-weavers (doesn’t that just slip off your tongue? lol!) it was dangling on a web-strand that was at least 5 stories high! whattheheck! this roly-poly little spider was bravely trying to reach a white mass that was a bit flattened (an egg cocoon with several hundred eggs, we read later) while being tossed about in the wind, up and down, sideways.
i could practically hear this spider whisper to itself, “gotta have sisu, gotta have sisu” as it climbed, bobbing, bobbing, up its long, high-above-the-ground web, finally reaching its cocoon and wrapping it close into its body.
wow. what we do for our babies, eh? amazing stuff. the stuff of sisu.
