Chase always cracks me up.  Notable sayings this week:

When he spent the night this week, he said,
"Sleeping spoils the sleepover!" 

and tonight when his knee hurt,
"I think I broke my skeleton"

Talking about the prehistoric shark that he made with clay,
"Orthacanthus has an eel-like body"  What kind of 4-year-old talks like that??!!

Kids are definately educational!

Note about my last blog:  My goal has always been to teach so there is nothing new there.  I don't see myself teaching art in a traditional position at a college but I haven't ruled it out completely.  I would like more to teach at retreat-style seminars and possibly my own private program/school.

 

 

Hi COS people and Xanga regulars~

My name is Lisa Gatz and I have been blogging for quite some time now.  I had a site before this one for about 5 years and this "Gourdgeous" site for about 1 year.  I try to make art and really enjoy working with ceramics and hard-shelled gourds.  I have 3 grown daughters, 2 grandsons, and a partridge in a pear tree.   Oh I mean and a husband.  And a dog.  And a headache.

I will be using my blog for a time for class assignments in my English 2 class.  I'll try to keep updated on my regular blog entries as well. 

J.Jordan asked these questions:

Major? 

3D Art is my major.  I want to teach as well as work on art personally.

Two goals for this semester--one academic goal and one life goal.

My first goal is to be 12 units closer to my transfer with a 4.0!
The second goal is to create 3 gourd bowls in my new series and be ready for the Southwest Gourd Art Festival.

What have you recently learned how to do?

I'm learning to play slide guitar...it's much trickier than I expected!

 

 

Success

August's topic on Featured Grownups has to do with success and how we define it, what it means to us.

I'm kind of turned off by the word, "success".  I've heard it used most when someone labels the value of a person's career or life.  I've also heard the word used when someone evaluates a performance or an attempt at some prize.

The word success drags with it heavy baggage for me. It holds memories of people with tunnel vision who believe that success is only defined in their narrow outlook and is almost always dependent on money.

The concept of success equalling financial gain makes me sick.  That sums up everything that I DON'T believe in!  Money and things are ephemeral in this life.  The older I get the more I realize that there is very little that lasts beyond our time on earth.  Even if your money survives you and is handed down, it means absolutely nothing if there is no love and connection to go with it to the next generation.

I feel that the only lasting thing that I can do while I'm here is to live as honestly as possible and be true to what I understand as good.  For me personally, I think that the only tangible way that the world will feel my existence is in the love that I give to others.  That sounds really cliche as I write it but I really, deeply believe this. 

I try to be true to the person that I am; I try to figure out how to create meaningful things (I'll let you know if I ever get there!)  But the most important thing is the love that I show other people.  I think that I have tons to learn on how that can be done but I desire to learn it.

So if I had to use that distasteful word, success, so that we can agree on a concept, my definition of success is being sure that I'm giving all that I can while remaining in truth.  Nope, haven't even come close to that yet but it's my goal.

 

 

A quick new bloggie...

I had an order for one of my frog bowls so here's the new one.  I like it a little better.  His name is Fred.  I call it, "Fred Ponders the Heavens"

 

The pictures didn't come out too great but I'm too tired to retake them today. 

I'm a little on the manic side both today and yesterday but I'm learning that it's part of my creative process.  Just go with it.  It will eventually tone down and then I can get some rest.  For now, I'm filling up my sketchbook.

"Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then"

I heard Against the Wind by Bob Seger today on the radio and I know that I've heard this phrase a million times but today it struck me.  So many times I say that I wish I knew then what I know now and for the most part, that's so true.

The things that made me reckless I don't wish back.  Sometimes I would like that endless energy that let me feel like I could do anything.  Cautious is good in moderate amounts only.

Internet Island Topic Post #16.00: "Secrets, Confessions, Opinions, and Comfort"

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16.01: Secrets

A lot of secrets are shattered in the blogging community, thanks to the relative anonymity of the process. Since we can be anything we want to be in cyberspace, it is a perfect place to share secrets great and small. Have you ever shared a secret with your internet brethern, or would you like to do so now?

I tend to share a lot on my blog.  On my old Xanga site, sometimes I shared REALLY intimate parts of my life.  Why do I have a new blog?  Well the truth is that I wrote some things in my old blog that were read by my in-laws and my mom and I hurt their feelings.  I saved my old blog to disk so that I would have a record of my online "journal".  The first incident had to do with me complaining about my mother in law when Jim had his heart surgery last year.  I was really stressed and didn't have much tolerance for other peopes' processes.  I panicked and shut the site down when I found out that she was upset.  A little later, I found out that I had also hurt my mom with things that I had wrote.

Blogging, for me, can be dangerous and deceiving in its illusion of  anonymity. Although I use it to write and process things that are very unformed in my mind...kind of like thinking online...those thoughts can be brutal and the feelings of the moment can seem monumental.  It helps me to sort things out or just blow off some steam when I write but I don't like to hand write in a journal.   Blogging has been more useful to me.

I guess somehow I lost sight of who was reading my blog and the public nature of it.  I wrote things that I wouldn't have chosen to share with those people because I felt no need to drag that crap up.  Sometimes I feel like I'm just talking to myself out loud when I blog.

The situation with my mom was the worst because I believe that we have a very good relationship.  We've had some rocky times and there are things that I have had to take responsibility for, ugly things on my part.  But you know, my mother is a good and wonderful woman.  And it absolutely broke my heart to know how I had hurt her.  I didn't talk to her about some of those things in person before because I knew that they were mine to work out and would only cause pain if spoken out loud.  We worked it out, I think, but I fear that I may have left some scars with her.  Hopefully our relationship is stronger having worked through it.

I'm more careful now in what I write.  Maybe that's not all good because I really did love the freedom to just spew out all kinds of shit from my brain  but I have to face reality: blogs are public.  If you write it, it may come back and hit you in the face.

Any secrets that I share here would have to be those that I'm fairly sure wouldn't hurt someone somewhere.

 

A fun little frog bowl that I made from a gourd and polymer clay.

Escape to Mineral King!
With the valley temperatures running about 110-112, we spent Tuesday night and Wednesday at 9000 ft.  It was food for my soul to sleep out under the stars and Giant Sequoias.

 Jasper                                      Artist: The Creator

Internet Island Topic Post #15.00

Is what you do who you are?
Is what you eat who you are?
Is what you wear who you are?
Is what you read or what you watch who you are?
Is what you think who you are?
Is what they think who you are?
Is being on the right team who you are?
Is what you believe who you are?
Is what you say who you are?
Who are you?

 A string of questions such as this is sure to create more questions than answers.  I can say a few absolutes and then a whole lot of paradox.  (what's the plural of paradox?)

Is being on the right team who you are? 
Most definately not.  The "right team" is a relative term anyway.  In my mind, clubs and sects exclude and make members feel that they're better and more special than others.  I wonder if there's a serial killers' club??  I don't think they have an organized membership (but who knows?) and they certainly don't seem to have any uniforms that I've seen.  

Is what they think who you are? 
That would be a stab in the dark for others to define us, wouldn't it?  It's challenging enough to find truths about myself, real truths that only I can know, without allowing people to define me.  Even if I agreed to allow others to define me, it could not be true definition.  If I believe what others think, I may fulfill their image by acting in certain ways.  But is that who I am?  No.

I think that the ways that we think, eat, read, speak, believe, and wear can be manifestations of who were are.  Can be.  I don't always act true to myself; I don't eat the things that are best for me, read or watch the things that are good for me. 

What to wear?  I wear what is comfortable and keeps my body temperature where it needs to be.  At times, I feel like I want to play and say something  through the things that I wear.  Unfortunately, what we wear is used more as a statement to other people.  "Don't judge me, I'll just blend in".  Or, "Don't approach me, I'll hurt you".  Or "I can afford the best so don't approach me if you're beneath me".  Those may or may not be true messages but I'm just throwing some out. 

 So who the hell am I??? 

I smile at this question because at this point in my life and for some time now, I know that this question is not one that can be defined in words.  It is such a profound and spiritual question.  We can make statements that are true about ourselves and what we like, what we prefer, what we believe, but how can we expect to define a spirit that we can't even see? 

I think that striving to make art (visual, verbal, musical, performance; any kind of art) is one way that we seek to express the definition.  Real deep striving.  I haven't done any of that yet.  Maybe someday I will.

Defining the self is like defining love.  Do we know that it exists?  I believe so.   Most of us have experienced it.   Good things happen.  Kindnesses are shown.  Those are actions but what's the motivation? Sometimes love is.  What is love?  Who can define it?  Who am I? At this point in my life, I don't need to define it.  I am. 

 

Just a few show and tell photos from this past semester:    

And some pendants that I made recently from gourd shards:

Like the Ocean,
A creative tide 
Washes through my home
Displacing everything
That I had so carefully arranged.

Groups of pendants
Scattering of books
Pine needles floating on a sea of carpet
Beads strewn about like pebbles
No longer gathered into groups of color.

Slowly, the tide recedes
I look at the expanse of objects
That are left randomly...or purposefully
And I see again what I might arrange them into.

_____________

I wrote this the other day after watching a video about Andy Goldsworthy (a brilliant artist in my opinion!)

 

Still Here, Still Working

The color of clay; the color that my hands are tinted after I've been throwing for a while.  The iron in the clay makes my hands reddish.

I completed my second semester of wheel throwing last Friday.  I made some pretty big leaps in my form and evenness of the walls of my pots.  Pictures to come soon.

I have only been really happy with a few of the pieces that I've made since I began on the wheel but I'm glad that I threw all of the other forms.  I learned a lot.

I went to Cherokee at the beginning of June...met Doris and her family.  More huge leaps in my level of inspiration.  I like to say I went back there to BE Cherokee for a while.  I had visions and felt the land.  I met wonderful people.

The family is doing well except for Jim's back which may have another blown disk.  It's wierd...seems like we know how to live in this situation more than in a pain-free one.