community-care

Love wins, kitchen leprechauns and Irish poetry

A Creative Life, Artist interviews and profiles, artistic inspirations, creative thinking, fine art, kitchen art, poetry, recipe illustration, sketchbook, small things, whimsical art

A local brewery was targeted because Drag Brunch is held there. Adults dressing as they like and eating a meal with other adults is offensive, it seems, to a hate group who busted windows and doors at the brewery claiming drag brunch to “justify” their violence. Here’s a recent newspaper article about this topic. https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/mar/11/heathen-brewing-feral-public-house-vandalized-saturday/ So in support of Heathen Brewing and our community my wife and I went with our Fairy Goddaughter to happy hour!

There was a line inside and almost every seat filled!! We had beer, nachos and sweet potato fries. We talked with people in line. We talked with people at the tables next to us. We petted dogs. We laughed! And we all had a grand time! Love is definitely winning!! The Go-fund-me page shows they’ve gotten more than 3000 dollars ABOVE their goal! Yea! Love wins again!!!

The current outpourings of love in response to hate reminds me of the late 1980’s gay rights activism in Oklahoma where I participated. We did what we called “Love Ins”. Wherever hate had happened or was happening many of us, LGBTQ and allies, would fill the floor space with our bodies. We would sit and spread out on the floor playing cards, coloring in color books, building things with toy blocks and we would sing or read poetry outloud. Sometimes a drag queen would read a story aloud. We had printed signs addressing the specific issue at hand. (The basic human right to access healthcare, the right to equal employment, the right to fairness in housing, the right to marry the person we love… to name only a few issues.) We also had general signs saying things like “We’re here, we’re queer get used to it”. But we did NOT verbally shout back at the people shouting hateful things at us. We played our games on the floor and ignored the haters. People had to step over and around us. Whenever a hater purposefully kicked one of us – the person who had been kicked said to another person on the floor “Ouch! Did you see that?” to which many of the floor sitters would loudly respond “I saw that! Are you okay? We love you!” and various other phrases in support of the person who’d been hurt. The perp, the kicker, was deliberately, overtly, ignored because we were focused on creating the loving world we wanted to inhabit. Often the shouting and kicking from the anti-gay side stopped in the absence of reciprocal violent exchanges – or if not completely stopping the violence failed to escalate – it seemed hard, for most, to keep yelling and kicking at people who were just playing cards and loving everyone even if some of the card players were wearing sequins.

And the LGBTQ community did, slowly, gain basic human rights – including the right to marry – even in Oklahoma. Love totally wins!

While thinking about all of this I created a sketchbook page and shared it on my email newsletter… it’s another description of why I do the kind of artwork I do.

Yes, it was so good to see love winning again more recently at the local brewery! Life, love and good things are for ALL of us! That’s what the ideals of equality and democracy are reaching for, however imperfectly, and it’s a worthy goal. It’s a goal for all of us by all of us!

What if our innovations, our future advancements, rely on how well we’re able to care for and about ourselves, people and plants? What if life, the future and everything is really all about love and how well we can do that loving of ourselves, each other and the natural world? (Rebecca Solnit writes a wonderful essay here about the real potential of this!)

Anyway, as I forcasted in my last blog post Amie McGraham at Cook &Tell interviewed me about my kitchen sketchbook and what was on my St Patrick’s Day menu! There are photos and sketchbook pages and recipes – https://amiemcg.substack.com/p/shot-in-the-kitchen-sue-clancy

Here’s a leprechaun, aka me, in the kitchen. 👇

Below is a quick look at my St Patrick’s recipes and what they looked like when served… more details on Cook & Tell.

Here’s one of the Irish poems I enjoyed with my Irish Coffee. It’s by Andrew Cherry. I find it both fun and encouraging.

This is the book the poem came from. 👇

Here’s some green plants in a recent painting I did titled “White Elephant” which I had also mentioned in my email newsletter.

Ah the hardiness of plants like those mentioned in the poem by Cherry! Love and luck to thrive anywhere and everywhere like clover! 🤔😊 Such an inspiration for humans don’t you think?

We’re in this life together. See you next Mondayish.

Professional dogs, box project, cards, books, the first chat and some biscuits with gravy

A Creative Life, art exhibit, art gallery, art techniques, Art Word Combinations, artist book, artistic inspirations, author illustrator, books, creative thinking, Creativity Chats, food in art, greeting cards, illustrated poem, illustrated recipe, kitchen art, mental health, poetry, publications - publishing, published art, Sustainable creativity, This Rabbit, words and pictures, writing and illustrating

The Professional Dog text for my in-progress childrens book is solid enough that this week I focused on the illustrations. I’ve done about 12 of them in ink and have established a pattern for the artwork that relates to the text. I’m working on bringing the illustrations up to the same semi solid level of preparation as the text.

As per my last post I’m still looking at this project somewhat sideways. It’s more in focus and it’s now moved into my “main project” work time slot but it is still becoming itself, so rather that looking at it head on and making declarative  statements about it – it’s just a project I’m working on every day now. That attitude helps me keep it playful.

In my last post I spoke of picking up a box, a cube really, from the Caplan Art Designs gallery. The Gallery asked several of their artists to do something in their art style for what the Gallery is calling the “holiday box project”. Over this week I put 3 coats of gesso on my box. I also did some brainstorming in my sketchbook  about what I might do with the cube.

Allowing time for gesso to dry between coats gave me time to think and try stuff with The Professional Dog project as I mentioned above and also experiment with other things…

… one of the things I thought about is this: It feels urgent to me to practice patience and to encourage decency as much as I can. The selfish meaness of a small group of people during this time in U.S. history is toxic. The majority of people are generous and kindhearted but I see the kind people, particularly my friends in the medical and teaching professions, being worn out by the few meanies. Sometimes even I feel worn out. So I have taken it as a creative challenge to do whatever I can to give the kind people a bit of care.  Yes, my attempts to give care via art sometimes feels small, it feels like trying to refill a dry lake by the teacups full. But art is what I can do. And I do firmly believe this quote on my studio wall pictured below. Art is all we have. It’s certainly all I have.

Every time we’re kind, loving and supportive of each other – even in small ways – we’re enabling ourselves to not only survive but thrive. When we share art and beauty we help each others spirits – moment by moment. These moments add up. We are truly stronger together. And helping each other helps us feel better too. Self-care is community care and vice versa.

As I waited for gesso to dry I rummaged in my files, and my sketchbook for art pieces I’ve done that might encourage people. So I’m beginning a “For pleasant encouragement” art prints series on my Society 6 shop. Perhaps this series may also become a book someday? Anyway here’s one from this series.

Lighting Candles art print by Clancy – https://society6.com/product/lighting-candles424527_print?sku=s6-6943722p4a1v45#1=45

Also while gesso dried I added a few more recipe postcards and odd cards to my collections on my Zazzle shop. I have been enjoying mailing cards to friends and they’ve seemed to like getting them – so these cards fit with my overall project of encouraging people.

sueclancy on Zazzle – https://www.zazzle.com/store/sueclancy

This week my book This Rabbit was featured on the Read Aloud by Kidz Stories And More YouTube channel! I am honored to be called a “favorite author”! Kidz Stories And More reads childrens books aloud very well and they welcome submissions from self published childrens book authors. They can be contacted via social media.

https://youtu.be/13yziUOlj6U

As I mentioned above during one of my “gotta let the gesso dry” times I set up my new video thingamajig and did my first Creativity Chat!

I haven’t figured out how to embed video in blog posts yet so to view it you’ll have to click here.

Creativity Chats: introduction – https://youtu.be/IDhodTsN_EM

I’ve written short scripts for about 15 of these chats so far and my main point of doing these is to encourage people and discuss the intersection I see between creativity and good mental health. Some time ago I had planned to do another version of Dr Bob’s Emotional Repair Program First Aid Kit and focus the new book on creativity. But other projects took precedence … so I’m excited about doing videos on this topic! I can squeeze a short chat on video into my busy life!

The yummy comfort food this week was homemade biscuits and gravy! See recipe postcards above or via these links: Judy’s Biscuits and Good Gravy. It was a fun collaborative brunch!

Some books I’m reading in the evenings: Death in D Minor by Alexia Gordon – a mystery novel with a ghost in it. (It is October after all.) I’m finishing A Swim In The Pond In The Rain by George Saunders. Both are very delightful to read and transport me to other worlds smoothly! Technically I’m rereading the Saunders – I read it first as an ebook and am rereading a print version now and making notes. Thank goodness, I say almost daily, for writers – how dismal our lives would be without good soul-satisfying books.

Temperatures here in the Pacific Northwest are now cool to cold as the sun goes down so my reading evenings often have hot chocolate or hot tea to go with a book. Last night as I returned to my chair I thought “this is one of my happy places” so I took a photo.

I hope you get to spend time this week in one of your happy places. See you next Monday.