Who Are You?

A word of warning, if you are easily offended don’t read this post. At all.

Who are you?

When asked this question I’m always reminded of the hookah smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. Blowing smoke rings and asking Alice who she thinks she is, and then proceeds to tell her she isn’t actually Alice - at least not yet.

I feel like that a lot. I know who I am but am I really projecting that person the world around me. The short answer is of course not. We all censor ourselves for various reasons and in various situations. Then a Facebook friend of mine posted something the other day that made me say Enough. She basically posted a warning to all of her friends that said if you choose to say Fuck in any of your posts, I will block you. It is an immature word and I don’t want to see it or have my family see it. I read that, then re-read it and couldn’t help but think how immature of HER, a grown woman, to try and tell her friends what was acceptable to post so it didn’t offend her delicate sensibilities. I decided to post this in response:

And it felt amazing. Not because I wanted to retaliate, but because it’s what I felt, at that moment, after reading that post. I’m done censoring myself online or anywhere else for that matter because people may not like what I have to say. This is me, take me or leave me. It’s exhausting to play at being yourself or pretend to be someone you aren’t.

So who am I?

I am an artist.

I am a belly dancer.

I am an emotional mess.

I know it’s possible to love more than one person at the same time.

I fucking love someone I will never again be with, and I’m ok with that.

I hear certain songs and my heart falls out of my chest.

I wanted to be a geneticist.

It’s better that I’m not. I probably would have started the zombie apocalypse.

I am educated.

I never use the degree I went to school for and wasted a lot of money getting.

I am in a fucking endless loop of going to a job I hate and then going home and being too exhausted to do my actual work.

I am a runner.

I am a kick ass motivator of people, but find it hard to apply it to myself.

I sometimes wish I lived a life of solitude

I hate money

Hypocrites suck and I’m done being one in the virtual world.

I used to cut myself because physical pain is easier to deal with than emotional pain.

That last sentence was only a partial truth. I never could actually break the skin; just push the knife down really hard into my flesh.

My every waking and non-waking moment is haunted by Brett.

I hate myself for that

I wish I could Eternal Sunshine my mind and take him out of it, even if it didn’t end well. A few moments of peace would be worth it.

I love my husband for understanding.

I sometimes wish I never had my daughter.

Anyone who reads that last statement and condemns me for it is either lying to themselves or doesn’t have kids.

I dislike most people

I am rude and mean and sarcastic

I’ve built so many walls I don’t know how to tear them all down

I look at my beige office and want to take paint and run down the hall throwing it everywhere

Crayons are a girl’s best friend.

I am a nature loving freak

I am not religious

Power corrupts

Religion is about power

Religion therefore corrupts

I am aware correlation does not equal causation

I am spiritual

I don’t care who or what you worship as long as you keep it to yourself

I hate shoes.

I would wear yoga pants or hippie skirts and tank tops all day every day if I could

My hair is turning grey at 35

I’m ok with that

Halloween is the high holiday in my world

Coffee is my god

I still believe in Fairies

Homemade vegetable beef soup is the best thing in the world

I don’t have imaginary friends anymore

That makes me sad

This was the hardest and most satisfying post I've ever written

What is the takeaway from all of this? Embrace yourself – your whole self, all the messy parts and parts you don’t love and parts other people will never love and just be you. Because being anyone other than yourself sucks donkey balls. Quit censoring yourself and see how much better things become. You may lose friends or acquaintances, but you will be gaining so much more.

So readers, who are you?

And Now For Something Completely Different...

I’ve always had this great desire to help people in some way. When I dream about winning the lottery, I always have a plan to set up a charity of some sort. Most of the time I go back to a foundation to help the homeless get back on their feet. An apartment complex that would be rent free for 6 months so they have a permanent address and phone number to be able to find a job. Career counseling services, addiction support, financial planning, and help transition back into the real world, etc. Big, wild, I will never have enough money to start this dreams.

My most recent wild dream is to start a community dance and arts center. I want to offer different types of dance at affordable rates, outreach to the local school districts, workshops, art retreats, etc. Again, money is always the sticking point. Well money, and then I think do I really want to stay in Oklahoma my whole life? We had always planned to move once Abby has graduated high school – and she is hell bent on moving to Seattle after graduation anyway (she loves the rain, and I mean loves, plus she has family there)

So what to do? I’m at a transition point in my life, I can feel it, but I am out of sorts and have no idea where to go or what to do.

The three things I keep coming back to are dance, art and fitness, or maybe they keep coming back to me.

Dance has really started picking back up for me. I am starting a new troupe with some friends, and we are getting performance opportunities, unfortunately none of them paid shows at the moment.
Fitness, and running in particular, has been showing up a lot lately too. I will be leading a couch to 5K program at my office, and also helping a friend with her running goals. Again, none of this is paid. (I’m sensing a theme!)

As for art, another friend is organizing a doll conference here in town in October. We will have several fabulous teachers, including Jessica Hamilton who will be teaching us ball jointed dolls! I am super excited about her class. There will also be several mini classes, and I have been asked to present. I’ll be teaching two short classes, one on how to sand paperclay to a porcelain like finish (I finally, finally figured it out! I’ll be putting a PDF together soon and selling in my shop, although I might give it away to my long time loyal followers! Stay tuned in the next month or so for that!), and a class on how to up-cycle materials into your doll making. Should be fun, but guess what, it’s not paid.

magicalartdolls.com

 

 So how to turn all of these things into paying gigs. The interest is obviously there, but where’s the money love? Another recurring theme that has been coming to me in the past several weeks is getting paid for your art. I had been finding articles, and blog posts from different sources and all by accident about this subject. Then Monday I found a post by Leonie Dawson regarding Sacred Pricing. "Everything – everything - must be an equal exchange of energy. It is sacred. Money is the manifestation of energy. Money is sacred too."

Ok, fine universe I get it. I need to come up with a way to turn all of these passions into money making ideas. The plan for the next several weeks is goal setting, figuring out my million dollar idea (well ok, $100,000 dollar idea) and running with it.

Amidst all of this I did have time to finish a new doll - and use my dremel in the process. Power tools are awesome.

This is Sarah. She is sculpted in paperclay, sanded to a porcelain like finish, painted with acrylic paints and has a sewn Tibetan Lamb wig. She is jointed at the arms, hips and knees with beads and bead caps. Sarah is currently in a library exhibit, but she will be going in my Etsy shop around the first of May - I'll keep you updated!

 Her boots are made from leather, and have a wooden clothespin base. Yes I re-purposed a clothespin into doll feet /boot soles - and didn’t cut my finger off in the process!

-

That's my story, and in a few weeks I'll have a concrete plan with achievable non-wishy washy goals, because if I don't I think the universe might slap me silly.

~Shauna

Marionettes!

No, I'm not making marionettes. One day, maybe, although I'm afraid I might saw my finger off in the process!

Today I want to share with you one of my favorite artist troupes. I've been following CastIron Carousel for a while now on facebook and found out recently they have a KickStarter campaign in process to bring their adult marionette show on the road!

The first video I saw of theirs was Fiction Failed this Family. I was blown away by the sheer awesomeness of what they bring to their art. (plus they are based in Portland, OR where we are planning to move in about 4 years!)

Their new show is "The Doom That Came to Fiddle Creak, A darkly beautiful, Lovecraft-influenced, marionette puppet play for adults, performed this Fall in Portland Or, and beyond"

If you want to help them fund their show and hopefully bring them on the road you can fund their KickStarter here 

They have some awesome pledge incentives too!

I am working on some new dolls to share, hopefully I'll have some in the next week or so to show you!

Have a great week!

Lifebook Update

Last year I signed up for the Life Book 2012 course, and didn't do most of the lessons. This year I actually won a spot in the 2013 course and I am focusing (using my word for the year!) on completing the lessons. I won the spot 2 or 3 weeks after the course started, so I am behind, but catching up little by little.

 Pre-Lesson - My fairy art mother. I really love her - I recently bought a Blythe doll and started drawing big head and eyes based off of her.

Lesson 2 - My intentions for the year (Yes I have skipped lesson 1 - it's not coming together the way I hoped!). Her hands came out a little strange, due to the way I cut them out, but overall I'm pleased. I used an image of a terracotta Lilith statue for the the head and arms, a stamp of a dress form for the body.

Lesson 3 - Mixed media flowers with Christy Tomlinson! (sorry for the weird photo - I'm still getting used to taking photo's of paintings. Normally I scan, but these are three dimensional flowers and the scanned photo came out really bad!)

I'm also working on some flower people dolls as part of an art abandonment project. These guys will be going out into my city this week for someone to find and take home. 

Have a great week!

Secrets

Secrets have been on my mind a lot lately. Secrets are an essential part of our make-up. Deep down inside everyone is at least one thing you keep private and secret from everyone around you. It eats away at you until you can't take it any longer and have to tell someone, anyone what it is your are keeping secret. Then the greatest tragedy of all is you realize you have kept it secret for so long, it doesn't matter as much as it should. Sylvia Plath once wrote:

"And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.” 

And yet, there is always a deeper underlying secret you have not yet revealed.You are afraid to reveal for fear of what others will think or that you may lose part of yourself. There is a saying that two can keep a secret when one of them is dead, (and is part of the Pretty Little Liars theme song - yes I love cheesy teen shows - even ones on ABC Family. There's a secret for you!) which is one reason the Secret Keepers came into existence.

My obsession with secrets has led me to making mini journals and Secret Keeper dolls. Those two things seem to be the only work I can finish lately. My newest mini journal is 2" x 3", and has 128 pages (counting front and back). I have about 10 more in process at the moment and hope to update my Etsy Shop with them and some dolls in the next couple of weeks. 

My newest finished doll is Suzannah Secret Keeper. Her head, neck, arms and bust are sculpted in Creative Paperclay and her body is a candlestick. She has Tibetan Lamb hair, and beads and beadcaps for eyes. She has no mouth so you can tell her your deepest, darkest, most twisted secrets and she won't be able to say a word.

Have a great week!

Focus

Wow – it’s been way too long since I have updated this blog! Dust bunnies are everywhere – I hope I can catch them all!

I try not to make resolutions, as they always seem to fall by the wayside after a few weeks. This year instead I am choosing a word for the year. My word is Focus. I needed something that would serve a purpose for both my art and my dance goals. Focus on technique, focus on practicing mindfully, focus on doing a little more today than I did yesterday and most importantly focus on letting go of the past and moving forward to the future. 

December 21^st was supposed to be the end of the world, and while it obviously did not end, something changed that day. I was able to exorcise my dance demons and move past the heartache and mental blocks that made me stop dancing two years ago. It was a rough road, but it led me the most memorable performance of my dancing “career”. I was offered the opportunity to dance at the historic Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, OK at an End of the World Party, although I now see it as a beginning of something party. 

Pick a musician and they have most likely played the Cain’s, from The Sex Pistols to Bob Dylan and everyone in between. Backstage at this legendary venue, there is a legendary wall of signatures, which we were fortunate enough to be allowed to sign (although I used my dance name - Sahana). I’m not sure how any future performance will top that night, but I will carry the energy of that night with me, and I feel it’s a sign of great things to come.  

I have some new things planned for the coming year with my dolls, and will be focused on updating this blog more often. I’d like to say, yes I’m going to blog twice a week every week or more, but that is setting myself up for failure – or at least feeling like a failure if I don’t meet the goal. Instead I’m going to focus on updating it more than I did last year.

2012 was a time of introspection and inaction. I hope to make 2013 a year of action and focus.  

That being said I did start on some new projects over the past month or so. A few mini books, and a doll I've had on my worktable for ages is finally coming together.

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. If you had to pick a word for yourself this year what would it be?

New Work

Hello my lovely and fabulous readers! I've been neglecting my blog and my art since summer started. I'm having a hard time having energy left at the end of the day when the day job is over, time has been spent with my family, the workout is done, etc. I was able to carve out some time a couple of weeks to work on some dolls. I hope you enjoy and I'll post more photos when they are complete. (and sorry for the photo's they were all taken with my phone)

I have been working on Halloween decorations since then and haven't had a lot of time for dolls. I finished altering a book, using a tutorial I found on the Life Art Collide blog 

All of my other props are still in process, but I will be posting more photos soon!