A cold January and February. Me, inside, warm and busy, creating and shipping out lots of One Little Words. These are words that people make part of their day and year. I script them out of salvaged material. And they become visible.
I am grateful to be a part of Ali Edwards' powerful One Little Word movement.
I pause as every salvaged word is created and packaged with love. I think about each person and why they picked their word. I write addresses to far away places like Singapore and Australia with little messages on the package. And I think about my own one little words.
My OLW for last year was trust.
And if one picture could sum up a year, this would be it.
2014 was breathtaking. Scary. At times epic.
Although I took this photo in Southern Utah last October, I could easily be the person to the right taking stock of where she is standing.
Heights scare me. But I did make it all the way to the other side where the top layer of light rock ends. And then I made it back again with some help from friends. There were a few moments when I was on my hands and knees because it felt safer to touch the earth being so high up.
2014 was full of risk and reward on every level. And I did some of the truest artwork I have ever done. And a lot of inside work too.
My OLW for 2015 is clear.
And one picture that sums it up so far?
I took this yesterday as I was leaving my studio.
It is very clear I need to be in this space. My space.
It looks so calm, but my studio is full of lovely creative chaos. This may be the only calm spot in all three rooms. This little corner of a canvas.
In January, I shipped over a hundred salvaged word orders from my home. I wanted to get orders out but be near my family. But doing this from my home made working all the time too easy.
So I moved all of the work back into my studio. And my house became my home again.
But there were still a lot of orders to process and cards to package up. It was too much to do on my own. It was very clear I needed help.
And in came Kat. She works for me and my talented friend Heather. Thank goodness Heather found Kat. Kat is a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design. A day or two in my studio. A day or two with Heather. Life changing. I so needed help packing and shipping. And with illustrator files.
And separating work and home.
This is what the end of a day looked like this week. A basketful of packages to ship after Kat was at work. I closed my studio for the day. Then dropped off these packages to be mailed. And walked into a calm home. Clear headed. Open hearted.
Two months into 2015, and I feel shifts. A clear vision of what I need to do to go forward in a gentle way. Not in a crazy, work all day way.
I am okay with baby steps. Or crawling sometimes, like in Utah.
It all gets done. It always does.
Most importantly, we all get to choose how we want to feel in the process. And make shifts so we can feel that way.
xo.