Virginia A. Spiegel

Once December comes, I’m always looking for peppy things to make me happy (and the winter seem shorter).  I came in to my studio yesterday and noticed all the cheerful blue.

Do you like my “Blue Moo?”  Really it’s a WittFitt “chair.”  I found my “Blue Moo” after seeing an article in the local paper about schools using these “chairs.”  If you are like me, sitting and sewing for hours on end (even with breaks) just kills my legs.  This seems to be an excellent solution.  I have absolutely no affiliation with WittFitt, but love the product and their customer service.

Notice the rolled art quilt (Boundary Waters 51) with the blue backing.  It’s rolled because it is my entry to a hush-hush juried invitational.  I hope to finish it up early in 2010 and MOVE ON.

This is not Photoshopped in any way.  The sun came up through the clouds and snow this morning and the world was pink.  I went out later in the normal white world and it was a photographer’s dream.  Shoveling, not so much.

Wild at the Edges:  Inspiration from a Creative Life evolved by keeping in mind the kind of book I like to take to bed with me (maybe with a glass of wine or a mug of hot chocolate) and peruse as the spirit moves me.

You will find encouraging thoughts about life and art, hidden treasures of poems, close-up photos of art and nature and, last, but not least, a very personal view of the driving forces behind my creative life.

Preview Wild at the Edges here.

25% of all profits from this book will be donated to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.  Fiberart For A Cause has donated more than $190,000 to the American Cancer Society.

It’s a tradition in my family to have handmade ornaments for everyone at our holiday gathering.  My sister, my Mom and I used to take turns making them.  But we are up to 26 people, so the last couple of years we have made them as a group project.  Since Mom and Nancy were at my house for a visit, we decided to go ahead and make them in October.

I set up a six foot table and we loaded it down with beads and fibers to be sewn on small ovals.  But what we most loved was THE BUTTON BOX.  Does anyone still keep one of these?

This is my Mom’s collection, but Nancy is the keeper. I dumped it out on a big cookie sheet and we kept it right on the breakfast bar and not on the side table.

What fun!  Glass buttons, metal buttons, tiny buttons with a rim of color, “jeweled” buttons, cloth-covered buttons, and on and on.  All of the buttons were cut from clothing by my Mom; maybe some even came from my Grandma’s button box. I must admit I “liberated” several buttons that looked like little gears (long underwear buttons???).

I’m sure that some of our ornaments won’t be appreciated (as much as we would like) for their embroidery, buttons and beads, but it was worth it just to take a stroll through the button box.

Photo by Nancy J. Spiegel Rosman

When I am in the Boundary Waters I try to keep my mind blank, but open.  A terrifically hard thing for me personally.  But art will out.  We were having “rock time” and I started pushing “stuff” around with a little stick.  The time floated by as the little stick worked its magic in finding and arranging things found on the rock.  I wonder what the next person who arrives on these campsite rocks will think of this found-object collage.

I’m always looking, looking, looking from the canoe, on the portage, and in camp.  Here are some of the themes I am, once again, contemplating with these new images as inspiration:

The juxtaposition of hard and soft; the timelessness of nature, the ephemeral nature of humans.

The beauty of decay, the cycling of all things in life from life to death.

The abundance of everything in nature, even spawn upon the shore.

The power of water; the mystery of reflection.

The Beginning of Pink

June’s Trip #13 to the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness was pretty much a disaster, but it was compensated 1000 times over by this delightful journey.  We had an adventure-packed ten days of portaging, paddling, and appreciating nature.  Every other day we would “gear up” and paddle forth.  We portaged over 13.5 miles total, but were always done fairly early in the day.  The weather was phenomenal.  Our only disappointment was seeing only one moose (rut hadn’t started yet – very late), but he had only one antler!

Highlights included a concert from a pack of wolves camped out in our neighborhood and four beavers doing a ritual of some sort involving an all-nighter of tail slapping.  Of course, stunning as always were the eagles, the stars, the tall pines, and the strong teamwork of the Sister System required by the Boundary Waters.

That Sinking Feeling
Photo by Nancy J. Spiegel Rosma

One of our great adventures was beaver dams!  (I am not even going to start on impassable rapids with no portages and very little water – another whole story.) We would run the boat up as close as possible and I would jump out.  Sounds easy.  But you are climbing up/standing on a shifting mass of sticks – - some dried and easily broken, some loose, some firmly wedged in mud.  The water rushes between and over your feet and in the back of your mind in this little false alert going off, “I’m sinking, I’m sinking.”

Sister Nancy would jump out, we would take out one pack and lay it on the dam and then heave Beauty, our 17.5 foot Kevlar canoe, with the other two 50 lb. packs over the mass of sticks. Nancy would fling the pack back in and then take the fully-loaded boat out, swing it around and I would jump in.  Off to the next one.  Of course, coming back with the current was a different story (and actually easier).  The photo is the from the first and smallest dam (we did 3 out and 3 back) which compensated by being built on boot-sucking mud.

More later this week on things that inspired me on this journey, but here is one of the huge variety of mushrooms we photographed :

Pedestal