Merry Christmas to ALL 2012

December 2012

Merry Christmas to ALL!

Our leap of faith started the day we signed the contract to build our new house in Manteo, North Carolina.  This December is our 1^st anniversary living in that house.  The next leap of faith will be December 2013 when Jay officially retires from Erie Insurance; a long awaited day! 

This past year I have been teaching basic skills to adults working on their GED’s at the local college.  In January I will kick off a new offering at the college called ‘What It Takes.’  I will be working with unemployed adults to help them develop the soft skills (such as work ethic, attendance, teamwork, etc.)  one needs to be successful.   Believe it or not, many employers find new employees don’t always understand the importance of these needed traits. 

This past year I got out the paints and brushes and worked to develop a new painting style  – abstract expressionism (new for me).  I’ve connected with the local Art Council and I hope to be able to exhibit some work in their gallery next year.  Also I continue to put pen to paper and write.

Jay and I celebrated our 25^th wedding anniversary this year (my head is still spinning!).  I find that sometimes we finish each other’s sentences and carry on a continuous conversation without missing a beat.  In our early years together, we would get frustrated because we didn’t always understand each other.  After 25 years, we get frustrated because we do!! 

I have great wealth that has nothing to do with dollars:  a wonderful husband, precious grandchildren, and outstanding adult children with wonderful loving families.  And of course, we have Ruby and Lady to watch and love.

At the end of each day during our holiday season, Jay and I dim the lights, Jay pours a glass of wine, and we sit next to the Christmas tree and listen to soft Christmas music playing in the background.  It is a time to reflect on the past year and the events that took place: a summer family get-together at our house – lots of beach time and plenty of sand; visits from Jay’s mom, visits from old friends and new friends; time spent planting and tending our gardens (which were magnificent); ballgames with Todd & Leesa, Chip and Jay spending good father/son time together; special grandparent day visits to Lizzie’s classroom; dance recitals, award ceremonies at Cape Henry High School; celebration of Annalise’s dream come true of attending college in Boston next fall; cold early Saturday morning soccer games at Cape Henry; Jay working out in HIS workout room;  a new motorcycle with Jay’s name on it sitting in the garage; Lisa’s published book for Nurses; Harriet’s published novel that is #3 on the NYT best seller list; Barack Obama winning a 2^nd term (can’t forget that!).

 Life goes on, time marches by.  Jay and I look forward to the New Year that will be full of things that have never been.

We wish you good health, contentment, and enjoyment of family and friends in the New Year.  

Paula & Jay

August Work

Seascape

Shelf in the William Sonoma store

Secrets

Ebb & Tide

 Found In the Junk Drawer

Young Girl's Dream

Two Birds In the Bush & One In the Hand

Isn't the imagery found in this Bible verse beautiful?

For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.  

The Lighthouse

When the light went out,

if it had but looked down,

past the rocks and waves, heavy now and grey, it

would have seen the dreamer.

Then, from the other side in darkness, it

would have heard the lament, 

turning about, gliding silently,

stretching to search the beach,

while not disturbing even one sand castle.

Caught in the strobe, the stony shore

throws shadows while the lonely sentinel eye

opens and closes.

Turned about, held in the moment,

it looms above the sea

against the darken sky.

If ever it comes to some end,

at a devil’s or angel’s hand,

let it be remembered  - alone,

a seeker of the now

by stops and starts of light and dark

intertwining those below.

Secrets Shared

Warm breezes whisper

Secrets young girls share,

Innocent and naïve.

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Pussy willow flutter and dance with glee.

.

Many times, when I lie alone

In a pensive or vacant mood,

I recall the dance of the pussy willow,

Swaying in the wind,

A ripple pushed across the lake.

And more - traces of young girls’ muses higher than the trees.

To join together in the sky - never-ending lore.

)

Fairies in Winter

PAULA HANNAH HANNAH-MAURI'S POEM:

Winter Fairies

Fairies shrouded in white, dancing, whirling left and right,

sporting the winter game.

Swirling beyond,

they turn and in step

follow the icy wind.

Fairies, together,

spin and spiral about

above the white below

that reaches up

to touch the grey sky –

the veil of morning.

At last the fairies come to rest

and gently sink into

the drift below.

Swiftly, they vanish

and join together as one.  

A Few New Paintings -- May/June 2012

The Wind, Our Constant Companion

We've been sitting on the deck looking southwest and watching the weather come in. Quite a distance out we see flat, anvil shaped clouds moving our way Over head the clouds are very busy pushing around large puffs of fog and mist. The wind is howling but the wind ALWAYS howls here, a constant companion. We were at a neighborhood get together on Monday and one of our neighbors told us that when they were looking at the property they eventually purchased the realtor discouraged them from buying it because she said 'it is so windy out there, no one will put a house up.' We know she was partially incorrect because we are here with some neighbors but she was right on about the wind!

Snow Fairies seen during the month of May

I did some tweaking to this poem - 

Fairies shrouded in white, dancing, whirling left and right,

sporting the winter game

Swirling beyond,  

They turn and in step

follow the icy wind.

Fairies,together,

Spin and spiral about.

Above the white below  

That reaches up

to touch the grey sky –

The veil of morning.

At last the fairies come to rest

and gently settle on

the mound below.

Swiftly, they vanish

into one with all that fell. 

What Does It Take To Be Creative?

What does it take to be creative?

As I reflect on the past, I realize that as I matured my creative passion grew more intense and purposeful.  I married my first husband when I was in my early twenties and I concentrated my creative juices to make a comfortable and cozy home.  Money was scarce so my friends and I would spend hours going to tag sales, garage sales, and junk sales searching for the perfect whatnot to create the cozy living room or bedroom on pennies.  Through experimentation, I became more aware of how textiles could work together, room arrangements and color combinations could be use to reflect personality and mood, and collectables could add fun and whimsy to a home. When I cooked and baked I tried not just to create yummy dinners and desserts, but also beautiful ones with elegant presentations.

Many years later and, with a new husband, I moved to North Carolina.  My creativity has flourished since our move because in times of quiet,  my brain can rest and process and dream.  My best ideas come to me when I’m relaxed or not preoccupied with producing anything.

Creative people dream new ideas and out of the box concepts and then actually set about to bring them into existence.  Creativity takes time and work and patience to nurture.  It involves learning lots of little skills and then figuring out how to put them together to make something new and special.  Creativity means setting fear aside and putting your heart and soul into a creation (even if it may be criticized and rejected).  Creativity can’t happen without risk.  There are no right or wrong ideas.  I try to trust my intuition.  When I jump off and explore new ideas, the positive energy comes right back to me in ways I had never imagined.

A Daughter's Reflections On Her Mom

My Impossibly French Mom

My mother had French blood running through her veins and like many French women, she had an eye for fashion and a taste for elegance.  My husband saw it.  When talking about my mom, he often says,    ‘Your mom had a sense of style.’ 

She knew how to be stylish.  My mother bought high quality and classic clothes, perhaps because they enhanced the way she felt about herself.  She didn’t mind spending money on her wardrobe   She chose colors and styles that complimented her.   She wore very little make up, lipstick and a touch of powder.   Fine lines surrounded her eyes and her hair had a little grey; yet, it was hard for people to guess how old she was.  For years, she looked like she could be anywhere between fifty-five and sixty-five years old.   She was nonchalant about aging and her attitude seemed to be a man could love and have fun with a woman of any age.   Her dark eyes could be warm and compassionate, could twinkle mischievously, or snap in anger. 

She loved to swim and her strokes were fluid, strong and graceful.  They looked effortless.  She didn’t have an ounce of fat on her body.

My mother had a bit of the ‘impossibly French’ attitude.  She made a little time for herself everyday.  She could be sexy, sophisticated, vivacious, and flirtatious.  She turned everyday into an ‘la petite aventure.’

One More To Add To The Collection

This one was just for fun -  

Painting: Serenity and Chaos

Painting:  Serenity and Chaos

I think the idea that a simple symbol can represent a complex notion, or even a story, makes images an essential means of communicating ideas.  Of course, the style and ability of the artist combine with the image to strengthen the intended message.

I love to fill my paintings with color.  Color gives me, as the artist, and you, as the viewer,  yet another level of experience – another language.  The enormous scope of possibilities of techniques, styles, color, medium, open up endless choices in how to depict an image.  Not only are the techniques of working with color very different from one medium to another, but also the process of thought in producing the work suddenly alters.  The challenges are many, but there's something incredibly satisfying, not to say almost magical, about being able to express an idea with a few swift strokes.  

Abstract Expressionalism

In these paintings I have attempted to capture energy, movement, excitement. 

 I had fun painting these.  I hope you enjoy them.

My Life As An Artist

My Life As An Artist

As far back as I can remember I was always making some kind of art, from sculpting clay to holiday decorations and craft projects.  When I was old enough to get an allowance, I spent it all on art supplies. As a child I was happy to copy, to coordinate my hand and eye and attempt to achieve technical mastery of my tools.  Back then, the Sunday Pittsburgh Press always included an article about a famous person and with the story, they published a sketch of the person. Many artists drew the portraits so the styles and techniques varied.  Using Conte crayon and charcoal on newsprint pads I imitated the styles. In my early teen years I did a lot of drawing from nature delighting in the intimacy gained through such a close look at a subject.

 A couple of years later I began drawing portraits (mostly of my family.)  I also loved to draw caricatures even though my subjects would often complain I accentuated their worst features!

After graduation from high school, I attended Edinboro State College, as it was called then.  I took several drawing, painting and design/ color classes along with art history, printmaking, jewelry, pottery, and sculpture classes. In the drawing and painting classes we stood at easels and drew or painted still lives and figures of the models posing for us.  These classes helped me to loosen up – to use the larger gesture of my whole arm instead of the tight strokes of cramped fingers.  I continued drawing and painting on my own, developing a looser style which was much more expressive in terms of color and form.

Next stop:  Miami, Florida…

 I liked the freedom of being in a new city and exploring all it had to offer.  We were young and this was my kind of place.  My hair bleached out to match the bright Miami sun.  Sloppy t-shirts and jeans were the norm, and just about everyone I knew was acting up or acting out.  I applied to Barry University and continued my art studies.

At the time, the popular notion of a serious artist was to be an alienated rebel who trampled on tradition, howled at the absurdity of life, and looked down on middle class values.  I identified with this icon of my generation.  I strove to excise myself from the mainstream. 

At Barry the classes were three to six hours, which gave the students plenty of time to immerse themselves in their projects. We drank coffee and talked to each other for hours.    We built light and sound machines, projects we set on fire, constructions to tickle the senses. I had classes in calligraphy, architecture, one and two dimensional design, life drawing, and painting.  I added collage materials to the oil paint and that process intensified my sense of composition.

Since then my life has taken a lot of turns.  I’ve lived in most of the states in New England and plenty of them up and down the Eastern Coast, and now in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Through most of it, I kept drawing and painting.

Today, my art is in a non-objective stage.  All art is abstract in the sense that it moves away from ‘reality’ to some degree.  Non-objective art, however, does not begin with the world and often has no reference point.  When I paint, I use acrylics that work better for me because they dry quickly.  I can work on a painting over days, adding layers onto the canvas.   The windows in my ‘studio’ face south; the other windows face west and look out on the boat ramp.   It’s a lovely environment to work in.

A few Samples of My Work As An Artist

       

Tribute to my Father written by my sister

The following was written by sister and so touched me that I took the liberty to post it on my blog too.  I wanted to share it with my friends.  The credits at the bottom are her's.  I hope she will not be upset.   I miss my dad.

A QUIET CARPENTER

He was a quiet man, a carpenter, a builder of houses and maker of furniture. I grew up in the house he built and live now in my own home surrounded by the furniture he made for me: the tall grandfather clock in my living room that chimes every quarter hour to the delight of my young grandchildren, my bedroom suite of lovely Honduras mahogany, scarred over the years by my careless spilling of perfumes, the ranch oak twin beds my boys slept in, the spinning wheel that actually spins. All of this and more my quiet father made.

He built the basement of his house, patiently, one cement block at a time, and we lived in that basement as he built the rest of the house, slowly, paying for building supplies as he went. Aunts, uncles, cousins would gather every weekend to help with the house. The men held nails in their mouths, taking them out only to smoke Camels and Lucky Strikes. The women carried pitchers of iced tea to the men and made sandwiches with thick slices of home-made bread. At the end of the day of labor, my father would build a bonfire and we would roast corn on the cob in their husks. The corn was from my father’s garden, planted in long arrow-straight rows. I remember the sweet-charred smell of that corn and the warm, wet feel of melted butter on my fingers.

After dinner, I would settle in to read my Trixie Belden book but would lay the book aside to watch and listen to the adults discuss, debate and – finally - loudly argue who was a better president, FDR or Truman, the chances of the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the pennant and the quality of Chevrolets versus Fords. The conversations grew more intense, more animated, swirling around the table, little tornadoes of sound. My father sat at the head of the table, quietly whittling a piece of wood, rubbing his thumb on the surface, smiling, a crooked little grin that turns just the left side of his mouth up. He listened to the debates but stayed outside of them, on the fringe of the noise and the laughter. Even when my mother would demand his opinion, he would just smile and shake his head. 

 

I remember sawdust in his hair, on the backs of his hands, on the top of his shoes.  I remember the smell of wood like an aura around him. Pine. Oak. Maple. But what I remember best and treasure the most is the gift he made for my son.

My son, born with congenital heart defects, suffered a head injury at age thirteen and a subsequent cardiac arrest.  He was resuscitated but was in critical condition in Intensive Care with an intracranial pressure monitor screwed into his head.

His prognosis was poor, we were told. Even if he survived, he would suffer brain damage, “Diffuse cerebral edema,” the doctors said in mournful voices, shaking their heads. The nurses swabbed his shaved scalp, cleaning the skin around the intracranial pressure monitor screw and then patted me gently on the back. 

My father refused to visit him in the hospital. Quietly but stubbornly he refused, shaking his head, simply saying he would wait until later to see him.  There might not be a later, I wanted to scream. I didn’t, couldn’t understand. I was angry and hurt by his refusal. It wasn’t until later that I was filled with awe at the faith of my father.

My son, indeed, did recover. The barbaric pressure screw was removed from his head.  His blonde hair began to grow back, stubble covering the scar. The respirator was slowly weaned away. He came home, thin and weak, but alive and alert.  He came home to sleep in the bed my father had made for him.

When he came home, my father came to visit him.

And he brought the most amazing gift, a testimony from my father to my son. While my mother, my husband and I hovered at the bedside of my son, my father had labored in his work shop. He had measured, cut, constructed, sanded and varnished a desk for his ill grandson. Sawdust in his hair and hope in his heart.

A desk of golden oak and a matching chair.

He carried the heavy desk with ease, into the house, smiling, this quiet man in his bib overalls and flannel shirt. He carried it up the steps and into my son’s room and then carried the chair.  He helped my son from the bed to the desk chair and knelt beside him to hold him steady.  My son has blue eyes, the same clear blue as my father’s. They smiled at each other, the same crooked little grin. I then understood why my father would not go to the hospital.  He had better plans, in his workshop defying the prognosis, defying despair, defying grief.

He believed his grandson would be able to sit at that desk.  He turned that belief into a testimony. A desk. A chair.

My father. My hero. A builder of houses, a maker of furniture. A man of faith.

The above was published in My Dad is my Hero anthology. I have also been published in Voices from the Attic (a Carlow UniversityAnthology),Pittsburgh Magazine and the Tribune-Review, I also received an honorable mention from an Atlantic Monthly, fiction contest.

Art is long and life is short.

I’ve been drawing or painting all my life; sometimes I’m just fooling around with the materials and other times I’m more serious. I have deep respect for those artists who have come before me.  I’ve studied many peoples’ styles and have taken a workshop or two. Lately, I have begun to notice similar techniques in much of their work and patterns in my own work:  repetition of the tried and true.   

At this point, I would like to forge a new path for myself although it’s not very clear yet. I want to capture emotion in my work.  I’m in uncharted territory with no prior experience.  When judging your work in terms of technique, it is pretty easy to see how well the piece turned out.  When you shift and start working to convey emotion, the critique changes.

When I paint, draw, write, I create my own circle and all outside worries are not allowed into that space.  Sometimes I have felt alone and lost in that circle but inside I have the freedom to focus on what I’m trying to do.

Reflecting on previous efforts to paint,  I realize that my whole body becomes involved. I walk back and forth, swing my arm and let the brush dance across the canvas. Occasionally the paint even lands on the canvas.  It’s that energy I want to capture.  How do I show that emotion, what marks do I need to make on the surface?  What colors should I use?  What movement should the piece have?

And,  I need to remember that expressing emotion directly through color, line, and form, still requires attention to composition and all the other elements.  My personal signature needs to be there.  Just as an author develops her own voice, so does a painter.

Design the Perfect Piece

Trying to Design the Perfect Piece

Today, I spent the afternoon working on design possibilities for my outdoor welded sculpture.  This project presents many challenges.  I’m attempting to design a contemporary piece, not too large, with graceful lines and fluency.  I might incorporate movement.  I think we all are born with an innate desire to communicate, first through sounds but eventually written expression such as early childhood random scribbles.  Before I go much further in my design process, I need to narrow the definition of what I want the piece to communicate.  I hope I can have something in place by February 10^th when we meet as a class for the 1^st time. 

I wanted to share this piece I have taken from one of my magazines:

‘Sometimes,  I make myself pretend I don’t know this guy:  This is not the man I’ve climbed into bed with for more than 20 years.  No, this man (like every person) is a walking mystery story, filled with ghosts and untold tales.  Maybe there’s something about him I still don’t get.  It can help to picture yourself as two old friends talking in a coffee shop – with a friend, you would step back ten paces and explore all angles.’

Yesterday it became very obvious to me that there are many ‘angles’ to Jay I don’t understand and maybe never will.  

Demise of books?? REALLY??

The past weekend I’ve read a number of news stories predicting future styles and trends; some of the ideas seemed a little crazy to me and others I found rather discouraging.  The most discouraging one predicted, or rather recommended, the demise of the printed book.  Electronic content is more efficient and more economical the writers argued. 

What I think is a book is more than just content.  It is heft, smell, design, the little sticker on the back that tells you where you bought it,  the wrinkled pages that remind you that you read most of it while you soaked in the tub. 

Our house is packed with books on many subjects.  We have shelves of books about the Civil War; we have bound sets of antique classics. Our bedside tables are piled with recent fiction.  We have Stieg Larson nestled in with volumes on garden design and chess strategies.  And there are shelves whose contents clearly say  “Grandkids, these are yours!” 

Reading, after all, is a solitary activity.  It’s between you and the book you are reading.  There is so much to read you can never get bored.  For me, the most remarkable stories are biographical tales that recall how a person faced adversity.  Diaries kept by pioneer women, housewives during the depression, or just ordinary women during extraordinary times fascinate me.  Maybe it’s the snoopy part of me?

The best part of reading is that your imagination gets to work on its own without being fed from any other source but the writer’s voice