A New Habit

I am going to post pictures and writings here more often and eventually… the things I film! I’ve held this space together very loosely since 2015 and have never devoted regular time to it. I have some sort of urge to do this. I think I am the only one who visits here but that is okay. It’s neat to have a log of things to read and look at. If you have found your way here, perhaps you will like it too. Please feel free to leave a comment and say Hello. Otherwise the echo is quite loud :)

I’ve even spent time making a spot at a desk that will entice me to want to sit and take some moments to give words and pictures here. That has seemed to help a lot in making it a special time where I look forward to making some tea, sitting with some candlelight—because I love to do this most in the night time—and just write. I like the spirit of the night. I would stay out all night if I could, but it gets cold and I like to sleep.

While I’ve been working very hard rearranging my studio spaces, I am so eager to get out and explore with my new camera. I do that from time to time, especially when things feel “stuck”… and “stuck” seems to be the theme for awhile now. I move EVERYTHING and scrub and clean down to every little rock—and, I have a lot of rocks—I reset my tables and work benches, clean every tool, put it all back together again, and breathe in the new. That’s what I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks. I’m even painting my walls! While my pretty camera sits and waits. I of course have been taking photos though, and have done the WILD thing of turning my old, still-in-use camera from portrait to landscape, in anticipation of filming. It feels quite like my world has been turned sideways, in good ways. I am seeing things all anew and my dreams have been full of running and recording magic. I cannot wait until that moves from the dreamtime to waking time. My spirit has always seemed to live much ahead of my body, and this is no different.

Here are some landscape pictures from the past few days. Imagine them moving.

A monsoon blowing in from the west

I laid on the ground and studied the storm clouds. The word tempest repeated in my head. I love to paint scenes like this.

Sunflower spirits

The lens that never likes to focus but sometimes I like it that way

But of course Hattie will be joining me on these adventures!

Beeswax light selenite good night

In Stillness and Movement

There is something that I have been wanting to do for a long time, and it is another thing that I am finally seeing come true. Everything in its own time. Of course we must work toward what we want, but I do believe a part of the realization equation is the way we relate to time itself. How do we cultivate our sense of timing to balance action and patience? But that is a whole other subject!

In my past life working in tech, I was often a creative director and creator of video. How thankful I am for having learned much about the technological side of how we make and deliver video / film. The piece that was always missing, though, was that I was not able to create purely, the way I wanted to do it. There was that whole client aspect of the endeavor, and I worked for them, not myself.

Things are different now.

So, very, different.

A universe apart from that life. And in this universe, I am finally, after over a decade, able to call a camera that captures life in all of its beautiful movement my new prized tool.

I have a film camera.

And we are going to take you on adventures into the world that I see. There is something about when I go out into the wild land alone. Things happen that do not seem to happen when others are around. The sky is a bit more grand. The animals come closer. The wind parts the grasses and paths to wonder reveal themselves.

This has always been my experience with the world, and that was that. As I have written about and photographed life over the years, I have always felt the magic was not completely conveyed. People need to see it happening. I’m told that others need to be able to experience some of the things I do. That it is important I share it. I’ve explored this a lot—how to hold such a task and express it in a way that is meaningful and effective, in a way that honors what is simply quiet observance of the world around me.

My camera is the way.

I hope you are ready for this next chapter. I sure am! You will finally get to see lots of behind the scenes of how I make my jewelry! This has often been requested for years, and it’s something I have been wanting to show very much. So I’m going to go out and play with my camera for awhile, and will bring back treasure for you. Southwest magic, from stillness to movement, here we go~~

A Way of Being

A little catch up—

Happy summer. I hope the world is being good to you, despite the chaos, oddness, and tumult.

As you have probably noticed, I stepped away from social media a little while ago, and this has been a very big change. I have been posting on there for the better part of the last five years, keeping everyone updated almost daily on the art I am working on, or pieces of what I writing, or photographing, and it has been a fun journey for the most part. It has also been quite the vacuum of energy, in many facets, whose scope I did not realize until my hiatus this time.

Moving forward, I will be still be posting on Instagram & Facebook, but the frequency will change. The majority of my time will be spent without it, and then I will peer out of my cave several times each year to post and catch up, and offer what I have been making. A true mountain dwelling, jewelry forging, elusive dwarf creature from the Northern myths, I suppose! I hope this suits you. I will make it so that you are able to acquire jewels, knitted wares, sewn treasures, et cetera before winter holidays, and in the beginning of each season. That is how I see this evolving for the next year or so. And, if we are ever able to attend markets and festivals again, I will certainly be at those.

I think it will be exciting this way—for me, for you. There’s something about wondering what someone is up to, and then being able to explore a whole bunch of their new work. Some artists are starting to do online virtual shows, and this is something I’ve been pondering on, as well. Maybe it would be fun to have an evening where I set up a space online and you are welcome to come see what I have; it’s a bit of an odd thing, as opposed to an actual opening at a gallery, but I am warming up to the idea. We shall see. We have to flow with what the world is offering to us, and get on a boat that is apt to sail in winds where we would like to go—that’s how I look at it.

So, sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t, I will be sending updates there as well. It is so easy to miss a post on social media, as that is the way (t)here.

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hard at work

I am deep in the jewelry collection that has been keeping me inspired through spring and now into summer. I haven’t decided when I will release it, it may be next spring as that’s the season that feels right for these. They were going to accompany me to market this year, but then the world ended (momentarily, I do hope). It is mostly beaded pieces—earrings, bracelets, and necklaces and I can’t wait to unveil them! They are waiting patiently… I want to share the name of the collection, and the meaning behind it all so much, but it must wait!

I am busy planning my fall + winter projects, because those feelings are always around me. I am gathering wool to knit two coats, and I am so very excited to pick up the knitting needles again. I will definitely be putting hats and mittens in my shop this winter, as I designed patterns for those this past season. Eventually, coats and sweaters will be items I create for others, too. Designing those is a bit more work, and one of my coats will be just that: an original design that I can then make for others! I tend to plan way ahead, creatively, and my hands have to catch up.

I am going to be making my first quilt, that is the new thing I am going to embark upon creatively later this year. I am designing it now, selecting fabrics, and learning. It will be full of soft wintery blues, purples, snow white, watercolor batik fabrics, some midnight northern light hues, and the animals I dream of in that time. I love to see the entire thing in my head as I do right now, and then uncover the steps and materials I need to make it so. A dreaming quilt. Another thing I want to make for others, eventually. Magic~

And a jewelry collection! I had an incredible long dream of an earth spirit taking me on a walk around Iceland. He showed me two ways of being—enchantment, or disenchantment, and what awaits in both. The former required an absolute faith and steadfast work in the path I am walking. The latter, a much easier and mundane path, would be otherwise. I woke up that morning and cleaned my entire smithing studio until even my tweezers were gleaming. I have no doubt that being was watching me, tapping his foot, saying Get to work. So I will be back to forging silver pieces with most of my time when the weather turns cool. I have already made a few pendants to get that energy moving. I could write so much about all of that, but this has gotten quite long. I will save it for a later post.

I hope you stay well, and float on okay.

Blessings,
Christi

Into the Sixth Year We Go...

This month marks the fifth full year I have been working on 'this jewelry thing' as I call it. It is more than that, of course, it is my effort to create a life that grows in ways that hold me here.

Each day the roots have grown deeper, and that is just something I need in this life—deep roots that gnarl down into the earth holding up a tree that grows into the sky. It has always been and continues to be my hope that this will one day support me enough to build a small earthen home in a place that I feel free, where I can do all of the work that calls during my time here.

The world, with all of its holy beauty, is also a heavy place to walk within, and we each deal with it in our own ways. I have been reading a book on the history of beads and well, my mind has been opened many times over. I may expand on it more later, but the lesson that is running through my head right now is that beads were the first way, after creating fire and hunting for food, that humans learned as a way to survive and cope with the world. They are the first output of the development of abstract thought, coinciding with our first use of ritual and acknowledgement of an afterlife. Isn't that fascinating? Their history is unimaginably rich. And I can't help but smile because they are still the way some of us cope with the world! Myself included. Absolutely. I have felt like such a weirdo about it for years now, but I don't really anymore. It feels more like an honor to carry on this oldest of traditions and create jewels for others to wear.

This is but one piece, one bead, of the many layers of intention that go into every single thing that I make, always. None of that is imbued into mass produced, factory made, wasteful things that are the way of so many cultures nowadays. It is wild the way we have grossly commodified our oldest of sacred arts!

Regarding all forms of making the things we need and love: Let's get back to the old ways of supporting our communities and the makers within them, and open ourselves to the very old, wise, learned, magical, spiritual, natural, beautiful, connected ways found there.

Blessings.

The Eve of the New Year

2020 is almost here. It does feel like it's going to be a big year, perhaps it will be the year our visions of our really important dreams we reach for in our lives become real and clear. That is how I like to look at it. And that is what I hope for everyone.

The rabbit

The last year for me was the most challenging for my work, which is pretty much my life because that is the amount of effort I care to put into it. As I have written about before, creating a life that is your own, that is supported by your heart's work—doing things that you are most passionate about—is so very hard for some of us to achieve. This is intimately intertwined to your self, it is absolutely a spiritual journey, and when it is failing, well, it is a lot of work on its own to master the mind and keep rising through the travails. And that is what this year has been about, learning to rise again and again despite whatever extremely stressful things come, so that I can keep going and not fall prey to the shadows that do not stop haunting.

I feel close to the rabbit, an animal that seems to our human perception at such a disadvantage out there among the weather and predators. But they are who I see the most out of all the animal visitors. There are some living nearby, and every morning when I am up and beginning my day, there is the rabbit rising from his home to work through another day too. He is always there. Each night he makes it through a world that we certainly could not survive in, in all of his fine boned, supremely sensitive, highly aware splendor. He outwits what haunts. And each morning I see him, I smile and revere him for his unlikely strength.

If you are feeling this, I hope the new year brings whatever you may need to keep on the path toward your dream. For those of us walking it, we know there is no other place to go. So forge on. We will get there.

Winter Solstice deep in the mountains