A Laundry Line of Meditations and Reflections...at Fort Worden until May 18

 I've been doing an artist residency with Centrum Residencies at Fort Worden and have created an installation which I'd like to share with those who are interested to see and experience it. I will have an Open Studio 2-4pm this Thursday and Friday (May 14-15). --Other times for viewing might be possible by contacting me and let me know when a good time for you is before Monday the 18th.-- The studio is at Fort Worden across the street from Madrona MindBody Institute in the 205 building upstairs on the northside - Included here is a statement and some photos to give you an idea of the installation.

A Laundry Line of Meditations and Reflections....

Each morning, I sit down with coffee, pen, and notebook and begin writing whatever is on my mind or wants and needs to get out of my head. I think of it as journaling, though at times it feels more like miscellaneous mind purging — helping me reconnect with myself and the world after sleep. My intention is simply to keep my hand moving with words, without judgment, as I slowly wake into the day.

In recent months, this morning practice has expanded into making white marks on small pieces of precut black paper. Sometimes I’m drawn to use words, sometimes only lines or dots. The drawings arise from where I am inside myself and whatever I’m feeling, noticing, or wanting to attend to in that moment. This process functions as a kind of meditation and release.

I began playing with white markers on black paper years ago, during a time when I wanted to work in the studio but had no idea what I wanted to do (and I don’t like to “draw”). I wanted to get my hands and mind involved in some simple creative activity that I wouldn’t judge. Making white marks on black paper suggested itself, and it felt like a process of bringing light into darkness — rather than scratching out the light by putting black marks on white paper. It felt less like adding something more to the world and more like clearing space within an overcrowded world and mind.

At first, the drawings involved slowly making line after line with a white marker, across a black piece of paper — lines as straight as possible with my shaky hands — each line drawn below the previous one, as close as possible without touching it. The process became a sweet kind of active meditation involving attention, breath, acceptance, patience, and persistence. Recently the white mark making evolved into those you see here.
This installation gathers together several months of these daily visual meditations. The red line connecting the pieces, for me, represented, a kind of lifeline or thread, inspired in part by William Stafford’s poem The Way It Is (excerpt)
“There’s a thread you follow.

It goes among things that change.

But it doesn’t change.”

The ladders, reused from an earlier installation, add another metaphorical element — suggesting movement through the ups and downs of daily life and the continual attempt to navigate between inner and outer worlds.