Deconstruction

As I move forward toward the making of ART CLOTH, I've been running across the concept or the technique of "deconstruction" -- as in taking something apart after it has been put together. "Breakdown" is another word I'm seeing used in the same or similar context. How appropriate for me these days, because I am in the process of deconstruction in an entirely different domain -- my whole life. More on this in a moment...

A number of years ago a good friend at the time gave me a card that reads:

the most visible creators i know of

are those artists whose medium is life itself.

the ones who express the inexpressible --

without brush, hammer, clay or guitar.

they neither paint nor sculpt -- their medium is being.

whatever their presence touches has increased life.

they see and don't have to draw.

they are the artists of being alive...

When I think of myself as an artist, as I am, I know at a deep level that the art I create isn't about a particular medium I'm using, but that it is about expressing something inside of me that over the years has been brought into being in a variety of forms. I am truly an artist of being alive. Even though there are times when I feel the victim of what life has brought me, there are other times when I feel the mythic quality of my journey as an artist of being alive, when I am really connected with the larger perspective of what I'm doing here on planet Earth.

I'm in the process of a change of life, and I think it entirely appropos that now that I am well beyond a year past the moment of menopause, things are shaking up in my life at the root level and of an entirely different magnitude. (I should say here that I am feeling my way through the verbal articulation of this change as it's happening, and I am looking and talking about it from a different perspective as well, on A Crone's Chronicle, my personal blog. So check that out, too, if you're interested in following my process.)

More later...I've got to go out for a few hours. But I've lots more to say, so stay tuned!