Dream With Wild Abandon!

Outgrow Your Shoes - Digital Collage

If you allowed yourself...just once...to dream with wild abandon...where would your dreams take you? Would you be on a wistful journey, meandering through experiences at your own cadence? Or would you rather give up all control and fly unrestrained towards a destination that only Fate can dictate?

The focus of the latest Lunagirl Moonbeam Design Team Challenge is "Shoes".  This challenge is shared with Vicki Romaine's Blog, The Cheerful Stamp Pad.

Thinking about shoes brought me to one of my favourite sayings by Japanese writer and poet, Ryunosuke Satoro: "Let Your Dreams Outgrow the Shoes of Your Expectations". Lunagirl's images are inspiring as always. I chose a shoe and eagerly began my work.

Travel is my sanctuary and the act of my putting on my shoes was always the prelude to a great adventure. I never knew what to expect, but I wandered, ever hopeful that I would experience something different and wonderful.

By allowing my dreams to outgrow my shoes my life, and art, grew in directions I never thought possible. I wouldn't trade those experiences, the great and the not so wonderful, for anything!

So, fellow Artists and Dreamers...the call to outgrow your shoes is beckoning you. Will you take the dare?

Harmony Comes in Many Colours...

Harmony--Conventional Collage

STRATA: n., pl. stra•ta (ˈstreɪ tə, ˈstræt ə) stra•tums.
1. a layer of material, naturally or artificially formed, often formed one upon another.

How could I take this concept and turn it into a collage? Would I be able to harmonize the bits and pieces that found their way to me? I needed inspiration...

I went to our local Salvation Army to peruse their used books.  I picked up quite a few, and in the collection was a nearly new copy of "Memoirs of a Geisha". I read the book a long time ago and was enchanted by the movie. The cinematography was breathtaking. I was recently told at work my new position would take time to adjust to because it was like being asked to "learn Japanese".

Again..nudged my my Muse, I put added handmade papers, art papers, and Oriental papers into the design. I found a spot illustration of a Geisha a long time ago and filed it away in the "maybe I will use this someday..." box of art papers. She found a home at last. I also used a Chinese wood block and ink. The character is "Harmony". I stamped it on tissue paper which was sheer enough to paste over the Geisha image.

The Japanese type is from an ad I found in a magazine. I also used a story, the black and white text, from the same issue.

When I finished, I did feel that Harmony was the key to this collage. The colours seemed to blend even better than I hoped they would. 

Harmony...the word is simple...but means so much more. Harmony in Life, in Art, in Work. Isn't that what we are all striving for? I think the Muse would agree.