February on the coast of Maine.

Snow and more snow, lovely blanket across the land, frigid cold, old cars groan and doors stick shut, ground moans under foot, roads heave, ice forms sheets across the harbor, glistening, as further out in the bay the sea smoke rises and hovers.  I force myself to walk the road, in all weather, the neighboring estate's field of summer grass gone under the cascade of thigh high trackless snow.  Other tracks, car, dog, me walking, rabbit and fox, and I wonder where the deer are, waiting in some deep forested place or the seals, roaming their icy underwater world, gathering in what they can.  We walk about, and go on with our jobs, our sense of duty, and try hard to give our love to those around us..we struggle with giving when the dark beckons us to curl tight, hold fast.
February sun finds its way into the house..it is a trail, a road, a bed, a song.  It is warmth, earth's shining partner.

Happy New Year all of the earth..
us earthly beings, whence come we?

a spark of light, a breath of air, a deep void,
a God, a rib, a seed, a womb
a dream, a desire, a solitary moment,
an ecstasy, a glee, a wonderment.

Second week of November, 2010, time change this past Sunday..fall back one hour, and traveled down to the southern part of the state to deliver 28 paintings of mine to the Lifeworks Chiropractic Center.  The day was punctuated by overcast sky, blowing winds, the russets of the oaks along the highway, and fellow humans scurrying in their cars, route 3 and 295 busy, like we were all trying to collect our provisions for the winter, and in a hurry.
In this time of a slow turning to the longest night, I feel pulled by media/culture to do more, speed up.  Somehow the slow turning becomes a very fast spin into Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I need the daily reminder to step back, slow down, breathe deeply...stretch....and pray.  Remember what it means to be human in this time of autumn, when we gather in, share long and early dark nights with a candle, a flame, a warm friend or drink.  Share stories or songs told in person, in our own neighborhoods, dance while making music for one another.

September 19th..and summer is nearly gone. 
On a walk home from town, my youngest daughter collected her first horse chestnut of the season, cracked the spiny shell, and behold! the satin chocolate surface of the nut...beautiful, shiny, and newly revealed.
Summer was long this year, like the summers of my youth..hot days where rocks in the driveway, and roadside sand burns your barefeet, where the sun is literally blinding, the air hot and heavy, hanging gray/blue over the mountain vista, the ocean horizon.  Cool drinks and cool stores, doors wide open at home regardless of mosquitoes.. too hot for them. Here in the Northeast, windows with screens flung wide at night but the cooling breeze doesn't come.  Only a soft occasional whisper against a bare thigh or cheek as you lie in your bed, still and listening, waiting for sleep to come.
Summer saw family visits, car trips, friends parties and music gatherings, gardening, and hard work destructing and contstructing the studio.   A wondrous culminating ceremony in the hills of Vermont for my middle daughter, punctuated by thunder storms, brilliant sun, soulful food, gift giving people, and the last days in a long journey for eight young women.  This past year for her, one of seeking, searching, spinning, re-membering, storytelling, listening,  giving, creating.  The remembrance community, new to me, and already dear to my heart.  Those three days like a dream, like a family I never knew, but have always known.  So profound and I am processing/writing/drawing/painting/singing.  Wonderful work inspired by the teaching of Martin Prechtel, and inside us all; of the earth. 
This summer has seen the tearing down of our old small barn, and the putting up of a new studio/gallery for me..Structure is framed up, roof almost done..windows and doors coming..button up before the snow flies, or maybe even before a big birthday celebration in October, with music and light, good food and companionship.
check out the progress..www.flickr.com/photos/heididaub
Maine shows coming up..Pieces right now at Pearson Legacy Gallery on Deer Isle..a few pieces in Bangor at By Design Art Gallery.
A private showing at Laura Balombini's studio/house in Blue Hill Oct. 9 and 10.
A large solo show Falmouth at Lifeworks Chiropractic in Nov-Feb. exciting for the scope of the show..up to 30 large pieces.

Go out and support the live arts in your neighborhood, your community, support those who long to create, those who need you to listen, to see, to feel.  Maybe you are the receiver,  maybe you are the creator.  We all need someone to love.

June 14th..Flag day..1777. Dear friend's birthday tomorrow.
Gorgeous Peony busting out.  Bouquets shine on the kitchen table.
Rain and sun and lawn mowers.
Traveling, older daughters back home, making room
making pie, making dinner, making paintings.
Writing and making paintings.
Organizing art shows, submitting applications
playing music for kids, for the community
town hall contradancing till midnight.
Listening to jazz.
Listening to sweet harmony on the radio.
Windswept was bought and I stood on the other side of the fence.
Finally.
Not my home though.
Home for those who have the do-re-mi boys..
Friends, I'm glad for them, was a dream for me.
Summer is next in the big circle of life
the fullness of tree and vine
the love of flower and weed and fruit and fleas.
Working by day as gardener in other's gardens
While the oil continues to pour, into our southern salt waters.
What are the ramifications, how can we go on
like we have always done as we pollute the life force that feeds us
pollute the source from which we were born?

may 10th..and i sit at my kitchen table the waft of apple blossom, lily of the valley and lilac
crossing, mixing..a heady scent.
The dance is what it is all about..I am convinced..the movement, the flow
the give and the get
the body electric.

driving to bangor, the soft hills of north ellsworth..the colors unbelievable. 
the many hues of green, and yellow, like a fine weave.  and coming home around dusk,  the ochers and the soft pink crab apple..the clouds of white apple blossoms, in thickets, proclaiming the new, the start all over again.

spring has sprung early, and we hardly know what to do.

do you?  In such a riot of beginnings?

_________________________________________

Two lovely spring rounds (imagine the lively chorus of childrens' voices)

sweet the evening air of may
soft my cheek caresses
sweet the unseen lilac spray
with its scent it blesses.

white and ghostly in the gloom
shine the apple trees in bloom
apple trees in bloom!

___________________________


white coral bells
upon a slender stalk
lily of the valley deck my garden walk.

oh don't you wish
that you could hear them ring?
that will happen only when the fairies sing.

_______________________________

As we catapult into spring, (forsythia just blooming this moment..in coastal Maine! on April 8th!), I am looking back at the last month, and am grateful for so many aspects of my life here in this small town. To my hometown high school jazz band leader for creating one of the most dynamic jazz bands, and combos in the state, in any division, and entertaining the masses.  Kudo's Mr. O.! And to my wonderful husband who leads the elementary jazz band (and is feeder to this high school) ..Hooray for keeping jazz alive and well among the young'uns.!
Grateful to the island arts group on Deer Isle who put on a wonderful community production of "Sound Of Music"..live wonderful music as well.  Grateful to my bandmates, and the dancers who come to support our contradances..they are the inspiration. Grateful to the authors and poets who help spark my inner flame..this winter particularly Terry Tempest Williams, Mary Oliver and Georgia Heard.  Grateful for a warm home, warm food, the love of my family. 
My daughters..barefoot on Easter Sunday..through a yellow field by the ocean, to the root of a cathedral pine... youngest running the length of the lavender grey tree shadow, ocean sounding, crows watching in the forest edge at a distance, warm wind and sun, scanning the water for seals, a whale, an eagle, some sign while walking back along the shore, eyes searching for a heartstone, or a gold glimmer...but all is the ordinary beautiful, and at once, all these things I was searching for, become manifest, if only in my mind.   A  family of humans gathered together,  in love,  the capping waves and the bobbing of old wood and the constant wash of water over barnacle rocks at tideline.
Other young artists, musicians..making the bold leap of "being an artist in the modern world".
Fellow peninsula resident and yoga teacher Charlotte Clews quotes Martha Graham on her website,
"There is a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one you in all of time, this experience is unique.  If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost, the world will not have it."

Grateful...as Jean Ritchie sang in her "Blue Diamond Mine" song,  "Oh, fall on your knees and pray."

TIME CHANGE..
time of change the change of time, the dark gets darker the light gets lighter, the sun comes up later and goes to bed later, the dark creeps in and around in the evening when you thought you felt it an hour ago..

who decided "spring ahead, fall behind"?
can't we live in "one" time..the rhythm of the days by the light and the life that we lead?

I just want to watch the world. Listen to the new birds, marvel at the swelling buds, let the sun soak through my winter worn body.

With this brilliance after winters long hold, I am paralyzed, like being long underground, it takes time for one to rise, dust off, and venture forth on wobbly legs, the outside everpresent and calling,  the plants pulsing through the soil, all eager to start anew.

I just want to watch the world.

On the learning curve with reproductions, grant writing, community ventures...
an artwalk in blue hill?
a community blog/calender?
art shows at the wine shop?
learning dpi, ppi, resolution, how many gigs?? cut, paste, scan, crop, adjust, sharpen, edit, delete, pdf, jpeg, tiff, ...my head near full and spiraling...
Investment in my business..purchases to be made..how?

adobe photospop, scanner, camara, packing materials, reprints, cards, readying images for reproduction.
okay..

what happened to singing and dancing?  PAINTING?

becoming nauseated at the screen, the imperceptable flicker, the addiction to google, the "find out".
Terry Tempest Williams suggests,  "the information we value is retrieved, never internalized".

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?   T.S. Eliot

I need to paint..to walk and pray, to sing, to breathe this moist cool salt air of maine in February, 
half snow
half rain
half thaw, half winter, half spring, 
bring some projects to the "whole"; the half done.


Gardening on February 22, (what..in Maine?)  good to be reminded in my body memory, of the ancient tasks...

raking leaves from last fall, cutting back my front garden, dragging all in a sheet, in a bundle over my shoulder, like a "santa", my loot for the compost, the garden, the rich soil to come.  

End of January, very brisk, blue sky, frozen snow, skids of ice, crack and creak of tree limbs in the gusts of wind.  The community has lost several members the past few weeks, memorials to bring us all together, comfort us living ones.  Dances to fight the blues and send all the money to Haiti, and we can only hope the funds actually find their way there.  Small town we are all entwined, and if we keep circling wider, we find still, golden threads of connection.  Trying to envision my future, the steps I need to take now to get me there.  My thoughts fall to my art and how for so many years I have been pushing pushing to get the work out and seen, and somehow this is not the road right now.  I seem to be following the call of homing in, establishing my own venue, and let the world come.  This feels multifaceted, yet liberating.  I am heartened by the words of Peter London:  www.peterlondon.us
"The root and full practice of the arts lies in the recognition that art is power, an instrument of communion between the self and all that is important, all that is sacred."

and this from Rollo May:
"What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?"

 (a revision of my earlier statement): My paintings evolve from an introspection, coming out of an awareness, a sense.  There is a surrender, an aspiration to a holy moment so to speak. The forms that are emerging feel at once unknown, but familiar. For me this is their gift, their revelation, that we begin to recognize some small thing, and start to perceive the miracle of everyday that often lies hidden beneath our modern veil and forgetfulness, but is always there, waiting, beckoning us to see, to feel, and to remember.

I have grouped approximately 15 acrylic paintings on paper and panel, revolving around a prose piece I wrote entitled: “To Hear The Forest Speaking”.  It is my desire, that through these paintings the viewer is encouraged to enter into a metamorphic world where the essence of our original selves is born, our humanness and our connection to the earth.

To Hear The Forest Speaking


You have to give up your cell phone.
Your computer, radio, T.V., blackberry, video game, ipod, stereo.  The contents of your refrigerator, your pantry snacks, coffee, alcohol, give it up for this day.  Your hair color, scenting your body, making up your face, shaving.  Put down your tools, knives, pens and hammers, pots and pans, your boomboxes and briefcases, brooms and vacuum cleaners.
Put down your guns, cut the engines, unplug the cash register, ground the plane.  Leave your watch at home and your jewelry, your papers, books, vitamins, pills.  Leave the hospital, the office, the nursing home and factory.  Close the school, the bank, the mall, and your purse, leave it home.

You have to get out of your automobile and walk,
like a human, into the woods.  You need to go so far in,
you don’t know your way out.

Now listen and breathe, and listen beyond what you can hear, look beyond what you can see,
feel the pulse of a tree, your arms wide open and receiving.

You can’t imagine how beautiful you are, when we all come to find you.