Busy busy day...

Art and life can sometimes be a difficult mix. Two of my grandsons have been visiting, with Oliver, the granddog. Oliver is a Cocker, on a natural wire. That dog can bounce in a way that would outdo Tigger and is close to Superman's single bounds! That dog can clear an art table in no time flat. Glass went everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.

I'm finishing up Mother Earth, and didn't have the glass from her put away yet. I have the Green Man to finish, so I also had that glass up there.

Doh,

I know better; this was a case of magical thinking on my part. I forgot that this dog can levitate. I think he uses the floppy ears to helicopter up there...

Just to be safe, I put away the gesso mix with the rabbit skin glue. I keep having this disturbing image of acid free dog poo, colored titanium white, all over the yard...and the deck... oh, yeah, can't forget the laundry room....

It's a damned good thing that dog is cute, otherwise he might become a set of slippers...

Mother Earth

Here She is, my latest creation, the Ojibwa creation story. Mother Earth, her body is all of water; Muskrat sacrifices himself to get the mud from the bottom of the waters, to put on Turtle's back, to make a home for us.

Four birds are sent out with sacred seeds to populate the land.

I have Ojibwa DNA. Both of my biological children have Native dentition. I just wish I knew more about our heritage. I don't mean the dry stuff that one finds in books, but the day to day stuff; like the little daily rituals that make up our lives. What we eat for breakfast, what we do as during the day, these things are clear to me as an averaged American.

What these things are in Ojibwa culture is a mystery to me.

With what I have been able to find on my own, this is the story that seemed to reoccur over and over, so I take this one to be the closest to the original as my meager understanding of the story. It's shortened in my explanation; it's much more beautiful in the writings that I have seen.