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Sacred Artist Interview: Bette Norcross Wappner

I am really excited about this new weekly feature on my blog for 2008 — I will be interviewing artists who keep an awareness of the sacred at the heart of their creative work.  I want to explore how others merge their art and spirituality and give you, my dear readers, some more insights into this connection. I am especially delighted to begin this series by interviewing Bette Norcross Wappner or b’oki as she is known by her poet’s pen name.  Bette found my blog not too long after I started writing one, about a year and a half ago.  She is a great example

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January 10, 2008

Call for Art Submissions and Art Marketing Conference

Call for Art Submissions  For the last two issues of Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction I have been serving as the Interim Art Editor.   It has been a lot of fun, so I have now accepted the job on a more permanent basis. For each issue of the journal (published quarterly), my task is to find visual artwork that complements the subject of each article as well as a cover image.  I am especially encouraged to find a wide variety of media (not just photos) as well as art from the global community (all inhabited continents). So I am using my readership here to put out a

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January 5, 2008

Winter Wonders: Visual Meditation

                         -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts (photos taken over the Christmas holiday while at Whistler, British Columbia)

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January 4, 2008

The Feast of Birth

The Earth will be going on a long time Before it finally freezes; Men will be on it; they will take names, Give their deeds reasons. We will be here only As chemical constituents- A small franchise indeed. Right now we have lives, Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses, Like everybody had once- Here at the year’s end, at the feast Of birth, let us bring to each other The gifts brought once west through deserts- The precious metal of our mingled hair, The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs, The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses- Let us celebrate the daily Recurrent nativity

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January 2, 2008

Order a 2008 Calendar

As I mentioned the other day, Waverly Fitzgerald has created a French Revolutionary Wall Calendar which features my nature photographs illustrating the seasonal theme of the particular month in the French Revolutionary calendar, for instance, January is Snowy/Rainy, and each day is marked with the item meant to be honored on that day. Usually these are plants and trees; every day ending in 5 honors an animal and every day ending in 0, a tool. She will be shipping the first orders out the last week of this year.  The calendar costs $16 for the print version including shipping ($10 if you want to

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December 20, 2007

Sacred Arts Ring: Pre-Christmas Edition

I am out at my hermitage and forgot to bring my camera, so I can’t show you what I’ve been working on.   So instead I did a lap around the Sacred Arts Ring and offer you much beauty to peruse below.  I will be posting for the Solstice on Friday and then taking a blogging break until the new year.  I’d still love to hear your comments and feedback on the previous post, so thank you to everyone who has commented or emailed so far. I want to offer a warm welcome to the two newest members of the Sacred Arts Ring:

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December 19, 2007

Sacred Stories Across Generations

“a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” -Isaiah 11:1 (from the second Sunday of Advent) Yesterday I gathered together all of the images I had found of my aunt and uncle (my mother’s siblings) as children and worked on creating something for each of them as a gift this Christmas.  I am not very close to my uncle so I am not sure how this will be received, but I felt the need and desire to create it.  This journey of reaching back across time and telling these stories through image

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December 17, 2007

Shoveling Snow

  I haven’t posted my own art in a couple of days mostly because I have gotten absorbed in sifting through photo bins and selecting more images for future work and then scanning them into the computer to reprint.  I have noticed a little twinge of guilt rise within me — you said you were going to make art every day during Advent, aren’t you letting this preparation of materials take too long?   Ah my inner-taskmaster, I have actually grown fond of her as she often helps me to get things done, however I have also learned to recognize when

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December 16, 2007

Learning to Fly

Tim You’ve only just arrived  Now you’ve begun to go  My God, how much I love you  How my whole body aches with  The glory that is you.    Constantly changing, sometimes slowly,  Sometimes in one heartbeat    Or the blink of an eye.  Becoming,    always becoming,    your self.    Already my hands rest open  You sitting there in the palm    of my hand  Stretching your wings  Testing the wind  Learning to fly.  -Rebecca Johnson ***** Rebecca was a participant in our most recent Awakening the Creative Spirit program.  She came with perhaps the least background in

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December 15, 2007

Women who journeyed before me

    I thought some of you might be interested to see the original photos I cropped to make the art piece for Monday’s Poetry Party.  The woman on the top was my paternal grandmother Erika who died when I was one year old.  The middle woman I actually don’t know, I found her photo among the others and loved the way she was looking at the camera.  She is connected to my family in some way, but it is still a mystery.  The woman in the bottom photo was my great grandmother, Erika’s mother Ernestine, but she went by Erna.  Erika and

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December 14, 2007