What the Heck is a Wilding??

This has been a year rocking with change for me.   (Anybody saying Yeah, Me Too?) 'Changes' sounds nicer than loss, it may even cover up loss, but often stems from loss. Last year I lost my Mom, my husband’s Mom, and my giant Oak Tree. Does it sound funny to combine them? They were all 'moms' to me. They were tall and strong and with their limbs and love defined where the sky began and how to gracefully weather life’s storms. Part of my leaving grief was finally seeing the void they’d left, and seeing how, without them, I would interact differently with my world. I was the matriarch of my life, my family and my land. It was up to me to define where the sky began.

How can I determine where the metaphorical sky begins?   First, I questioned all the facts I thought I knew about life. On a long drive to the coast I considered pretty much everything I thought was true. Most things were old ideas, or things someone else had told me was true. They weren't experiential or examined. I could debunk pretty much every 'truth' I thought of, even deeply held ones. You know, for years I'd been measuring the world by standards and ethics and truths that weren't universal at all!  It had been lots of work to do that, molding a reality based on these 'truths'. I decided to dump that thinking and by the time I got to the coast, I was feeling really good. Really light and free! My new outlook is to keep curious and see the world without all those filters.
Clap if you've been there!
 

I’m excited by how my newly energized curiosity affected my artwork. 

• I started teaching my own workshops this year. I’d co-taught with my mentor before and never had the urge to teach on my own. I got curious about what it would be like…  Wowza! It’s way different in a good way!  Each student blessed me. 
• I started playing with new materials. What would happen if...? became the shop motto!
• I started honoring more what my heart and mind were saying and letting that pop out through in my art.

It's this last part, working from inside my heart instead of building fairy houses that marks the real shift for me. The fairy houses I've made and sold up til now are comfy dwellings for fairies. These new ones don't all feel like fairy houses anymore. Some are edgier, some even have political aspirations. Basically they're starting to have a voice, a viewpoint. I don't know what to call them...Spirit Houses doesn't work, Natural Houses...but Wildings seems to stick, I even can imagine little Wildings running through the forest full of yippee! energy!

This house is the first Wilding I built after my trip to Ireland, in search of fairies of course, is what I mean by more personal. I was fascinated by the energy in Ireland and that, instead of windows and mouldings, translated into the wall of this fairy house. 

Oh Ireland!  That's a topic for a whole other newsletter!

Oh yeah, I was also curious what kind of photos a professional photographer would take of my fairy houses, so we had a little faerie house glam session that resulted in pics like the one above. What do you think....too dark or deliciously moody??

In peace,