Retreat Report

Pond Prayer
(painted canvas and silk threads) Jude '10

I gave myself four creative retreats this past year, of 10 days each. It seems miraculous in retrospect that this was possible.

One thing I hoped to work on was a fresh way to integrate painting with the fabric collage process I worked in for 30 years. I've experimented with this plenty of times before. But even though some approaches have been satisfying, a breakthrough had eluded me.

The first 3 retreats had been pretty much a flop as far as finding this opening, though none of them felt at all like a waste of time. I wound up with more pictures of water--worshiping the pond that is one of my all-time favorite gurus. And I made the self-portrait eyes that went into the header for my new coaching website at www.selftreasuring.com .

(Actually, the first retreat had resulted in the Self Treasuring name, which came about from working on nests--you never really know what you're really making while you're making it, in a way).

The final retreat of the year, in late fall, had the earnestness (or recklessness) of endings about it, a now or never feeling. I really wanted to try something different.

But I found myself digging out something old--a piece I'd started in fabric collage 15 years ago and never finished. It was based on a drawing I'd xeroxed from a book of art created during the Holocaust--I'm still trying to track down the artist's name.

Woman Waiting sketch (artist unknown)

Here's where I'd stopped with the fabric collage 15 years ago:

Woman Waiting 1 (fabric collage)

As I went back into the piece, I felt in collaboration with two other artists--the person who'd done the drawing, and the artist I was 15 years ago--along with the energy of the woman portrayed in the sketch. I was being all of them at once as my hands picked up pieces of cloth, the iron, glue, the paintbrush.

I heard anxiety in the mix: a WhatWillPeopleThink? voice, worried about making something unpretty, not 'uplifting'--something no one will want to see. I heard a deeper thrum of the fear of the injustice, loss of control and death represented by the Holocaust. I heard the dreaded gremlin MizSpiritual trying to levitate above that fear, sometimes grousing about hadn't we evolved past Hard Stuff pictures?

And all the time, that feeling of being carried, of choice-making happening of itself, that no-self experience of giving over into a creative process which feels so profoundly at-home. How should I know what I'm to make? It was being made. There was a fullness of gratitude that can't be expressed. Making light of hard stuff without even trying to.

When I could stand back from it and let the finished piece teach me, I witnessed something fiercely beautiful after all. I saw how light just pours out of us, even when we're angry and afraid and hurting, even when terrible things are happening, and we're waiting for something worse. Every moment, everybody is just such a beacon.

Even when nothing terrible is happening, sitting in front of a screen, just witnessing and connecting--maybe like you, now. Making light.

Woman Waiting
(fabrics and paint on unprimed canvas)

I don't really make anything--making happens through me--but all I ever want to make is something about that Light. (And that's not MizSpiritual talking, it's just the facts, m'am).

Now that the paint/fabric intersection is happening in a new way, I'm ready to go back into another piece that started during the summer retreat, a portrait of Ramana Maharshi, who radiated the peace behind and around and within every beauty. I'll find a way to open time for this in the winter, when that Stillness is so palpable in the north.

Ramana Maharshi eyes and photo

This winter, I'll also be leading a coaching group for 9 self-aware women who are ready to meet the creative challenge of their Next Big Thing (even if they don't know what that is yet). Might you join us? Read about the Mystery Mind Creator's Colony here.

Working Small

Grey Day, fabrics, 7.5x4.75 inches by Jude Spacks '09
Available for purchase.

I'm back into the fabric collage, working small, from small noticings.

Making little pictures seems to be creating an opening for witnessing more of the humble instants when a vision stills the talkative mind, leaving speechless awareness, aliveness, presence.

Trying to show that, however palely and inadequately, becomes worship. It doesn't have to be intense or hyped up with swooning string orchestras and godlight streaming from the sky.

There's something exciting and comforting happening, a cuddling up with how ordinary stuff is shot through and through with love.

This one is a riff on how light organizes everything, how everything visible is made of light.

Streetlight, fabrics, 7.5x6.5 inches by Jude Spacks
Available for purchase

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A friend stopped by with a lively new grandbaby.
I sketched very briefly, didn't get much of a likeness, but maybe just having a pencil in hand allowed the scene to imprint in some heartspace for retrieval later.

I frolicked in fabric with it for days, having a blessed run of that kind of concentration when you can't detach enough to take a sip of water, much less stop for dinner before midnight.

Though I lost some proportions from the drawing, on the other side, a sweet-comic rendition had emerged that I swear looks just like both of them. (Another friend who was there agrees. The grandma hasn't seen it yet, and perhaps will not recognize herself with blue face and pants a color like none in her possession....)

What felt so freeing was to start with a faint sketch of reality and zoom off from it into pure fiction, somehow winding up with something that felt true, maybe truer than a literal photographic version could have shown.

Meet the Grandbaby, fabrics, 9.5x12 in by Jude Spacks 09
Available for purchase

Detail Meet the Grandbaby

Some years ago, this same friend had commissioned me to make a portrait in oils of her mother and a great-grandbaby. The memory of that project gave another layer of association to working on this little one.

My friend didn't want a quite literal rendition of the photograph she gave me to work from, wanting to see her mother in a different colored shirt, among other things. So there had been a challenge of jumping off from reality into a bit of make-believe to find a deeper truth in that piece, too....

Portrait in oils, 24x32in, by Jude Spacks, '02

Before Completion

Before Completion (Fire Over Water)
Hexagram 64 of the I Ching
fabrics, threads and paint, 10x21 in, Jude Spacks '08 $549

I love that the I Ching ends before it ends: its final hexagram is called Before Completion. The text describes the transition from a state of standstill or stagnation, to one of peace. "It points to the fact that every end contains a new beginning. Thus it gives hope...." (all quotations from The I Ching Book of Changes, Wilhelm/Baynes trans.)

Before Completion is a more auspicious oracle than the preceding one, 63, After Completion, which describes an evolution from peace to standstill. When everything is done and all in order, movement stops: "For it is just when perfect equilibrium has been reached that any movement may cause order to revert to disorder."

(This reminds me of a couple I heard of who were both studying Alexander technique. The woman found her husband lying on the bed. "Don't touch me!" he said, "I'm perfectly aligned.")

Young Fox, fabrics (prints available)

A key metaphor of both hexagrams is of a fox crossing an iced over stream. An old fox has the experience, sensitivity and alertness to cross successfully. A young fox may impetuously try to rush things to completion, and wind up with the humiliation of getting its tail wet at the end.

"Success. But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing, gets his tail in the water, there is nothing that would further...."

Then, after crossing, it's important not to turn back and get your head wet. When it's over, let it be over.

Before Completion, detail, viewed from the side

Completion calls for the tricky job of differentiating and harmonizing factors that don't easily accord with each other, like fire and water. The text explains that the only way to do this is to be in right relation with ourselves first. "...in order to handle external forces properly, we must above all arrive at the correct standpoint ourselves, for only from this vantage can we work correctly."

Working from the correct standpoint in myself on this fire and water piece meant being a beginner. I'd never made anything quite like it before. It kept me surprised the whole time, following unexpected directions from inner guidance, like the idea of hanging one section of the piece from the other.

I experimented with a chenille technique and with making fringe out of some special threads (see The Support of Water). I didn't realize the title until the end. After it was "complete" I saw that the fringe suggested a fox's tail. Maybe it also implies the unraveling of ends--things coming and going from one form to another.

Another recent piece used thread to suggest fire. It also references endings and beginnings in the image of a phoenix, that burns and rises anew from its ashes. The hexagonal mirror can place your face between incarnations of the phoenix above and below.

Phoenix Mirror, Jude Spacks '08
fabrics, threads, paint, and mirror, 12x21in

detail, Phoenix (chenille and threads)

More on Show

Want to take a little tour with the artist? Step this way....

As you come in the door to the Belfast Free Library, directly across from you next to the elevator hangs this Portrait of Rodney Dennis.


Rodney Dennis was Manuscript Librarian of Houghton Library. He lived in Cambridge, MA and Union, ME. Thanks to Christie Dennis for commissioning and loaning the painting.


Across the room, you'll probably notice first the big picture called What Is, of Kathleen Hannan, conducting singing up to a high note at an interfaith celebration.


It's at the end of the wall across from you, which you might glance at...



...before you see that right next to you, as you still stand by the door, is a wall of little mirrors, ending with a small angel altar on the left.



At the right side of this wall is the artist's statement. Want to read it?


The first two (glass) mirrors have little vases inset in front of them, with an offering of a few small flowers. They are both called Made Mostly of Water, like the flowers are. If you look into them, you might consider that you are part of that same flow and freeze and melt, the drops and waves of life.


These two pieces were very loosely inspired by the photos of water crystals exposed to a variety of concepts, in Masaru Emoto’s The Hidden Messages of Water.




They're roughly 12" high, made with layers of handmade papers, some sewn together and then cut with a chenille cutter and raised in grooves. The one directly above has composition silver leaf crumpled and inset at the top.

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The piece in the middle is called Mirror of Transition. When my soul-sister died, I traveled out with her into the night sky. I heard myself say, "I'll go with you a little way, Joanne" as I lay in bed miles away. I experienced an indescribable sense of expansion, spaciousness, peace and awe. The next morning I learned she had passed at just that time.

Maybe 20 years ago Joanne gave me the piece of black lace with shot through with shiny hot pink threads that veils the mirror. (The post Anger tells one small story of what I learned from her). The veil refers to the Jewish tradition of covering mirrors after a family member has passed. As you look at yourself through it, you may see a mystery.

Every transition is a little death and ascension to a new and unknown form, or into formlessness. This piece has layers of transparent and semi-transparent fabrics; it tiers back and back as you look through, into an undefined light essence rising, a distant evocation of that moment of letting go into transformation. Or, that's what I was going for. What's it like for you?

Here's a detail of what's under the veil--a small advantage of a virtual tour, since I know in person you would never pick up the veil to peek, it's very delicate.

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Next comes Mirror of Aging Beautifully. Look in--obviously, you are (aging beautifully--admit it!) Here the mirror reflects the What Is picture across the room. To the left, the little angel altar; you can barely see the composition gold leaf inset center focus in the shelf from this angle.

Maybe you recognize this piece from the flyer that's up around town about the show:

It's intended as a magic mirror, like the ones in fairy tales--"Mirror, mirror on the wall..."

Something happens when you donate your face to the composition, right up close. All the symmetry and non-symmetry and near-symmetry, the dynamic balance of vivid and soft colors, the flowing, expanding lines of crows feet, or wings, the rising and falling and circling around of the shapes, all that harmonizes with your beautiful, changing face in this irreplaceable moment....

Well, sorry, guess you had to have been there....

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Let's take a quick look at the opposite wall, shall we? This one, Inner Reach, is a particular favorite of mine.

It's a new departure for me to show more abstract pieces like this. It's done with fabric paints on canvas, and colored pencil, sewn onto a heavy dark blue denim backing.

I like how you can't really tell what's on top of what, but you wind up with an impression of depth or spaciousness, full and open at once. Maybe it evokes an enlarged section of an imaginary scan of your mind...or maybe not.

Someone at the opening said he saw an unhappy face with slashing claw marks across it. Hmmm. The eyes of the beholder, that's where art lives...

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This one at the left corner is called Stick With Love. The story behind the piece is in Dogged Dedication. The image was done with pastels and glitter on black fabric, the border, with fabric applique.

An theme of the show is experimentation with ways of combining fabric art and painting/drawing. I worked primarily in representational fabric collage for 25 years and then returned to painting where I started, in oil portraiture. So I'm interested in how to integrate the different media.

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There's three more to look at on this wall, and I seem to keep talking your ear off here. Is that enough for now? Personally, I can't look at a show for too long without getting a little jaded. Want to go upstairs and get a book out? We can come back in another post to look at the rest. As you head for the stairs, you'll see the corner on the left:

And looking down on the right as you climb the stairs, maybe you'll want to check out this Phoenix Mirror and Angel Altar later...

Oh, one other thing. Yes, most of them are for sale, but since it's a free library, the prices aren't mentioned on the wall, and there's not even a price list out.

But if you see one that might be for you, send me an email at judespacks@gmail.com and I'll be glad to tell you more about the piece, and the price.

Hey, thanks for looking and reading so far! Seeya later.