Sunday afternoon in Tesuque

Yesterday we took a drive down to Tesuque village to for the afternoon. It was a beautiful drive. The fall colors were peaking, and it was a warm day. First we went to the Shidoni Sculpture Garden and sat in the shade and read while Calvin took a nap. When he woke up we had some fun, eating the apples from the tree, walking under the legs of the giraffe sculpture and looking around. Calvin especially liked a piece in the shape of a star.

I saw an original bronze gate with two egrets standing in tall reeds. ($25,000) It seemed like that would be the kind of yard art that I would like to get. Something beautiful that is also functional. I could see it in the fence around an adobe house.

Margie Sarrao

Last January Margie Sarrao sold her first painting at the Four Seasons Show at the Fuller Lodge. It was a small painting of pretty pink hollyhocks in front of an adobe building. “It was pretty and springy. She (the buyer) told me it made her happy.”
“I want to create art that people will want to put in their home,” said Sarrao. “Most people would want to look at things that are pretty.”
Although Sarrao doesn’t see herself as a cutting edge artist, she is determined to find her own artistic voice. Her inventive spirit and rebellious nature is leading the way.
“When you start to take a class you want to do what the instructor says. Instructors have a style, and they think it’s the right style, but with art you need to start to develop your own style.”
In high school she was in a group that got together at a woman’s house to do still life paintings. She said, “It was very classic. Very realistic. I was already rebelling.”
She was working on a painting of a vase of flowers and fell in love with the colors mid-process, and decided she wanted to keep it that way (it’s hanging in her dining room). “The woman teaching the class said, ‘this painting’s not finished.’ But I really liked it and put my foot down.”
She said, “My mom and dad were dead set against me being an artist. They wanted me to sustain myself financially, so I ended up going into teaching.”
She put her art aside for many years, but five years ago she decided to get back into it and has disciplined herself to take classes at the Art Center.
She started out doing more still life paintings, but (like most of the artists that I’ve interviewed) her artistic life changed when she found a material that she loved to work with – a palette knife. She said, “I just took to it. It’s so textural. With the palette knife you smear paint on. If you don’t like it you scoop it off.”
People have told Sarrao that you just can’t paint portraits with the palette knife. It doesn’t work. But she is determined to find a way to make it work.
“I’ve seen people who do portraits with palette knives online,” she said. She met a woman who does who calls them “gestures.”
“It could go badly at first,” she admits, but is excited to use the broad textured strokes of the palette knife to paint things like children in the distance, so that you can see that it’s a child in a snowsuit, or portraits of people with interesting faces.

Stars of Enchantment Quilt Show is Today!

The Stars of Enchantment Quilt Show, presented by the Los Alamos Piecemakers Quilt Guild, it today and tomorrow at the First Baptist Church, 2200 Diamond Drive.

I'm going because Calvin's blanket is going to be on display there.

There will also be a drawing to win a quilt, a silent auction, demonstrations, a children's "I spy" game and prizes.

It's a great morning to take a walk downtown!

Because there are two art events happening in Los Alamos. There is the SEC Sandoval Chalk Walk on the sidewalk behind Fuller Lodge from 8 am - and it will be judged at 12:30. David Delano will be in the park drawing caricatures and the Life Drawing Group will meet in the park and you can see them in action.

Also, Christy Hengst will have an installation of her porcelain birds in front of Fuller Lodge, today, and around Ashley Pond on Sunday.

I am going to check it out tomorrow, because I'm in Taos right now. I just want you all to get a chance to see it.

The seven days of creation - quilted

There are a lot of really amazing quilters in Los Alamos! Here is a series of quilts that are on display in Graves Hall at the United Church of Los Alamos. It's a depiction of the seven days of creation.

St. Dimitri's Ethnic Dinner is Sunday

Taste the zip of a Feta crumble tucked into a fresh tomato. Smell the golden spanikotpita, stuffed with spinach. Take a bite of baklava from the recipe of YiaYia Maria Marros and savor the flaky layers of honey and nuts.

On Sunday September 20th at 5:00 pm the members of the Saint Dimitri of Rostov Orthodox Church will host a dinner for the community where they will serve a sampling of ethnic and Mediterranean dishes.

After every liturgy, the families at Saint Dimitri’s they have a meal together. Because of their mix of ethnic backgrounds, they usually serve traditional foods from Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Sweden and Romania.

“We fast before we come to church, and so we’re always really hungry,” said Elizabeth Bezzerides, “and we like to visit with each other.”

The United Church of Los Alamos has volunteered to let them use their dining space in Graves Hall at 2525 Canyon Road.

Bezzerides converted to the Orthodox religion after marrying her Greek husband and learned to cook Greek food by watching her mother-in-law (and later getting a great cookbook). She will be cooking Greek macaroni meat and pasta classic dish. “Food is basic to people’s relationships,” she said.

Even the kids help. A seven year old boy will help his mom make Spanokopira, phyllo stuffed with spinach and feta cheese.

For dessert there will be baklava, Russian tea cookies, and galactoboureko, a Greek custard pie, coffee and Russian Tea .

Seating will be limited. Make your reservations today by calling 661-7466.

Suggested donations are $15.00 for adults, and $5.00 per child of 10 years or under.

Dream method helps you overcome writers block and gain deeper insights

Eugene Kovalenko, Ph.D., from Los Alamos, NM, has created a simple method of using images from your dreams to infuse your writing with deeper meaning. It’s called the CREEI Method.

Remembering what you dreamed about can be a challenge for some people. “If you have to get up to turn on the light and start getting ready for the day, usually the dream will fade -- unless it was a nightmare!” said Kovalenko, who recommends keeping a notebook by your bed, or in the bathroom, so that you can write down your dreams with the least amount of effort. “If you make a minimum effort to wake up to record a dream, even a few key words can be like a little thread. You pull that thread and it becomes a string; the string becomes a cord; then a line, and before you know it you've landed a dream fish!”

“Dreams are your language, your personal metaphor. Every dream has something original in it, something new,” said Kovalenko. For writers, simply writing your dreams down can help you overcome writer’s block. The raw dream images can help you find your writing voice. Discussing dreams is a way to put aside ways of thinking that can hamper creative growth.

But CREEI can do more than help you collect images. It can actually change your life by helping you work through problems that lead to writer’s block.

Using CREEI people can record their dreams by answering 12 yes or no questions and plotting the answers on a spreadsheet. The questions are:
The questions are:
1. Is the scene Clear? (Can you describe it?)
2. Is your Role proactive Rather than absent, passive or reactive?
3. Is your Emotion (passion) high?
4. Are you Expressing your emotion?
5. Are you Interacting with others? (Rather than withdrawing or being alone.)
6. Is the scene complete or resolved?
7. Is it pleasant? Does it include satisfaction, joy, beauty, aesthetics and/or abundance?
8. Are you secure? (Do you feel safe?)
9. Do you have a sense of healthy self-worth?
10. Are you being your authentic present self? (Rather than pretending.)
11. Are you becoming all that you can be? Are you on the path towards self-actualizing?
12. Are you beloving of all beings? (Do they experience their own beauty in your presence?)
Answering them quickly makes it possible to avoid judging, analyzing and interpreting the dream prematurely. The questions lead to “AHA! moments” that foster creative and spiritual growth and also help you identify problems and issues.

Each dream is categorized based on how many yesses and no’s you have. Dreams can be “transformative,” “motivational,” “anticipatory,” or “traumatic”.

When a dream is puzzling, disturbing, or thought provoking, CREEI offers a technique to help you gain further insight.

In the three stanza poem, the first stanza is a word sketch that captures the dream as you remembered it. In the second stanza you can mess with the dream: ask questions, make changes, or reject certain parts. In the third stanza you rewrite the dream, bringing in heroes or outside support, so that it scores transformative. Kovalenko said, “The very act of writing these words actually makes changes in you, and they are permanent.”

Dreams are close to the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual world. Looking at that boundary will help you answer questions like Who am I? Where am I going? Why am I here? and will give you a new style of writing that is more creative, direct and honest.

Kovalenko offers a free online video course at www.creei.org.