Art as a way of healing your soul and spirit

I am going to be straight up honest with you right now.  June and July were not the best months for me in terms of health.  For some reason, my stomach has been acting up and the nefarious pink eye incident turned into the plural form.  In fact, looking at my eyes today, I can safely say that the whites surrounding the pupils are actually white for the first time in way over a month.  Maybe we are making some progress.  As for the stomach problems, stress and too many Vitamin C tablets may be to blame.  When you think about it, Vitamin C is ascorbic acid and too much acid or a combination of acids such as a vitamin with cups of coffee, tea, cola drinks and such probably overloaded my system.  So, I am cutting back on the Vitamin C and trying to limit my coffee consumption.  That is contradicted somewhat by my ordering coffee for my specialty coffeemaker, but I will try to behave and limit my consumption.

So, what has art got to do with all this nonsense?  Good question and I will try to answer it.  Sometimes when I am feeling really rough, I will grab a book to try and lose myself in it and work past the nausea or whatever is ailing me.  One night a week or so ago, I grabbed one of my recipe card booklets and started drawing what I was feeling, writing in words, colouring different areas of the card and so on.  It actually took me a couple of hours to finish the piece.  A small 3 inch by 5 inch piece of card stock.  Unbelievable, right?  When I look over this minute piece of art now, I am surprised by the words I wrote on it and they made me take stock of what is important in my life.

For some reason, I have been having a difficult time in terms of inspiration and motivation.  Add to that the physical problems and you have a pretty good idea why there has not been a blog for the past few weeks.  I think I am moving past this stage right now and if I can go another week without the colour pink surrounding my pupils, I just might get myself back on track.  My sleep patterns need adjusting as I slept a lot over the past few weeks.  That was probably to combat the weeks before when sleep was a scarce commodity.  Let us just say, I think the worst is over and maybe I can get back to the business of living and that means making art in all forms.

I did keep up doodling on index cards during this time as well as doing a fair amount of braiding.  Reading kind of went by the wayside for obvious reasons.  It really is difficult to read when your eye is dripping fluid.  But, this did not keep me from quick bursts of colour and patterns on the index cards. Another plus, I finished a braid last night that has taken over 8 hours of braiding.  What I have learned from that braid, measure your embroidery floss to the size you really need for an actual piece.  I thought making an extra long cord that would turn into 2 or 3 bracelets was being time efficient.  The reality of this is that I am goal oriented and I like to see results.  Consequently, I just threaded the bobbins for my kumihimo loom with shorter, bracelet length pieces of a dark blue ribbon.  I have a story about the ribbon too.

I did manage a trip to the supply shoppe to pick up some items that were on sale.  One of my downfalls is that I love ribbon and when I find it on sale and know how I can use it, I stock up.  Really stock up!
So, I was walking around the store looking at all the eye candy and a young man came up to me.  He had obviously been watching me tear through the ribbon department and was extremely curious.  He stopped me and pointed to my stash of colourful ribbons and had one question, "Why?"  I had to laugh at his face, he was obviously floored at the number of rolls of ribbon.  I explained to him that I made bracelets out of ribbon and all this would soon be wearable art.  I am not so sure he believed me about the "wearable art" aspect, but he sure had a new appreciation for how much damage one woman could do in the ribbon department.  By damage, I refer to my pocket book.  I am a responsible shopper and am known to tidy up store shelves as I shop.  Weird, I know, but I just have to do it.  Maybe deep down, I do not want anyone to think that I caused the chaos.

Anyway, I am back and starting to feel more like myself.  Or what passes for myself, some days I am not so sure.  I seem to be constantly changing in reaction to what I see, hear and feel.  I try to get those feelings down as colours, designs, and/or words on small pieces of card stock.  Hopefully, I am going to move forward enough to keep the momentum going.  I have a few ideas in mind, but I will share those with you in another post.



Have a great week!  Drop me a comment if you would like to start some dialogue on art as a way of healing.  How has it helped you or would you be willing to give it a try?

Sincerely,   Rutheemac