"Work," said Kahlil Gibran, "is love made visible."

 I have been working on cutting out the pieces of Wonder Pellon for my Celebration Shrine.

I have also been thinking about what it means to Celebrate.  I have been thinking in cutting out these pieces all the different pieces that we get out every year for Christmas.  How many lights, ornaments, dishes...all these pieces that we get out all unorganized.  They need an artist to arrange it in such a way to create the atmosphere of the Christmas holidays.  One year when we lived in Portland, Maine our house was too small to put up a tree, so I went to a historic house and enjoyed there decorations.  It was breathtaking, and totally magical.  It takes a lot of work and money to create these kinds of stages.  

  Today I went down and picked up the living room where my teens have been camping out over the weekend.   I was puttting in this clean energy of love into that room. 

That cleaning itself was an act of celebration.  

I tried to effuse the room with the energy that

I remember having when I was expecting a visit from a dear friend.

I started thinking about those feelings and how different they are from the drudgery of 'housework'. 

When I anticipate someone coming over I look to the future that I have the power to create.  When I focus on the trash, carelessness, irresponsibility of other that created this mess, I put my focus on the past, something that I don't have any control over.

So although I may not spend the kind of energy that is required when preparing for the holidays, I can create Mini Celebrations or Nano Celebrations by transforming a room into a shrine, mindfully.  

A post that shows how simple this is at Woman With Wings when she enshrines her sewing machine.

  "Work is love made visible."  Kahilil Gibran. 

Vagabonding in my sketchbook.

 I am Vagabonding, another words studying art.

.  I got this idea from the book I am reading The Hare With Amber Eyes. 

His great great cousin was Swan in Swan's Way by Proust.  This cousin whose name was Charles  Ephrussi, patron of Manet, Degas and Renoir and owner and editor of the Gazette des Beaux Arts. 

  He called this occupation Vagabonding

So  this is my Vagabond Sketchbook.

  I am studying Henri de Toulouse Lautrec and how Japanese woodblock prints influenced his own style.  

In The Hare With Amber Eyes the author says that the Impressionist were interested in seeing the background and the subject matter all blended.  That you would have to see the whole piece and take it all in, which might mean stepping back to a distance to see it all blended.  The Impressionist were saying that your environment shaped you.

  Henri de Toulouse Lautrec thought just the opposite. 

"Only the human figure exists; landscape is, and should be, no more than an accessory; 

the painter exclusively of landscape is nothing but a boor. 

The sole function of landscape is to heighten the intelligibility of the character of the figure."

What artist are you inspired by today and what about their work inspires you?