Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Art, life, oranges

My friend Allysha (of bells on their toes) asked me to contribute a personal experience with art to her creative blog venture Just an Orange. Allysha is a lovely soul and just like me, she's always learning new things and looking for new ways to express herself creatively in between diaper changes and baking birthday cakes (with a considerable degree of handwashing in between). Someday soon we're going to start a writing critique group (just as soon as we get more than two founding members...)

Anyway, asking me to write about art is like asking a Baptist preacher to talk about the scriptures but I managed to keep it under control. If you're interested in reading about why I became a Humanities nerd and how I use art to make sense of my life, you can find the post at Allysha's site here.

4 comments:

Mumsy said...

I just read your essay and thought it was truly beautiful.

(Allysha is one of my dear friends, too.)

mindyluwho said...

Beautiful essay Julie.

Pale Bear said...

I look back at my life since I've had children and realize that too often I have seen their major milestones through the small frame of a video camera. While making sure that the events are captured in that small window, I have sometimes missed the small window of opportunity to see first hand their first steps and other things that matter. Sometimes we have to examine our lives or we find we are missing out on something great.

My daughter asked the other day, as I was filming my younger son's first steps, if she could see the playback on the camera while I was still filming him. I told her it was much more important to watch the real thing than to watch what was on the camera. Because I was busy watching him, I don't know if I captured his steps in that small frame of the camera or not. Some day I'll go back and check the film. In the mean time, I did capture it in my heart. Yes, that's terribly corny. But I'm grateful that I saw it with my own eyes and not just with the camera's.

And I miss seeing your posts. Every Tuesday is not enough. When finals are over, will you talk to us more?

Luisa Perkins said...

I loved your throw-away line about the over-examined life; you could expand that into a profound post or two, I have no doubt.