Door is open!  Stop in and be surprised.  Art, art, and more art. 

My painting, Monet's Hollyhocks, is part of this lovely treasury. Take a look! You won't feel blue, just happy.

Guest Bead Artist Anne Hennekens, Buddha Bliss, at Swallow Nest Art Gallery

Anne in the gallery on opening day

Earrings in a rainbow of colors

swallownest art studio: Swallow Nest Art Gallery Opens

swallownest art studio: Swallow Nest Art Gallery Opens

Swallow Nest Art Gallery Opens

Main Gallery

Main Gallery

I wrote a blog post last week while working on clean up and set up in my gallery.  I became distracted by the task so I never posted it.  Today I opened the gallery.  Weather here was gray, dreary, cold, and wind from the north which blows right in the door and chills the room, ruffles the displays, and reminds me that I am fortunate to have a nice toasty home only a few hundred feet away.   It wasn’t the kind of spring day to entice visitors.  Nonetheless, I sat at my table in the gallery and enjoyed the gallery and myself.  I decided that beauty is still beauty whether any one but me sees it or not.  It’s beautiful in my gallery even when I am not there.  Here’s what I wrote last week:

I'm getting ready to open my art gallery for the summer.  My gallery is unique, located in the hayloft of a hundred year old barn.  It makes a beautiful gallery in a warm spring, sunny summer, and colorful autumn but this year Wisconsin has not enjoyed an early spring, or really much spring at all.  I dragged my feet about clean up and set up.  When it's 46 degrees and rainy, the hayloft is cold and dreary. 

Limited edition of cows

Today however is sunny and temperatures are climbing into the mid-sixties.  So, I'm getting started on cleaning.  When I close in the fall, I cover all display furniture with old sheets, take in all my art for storage in the house.  To open, I take off the old sheets, wash them, hang them on the line, and wash down all the furniture.  The biggest job is vacuuming.  I vacuum every square inch of the floor, and some of the walls and joists.  Then I enlist my husband's help to transport all the art back to the barn.  Then the fun begins as I select just the right spot to hang each piece of art.

            As I worked this morning, I reminded myself to have a joyful heart.  I am setting up a sacred space.  I believe art and making art takes me as close to the sacred as I can get short of death.  I was also pondering my journey to this point in time where I have this wonderful gallery that I can fill with my joyful creations. 

More displays

            Once upon a time, I milked cows and fed them in this barn.  One of my jobs was to traipse up to the hayloft and throw down hay bales and fresh bedding.  The transformation of the hayloft into an art gallery was not an easy or obvious change.  That it came about at all is a testament to the workings of a higher power in my life.  It is also a testament to my spirit.  I have never let life get me down.  If I fall down, I pick myself up, dust myself off, and set off again.  And so I did when I found myself alone on a 240-acre farm.  I decided failure was not an option.  I liked living here and I was here to stay.  A dozen years later, I enjoy a happy marriage and my wonderful farm.  The gallery and art studio are icing on the cake.

            Of course, casual visitors don’t know my story.  They don’t need to know every twist and turn in my life.  Yet, when they step in, the reaction is the same.  A little bit of surprise.  A little bit of awe.  A little bit of joy.  They may have intended to hurry through, stopping only out of curiosity, but once inside, they forget that intention.  When they leave, I see they are a little more refreshed, a little more aware of beauty.  And that is a beautiful thing.  That is their gift back to me.

           

Tell (Paint) Your Truth

This post is a little later because I was busy attending the annual Writers Conference at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.  As some of you already know, I was first a writer before I discovered I was also a visual artist.  I continue to pursue both artistic modes of expression with enthusiasm and vigor.  This was my seventh attendance at this long-running conference.  2011 was the 42nd annual.  In my opinion, it was one of the best.

No matter if you are a visual artist or a writer, what applies to one art also applies to the other.  For instance, Loida Perez said, "Write what interests you.  It will interest your readers.  You can rest assured there's an audience out there with the same concerns."

Passion Garden by Candace Hennekens

You can apply that truth to painting.  Instead of write, substitute the word "Paint." 

Another speaker was Maxine Hong Kingston, the most anthologized writer in America today.  Of Chinese-American ancestry, she has spent her life promoting peace through her writing.  She said, "Tell the truth and so make peace."   

Again, simply by substituting the word "paint", there is another truth that pertains to visual art.

America is a great nation but very commercial.  As artists, we must remember we will only find success by staying true to who we are, what interests us, what are passions are.  Sharing our truth sets us free.  And our truth just may set someone else free as well.  We may never know the true impact of what we have said, what we have painted, what we have written so we have to trust that authenticity makes us true artists not cranks pretending.

Follow Your Passion

            Consumers of art respond to the maker's passion.  That is why there are books, poems, songs, and paintings that take on a life of their own, outside of discovery by critics that deem a work "good."  Because I am also a writer, I know things about books that many do not, that, for instance, a best seller is a best seller before it's even written.  The reason that is so is because publishers budget advertising and promotion to back the author's work.  Alas, the average books sells 2,500 copies.  Publishers make money on their bestsellers.  Readers on the other hand know what they like and if they read something original and fresh, they recommend it to their reading friends.  No matter how many books are published, readers are always looking for something good to read. What I love about the digital age is that the old gates and doors that gave entry to writers, painters, poets, singers, and dancers can now be opened by anyone with a computer. 

            Now back to passion.  I am passionate about art.  What I usually say is that I love making art but that is shorthand for I am passionate about art.  I sleep, drink, eat, and think about art, literature, poetry, painting, and even music, although I have not a drop of musical talent.  I see around me thousands of ideas to make into paintings and poems.  I've learned to be selective, that I can't make them all, or write them all.  I select ideas I feel an artistic urgency to create. 

            About five years ago, I saw a description for a poetry contest that had as its theme "anything about a car."  Out of my subconscious came a first line, "My '63 Plymouth Belvidere was already old but it ran".  It was not just a thought but a driving need to write that line down and see the poetry that followed.  I sat down at my computer and a few minutes later I had a poem called "My '63 Plymouth Belvidere".  There were decades of pent-up passion in that poem.  Even though I'd written a ground-breaking book on healing from domestic violence (Healing Your Life:  Recovery from Domestic Abuse), that sold thousands and thousands of copies in every U.S. state and several foreign countries, there was much I'd left unsaid.  I rewrote the poem, but not much.  I had been given the poem in one piece.  When I submitted it to the contest, I won.  Someone who read it and liked it included my poem in an essay about poetry being relevant.  Before I knew it, the poem was popping up all over, including a website for a publisher specializing in books on abuse.  My poem, so close to the bone, so authentic, so passionate, took on a life of its own.  I couldn't call it back, only follow it on its journey.  Ultimately I ended up reading it to an audience of more than five hundred in Madison, WI.  After the first line, the audience became so still I could have heard a pin drop.  As I read the poem, and looked into the audience, I understood for the first time how powerful words are but not just words, passionate words.

            Whatever your medium, art, poetry, music, architecture, or fashion design, aim to tap into your passion.  Don't second guess what people will buy.  Tap into your feelings and dig down into your emotions and create something that funnels those out into the world.  That is the key that unlocks your artistry for the rest of the world to enjoy.  Sooner or later, that artistry will be discovered and appreciated. 

            Before I leave you, I'll give you the poem I discussed in this blog posting.

My ’63 Plymouth Belvidere

by

Candace A. Hennekens

In 1978, that ’63 Plymouth Belvidere

was already old but it ran.  Your mother

had gifted the car to me on her death bed.

Two years later, I drove away, the back seat

piled with clothes, our daughter in her car seat.

I forgot shoes, winter coats.

You mailed those and anything else

you could find that was mine

in an enormous box--my grandmother’s wall vase,

college papers, cut crystal, all mixed up.

I vomited in my mother’s basement toilet,

knowing you had touched all my things.

The night we escaped, I decapitated a goose

on some dark country road; the state patrol

ticketed me for speeding.  I pulled into my

mother’s driveway, my eyes dilated, panting,

reeling, like a prisoner released after a long sentence.

My mother touched your hand prints on my neck

and wept.  The Belvidere had a 318 engine.

I knew how to change oil, replace spark plugs.

I pushed buttons on the dash to make her go.

Painted bright yellow I never drove anonymously.

Sometimes I search for that car in the classifieds.

If I find her, I’ll buy her back, restore her

to mint condition, and keep her as a memorial

to my freedom that all these years later

is still precious, a gift from your mother to me.