my ancestors
in the search to find the story and the land of my grandparents, I have learned of the pain that has been carried and passed down for generations.
don’t hold your breath
learning to flow, using my art journal
I have returned to my art roots and have decided to “share my work“ (refer to Show Your Work by Austin Kleon).
years ago my mother’s death inspired haunting night dreams that I wrote down, that I needed to express through art. This art became Inside the Belly of the Whale, which has taken several forms, from a gallery installation exhibition, to a DVD, to its current form, a journal.
I’m choosing to share the work from my art journal weekly. My hope is to create a space for self-expression in all of its many forms because I believe art heals.
this site’s link labeled Ideas + shows how others have used music, books, articles etc. as inspiration for self-expression.
breath 1 by LLGriffin
he’s dying … does that mean he gets a pass?
He’s dying, is a line from the movie Kodachrome – film on Netflix. The line implies that even through he was a difficult person you should put that aside and spend time with him.
If family relationships weren’t so challenging, and if we didn’t have such a difficult time talking about and preparing for death, spending time with a dying family member might not be a big ask. Sadly, however, they are, and we do. In Kodachrome, Matt Ryder reluctantly drives his dying father, to whom Matt hasn’t spoken in ten years, across the country to the last photo shop in America that can still process the father’s decades-old rolls of undeveloped Kodachrome film.
“Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity” – Pema Chodron
Being stuck with the pain of not having the relationship you wanted may keep you from being in the relationship that’s available. We get to choose.
The set-up from Wikipedia – Matt Ryder is an A&R representative at a record label who is in danger of losing his job after his company’s biggest client signs with another label. His father’s assistant and nurse Zooey Kern arrives at his office and informs him that his father Ben, a famous photographer, is terminally ill. Though they have not spoken in over ten years, Ben has requested that Matt drive him to Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, the last shop that still develops Kodachrome film. Ben has several undeveloped rolls he wants to have processed before he dies, and Dwayne’s will stop in the near future because Kodak no longer makes the required dyes.
