Friends of Prospect Lake
daily practice
"It is often the simple daily practices that influence our lives in dramatic ways."
Alaric Hutchinson
After two years of uncertainty, isolation and stress, it feels right to consider how each of us has coped and share ideas about the ways we have managed our existance in difficult times. For some it's about focusing on the bigger picture to gain context. For some it's about focusing on our families or offering service to others. And for others it's about looking inward and focusing on the natural rythyms and our personal journeys as we interact with our surroundings.
Artists very often rely on the latter by developing a personal daily rythym that provides a sense of purpose and a unique flow that is both serene and productive. It is this rythym that becomes their daily practice to be expressed in a myriad of ways.
This month we are very fortunate to be able to have a peek into the daily practice of artist Sarah Nicholson. Many of you may recall Sarah's beautiful nature mandalas that debuted in our online gallery two years ago, one of her thoughtful and beautiful daily practices.
(can be viewed by hovering over Gallery page tab for drop down menu).
In this new online exhibit, Sarah shares more of her daily practice that focuses on journaling in her hand made books, artworks in their own right. Through the choice of material, color and format, each book eminates a kind of soulful sense of peace and an intimacy conveyed through the knowledge of the artists hand, which has thoughtfully touched and worked each page to reach the desired state of grace.
More on artist's book making can be found here:
Interested? The Friends of Prospect Lake would like your opionion. We are considering the possibilty of offering online workshops, courses, lectures, and other interactive events. If you are interested in participating in an online book making workshop, please let us know by emailing us at info@prospectlake.org
Thank you!
Pandemic Pages
Sarah Nicholson
Cultivating grace through daily practice.
I have been practicing daily offerings for years and they have taken many forms. Marks on paper, writing. Color on paper, sketches. Placement of nature’s offerings, mandalas. Or more ephemeral forms: water paintings on stone, reciting poetry out loud, kolam on the earth. (Kolam is a practice from India of drawing on the ground using rice flour.) Some I document, some I do not. Some are permanent, some are fleeting. All of them are my daily offering to the holy in nature. A way for me to greet the day in a practice of gratitude and acknowledge the presence of something larger than my self as I show up new in each day.
I have also been practicing the art of hand made journals over the years and my daily practice often includes my journals. Through the variation of my practices, I have been inspired to create different forms of journals. These include coptic stitch books, meander books, and round pamphlet stitch books.
One such pamphlet book tracked the phases of the moon. When the covid epidemic kept me at home I drew a daily mandala in a meander book that I made from a nautical chart of the world. I was captivated by the overlay of my drawings on the chart marks. Most recently I completed a small coptic stitch journal into which I wrote one page and watercolor sketched on another.
As Desmond Tutu says, “We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew… Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful… and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things."
My varied forms of daily practice are my way of finding the grace with the grit and of honoring this beautiful life that we are gifted with. My hope is for my journals to inspire others to find their unique way of expressing and enjoying the beauty and presence of nature in their everyday life.
FOR DETAILS AND LARGER VIEW, CLICK ON IMAGE.
