Category Archives: mandalas

Trifecta!

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It’s Friday. I have inadvertently snapped my cherished prescription sunglasses in two. There’s a large blister on my left ankle. The universe continues to aggressively overlook my sublime genius. My husband is blasting pop hits from the ’70s through his speakers. So it’s looking like a 3-mandala kind of day.

Sometimes, things get very crazy internally.

Sometimes, things get very crazy internally.

These are old mandalas, and I don’t remember drawing then, or what was going through my head when I did, but they’re all pretty exuberant and cheerful. Sort of expansive, as if they wanted to encompass all the generative power of the universe.

Sometimes a single piece of paper cannot contain the intricacies of the mind.

Sometimes a single piece of paper cannot contain the intricacies of the mind.

They’re also all very free and unrestrained, drawn without the squawking voice of the inner critic complaining about an inherent lack of perfection. If these mandalas were people, they’d be participating in the Body Love Conference.

This one is pretty pleasing and pleasant.

This one is pretty pleasing and pleasant.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling much more centered now.

Here’s a Spectacular Hodgepodge of I Don’t Know What

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Finding myself without any pithy observations regarding art, writing, or the intersection between the two, allow me instead to offer a completely random assortment of recent-ish images.

Let's call it a snake in the grass

Let’s call it a snake in the grass: torn paper mosaic from 2013

I’m pleased that today was a good day, writing-wise. Got about 3500 words out on this graphic novel script, which is nothing to sneeze at, although I could have done a few thousand more words if I’d been stern with myself.

Have a pointy mandala why not?

Have a pointy mandala why not? This one puts me in mind of a compass rose. It’s quite skewed.

I also read and critiqued a friend’s essay and discussed it in what was essentially a one-woman workshop. As an old veteran of Iowa-style workshop (I’ve taken 10 of those suckers, 6 at the graduate level) I can offer pretty good feedback. Would that I could read my own writing the way I read others’.

October 2013

October 2013 I apparently cut out some weird looking pumpkins. The one in the center is by far the saddest jack-o-lantern I have ever created.

This bulletin board is one I didn’t like well enough to put in my original gallery of bulletin boards, but it’s OK. Eventually, I’ll get them all up. The quote, if you can’t read it, is from Percy Bysshe Shelly: “There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky.” Since I have space considerations, and my target audience is on average, 8 years old, I often use small segments of quotes. This one continues,  “which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”

Sort of a Sad Story

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It’s been a couple years, but this still gets me.

Everything is complicated.

The Dissertation Mandala: everything is complicated.

Just deleted an 800 word post, because it didn’t say what I meant it to say.

The story of this mandala, in short, is that I had a friend for 17 years, a close friend, a woman I considered one of my best friends. Although there was a parabolic pattern to her love for me, I always loved her. However, we fought with increasing tendency, until she eventually told me, in no uncertain terms, never to contact her again.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that, but the story of this mandala is that, maybe six months or a year after she broke my heart, she emailed to say that she still never wanted to talk to me again, but she did want to hire me to edit her Ph.d. thesis, and for various reasons, only one of which was money, I accepted.

It was a hard edit. The dissertation was hundreds of pages long, and its quality didn’t come close to her previous work that I had read throughout our friendship. It took a couple weeks to make a single pass on the manuscript. She seemed satisfied with what I’d done and paid me; I haven’t heard from her since, although I miss her often.

This mandala depicts the layers of emotion and complexity I felt while reading her work.

My First Mandala

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The start of something, 1996

The start of something, 1996

This is the first mandala I ever drew as an intentional mandala, knowing something of what it meant to draw a mandala. I had recently finished the class on CG Jung where I began to develop some understanding of spirituality beyond what they taught in Hebrew school and what I’d come to understand in a few years of atheism. I had also recently broken up with my boyfriend of almost 3 years, the one with whom I used to do a lot of collaborative psychedelic art.

I’m pretty sure he had come around to try to get me to take him back, or at least to get me into bed, but it was pretty transparent and I was pretty much through with him. Instead, we ended up painting.  Not collaboratively, though. I don’t remember what he worked on, but it wasn’t my mandala. I told him a mutual friend had confided her attraction to him and he left happily, although our friendship was sort of rocky.

Looking at the huge lapses in symmetry, I wonder if my psyche was that deeply out of alignment, or if I just lacked any skill with a paintbrush.

Getting Centered

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This is a case where drawing a mandala really did serve primarily as a centering exercise.

It’s not easy to get me angry, but when there’s something to get really angry about, my brain gets obsessive. My husband and I received some upsetting news the day before we were scheduled to go down to Florida to visit my grandparents, and we agreed that we wouldn’t talk about it until we got back. Of course, we were both thinking about it the entire time. When we returned, we both had to deal with the situation, which I did by writing a 2000 word email. It took about 2 hours. The words had been brewing and stewing in my brain all week, and by the time I finished, I was in a massive state of agitation. Drawing this mandala helped me regain my composure. I deliberately used rainbow colors to lift my mood, although the skewing of the pattern shows to me how off-kilter I was at the time.

Mandalas Are Magic Part 3

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This whimsical punk mandala was inspired by a visit to the Hot Topic store at the mall

This whimsical punk mandala was inspired by a visit to the Hot Topic store at the mall

One thing I don’t worry about when I draw mandalas is perfection. Another think I don’t worry too much about is symmetry. My soul is clearly not perfect. And it is clearly not symmetrical, so why would my mandalas conform to that pattern?

A mandala inspired by satellites

A mandala inspired by satellites

Most of the mandalas in the collection are abstract, but some of my favorite ones are representative. Often, the silly and imperfect ones are the most-eye catching.

Inspired by a burlesque show

Inspired by a burlesque show

I can be serious too. One of the more complicated mandalas represents the emotions I experienced while editing the doctoral thesis of a former friend who refused to talk to me but still seemed to think I was the best copyeditor she knew. She paid me a good rate to work on her long and involved dissertation, but refused to renew our friendship. Another mandala was drawn as my mother-in-law began treatment for breast cancer.

Sometimes, it’s good to be playful about serious things, too.

Most women can probably figure out what serious monthly life event I have amusingly commemorated here.

Most women can probably figure out what serious monthly life event I have amusingly commemorated here.

 

Mandalas are Magic Part 2

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A flower-based mandala

A flower-based mandala

I set out to draw one hundred mandalas to help me find my way as an artist. It took about six months. Part of me thought, “why not one thousand,” but I only got to about one twenty five before other things became more interesting to me. I still draw mandalas sometimes, but it used to be a couple a week.

A mandala inspired by Aztec design

A mandala inspired by Aztec design

Patterns started to appear in the mandalas. Although each was different, there were many based on flowers or other plants, many based on crystals. There were mandalas inspired by holidays and mandalas inspired by tragedies. Comedic ones made my smile, perfectly symmetrical ones made my work a little harder.

Too obvious?

Too obvious?

Mandalas Are Magic Part 1

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The first of 100 mandalas

The first of 100 mandalas

After my bulletin boards became a regular part of my life, I began to see how visual art made me feel, and how others responded to it. While it was work, it was enjoyable. While I might not be one hundred percent satisfied with the outcome, viewers derived pleasure from it. One day, on a whim, I purchased the Crayola telescoping tower (one hundred fifty colors!) and drew a mandala, something that had interested me in college, but that I had never made a serious study of.

A caddisfly themed mandala for an entomologist friend

A caddisfly themed mandala for an entomologist friend

Mandalas are sort of spiritual maps, or maps of the artist’s soul, if you like. Drawing fast ones had always given me an idea of where I was, balance and focus-wise, and taking more care in creating them helped me see when to take better care of myself, to add more art into my routine.

A monsoon mandala

A monsoon mandala