Read the latest interview  with 

Lynda Lambert & Suzanne Gibson.  

Two Pennsylvania artists are featured in

TOUCH ART BLOG 

We sat down with Kirsten Ervan recently  and  discussed  our  forthcoming

TWO PERSON Art Exhibition,

VISION and REVISION.

We talked about our own sight loss and how we continue to MAKE ART !

http://touchartblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/continuing-our-creative-lives-an-interview-with-artists-suzanne-gibson-and-lynda-lambert/

Painting With a Needle...
the EXQUISITE  art of Lynda McKinney Lambert 

I was thinking this morning about our influences, and how we got to where we are today as artists.  Have you stopped to think about where the ideas come from when you are creating your own art?

 I thought about the choices we make. How do we decide what to create?

I immediately think of  my MOTHER who patiently teaching  me to do embroidery when I was a very young child.  We were  sitting side by side in my GRANDMOTHER’s kitchen.  She had purchased a kit. It consisted of a piece of beautiful linen fabric, in white. There were three colors of embroidery thread: Light blue, dark blue, and silver gray.  I held those little skeins of thread in my hands and moved them about to catch the light on them. They seemed to shimmer as I turned them over and over again. They felt so silky soft in my small hands. The colors seemed to me like they were magic; they were the colors of the sky on a summer afternoon.

There were two  more thing in my embroidery kit; there was a slender, sharp, silver needle and a round metal embroidery hoop.

 As I speak of this day, I can still see my mother bending over me, and showing my how to put my needle into the cloth, to push gently down on it, and to bring it to the back of the linen cloth. I searched for just the right spot where the needle would be pushed into the back of the cloth, and gave it a shove and watched it pop up onto the front once again.

That feeling of pushing the needle gently into the fabric, then pulling the blue thread so gently until it was completely through the fabric was something that stays with me in my memories after sixty years.

My imagination brings me once again to feel the silken thread, the tension of moving it from the top to the back of the linen, and then the pull of bringing it back up to the surface.  It is a feeling of  the comfort of  repetition  and the solitude of working with fabric and thread.  It’s a quiet feeling that gently comes to me when I remember  the slender  silver needle in my small fingers.  I was about 8 years old at that time.

This afternoon lesson sitting with my Mother, is one of the many precious things my Mother gave me. Did she  recognize that I was a child who was destined to be a maker of beautiful things? Somehow, she must have known intuitively that it was important to take the afternoon and spend it with her oldest daughter.  Did she know that she was teaching  me  a life lesson with three skeins  of thread, a delicate needle, and a piece of ivory linen?

Today, I recognize that this was my first painting lesson.  

In the art I am making these days, I am conscious that I am PAINTING with a NEEDLE, and the THREADS are the SPLASHES of COLOR, my PIGMENTS.  Into this mix of fibers and threads, I add dashes of natural gemstones; I gather things from Nature that will be part of my pictures.  And, not only are my THREADS the strokes of the painting’s surface, so are the glass beads, the pearls, the vintage objects, and the crystals.

PICTURED HERE:  Ilsa’s Butterfly Garden, Mixed Media Painting on Fabric.

http://lyndalambert.com

Art show winners - Ellwood City Ledger: Local News

Art show winners - Ellwood City Ledger: Local News

You can click on the Ledger link and SEE ME with my BEST OF SHOW award winning art, DANCE OF THE NEW MOON.

Leave me a message - tell me what you think about my latest post. Thanks.

Best of Show winner overcomes blindness through art - Ellwood City Ledger: Local News

Best of Show winner overcomes blindness through art - Ellwood City Ledger: Local News

There is absolutely no reason that a person with sight loss cannot continue to be a creative person!

This article in the Ellwood City Ledger gives a little bit of my story to find my way again as an artist after I was sidelined in October 2007 by Ischemic Optic Neuropathy. this very quick event left me with "profound blindness."  But, the ARTIST who dwells inside of me, found ways to continue to create art and to continue to be in art exhibitions and even to win the Best of Show Award.

Leave me a message - tell me what you think about my latest post. Thanks.

The Artist Speaks of the Gestures of Life

The Artist Speaks of the Gestures of Life

Remembering Professor Glen Buunken (1943 - 2013)

http://www.wtae.com/news/local/butler/man-dies-after-tripping-falling-through-glass-window-at-sandwich-shop/-/10928542/20406044/-/o49vjg/-/index.html

Professor Glen  William Brunken usually taught a course in drawing every summer at the university where I was an art student from the fall of 1985 to the spring of 1989.  During my studies for the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, I always took  Prof. Brunken’s summer drawing classes each year.  It was the only time Prof. Brunken taught drawing and I wanted to study with him because I had admired his paintings when I saw them in an exhibition.  In fact, I was so inspired by his art that it led me to seek him out as a teacher.  I wanted to study  painting with the man who had created the most exciting paintings I had ever seen!  I had heard that he taught at the university and that is what led me there to study.  Though I had intended to study painting with him, it never really happened. It was because he did not teach painting at the time I attended the  university.

     During the regular semesters, I took printmaking with Prof.  Brunken. But, in the summer courses he would focus on drawing.  It was in those intense  early morning drawing classes that I would absorb  life lessons and expand the core beliefs of my art philosophy. I listened to him teaching every day in that large drawing studio on the second floor of the spacious old building known as West Hall. We  students stood at our easels hour after hour, day after day.  Prof. Brunken once reminded me that “When the Muse comes, you better be standing at your easel.” 

     We did not have air conditioning but the wall of  open windows was  adequate. A slight breeze would waft across the large room; it was enough to keep us going as we labored at our easels, drawing from the live model.  We stood in a circle around the model’s platform. The room had a well worn floor.from generations of art students who learned the rudiments of making art with various professors. As we struggled to find the forms and planes of the figure, we  kept our eyes focused on the nude models who took a pose on the model’s platform.  That platform became the center of the room and the apex of the world that connected us to our internal longings to find balance and purpose as artists. We held  pieces of black charcoal sticks, worn down lead pencils, blocks of waxy crayons, and even brushes and paints as we slashed, swooped, smudged, and splattered the large sheets of drawing papers that were clipped onto the thick, heavy, drawing boards held upright on our tall metal easels.  

     After the four hours of drawing, my hands, arms, face, and clothing would be covered with the materials I had used for my drawings. It was so exciting and I often felt like a small child who was playing in the mud – joyous and forbidden. It seemed that for the first time in my life, I could get very dirty and I was breaking the rules – and it was all okay. I relished those summer days making drawings and feeling like I was part of something so special, there with my classmates, and Prof. Brunken.

"My Life as a Wave"

Etching by Glen Brunken

     We worked away at the drawings before us each day. Prof. Brunken would walk about the room. He stopped beside each of us, looked at what we were doing in our drawings, and made comments and suggestions.  Often he would make a joke and laugh about what he saw on the page. And, we laughed with him.  He had a sharp wit and a critical eye. His ability to focus in on the most minute bit of information that a student needed was uncanny.

     Before I started going to the university, I had been a painter who was enchanted with the landscape and had been making paintings that would be called “painterly realism.”  I painted every day once I started painting at the age of 36.  I lived and breathed painting and art. Before I went to sleep at night, I would read from one of my art books and study the photographs of drawings and paintings. I visited art exhibitions and looked closely at each work that interested me, trying to learn from them and bring information and techniques into my own work. I had studied for six years taking private classes with an artist; and then  with a teacher at a local art center. 

     All of this eventually led me to expand my art education and begin work on an art degree at the university. At the age of 42, I was now a nervous freshman student.  I was surrounded in the classroom by young students who were the age of my own children. In fact, I had grandchildren, too!  I tried not to be self-conscious or  intimidated by their youth but to just keep my own sense of purpose in my mind. I was there to learn everything I could about everything I could study. I felt like a child who was on a merry-go-round and I was reaching out to capture the brass ring. It was the most exciting time of my life, to return to a classroom as an adult filled with desires and a passion to spend the rest of my life making art. It was as though the sky had opened above my head as I whirled around on that merry-go-round, reaching out into the future. The vast universe had opened up to me and I was learning to fly into the clouds with  a brand new pair of wings. 

     Prof. Brunken was my advisor. He encouraged me to take courses in everything and particularly in the things I knew nothing about.  I began this adventure into the studies of everything, with courses in Geology, Biology, and Sociology. I never found a course I did not like, and I never found a course that was “easy.” I put everything I had into each of the courses I had and each of those disciplines gave me new information that I could take back to my art.

I had a secret, hidden desire as I entered the university fine arts program. 

     My goal was to learn how to do abstract art. I had seen some abstract paintings in my gallery visits and I was swept away by the magic and depth of it. There was something so mysterious about abstract painting, and it pulled me into it. It gave me an emotional response like nothing else had done. I bought several books on this way of working and  did a lot of experiments on my own before I started classes.  Soon, my desire to make abstract art came to the forefront of my mind,  and I began  changing. I did abstract art in my dreams at night; during the days I struggled to find the way to learn how to do it in the classroom.

     It was exciting and yet it was frightening to me. I had to leave my comfort zone and change my ways of thinking and working. Prof. Brunken would be the catalyst that would push me over the edge into this new  consciousness  and understanding of the world. Art making, passed from being a perceptual notion, to being conceptual.  One morning Prof. Brunken paused during one of our little gatherings. He smiled broadly and said, “The more I think of scribbling, the more I like it!”  He seemed to be a child again as he spoke to us about the joys of freedom of expression. He affirmed  for us that we were able to be a child again, to scribble.  This  was the message of the day. It was all okay and I was free to play and enjoy the physical activity of drawing with a passion.

     From time to time throughout the morning sessions, we would take breaks from our work.  Often, we would gather around Prof. Brunken. He would laugh and talk with us about making art; his own creative life journey; his views on drawing; and even his views on time and place.  He would take some of our drawings and lay them out, one by one as he  pointed  out what was “working” in that drawing and why it was important. He taught by emphasizing the positive things he saw. And, it was interesting now that I look back on it because it did not matter if you were an art major at all. Each student was treated the same and each had his full attention. 

     One of the things we did every day on our own after class was over was to make many pages of rapid and small drawings in our sketchbook. They were called “gesture drawings” I would soon learn. We had been instructed to fill pages of our sketchbooks with those little drawings. There would be about 20 or more on a single page and we used drawing pencils or black ink pens to do them.  When he gathered our sketchbooks and went through them, he would make a little asterisk mark beside the ones that he thought were the best ones.  It was very affirming to look through our books after he gave them back to us and find a few of those little stars beside one of our “gestures.”

     As the days went by, my understanding of the gestures of life grew. We made gesture drawings as homework; we made gesture drawing on the very large sheets of drawing papers in class. We learned to look into the surface of a figure; quickly assess the gesture that was creating what we were looking at when a person walked past us. We saw gestures at a distance; we saw gestures in the trees; in flowers blowing in a field;  a person walking far away down the busy street; the furniture in the art studio. “Everything in our world holds a gesture,”  he said. That gesture is the moving, living, life form of the thing we are viewing. It is what gives things life, movement, and stability.

     Many years later, when I became an art professor, my students would learn all about gestures, too. We practiced looking for gestures in our classroom, in our drawings, sculptures, fiber arts, and in our paintings.

     On one occasion, I observed Prof. Brunken as he was judging an art exhibition. He looked at a sculpture and said,

This person needs to take some drawing classes. This sculpture has a lack of understanding  of  structure. It looks like the artist does not know how to draw.

He could look at an art work and know if a person had studied drawing and understood gesture. We learned how to do that ourselves through being around him in the classroom and in our discussions together as he looked at our drawings.

In the many years I have made art after leaving the classrooms of Prof. Brunken,

     
I have observed everything in life through the  lens of gesture  that I began to develop as an eager  student. After school days were over for me, I carried a sketchbook on all my travels. In those books I made gestures of the world I was experiencing. I wrote poems and reflections, and did sketches every day as I traveled and taught classes to my own students.  As an art professor, I passed down the teachings I had learned in Prof. Brunken’s classrooms during those long ago hot summer mornings.

     Just a few days ago as I traveled by car with my daughter,  I spoke to her about gestures and she began to see them as we traveled down the highway together. She is a self-taught artist, and I know that once she begins to see gestures  her own art will grow, too. One is never the same after we begin to see gestures.

The smallest things in our daily life  begin to dance before our eyes when we look more closely at any movement. Begin to think about what is beneath the surface and see the spirit of the thing there; the movement and the embrace of the inner core of all of life present and visible to us as we stand in awe while looking at someone or some thing. A gesture sends a visual signal to an onlooker. While we engage in the various movements and acts of life, every moment of every day, we are typically unaware of the message that an onlooker is getting by watching us.

Many of our actions are basically non-social, having to do with problems of personal body care, body comfort and body transportation; we clean and groom ourselves with a variety of scratchings, rubbings and wipings; we cough, yawn and stretch our limbs; we eat and drink; we prop ourselves up in restful postures, folding our arms and crossing our legs; we sit, stand, squat and recline, in a whole range of different positions; we crawl, walk and run in varying gaits and styles. But although we do these things for our own benefit, we are not always unaccompanied when we do them. Our companions learn a great deal about us from these 'personal' actions - not merely that we are scratching because we itch or that we are running because we are late, but also, from the way we do them, what kind of personalities we possess and what mood we are in at the time.”  (From Manwatching by Desmond Morris.)

Learning to recognize the gestures of life can be difficult. 

We are so accustomed to taking a quick glance at everything and only seeing the surface of everything. Seeing requires more time. Seeing is a skill that has to be practiced and learned and it takes a lot of deliberate time to do it. Think of all the many images your eyes view every day as they rapidly flash before you. There are so many you cannot even see them because seeing comes slowly and it comes in layers. Seeing requires intention.

     One day after Prof. Brunken had looked through my latest group of gestures in my sketchbook he turned to look at me and he said,

“Lynda, you need to look at this gesture drawing until you begin to realize it is beautiful.  In fact, cut this one out of your sketchbook and put it in a frame. Put it in a place where you can see it. Look at it often. Keep looking at it until you understand that it is beautiful.  For many years that framed gesture drawing had a prominent place in my home.

     Today, I needed to write an artist statement about my own art. My statement will be included in an exhibition I will be doing at a museum gallery next spring. I thought about Prof. Brunken, and I began to realize that what I need to focus on in my statement is the central theme of everything I do. It is the gesture that is at the core of it all.

Note: 

Written in memory of Professor Glen Brunken (1943-2013).

Glen taught at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania for 40 years (1969 – 2009   He was killed in a tragic accident, June  3,2013, when he fell through a glass door at a local restaurant in Slippery Rock, PA.

You can find additional information on “Gesture”  at:

http://www.uefap.com/reading/exercise/texts/gesture.htm

Written June 21, 2013.

Lynda McKinney Lambert.  Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.

Keep Your Eyes on the Brass Ring

Watch for the Brass Ring:

A 5-Step Plan for the New Year

by Lynda McKinney Lambert

Copyright 2013. Lynda McKinney Lambert. All Rights Reserved.

As my sister, Patti,  would attest, I have an opinion on everything.  She would say to this, "YOU are not kidding!" I say this with a smile and a little chuckle - because I have an enormous sense of humor on most things. 

Lynda Lambert with her First Prize Winner 

at an art exhibition in 2012

Keep your EYES on YOUR PRIZE!

I read on a Writer’s Discussion Group recently  about  publishing.

I realized how fortunate I have been for the past 20 plus years of publications of my poetry, articles, and book. Maybe my experiences have been different due to my profession in art and literature. I do not know.  I can offer some advice here through my own experiences. I can let you know what has worked for me in my career. Some of it might work for you. 

My own career has been as an arts administrator ( executive director of a museum and community arts center ) and a tenured college professor of Fine Arts and Humanities.   Both of these occupations provided many opportunities to flourish in my field of fine arts and literature.

For both positions,   publishing of our work is essential over our whole career. Promotions are based in part on visibility in the community and in our field.  Published works in literature and exhibitions in fine art set a benchmark; an example to our students; credibility in our field; and tenure and promotions in the academic institutions.

There is no question about it at all; if we teach a subject, we are experts in that field and publication of work is an enormous part of who we are. Can you even imagine an English professor who does not publish? An Art professor who is not in major exhibitions in museums and galleries?  Each has to provide a detailed list of “Professional Achievements” every year. That is what keeps the discipline alive and thriving;  no one reaches a goal and sits down to rest with the laurel wreath on her head. 

My poetry is published several times a year in various publications.  Those come about because I send  them out to the publications, usually. It has never been a struggle, but has just happened naturally as I worked at developing possibilities for them. Rejections are our normal condition and the sooner we get used to it the better. Move on! You can decide how many times you will send out a piece of work every month. That is in your control. Getting it out for consideration is totally in your control  No one but you can decide how many poems you’ll send out this month. But, just do it and wait for your reply to come back from the publication.

One way my works has been published is because I have been active over the past 20 years in giving conference presentations.  By doing this your work is presented by YOU to an audience who has come to the conference and has an interest in the topic you are presenting. This also opens doors for your work to be published.  Typically, it will be selected by someone at the conference who is working on a book, or by the conference coordinator who is compiling a book on a particular topic.  After your presentation, you are contacted by the editor and asked to be included in his/her book. I have never sought out these opportunities, but they have come to me because I was "out there" with my colleagues, discussing my work and research and was presenting on it.

When my  book  ( Concerti: Psalms for the Pilgrimage ) was published  it was because the publisher  had met me through a mutual interest.  The publisher lived and worked in Washington state; but her mother lived in Pittsburgh, PA. The mother had read about me in a newspaper, sent it on to her daughter in Washington, and the rest is history.  They edited my book, did all the design work, did all the business details on it, and sent me the drafts several times as it progressed.  It was not difficult at all, and the book arrived in time for an enormous art opening that I was having to celebrate 10 years of my work in Austria. I was able to have that opening of the exhibition, be the book-signing launch of the book.  It was an international event and very exciting. My book is no longer in print, but is still available through amazon.  And, occasionally, I have checked on it, and found it for sale in several other countries and at prices that knocked my socks off. I wonder, how in the world did my book get to India, or other such countries? It was published by a small press that focuses on a very narrow audience.

( I received  personal letters from the President of Austria; President Bush; and a number of Austrian ambassadors and officials who complimented me on the book and praised me for “being a good will ambassador for Austria. )

When I read of the struggles of getting published, it is surprising to me because that has not been my experience. All of the professors I work with have had books published, give presentations at conferences, etc. It is just part of our job to do this.  It is really an extension of our teaching, and our lectures. It comes naturally as we work at our discipline every day. 

My advice would be to get your work out before an audience who is focused on what you are doing.  There are conferences in every discipline there is, and that is your target audience. There you will meet others in your field, have great conversations with others who are lecturing and publishing, and make the contacts that can get your work published.

Since this is the first week of the new year, it might be a good idea to write out a road map from where you are, and where you want to be at the end of this year. Then put in all the steps and goals you have to reach along the way. Put dates on them, and one by one start working towards each step that comes next.

The way I work towards what I want to achieve is this:

1.  Write a 5 year plan of goals- be specific and write out exactly what you want to achieve in the next five years. This is where you lay down the PICTURE of your PRIZE. 

What is YOUR BRASS RING:?

What is it you want to GET at the end of your 5 year journey? THINK BIG.  What you envision, is what you’ll be working towards for the next five years.

2.  Break the five years down into 5 one-year plans of goals. What is the big picture for each of your five years? Be very specific and write it all out.

3. Write out 12 plans;  one for each month in the first year of your 5 year journey. It is good to begin working on this near the end of the year, or at the very beginning of the new year.  This is the beginning of your journey. You are laying down 12 little stepping stones that will take you through your first year. Keep it simple – one little step at a time. With your text outline, also write out your budget. 

What do you need to allot for your goals here? You’ll need postage most likely; envelopes; paper. If you are an artist, you need materials to make your art. Put these things in your monthly budget.

          Your budget will be an important part of this entire 5-year plan.

Write out what you need to do and how much money you'll need to do it.

4.  You now have a good road map to follow to get to your end goals in the 5 year plan you have written down.

5.  You will make adjustments in your plans as you go. Some of the monthly goals will be met on time; some will be delayed and can be carried over to the next month, etc.

Like any good budget and  road map, you make adjustments as you go, but you keep your eyes on the prize at the end of the road. You will be amazed at where you can go, once you have a concrete plan to get somewhere.  One friend recently told me “Keep your eyes on the brass ring.”

Whatever it is, stay focused on that prize.

If you are feeling lost at sea, maybe it is because you have not thought out your plan carefully.

Where do you want to be? and How will you get there? Begin writing!

It is good to keep your plan before you every day.

Read it over all the time. 

Burn it into your consciousness.

Morning Hour

Happy New Year

January 1, 2013

May you FIND just the RIGHT

WORDS and IMAGES  

for this new year. 

  
Morning Hour

In the early morning hour

a nippy breeze

wrapped  around my bare feet

like  soft gray cashmere clouds.

                         

My own reflection

slowly materialized-

I was exposed, naked,

on a clear icy glass

surface.

                       

                                   

Outside the frozen windowpane,

an icicle boundary

surrounded my view

of the aging Douglas Fir.

I turned for a closer look

through the silent porthole

                         

           

Quick movements

in the shadow

revealed

one tiny  ruffled bird,

a solo performer

hunkered down, deep,

on snow-clogged branches.

                       

             

Inside this room,

a blizzard-

a scattering of words still lingered-

Waited  to be gathered,

In a winter bouquet-written on a page,

in spite of the bitter cold.

We have been here

for a thousand years

In the early morning hour.

Copyright 2013. Lynda  McKinney Lambert. All rights reserved.

Poem and Photographs by Lynda McKinney Lambert, 2013.

Create an Art Camp Adventure for YOURSELF This Year

Create 

Your  Art Camp Adventure

Do YOU need a creative getaway?

Looking for some time and space to just relax and make some art?

Last year two of my daughters (Heidi and Ilsa)  decided we should  take a vacation together  and  go to a place where we could be alone, in nature, and make art for a week.  Another art friend, Lois, decided she wanted to go, too! That was a year ago, and now we are packing up for our Art Camp Adventure – just for the FOUR of us!

 We needed to choose a location  somewhere in-between Burlington, Kentucky  where Ilsa lives, and Western  Pennsylvania where the other three of us live. Ilsa and Heidi got started on finding the right spot for us. Shortly it was decided that a rural area in Southern Ohio would be just right.

We’ll be leaving for our Art Camp Vacation next weekend. We rented an A-frame with a hot tub. We can go hiking, do a  zip line, and attend outdoor activities in that area.

You can choose 

an exotic location 

like a Rain Forest  

Or Some Place near your own home!

Your back yard 
or along the banks of a nearby creek;

How about a quiet place 
where you can be alone with NATURE?

Right now, I am deciding what to take along for me projects to work on. I decided on taking the materials I will need to begin a couple of new Talisman necklaces. I am packing up some Tree Agates, Lapis Lazuli, Green Opals,  Honey Wax Opals, Japanese Seed Beads and Swarovski Crystals in brilliant greens and purples. I plan to be inspired by the woods and chose the colors with that in mind.

If you are unable to do a getaway, 

you know you can still create your own Art Camp Experience 

right where you are.  It is really a Vacation that is inside of us -

Make an ordinary day 

into a Vacation Day! 

Think about when your Vacation will begin. Then, decide what you will work on during your vacation time. You can do it at home, very easily.  Decide what you will not be doing in your daily routine, so you can decide what you will be doing for your ART projects. Then, go ahead and have yourself a great Vacation, wherever you are!

I would love to hear about YOUR art camp experience.

Where did you go?

Did you go away for your retreat, or did you do it in your own home?

 What did you work on that was not in your daily schedule?

What was the experience like for you?

In a couple of weeks, I will report on how mine went.

I will take photos and you can see how it was for the four of us.

Why not do the same and post some photos of you on your Vacation Art Camp?

You can VIISIT me on Face Book, too. Just look for

Lynda McKinney Lambert

Butterflies Bring Healing

Butterflies

Large Crimson RED Butterflies in January...

Today is June 1st. We are fully into the Spring Season now.

Spring time here in Pennsylvania  brings with it a myriad of flowers. They  begin to scatter over the meadows and fields and along the roadsides, 

I remember one special day in January 2008 when I watched  two butterflies playing in the stillness of an afternoon. 

But, it was not spring time. 

There were no flowers. 

It  was not over a field or meadow.

When I see a butterfly it brings back a memory for me.

It was 4 1/2 years ago, and I had just lost most of my sight. I had not yet had any help, and did not yet know about technologies that would help me, nor did I yet know of rehabilitation for the blind. I had no white cane, and no way of doing just about anything I had done just a couple months before. Overnight, my entire life was transformed into something that was new and unexpected. I could not use the elevator because I could not see the buttons to press, or know what floor it had landed on. Simple things like that, we took for granted, but those simple things were now a mystery to me.

It was at this very time that my second daughter, Heidi Melinda, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Now, I stood at her bedside in the IC unit in a Pittsburgh, PA hospital. Her surgery to remove the tumor that had spread to a stage 3C cancer was completed a few days before. But nothing had gone well, and within a couple of days she was near death. They had put her in an induced coma to try to give her sick lungs the opportunity to begin to heal.

Day after day, it was one step down after another.

Even though I could not see very much, I was staying at the hospital day and night. I could find my way from the waiting room, to the bathroom, and to my daughter's room. I slept for short periods during the night, sitting in a chair in the waiting room of the IC unit. Then, I would walk back to her room, to sit by her bedside.

She was kept in a coma for over 2 weeks. Nurses and doctors were at her side or directly outside her room working on the monitors and computers continuously, monitoring her, searching for the right mix of drugs to help her. We waited there in limbo as the days went by. There was nothing we could do but pray and wait. Family members came and went, all helpless.

One afternoon I sat in the chair at the bottom of her bed with my eyes focused on her laying there with tubes and apparatus all over her body. The hospital staff had named Heidi, The Sleeping Princess. On this afternoon, the Sleeping Princess had two unexpected visitors. They did not come in through the door.

As I watched Heidi, two enormous butterflies were there. They emerged from the base of her feet and they flew back and forth, playing with each other as butterflies do when you see them in a field. The two butterflies were a deep red crimson and they were the size of my hand. They were bright and very large. As I watched them, it was the most normal scene I could ever have seen. Heidi's body was the field over which they were zig-zagging back and forth over as they moved towards her head. It seemd like I watched them for quite awhile, but I believe it was probably only seconds. It was like an eternal moment, when time did not exist, and I had been a witness to timelessness.

The butterflies made themselves visable to me. They gave me new hope for my daughter. I knew they were the Holy Spirit, made visable.  I recognized that the Holy Spirit had come to visit the Sleeping Princess that afternoon and that this would be the afternoon when Heidi would begin to recover. I was assured at that moment when I saw this vision that my daughter would heal and that she had experienced a miracle.

Today, Heidi remains free of ovarian cancer, even though the tests done in surgery had shown that the cancer cells were throughout her entire body. She undergoes tests and scans all the time in Pittsburgh. She has an entourage of doctors who are keeping a close watch on her. She has side effects from her surgery and her long recovery time. Her body remembers the trauma, and her body is still responding to it. Our bodies carry memories, and those memories in the entire body continue to have a response to the trauma it went through.

         Heidi with one of her art works, May 2012

Heidi is an artist who has a studio on a mountain top, in the woods of Pennsylvania. She actively works at her art, and is in exhibitions including an international invitation one that her work is in right now.

Shortly after she recovered,  she organized The Sleeping Princess Team with her friends. The team raises money for the Ovarian Cancer Coalition of Pittsburgh. This is the fifth year that the team and Heidi's family will walk with her at the Walk to Break the Silence in the fall.  Our little team has been able to raise over $20,000. in funds to contribute to the cause.

Heidi wearing her SURVIVOR T-Shirt - Sept. 2011

Yes, butterflies are harbingers of renewal and transformation, and healing. 

They are a reflection of the Creator.

Butterflies come to bring us joy and healing.

Like God, they are right on time! Every time!

A Poem is for Everyone!

Yes, it is true!  

Everyone can read a poem 

and ENJOY it. 

I promise you, poetry is for everyone.
So many people say, "I don't know anything about poetry." The seem to apologize for not knowing anything about poetry. Usually when someone says something like this, they are really afraid to even talk about poetry.

Why is that?

For some reason they think you have to be "educated" in understanding a poem.
I say, if you are an English major, or taking a poetry class in school, then you will be learning a lot about different kinds of poems and poets.

But if you are just reading a poem, and want to enjoy it, then go right ahead!

What is poetry really all about?

It is all around you; the air you breathe; the warmth of the sun on your shoulders on a summer day; the peas that are cooking on your stove; the music on your radio; the sound of the creek running in the spring time; swimming in a cold mountain stream, and every other thing you may experience.

Don't worry about what "form" the poem is!
Don't worry about rhyme, or meter or other fancy words that some people like to throw around.

Poetry is all about you, and what touches you inside when you read something.
Poetry is the very air we breathe.

It's for everybody!