The Story of the Peacock Christmas Tree

 A Christmas Surprise


One Christmas I had been away from home in Germany visiting a friend.  I had not felt well and injured my leg on the trip. I was  coming in a wheel chair!  I wasn't expecting much, but when my friends opened the living room doors I was overwhelmed by the sight of the most beautiful Christmas tree I had ever seen, purples, greens, blues and gold everywhere.   My two friends and partner had engineered an amazing creation. Michael, an interior decorator, had put his talents to work directing the design and decorating.  
To understand why it was so special to me you would have to know another part of the story.  Many years before I had been studying about visualization.  The book suggested starting simple, choosing one small thing to concentrate on.  I chose a peacock.  I was traveling to Boston on an airplane and visualized peacocks the whole way.  Not thinking anything of it when I disembarked,  as I walked through the airport shops there were peacocks everywhere. It was a theme or something..but I was overwhelmed.  So years later to walk in and see a  vision of a Peacock Christmas tree was like a dream come true.  It truly was one of the sweetest thing anyone has done for me.  So this year as I get the peacocks out I think of the year of the Christmas surprise and wonderful loving friends.

One World in Peace

The more I thought about Christmas, Hanukkah, and other holiday at this time of year I began to think about what all my years of travel and teaching and art have meant to me.  I love people, I love other cultures, I love children and I love all people being able to express themselves through Art.

This picture says so much in such a simple way, we hold this world in our hands.  We must reach out to each other and take care of this planet.  It is our only home.  When you live in other countries you get to know people on a one to one basis, you are no longer removed by tv and newspapers.  And the amazing thing about people is, they are much the same all over the world: they laugh, they cry, they are sad, they all hurt, and they all love and want to be loved.  I have lived in several countries for long periods of time and traveled extensively and everywhere I have been I have loved the people and learned from their cultures.  So I wish peace for you where ever you are and I wish love wherever you are and I wish healing where ever you are.  I think as artists and people who love art we can offer something special, a way for people to unite,  a way for people to share, and a way for people to understand each other.

                       

Peace through Art

A World of Tolerance, Understanding, and Peace!

Israeli Christmas and Hanukkah Decorations

                                Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

This is by an Israeli Artist and is made out of recycled items!  

This is an artisan made menorah of stained glass.

Mona, a Christmas Gift to the World

Buon Natale Italy!  

I think of so many things when I think of Italy and Christmas: Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child, the Roman coliseum, family and food. 

I thought we would take out time to thank you for a gift you gave the world, one the worlds most treasured gifts!  Her image shines and mystifies like no other.  Her image is probably the most recognized universally in the world. Leonardo Da Vinci gave us many gifts from masterful paintings to the genius of his inventions that would touch the world for centuries to come.  So We in the world of art thank you for the gift of your son of Italy, Leonardo Da Vinci and his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. 

An English Christmas Tradition/the Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree, thought originating as a decoration in early Germany, was most popularized by England. 

In 1846, the popular royals, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree. Unlike the previous royal family, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at court immediately became fashionable—not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society. The Christmas tree had arrived.

My first English Christmas was actually in Izmir, Turkey.  Two of my British friends had us over for a proper English Christmas meal, with crackers and pudding!  It was quite wonderful and I brought the idea of crackers back to share with my American Family as well.  

Mother Russia/Happy Holidays to You

cover of Russian Laquer Box

Светлого Рождества и счастливого Нового Года!

  The Russian laquer boxes are always so exquisite and beautifully detailed.   The skill of the artists is amazing.  There is such a rich and wonderful folk history in Russia.     

Tales of Santa Claus/Around the World

When I lived in Izmir, Turkey I heard the most wonderful tale about Santa Claus and his origin.  I even went to Myra visit the site.  For years after I told the story to the Children in my art classes, and with delight their younger siblings would ask for me to tell the story year after year.  I was looking for the story when I discovered this site to share with you about Santa Claus stories from all over the world.  Enjoy, our world is rich with imagination and delight!
Santa Claus Stories From Around the World(click on this phrase and it will take you to the link with all the stories of Santa)

Fröhliche Weihnachten

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

Merry Christmas to our German friends. Here are a few pictures I took in Stuttgart and area at the wonderful Christmas Markets. It brings back such wonderful memories of Germany and good times with wonderful friends.

Wow This blog is doing well!!!!

6,000 Hits!
A new benchmark reached at Rabbit's Moon Studio Blog!
Thank you all for your readership and interest.  For a little blog that started in August with just me, a computer and Da Vinci dog at my side we have done very well.  We thank you and feel humbled by your interest and loyalty! 

I love Japanese Woodblock prints. I have a collection of some old prints and of woodblock print post cards. I thought I would post art from different countries that had to do with the holiday season in the next week. I know there are many religions that celebrate during this time, but my intent is to celebrate the human spirit, your country and culture, and art from all over the world. I also want to wish everyone in Japan a special Holiday season after such a difficult year with the earthquakes and tsunami. You are certainly in everyones thoughts. We are amazed by your community spirit and resilience.


                                                                          

This Week Look Who Visited Rabbit's Moon Studio Blog!

As we approach another banner day here at Rabbit's Moon Studio Blog We want to thank all the artists and art lovers across the world for their continued readership and loyalty!  We should hit 6,000 hits today and that is another benchmark for us!  Thanks again artists of the world and those of you who support the arts!

Australia 
United States
Russia
Ukraine
Germany
Canada
United Kingdom
Italy
New Zealand
Slovenia
Thailand

James Rosenquist/Aripeka Studio

This is James Rosequist in his Aripeka studio. I first heard him speak at an event for the Tampa Museum of art. He is an affable man with a generous spirit. He always seems to have time to help out in the local Gulf Coast area to support the arts. This is one section of his studio, there is a much larger section that is the size of two football fields to hang his massive canvases as he works on them. He travels between his New York studios and the Tampa Bay area. I read once he chose the area for the clear sunlight for his painting. A fire destroyed one of his studio's and a large portion of work several years ago.

I believe he has since rebuilt. Another article written about him references Rosenquist as the "King of Pop".

Some of his canvases are massive tracing back to his experience as a sign painter in his earlier years, not unlike, Jackson Pollack.

Florida has been fortunate in having some really wonderful artist reside here....I especially love the two R's...Rauschenberg, and Rosenquist!

Quirky Florida Holiday Drive

Aripeka, Florida

is a tiny dot on a map. It might be easy to miss if you didn't know where to look, but is a wonderful old Florida town that time has left by, and kindly so. There is only one or two stores that sell everything from bait to snacks. No chains stores, no condo's, and there is still a quiet beauty that has been left fairly unharmed. These pictures on a holiday drive a year ago. Florida is not snow, sleds, and hot rum drinks around the fireplace. Real Florida is palms rustling in the gulf breeze, beautiful clear sunshine, cool evenings in the winter and pleasant days, egrets and herons wading along the shore.

Florida can be quirky too, red beach chairs, a Christmas wreath that holds a pack of cigarettes just right, a creative naive painter who captures the beauty of the tropical environment that they inhabit, a store that defies any hint of organization or Madison avenue advertising placement, and all of that right on the front porch of nature. It did not go unrecognized by a famous New York artist. James Rosenquist made it his home away from home, built a huge hanger size studio the size of two football fields here, and paints in the clear crystal light that cannot be found on cloudy winter days in New York City.

Lets take a look at Finish Museums, one of our newest countries!

Art Museums in Finland

Museums with fine art collections and an online presence

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Espoo • Gallen-Kallela Museum Helsinki • Valtion Taidemuseo (Finnish National Gallery) • Amos Anderson Art Museum • Ateneum • Didrichsen Art Museum • Finnish Museum of Art and Design • Finnish Museum of Photography • Helsinki City Art Museum • KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art • Museum of Finnish Architecture • Sinebrychoff Art Museum Hyvinkaa • Hyvinkaan taidemuseo Joensuu • Joensuu Art Museum Jyvaskyla • Alvar Aalto Museum and Foundation Kuopio • Kuopio Art Museum Oulu City • Oulu City Art Museum Pori • Pori Art Museum Rauma • Lonnstromin Art Museum Riihimaki • Riihimaki Art Museum Rovaniemi • Rovaniemi Art Museum Tampere • Sara Hilden Art Museum • Tampere Art Museum Tornio • Aine Art Museum Turku • Waino Aaltonen Museum of Art

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Welcome Finland!

Welcome Finland it is so nice to add you to our list of countries! We look forward to hearing more about Finish artists, museums and culture.

Support the Arts This Holiday Season!

It is easy to go to stores and buy mass produced articles and things that are not made by hand with care or creativity, but it is not as satisfying as buying art. During this holiday season support the arts: give a gift of original art, an art museum membership, a ticket to a play or symphony, an art workshop to learn a new skill, an instrument, or music lessons. The Arts need our support in this difficult economy and artists who are self supporting need our help as well. Support locally and nationally...but do support, by making a commitment to the arts. Here are a few favorites to consider:

Dali Museum

Moma

Tate Museum of Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

Van Gogh Museum

Louvre

Ogden Museum of Art

Florida Craftsmen Guild

Miro Museum and Foundation

Musee D'Orsay

Chicago Art Institute

Chihuly

St.Petersburg Museum of Art

Mom on a Good Day

This is my Mother on a good day, not far apart in time, from the Madonna in Blue Pictures. I know many of my friends and family read this blog so I did not want them to worry about the picture I took of her on a not so good day. As all aging parents there are good days and bad. Miss Lela looks pretty good for almost 99 you have to agree!

You can still see the power of grace and love in her face...and strength. She had many accomplishments, but she counted motherhood as her most important. She taught until 72, for over 50 years she was a public school educator of highest acclaim. Her love of all things beautiful and graceful led me into the arts. Her love of people, justice for all, and education led me and my brother into education and making a difference for people in their lives. Her love of the underdog, the neglected, the poor led us into working in programs that lift impoverished peoples up to the light where they may shine.

Her love of science and nature help us appreciate all the wonders the world has to offer and the curiosity to understand what is unknown nor apparent. I could offer up Carl Jung again and this time the archetype would be SuperWoman!

Blue Madonna/A Portrait of Motherhood

BLUE MADONNA/A PORTRAIT OF MOTHERHOOD

Why do we do art, what motivates us as artists to do what we do? Joy, love, anger, pain, sadness...emotions and shared human experiences are certainly one of the things that motivate all artists.

An artist is like a sponge that absorbs experiences around himself/herself and then expresses them back to others using color, shape, texture, line and space. Dance, drama, music, poetry, and visual arts can elicit feelings that are difficult to express in any other way. Complex feeling can be expressed through art...think of the aria in the movie Philadelphia when Andy knows he is dying and has no other way to express the sheer pain of leaving life and loved ones, other than to play his favorite opera La Mamma Morta, at full volume, sung at by Maria Callas until it encompasses his whole being. Or think of the play a Street Car Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, when Stanley cries out Stella in a soul riveting pleading sob. Contemplate the ballet Swan Lake, its tender tragedy and love story. These are the ways artists interpret and give back our inexpressible emotions to us.

Aging of our parents and loved ones is not easy to look at and experience. It is a journey we all go on, unless a parent dies young. There are moments of joy, tenderness, and sadness on this journey. Everyday I go into my Mother's nursing home, into the alzheimer/dementia unit I am bombarded by sights, sounds and smells. I come away with feelings and emotions I do not know what to do with. The nursing home can be a drama of emotions on any given day. Adult children visiting alzheimer parents who no longer recognize them, patients who are robbed of their memory by dementia, the frustration of nurses trying to be patient when a patient screams and screams caught in a moment of confusion of where they are...sometimes it is no more that a tear sliding down a cheek or a head bent lost in a world of boredom...it is a bombardment of images and impressions. The smells of medicine, food, urine and antiseptics and the sounds of old movies droning away in the background effect other senses. One cannot walk away without feeling something and for an artist it is a hundred times so. Sometimes I think of Picasso's "Guernica" or Munch's "Scream" and then I think of Leonardo Da Vinci's pictures of aging or Renaissance pictures of Motherhood and religious icons.

I love this picture of my Mother, it is sad, it is tender, it is vulnerable. Mother is almost 99 now and at times aware and at other times not. She still knows me and my brother, she can still express her unconditional love she has always had for us. I have looked at this photo many times and felt a myriad of emotions. I have been reluctant to write and share because it is so close and personal to me. But like art ideas that come over and over to me, telling me they need to come in to creation, this one calls to me. It won't go away, I keep going back to this picture and thinking about it. Something about it seemed universal, beyond just an ordinary moment in the nursing home with Mom, it transcends the everyday to a shared human experience...it is persistent in my mind. What is it that I am being called to create, to express? Then I realized that the photo of my Mother wrapped in a blue blanket reminded me of Renaissance paintings I had seen before in art history studies and at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida that has a large collection of Renaissance paintings. The photograph of my Mother takes on an iconic form to me, the Jungian idea Motherhood as an archetype, as a perfection of love and sacrifice-for my Mother truly embodied those qualities.if

I know I will do an art work from this photo, from these experiences..but it has not yet completely formed in my mind as to how. But it keeps calling me, and I cannot ignore the call for long. I have thought about would my Mother mind me using pictures that show her in a vulnerable state, and I know in my heart she would not. She would tell me to reach out to others, help in anyway you can, touch others lives, give to others...that is the kind of person she is. So when I do this artwork it will be with her in mind, and with her guidance and love.

The Journey of Learning must begin with Experimentation

Art is Discovery

All discovery must begin with experimentation and trial and error. My problem in this piece is how to make a larger hole to allow for a larger necklace cord. Glass is not easy to manipulate to your needs. I built up the height with clear glass pieces and made a bridge with dichroic glass, but it looks clunky and bulky. I am not happy with the effect and need to experiment more. Which brings up an important thought.

If we cannot fail as artists, we cannot learn. It is the same in all disciplines. There was a time when the Medici family supported artists for long periods of time. An artist was allowed to develop, to have periods of trail and error, in which there would be success and failure. As a result we had many successful and talented artist during the Renaissance period. Thomas A. Edison said it best, in his struggle to invent the light bulb, when a reporter ask him how he could stand the failures....

He said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Thomas A. Edison That is how we must approach art and all learning, it is a path to success that we take as we experiment.

On the last attempt there was not enough glass to span the bridge and it did not make complete contact. Could I use this still for a necklaces? I think so, by passing the cord through and wrapping to the back with silver wire in a decorative pattern. I am still not happy with the look and will try more techniques and glass combinations.

So these are the samples of experimentation, not failure. From here I can record what I did and try again. I can do more research and consult with other fused glass artist. I am on my journey of learning!