If I was a bee, this would make me hungry.

What are you hungry for today?

“I know that if odour were visible, as colour is, I’d see the summer garden in rainbow clouds.”
~ Robert Bridges

Join me for a free creative journaling workshop on Sunday, September 12th! We’ll be trying out some image transfer techniques, including the two demonstrated on this page:

All materials will be provided, except for your own art journal. Click here for more details!

This is a few years old, but I still like it.

“Lavender, sweet lavender;
come and buy my lavender,
hide it in your trousseau, lady fair.
Let its lovely fragrance flow
Over your from head to toe,
lightening on your eyes, your cheek, your hair.”

Cumberland Clark Flower Song Book, 1929

The scientific name for the Monarch Butterfly is Danaus plexippus, a Latinized version of names drawn from Greek myth. Danaus, the son of an ancient king of Egypt (and a descendant of Zeus and Io), had 50 daughters (the Danaides); his brother Aegyptus had 50 sons. When Aegyptus ordered that his sons marry his brother’s daughters, Danaus chose to flee instead, building the first ship that ever was to make the journey to the Greek city of Argos. When Aegytpus and his sons followed, Danaus submitted to his brother’s will in order to protect the Argives (the citizens of Argos) from harm. However, Danaus ordered his daughters murder their husbands on their wedding night. 49 complied, but the 50th, Hypermnestra, refused, because her husband agreed to honor her request to remain a virgin. Plexippus (the second part of the Monarch’s taxonomy) was the name of one of the murdered brothers (it is also the name of a participant in the hunt for the Caledonian boar, but I’m not sure that relates).

Of course it’s the flight of these 50 daughters that connects the Danaides symbolically with the Monarch. It’s easy to imagine the butterflies’ epic migration each year, thousands of miles across North America to southern Mexico and back, as a ritual recreation of the Danaides flight. Plexippus may refer to the transformation all butterflies go through, from caterpillar to winged beauty.

Did you know, however, that it is only Monarch’s east of the Rocky Mountains that make that continental journey? The butterflies in western states travel to the Pacific Coast instead, finding winter refuge in groves all the way from San Diego to Santa Cruz.

In Mexico, locals have long associated the winter return of the Monarchs, which coincides with the celebration of el Dia de las Muertos, with the souls of dead relatives returning. While butterflies have been associated with souls in myths worldwide, it must be particularly poignant in Michoacán, Mexico, when thousands of the delicate creatures stream across the skies to take roost in mountain groves. One source claims the Masahaus name for the Monarch butterfly translates as “daughter of the sun” which is beautiful and appropriate for the orange beauty, but I can’t find any supportive documentation or, even more sadly, a story to go along with the evocative name.

I was very pleased to find this ribbon hanging by one of my submissions in the photo exhibit at the Orange County Fair!

It really was an honor, even just to be part of the exhibit. I think it’s the first time I’ve had artwork of mine on display since elementary school.

Here’s the photo I submitted, entitled “Off-Color”:

“Artists can color the sky red because they know it’s blue. Those of us who aren’t artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we’re stupid.”
~ Jules Feiffer

What’s your favorite color?

While I’d like to say I have been super-creatively-productive while away from my blog, I must confess that my journeys into both journaling and photography have been much curtailed over the past few months. I have been focusing very hard on finishing the first draft of a novel, which is monumental, yes, but the creative energy I was tapping for that project was very different from the creative energy that allows the type of expressive art I usually show here. It was a very intellectual type of creativity, intent on plot and structure and character development, necessary but not very enjoyable. Now that I am moving on to the rewriting phase, when I will start turning what I think is a good story into something artful, I can feel the need to play more with visual forms of self-expression start to kick in.

These are a couple pages from a new journal, just the start of a new journey!