sun-soaker collage, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

I have been having fun making collages out of old papers I have collected. It is a nice change up from my paintings that can often take months and even years before they are finnished. The paintings also take a lot of planning and drawing. The collages are all intuitive and quickly finnished, just kind of shooting from the hip. I love the randomness that hapens working with collage, the surprises and accidents. I bought a 1949 Sears catologe off Ebay and have been adding some of its wierdness to the process. The ladies underware section in that old catolog is a real mystery…..so much engineering must have gone into those girldles and braziers, (engineering done by men, who had no first hand experiece with what a womans body really requires for support and comfort ).

We have an Etsy shop where we have been making some of our art available that is in the lower price range. These collages along with cards and drawings, pot holders and Rose’s softies have been making their way around the world via Etsy.

If you have some wierd paper products at home you haven’t know what to do with you could either try your hand at making your own collage or you could drop some off with us and we will add it to our mix.

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Dove , originally uploaded by bbmarie.

Dove and Pearl have moved in together to share a bedroom. Rose moved in with Rain and Grace to share their bedroom after Dove moved in with Pearl. Nate took Rose’s room upstairs for $250 a month. Nate is our soft spoken young male border with out a car and an expensive fixed gear bike who is seldom home. We are seeking a way to live within a lifestyle we can afford. When we lived in Brooklyn NY our friends had five kids in one bedroom and the parents took the other bedroom. They made it work. Some times when things are given up life takes on a greater potency. Why are hard and beautiful so often bedfellows?

The night before I had a rehearsal with Brad, my friend the bass player. After we we finnished at around 10:30 we drove downtown to a spot I know of in a small park where the homeless like to hang out in the afternoon. There is a large goldenn delicious apple tree there full of golden apples with a pink blush on one side. I climbed up into the tree with bare feet and proceeded to shake a pick while Brad picked up the falling apples and filled up a large plastic garbage can with crisp sweet treasure. Our family is creating a root cellar in our basement where these apples will live out the winter in cool storage. We are seeking ways to live modestly while still making art and music. What were the secrets our parents and grandparents learned in those difficult years of the Great Depression and WWII? What will our country experience over the next seven years when all the shredded paper settles to the ground on Wall Steet? Remember the skinny cow that ate the fat cow in Pharrow’s dream?

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comfort, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

I find myself reusing old things to make new things. I find what was cast off and forgotten and give it another chance at life. I suppose I grew up feeling forgotten as the baby of a family that was really starting to unravel just as I was born. This personal experience has given me an emediate empathy with people or things set to the side and forgotten.

I have been having fun with old books, taking them apart and printing on the pages. Some times I apply some paint to an area to give the print a nuetral space to exist. I love the randomness of the way images combine when I work like this. These random combinations suggest new meanings of there own that are far beyond anything I may have origianlly intended when I set out to carve a new wood block. Many of these prints havemade thier way into the new style of paintings I have been making. Infact Brenda and I have been making these paintings together. When we are combining these images and adding paint we work on a very intuitive level. They come together almost like a crazy quilt and this approach makes collaberation easy. Brenda works for awhile and then I work and then it is back to Brenda until we feel like it is finnished. You can see examples of these paintings in the gallery at Grand Rapids Christian High School, in their beautiful performing arts space.

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Beerhorst_Family_Front_Final_Edit, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

We have hung a show at the DeVos Center for Arts and Worship on the Grand Rapids Christian High School campus. The show opens this Saturday night 6:00-8:00 PM. We have taken what we do in our home and brought it into this very polished space with high celiengs and track lights. It feels little wierd but cool as our very organic family begins to interface with a large institution here in the city. I look forward to other opprotunities like this. We are talking to the director at West MI Center for Arts and Technology about a show this winter at their space downtown. We also are being inculuded in a show at North Park College in Chicago curated by Tim Lowly called “Doll House” which will feature our family’s collaboritive art work.

I feel like there is a certain momentum that we are gathering as the chidren grow older and are more able to contribute their own ideas and abilities to what we do. We have been inspiring each other and working off each others ideas and energy.

If your intown and not sick of hang out with us, come over to the show this Saturday night!

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family art show #1, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

We are a full week past the latest Beerhorst Family Art Show. It was really amazing and fun. We had a good flow of people through on each of the three days that kept things buzzing. As always there were luls that gave us time to rest and have that long uninterupted conversation with a single friend or two. There were times when the house and garden were full of people looking and talking.

It takes a lot of work to prepare for one of our shows and the preperation becomes something that the entire family can rally around. We have three shows a year so that gives us 4 months to get ready for the next one. This cycle gives us a defined rhythm that helps pull us forward. When we are in the final few weeks before the show it gets exciting. As we get the house ready by arranging and hanging the art there is a palpable energy that builds. As we hang paintings and pull out drawings, Brenda finishes off a rug, Rose comes down with a basket of new Sock Monsters, Pearl puts up her string of very colorful pot holders…new connections are made, new ideas pop into our heads….it’s as if the whole house hold is somekind of giant compost heap of creativity that where chopping up and turning over and the Beerhorst Family Art Show preperation beomes the mystical shovel.

On a very practical level we were very near broke before the show and afterwards we had a healthy deposit to take to the bank which enables us to pay bills and buy the much needed supplies that are essential to the life of our family.

Thanks to all that were able to come. Thanks to those who couragiously opened purses, bill folds and check books to invest in real art/real life. You are our community.

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praying it in, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

We are on the other side of our Family Art Show and breathing a little easier. I was able to peddle over to the bank and make a deposit into our account and write checks to send out the bills that were stacking up in the wicker file.

Brenda and I had prayed that God would be infused in the weekend and intersect peoples lives, that he would use the art to touch hearts. I our prayers were answered. A lot of people were as taken with the backyard farm as they were with the art on the walls. A number of people just kind of settled in and hung out with us. We know that the paintings are out of reach for most peoples budgets and that is hard but there are always the cards, prints, potholders, and little kid creations that are affordable. I think just being here and soaking in the vibe has a potent effect on people.

Today is the day after. It has been rainging all day long. Brenda and Pearl spent a chunk of the afternoon watching Ugly Betty and I took a long nap in the carriage house while the rain drops did their thing on the roof. The little ones where quarrelsom and needed intervention on and off all day. For dinner we had a roast chicken, mashed potatos with gravy, green beans and spelt flour biscits made with coconut butter for dinner. It continues to rain. Brenda and the big girls are in their privet spaces with books the little ones have settled into quiet non computer/game boy play and Shep is playing with Birdy the pup.

We are thankaful for everyone who came and shared the weekend with us especially those who laid down their hard earned money to invest in our families work and life. We are thankfull and we will soon be ready to begin making new work and follow the garden into fall.

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pen pal, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

“We do not look to the things that are seen but the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are passing away but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

This is a quote from the bible (some where after the four gospels but where exactly I’m not sure anymore) that has haunted me for years, infact, it has become a guide for my life. We live in a post enlightenment age where we think of the physical substance of our lives as real, more real than the mysterious whispers that flutter just beyond our peripheal vision. The bible is packed with wierd unexplainable shit like when Jesus told his close friends that where in his inner orbit to feed all the people collected on the hill side that numbered into the thousands when they really didn’t have anything near what would be needed to perform such a task. What they had to work with was what they found in the lunch sack of one single young boy. That’s what they had, that’s what they used and every one got fed and there was a ton left over. What part of that equation makes sense to you? It is impossible and yet it is the path God choose. That story is not the only one like it, the whole fucking bible is built like that. Ordinary people doing impossible things because God pulls them into impossible situations where they are forced to go way beyond themselves and into God’s checking account. Our family is currently living like this and it is kicking the shit out of me and I am OK with that because the less shit in me the better.

I have been launched out into an incredible adventure with Brenda and the children and all the people that come in and out of our life like busboys and actors. All we can do every day is to remain present to the moment we are presently in. This is really living, this is really happening and it is as scary as heaven.

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getting out, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

“It is when we willingly embark, praying ‘take me where you would have me to go, make me what you would have me be’, that our journey becomes at once God’s and more uniquily our own.”

This quote by Julia Cameron from her beautiful little book, The Sound of Paper, has become an often repeated prayer of mine these days. Brenda and I are currently in our no money free fall that often happens this time of year when the country goes on vacation for the summer and commissions and painting sales fall off and we eat our way through all the money we stashed away for the lean times. The lean times stretch on and on while the kitchen shelves become more and more empty. Things like digital cameras and printers get broken that we can’t afford to fix and we just make do with broken and go without. It is in these times that we feel the reality of our total dependence of God for our the continuation of our lives. It is in these times that we ask God to take us by the hand and change what ever needs to changed and take us where ever we need to go physically, spiritually and mentally.

We are thankful for our big back yard garden right now and all that it has given to our table to make our meals healthy and beautiful. We are eating lots of kale because we have a lot of kale to harvest. The lettuce is starting to fall back but the green beans are coming in with vigor. We have been picking black berries and putting them into pancakes and muffins. There are plenty of flowers for the vases around the house. We still have the milk from our raw milk share to make cheese, kiefer, ice cream and all the other wonderful things we have learned to do with milk. The kids have been realy good about the lingering big pot of soup and the dissaperance of peanut butter and the general squeeze of a tight belt.

We are having a yard sale over the next three days in hopes to scrape enough together to make another house payment and to but more groceries on the shelf. Some times we become frightened for our future but then we remind ourselves that Jesus promised that our Father always watches out for all our needs and the Apostle Paul told us that God’s strength is made perfect in our weekness. So with that in mind, bring it on God, we want all that you have in store for us.

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the camp site, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

We just got back yesterday after a week end camping trip. We all rode bikes with the two littlest in a Burly trailer. We camped at Wabisis Lake which is about 28 miles from down town Grand Rapids. We were not aware of all the hills we would encounter on our choosen route. At one point when we were just about half way Brenda who was pulling a caboose bike with Dove doing her best to help with the peddeling pulled off to the side of the road on one particularly difficult long climb up hill and sat down and wept hard for a long time. At about this time I was wondering what I had been thinking when I came up with this idea to go camping on our bikes. Eventually Brenda wept her self clean and we continued on our way.

We made it to the camp ground after about six hours. Our journey was a difficult adventure we all were in together. When we finnaly set up our camp it was a great relief to just be there but also in the back of every body’s mind was the trip home awaiting us.

Soon after we arrived a couple of guys came in to the site right next to ours who at first seemed rough and even a little scary….a rebel flag, no shirts, tatoos and plenty of cussing. As is turned out Terry and Danny were very cool and generous. As I got to know them it turned out they were really into music and on Saturday night they managed to burrow a guitar from the chirstian college kids up the way and we were able to make some music together.

Our last night on Saturday about 3:45 AM half of us woke up in our tent to evil moskitos doing there best to bring us over into the pit of hell’s deepest torments when a fit broke out in the camp close enough to here the fists smaking into flesh. There were lots of wicked words and threats exchanged and it sounded awful but at the same time it seemed like we were watching a Will Farrow movie with the just the sound and now picture. The fight provided a wierd distraction from the fact that we were not sleeping, feeling misirable and had a long, long, long bike trip home early that morning to look forward to.

We did get through that night and some even managed to fall back to sleep for a little while. Brenda discovered a different route home which included a long and beautiful bike trail along the Rogue river which saved us from those killer hills we endured on the way there. We even had breakfast in a cool little resteraunt in Rockford at the start of the bike trail.

When we finnaly returened home every one sort of collapsed into rest and a slack dullness for the next several hours. We did manage our homade pizza that night with a double batch of vinilla ice cream filled with big chunks of dark chocolate. We were home and we had done what we set out to do. Thank you God and now help us pay these bills that await there time in the wicker file.

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Brenda and I enjoy a quiet still moment before the day really gets going.

Backyard Garden 7/12/08, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

The bacyard garden has taken on even more importance to our family this year as we have done what we can to actually eat what we grow and reduce our dependency on the grocery store. We are still a long way from total self suffeciency but we are on that journey and our quest becomes even more focused as we watch our nation slip further every day over the cliff of too much consuming and driving and too little creating and saving. Our culture has gone too far away from all that really matters. Read the artical headlines of any of the leading magazines targeting the ladies while you wait to check out with your grocries and see what we are thinking about as a nation…..”sexy tips to turn him on”, “eat what you want and still loose weight”, “new ways to decorate with thrift store finds”…. What in the hell are we thinking and what will any of this matter when we go to the grocery store to stock up and find it closed or go to gas up and find the pumps finaly dry ?

Yes I have been reading Howard Kunstler and it has left me sober, edgey but hopeful. I feel like the life Brenda and I have been living for the past 20 odd years makes more sense now than ever. We have always lived on a wing and a prayer. We have been digging through dumpsters and planting gardens off and on our entire married adventure and now as the storm clouds darken over the “american dream” Brenda pours over her new book on wild foraging as I slowly add to the wood pile and go back to memorizing scripture verses.

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