Rain, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

I believe we are about to experience a very different future. Our culture is about to make a radical shift -the large % of our western population is not in the least prepared for. We were born into a world engulfed in the modernest love affair with efficiency as was typified by Henry Ford’s assembly line. We were quickly drowning in everything from Art Van furniture, Big Macs, divorce lawyers and credit car applications. We have gobbled up our natural resources at a dizzy break neck speed and we are just about to hit the wall. In fact we have hit the wall and we are now in that slow motion stretched out split second of crash dummy whiplash as home foreclosure rips through the cities and the suburbs and Wall Street tumbles into a sink hole of no return. America is the Titanic. The ship has already struck the ice. The gash has overwhelmed efforts to hold off the icy water. The ship’s captain, his personal valet and the chief engineer knew what would happen in the next two hours but the rest of the ships passengers are picking out their dresses and straightening their ties getting ready for dinner.

We are working with a team of people on an Art Prize project called Plan B. This will be a home spun eco village on the bank of the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan in front of the Gerald Ford Museum from September 22-October 10. Sand and gravel water filters, a bicycle powered water pump, bicycle powered PA system for our performance stage, hand sewn tents made of used bill board vinyl, a puppet theater, black smith, leather worker, rocket stoves, chickens, rabbits, green house and container vegetable gardens….
We are seeking to create a powered down model of what our future could look like where technology is once again something regular people can tinker with and understand, a world where people not only work together but eat together and tell their stories. We want to create a place where we can become human again and hand off a culture to our children that has a future. Come and join us!

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I love this little film that Pearl made this summer of Shepherd skateboarding out in front of our house. It is really cool when siblings can team up like this and make things. There was no direct parent involvement in this project. Pearl simply followed a creative hunch and Shepherd was willing to be her subject. It is important for artists to learn to observe and she has done that. It is important for an artist to discover the art in their own environment and Pearl has done that. It is also important for the artist to work until she has a technical proficiency and I believe she has done that as well. As a side note, the percussion in the music for this film is provided by a tap dancer. The band is Tilly and the Wall.

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pearl & rosie, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

This photo was taken early spring when our boarder Rusty was traveling and we moved his drum kit up into the living room. We also purchased a small PA system around the same time. With the a drum kit, electric guitars and a PA in the living room it was kind of weird and cluttered but we did do a lot more messing around with making music for that month. We have since moved everything downstairs and we just don’t play as much now. Darn!

It is interesting to me how messy creativity is. How it has to do with taking action and moving things around. But it also makes me think that inaction is necessary as well. Taking time to stare off into space. Time for quiet. open spaces. I laid on my back for awhile in the back yard on our wooden bench next to the cedar trees. I was watching the limbs of the trees and their leaves blowing in the wind. A big soft dance over my head. It doesn’t yet come natural to me to be still and rest but I keep leaning into it because I want to become more human. I want to have an organic life not just eat organic food.

Maybe we need to get those instruments up into the living room again for awhile.

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building the city, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

I have been working for a while with this theme of clusters of houses and buildings all crammed together on the page. Lately ladders have made there way into the mix. I like the image of the ladder as a symbol for our need to connect with the divine. Also, I think this series has something to do with my hunger for a greater sense of community in my own urban living experience. We still have so many neighbors that we will never seem to know. It is as if there are these huge invisible walls that cut us off from each other. We all go about the patterns of our separate lives without any real attempts to connect with each other. This morning a woman came onto my front porch and called to me through the window as I sat writing in my journal. She asked me to call her a cab as her car had broken down somewhere near by. I did call her a cab and offered her a chair on the front porch while she waited. A little later she wanted a glass of water. After about a half hour she asked me to call again to make sure they were really coming and I did that too. The cab eventually came and took her away. It was awkward and an interruption but it was also nice to be able to help a stranger/angel? this morning.

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old school recording, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

I have been interested in getting an old reel to reel tape recorder and seeing what creative doors it could open for my musical journey. I really like the idea of circling back to technology that has become obsolete and forgotten. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it has something to do with a romantic draw to what is old. Maybe it has to do with a desire to throw hooks into the past that can keep the present connected to what preceded it and those provide depth and perspective. Maybe I just miss some of the things that where around when I was younger.

The development of magnetic tape and its ability to record sound changed everything for our culture. There was a time when music was only performed live and when the string stopped vibrating and the mouth was closed the music was gone, done, over. With electronic recordings we were given the option to have music playing while we washed the dishes, while we laid in bed trying to go to sleep. I suppose popes and kings had these options but not the rest of us. I wonder what it was like when in early times without radio,without TV and without sound recordings. Were there more people making their own music and entertainment? Was music more pure somehow? Were peoples lives more potent, more “real” somehow? It makes me wonder if we have dulled our senses by always having some form of entertainment filling up our otherwise more empty spaces.

Last night we had a band rehearsal and worked on just one song. The song is called “Broken Dreams” We played the song over and over with different tempos and different arrangements looking for what sounded the best and also to just see where the song wanted to go. It felt like hard work to me. Making music,making sound, creating a story, a puzzle, going off on a journey. All of these were happening last night and there is no recording of what we played except for in our brains and our hearts.

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studio work table, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

We are really loving the return of Spring to Michigan. The kids have been jumping on the trampoline over at the neighbors. Rose, Pearl, and neighbor Rose Shaw went in together and bought the tramp last summer. It just got set up again.

Yesterday Grace and I planted peas in the back yard garden and lettuce in the tin tubs that serve as good containers for our greens. The new bunny we were given this winter just had her first litter of 6 little bunnies this morning. They are beautiful and tiny with only the slightest hint of fuzzy hair in very pink skin.

I have moved my art making back to the carriage house from out of the basement where the cold weather had driven me. I make a fire in the wood stove in the morning to take away the chill and let it burn out before lunch and let the sun shine do the rest.

After a long hard winter like we just lived through, the warmer weather has new sprouts of life coming up everywhere.

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Window Peek Wednesday, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

Rose and Pearl both have a day to be in charge of the cooking. Rose has Wednesday and you can see here here at work making a coffee cake that actually ended up going to a potluck gathering that night. It is a great help for Brenda and I when the girls take over the cooking and they always seem to take it seriously and make something wonderful.

The big chopping block standing on its side is hard maple and plenty husky. It stays in place when you are chopping on it. It was a recent curb find. As you can see here we have a lot of cast iron skillets because I love the way they evenly distribute the heat and there classic look. There is a brush hanging up we use to paint on glazes for bread or scones. The bowl behind the chopping block covered with cloth is moistened oat meal we leave on the counter to ferment. The covered jar is fermented kombucha. The apple peelings went to the bunnies. The Doe is due to have her first litter next week.

We love our kitchen and use it off and on all day long. It is the heart of our house and the computer in the living room where I am writing this blog may be the brain.

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Two Artists, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

I love it when the art just happens in a natural way around here. This was a day Grace and I had a go a drawing little Rain Song who was rewarded with a sucker for her efforts. Rain was feeling pretty good in that polka dot dress and suggested we draw her. The little kitchen set was brought over by a friend who’s daughter had long out grown it. Our children get a lot of their clothes and toys this way.

There is something very freeing about doing art in the company of children because they are so free from heavy expectations about how things should turn out looking. They just go for it and when you work along side them the innocence is just contagious.

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butterfly book girls, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

I am currently experiencing a renewed enthusiasm for painting and drawing. I began painting in when I was a teenager copying pictures out of books and magazines. I turn fifty this month which means I have been making paintings for at least 35 years. When you do something that long you can look back over the ups and downs. The good thing about that back looking view is you can remind yourself if youare presently in a down mode you can rest assured that an “up” is on the way.

I am working on a couple of multifigure paintings these days. The photo accompanying this post is a set up photo I am using as a reference for one of my new paintings. I continue to use my children as models. Frida Khalo used her own face over and over again to create her visionary self portraits that some how were always surprisingly different one from the other. Morandi used the same dozen of humble bottles and jars over and over for years and years. There is something very powerful about returning to the same subject matter or the same figures or the same section of skyline over and over. So much of our experiences in this culture remain surface and unsubstantial. A deep commitment to a subject is a chance to go deeper into meaning. The wonderful thing about reaching a deep place in one particular area is the potential to extrapolate from there to other subjects through organic connections.

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Girl with a Red Book framed, originally uploaded by {studiobeerhorst}-bbmarie.

Looking through the pages of this life so filled with dirt and mystery. I can’t help but often feel lost. As I get older I am convinced that the feeling of being lost is something like being out in deep water. I cling to the hope that I don’t need to figure out everything that is going on in my life but simply trust that God is working his loom and I am simply one of the threads being woven into something lovely and useful.

As winter begins to show some signs of letting go and the sun makes another brave appearance I can feel a softening in the soil of my heart. I would love to have a spring of my own where some of what I though for sure was dead began to show signs of life. New songs, sold paintings, laughter, baby bunnies, a love poem, a bird nest that smells like hay and moist soil….

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