blue eyes on easel, originally uploaded by bbmarie {studiobeerhorst}.

This painting is the first portrait I have done of Rain Song Beerhorst who is the youngest of the clan. She does a great job holding still for a 5 year old. The painting is shown here on the easel surrounded with the inspiration and drawing resources that typically accompany the paintings on the easel. I seem to need all this stuff crowded around the painting to help me feel cozy and creative. Some times I think I would like to exhibit the paintings this way giving the viewer a better sense of the context that the paintings arrive out of. Besides I just think they look kind of cool this way.

I also wrote a song inspired by Rain when she was just two years old and getting into a lot of mischief around the apartment when the family was living in Brooklyn. The song is called “Natural Disaster”. The hurricane Katrina had just happened and living with a powerful two year old and six other females in a two bedroom, one bath apartment all came together in that song. The final line in the song is;

“It feels like the end of the world, in a storm with the name of a girl”

If you are interested in hearing it I can send you the five song EP for ten dollars which is a foretaste of the new record due to come out the end of September in time for Art Prize and the Beerhorst Wonder Wagon.

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The double rose painting, originally uploaded by bbmarie {studiobeerhorst}.

I began this painting last year and just finished. It measures 3 1/2 feet by 4 1/2 feet which is a big picture for me since most of my portraits are in the 8 by 10 inches realm. This image is one of a series of paintings that are about living by faith. They are about developing a new way of seeing.

The back ground is based on the Grand Rapids sky line as seen from the Wealthy Street over pass. The third hand? well that just sort of appeared one day as the painting progressed. The frame is made out of hundred + year old pine interior house trim that was chopped joined and then stripped/sanded and lastly gold leafed.

I would like this to be included in the Beerhorst Gypsy Art Wagon but I think it may be too large, perhaps it can go in one of the tents…..

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Thanks for the Cake!, originally uploaded by bbmarie {studiobeerhorst}.

“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” The Apostle Paul giving advice in a letter written to the church in Galatia.

I love this little piece of advice because it helps me continue living a life that is different from most every one I know. Some time I feel overwhelmed by our families peculiarities and uncertain future. We don’t have a car. We don’t have any medical insurance. We have little to no savings. The children have never gone to school. We make art hoping that eventually the right person will come by and purchase and take it home with them. We live in a city but our yard looks like a farm. Living by faith has taken us down a little zig zag path in a dark wood that occasionally opens up into beautiful sunny clearing were we can rest and get our bearings again.

We recently found one of those sunny spots in the form of a house show in NYC’s West Village at the home of Danny and Patty Gregory. They were kind enough to open up there home and invite their friends to meet a portion of our family and our art. The beautiful cake pictured above was part of a very plentiful offering of food from the Gregorys. When this cake came out I was truly overwhelmed by their gracious hospitality. We met a several very interesting people and sent off a number of hand crafted studiobeerhorst items to new homes. Together with our friends we created an event to bring people together for an afternoon filled with art, good food and interesting conversation. It required around thirty hours of travel in a van both ways. (We did the journey with our neighbor Dave Shaw and his two oldest children Nick and Rose along with my Rose, Pearl, and myself.) We stayed a few extra days in order to take in the city and reconnect with old friends there. I am so thankful for this particular adventure and the opportunities it opened up for us there.

The painting on this cake which is titled Braided Vision has something to do with living a life of faith. The girl has a book in her hands yet her braids are covering her eyes to block her vision. Her task is now an impossible one because she needs her vision to read.
When we follow the unique path God has created for us we will regularly be faced with what seems to be impossible situations which in turn force us to realize that we will need an intervention from God in order to continue. Remember Moses at the Red Sea with his stick. So living this way means an intimate walk with God and what could be more precious?

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Our new buggy, originally uploaded by bbmarie {studiobeerhorst}.

We are deep in the work of creating our Art Prize project. Cameron and Rachel VanDyke have come alongside our family to be our artistic collaborators in this venture. Our plan is to make a sort of mobile art studio modeled after a gypsy wagon which will be filled with our artwork. When completed we hope to pull it to an out door venue with either a horse, bicycles or people. We also plan to pitch at least one tent that we can use for hospitality and art work shops during the first week of the Art Prize event. Also we hope to have performances of music and poetry at our encampment.

The picture here is of the Amish buggy we purchased last week. We have since removed the riding cab portion and our designing an enclosed wagon that will be built up on the chassis of the buggy. We have a long way to go until we are ready to pull it down town and we would love your thoughts and help as we tug this crazy idea out of our collective heads and into some kind of physical reality with in the time of the Art Prize deadlines.

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Mothers day flowers , originally uploaded by bbmarie {studiobeerhorst}.

The flowers and the colors of spring have bloomed and now summer makes its advance. We came back from New York enriched by our travels and visits with friends. Our computer was stolen while I was away. We bought a new machine today so I can write this post. It hurts when we are robbed and God always uses these experiences to tug us into a deeper place of freedom.

The kids have dug a very deep whole in the back yard maybe eight feet deep. Sand on their cloths, sand on the floors, sand on the couch. Real life is messy and dangerous. Real life explodes with color and sometimes all the color is drained off for a while.

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Grace with Cat, originally uploaded by bbmarie {studiobeerhorst}.

I have been reading about Gypsy culture lately. One of the things I have learned is Gypsies are seldom alone. For them a lot of people and a lot of noise is a good thing. Our life is often a lot of noisy people. A lot of life going on all around us all the time. However there are two quiet places for me; upstairs in the carriage house after lunch for a nap and early morning at the dinning room table between 5-7 to write morning pages, read and think.

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for NYC with Rose, Pearl, my neighbor Dave and his two oldest. We are taking the Beerhorst Family Art Show to Manhattan. Our friends the Gregory’s are hosting us at their lovely apartment in the West Village Sunday afternoon (from 12-4 if your in the neighborhood) This is an experiment and an adventure. We are looking for ways to extend our territory and this is one way we thought of besides Etsy and Flickr. If you live in a different city and would like us to come and share our art with your friends let us know and maybe we can come with our little gypsy caravan.

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Free print , originally uploaded by bbmarie {studiobeerhorst}.

We are inviting you to come to our house this week end to experience the Beerhorst  Family Spring Art Show. We created a special edition four color wood cut print to give away to the first 50 people who come through the door. After I finished printing the edition I threw the blocks into the wood stove so it would never be printed again.  Each print is signed and numbered and valued at $50.

We love the people who come to our shows and invest in our vision because it makes our life possible. You inspire us with your presence, with your questions and with the light in your eyes. We are all struggling through difficult times. We are living through challenges that are unlike anything we have faced before. We need to find away to work together. We need to find ways to share our lives beyond what we have done before. Our art openhouse is one small way to toss the salad of our ever more vibrant local culture. So come by and bring your fork and wallet.

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Old phonograph, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

Rainy cold days in spring can be tough to slug through. It helps me to remember that the rain is just what the seeds need to get them going, and the green sprouts pushing up through the loose soil. Our back yard garden is full of signs of renewal. It is just getting going but is has started.

I have a image here of an old phonograph. When the CD player came on the market it seemed like the days of vinyl where over. It was time to pitch out the record players because they had been replaced with something better. Nearly all those old machines dropped out of sight into the trash, the junk stores or dark forgotten corners of the attic or the basement. What is interesting now is how those machines are coming back out of the dark places. The phonograph and vinyl records are being rediscovered by a whole new generation of kids that didn’t grow up with them. Is being forgotten for a time like being planted? Are there times when we feel forgotten and displaced. Do we feel like we have been replaced by the next new thing ? I know I feel that way from time to time as I get older. I think that God appoints times of hiddeness from time to time which feels uncomfortable like a cold rainy day. Uncomfortable but important because we are being prepared for something, prepared for a time and a place in which to bloom anew.

This phonograph print is made from bits and pieces of old ephemera that was thrown away and forgotten. I plucked these pieces out of the trash and made something new and mysteriously beautiful by artfully knitting them together in a way that makes sense.

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braided vision drawing study, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of humankind as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer than out right exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” Helen Keller said this and she ought to know.

I think we work hard to make our selves feel safe, secure, and protected. We lock up our bike so it is not stolen while we visit the library. We put extra money away in a savings account for a rainy day. We pay for insurance in case we might have an expensive stay at the hospital. These are the sorts of things we do all the time with out question because it seems like common sense. I wonder what wonderful experiences we are cutting out of our life by the walls we erect around us.

Our family of eight, living in a modest size city in the midwest, has been with out a car for 5 years now. In not owning our own car we are forced to cooperate with our friends and neighbors for the times we just need a car to get some where or haul some thing back and forth. This helps cultivate our community. Not having a car, we are forced back to a human scale. We don’t shop at the big box store where they have the “big savings” because it is too far away. We shop at our neighborhood grocery store because we can walk there. Last summer when it was time for a family vacation we went to a camp ground that was close enough to ride our bikes to. We borrowed an extra bike trailer for our gear.

There was a time we were frightened if our car broke down and we couldn’t afford the repair. We didn’t have the imagination into a life with out a car for a few weeks. Now we have created a life that doesn’t need a car in the driveway all the time, just once in a while and it feels so much more human and free. What were we afraid of?

I have a hunch that if we could find a way to live past our fears of life falling apart around us, if we could just really begin to trust God to take care of us like He/She has promised, then maybe our lives would begin to take on the brilliant color of saints and poets. What are we waiting for?

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make a nest today, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

“In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive, filling it with sublimity and exaltation. And those who come together in the night and are entwined in rocking delight do an earnest work and gather sweetnesses, gather depth and strength for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to speak of ecstasies beyond telling.”
Rainer Mariia Rilke from Letters To A Young Poet

I live from one creative thought to another like a string of uncultured pearls. This string keeps threatening to break and spill my loveliness all over the ground which would be OK because then they would sink into the soil and sprout more poems and creative ideas.

This Thursday evening, the 16th of April, begins a great journey. It will be the first of four consecutive Thursday night Wood Cut Workshop sessions in my studio with six people from the community who will be more than students. They will be travelers join together for a great adventure. They will be poet gardeners who will plant with in themselves the seeds of fresh creative ideas. As they enter into the ancient medium of wood cut printing they will uncover new things within themselves. It will be like discovering a room in the house you have lived in for years that you somehow never even new was there. In fact this room is not empty but full of forgotten and long unused l treasures tarnished and covered with dust that only need a good shine and shaking out to come back into use.

Spring is the time for planting, new growth, stretching out and beginning new things. Come and join us!

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