friday coffee retouched

Originally uploaded by bbmarie.

These are mt friends Paul and Kevin. We meet at the Common Ground Coffe house every Friday morning at 7:00 AM for a cup of coffee and to talk. I look forward to this time of the week to just be at the table with two of my best friends and just talk. All three of us are married and have children. Fatherhood is often a topic. Creativity, struggles, books we are reading, ideas we have, anything is fare game for disscussion. I feel like these guys really know me and I could tell them anything. Having friends like these guys help me continue on my path that is sometimes very diffucult and lonely.

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fixing her hair

Originally uploaded by bbmarie.

I really enjoy seeing a woman working with her hair. Brushing, combing, twisting, braiding, washing, blow drying——you get the idea. This little wood cut I did a few years ago represents a long on going fascination that I share with a number of other artists in history. Picaso, Matise, Balthus to name a few. There is an apparent mystery here that continues to be compelling, the world of women, the other half of God, some place of ultimate beauty and origin. Putting on make up is also a very charged female ritual.

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Rick Beerhorst 1

Originally uploaded by bbmarie.

My daughter Rain came into our bedroom this morning around 4 o’clock saying she was scared. I was not crazy about being awake so early but we ended up sitting together in a big cozy chair downstairs. Eventually she fell back to sleep in my arms and I was able to lay her down on the couch with a pillow and a blanket. After I was done being mad about my sleep being interupted I was able to enjoy sitting in the dark and being still with a beautiful child in my lap. The only sound was our breathing.

“The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.”

Rachel Naomi Remen

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broken pieces

Originally uploaded by bbmarie.

“It is when we willingly embark, praying, “take me where you want me to go, make me what you would have me to be, that our journey becomes at once God’s and more uniquely our own.” Julia Cameron, The Sound Of Paper pg. 34

This painting was done two years ago and was the beginning of a journey into a different appoach to working that uses collage and found objects. I feel like I have learned a lot since I finished this piece.

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dreamy girl

Originally uploaded by bbmarie.

I have five daughters and a wife. One son kind of in the middle who is 9 years old. The world of our home is dominated by femininty. The bathroom has a lot of beauty products. Shepherd and I from time to time are aware of this out of balance. Most of the time it is just our life an we don’t even notice. The world out side of our home where you can buy jeans at the Gap and hamburgers at McDonalds, seems to be a place shaped and directed by white men. Acording to Michael Moore this is a big problem because the population of the world is generaly not male and it’s not white. We are on our way into a time on our planet of great awakening. We are becoming aware that the american lifestyle that has been exported all over the world via giant corporations is a life style with a tank very near empty. This way of living is running on fumes and it is also killing us. But where do we go from here?
When I was walking on my way to meet up with some friends last night I went past a house of some young guys watching a hockey game. The apartment was one of those college age guy apartments with rows of empty beer bottles on display above the door frames lined up like trophies of their life style. They are going to college to get a job, marry, have two or three kids, get a mortgage, two cars and then get divorced and marry some one elses broken mess of a marriage/life that didn’t work out. Beer and sports on television and throw in some pornography and working long and late at a job with out real meaning that completely shapes a life.
I am living in a home drenched in femal hormones. There are my- little-ponies and fashion magazines every where. What would a real woman’s liberation have looked like? What would happen if we could drive out of our city all the franchises that creat places like the 28th Street comercial corridore? what would grow up in the empty place? Where is Grand Rapids going, and can that still be directed and are artist’s a potential part of that direction? What do the women of this city have to say? Why do so many women have so many head aches?

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