humming bird girl, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

This week I go to Chicago and set up a show at North Park College where they have given our family a 12′ x 8′ wall to be included in thier fall show called “A Doll House” along with three other artists. Our contribution will be a collection of art and crafts made by Brenda, the children and myself. Some of the pieces where collaborative (Older siblings helping younger ones, Brenda and I working together on the same painting…) We are excited about this opprotunity in Chicago to take what we do in our home town on the road. We currently have a similar kind of exhibition at the art gallery in the beautiful worship and art center at Grand Rapids Christian High School until the end of this month.

Our children have grown up in a very creative and artistic environment. It has been a sometimes tough and challenging home where we have had to think quick on our feet to survive as artists making a living through what we can create and sell. When the children are small that don’t really have much of a sense of what is going on behind the curtian of our mystical cash flow rainy seasons and droughts but the older ones have a quickend sense of why there are so many meals built around a big pot of soup. The children have grown up with our Beerhorst Family Art Shows which have friends and complete strangers waking around in our house talking and looking at the pictures on the walls like there life depended on it. The children have always been encouraged to get envolved buy making their creations available and were thrilled to make a little money at the end of the week end selling ball point pen and crayon drawings or card board painted birds. For our oldest two daughters those few dollars have grown into hundreds as they have developed their craft and handy work over the years. It is very satifying to find ways to work together as a family that leads into the creation of something truely unique and potent in a world dominated by bland junk coming out of institutions like Walmart, Target and McDonalds, a world that is more about conformity combined with modernist efficiency rather than what can rise out of unique small scale local econonomy that is long on labor and short on cash. When we finally sell one of our hand hooked rugs, paintings or pot holders, themoney we make an hour would look very tawdry compared to what it is offered by the typical worker/employer relationship in Ameirica. But we refuse to meter out our success on those kind of terms and tend to think more along the lines of following a crazy call God has planted deep within our our hearts which often makes our life feel like some of the scary places Frodo and Sam find themselves in on their way to dispose of their damned ring. The scarry places our life journey takes us into keeps hour hand on the tuning knob of the makeshift ham radio set in our heart that is trying to pick up God’s radio signal among all the other static of competing signals coming through the spiritual air waves floating around out there. We are enjoying a life together that is alot about process and journey more than it is about arrival.

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urban village, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

I would love to live in the country becuase I long for a natural environment. I love dirt roads, woods, bird song, and farm houses. But I want to live in the city more than I want to live in the country because of the culture that exists in urban places. I like living close to other people. I like crossing paths with friends at the post office or the coffee shop. I like to have a friend over for dinner that can afterwards walk home. I long for this city to become more and more intimate, more and more potent with color and diversity. I want our city to be a place were I have several layers of friends in intersecting circles. I want neighbors to come over to borrow spices for a recipe they are in the middle of. When I am paintingsome times I need to take a breakso I get up and go for a walk through the neighborhood-maybe just a few blocks and then make my way back to the studio When I am back I feel refreshed and ready to begin again.

We have chickens in the back yard along with rabbits in hutches. We made a rabbit pot pie last week and a large pot of chicken vegatable soup the week before all from what was raised in our own city lot back yard. The other day we watched a humming bird from our dinning room table through the french door while it made its visits to various flowers in the garden. A couple of the guys next door have parents who run a green house. They brought over four large boxes of peat moss left over from the easter lilly bulbs their father had just ordered. They thought we could use it for our garden. When things like that happen the city begins to feel like an urban village. We want some of what we love about the country to show up more and more here in the city. We want the soft contours of nature to blur the edges of the neighborhood. We want more gardens, more beauty and more mystery and the songs of birds. Tonight this is my prayer.

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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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