.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

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.

have a comment? 

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 Do we feel like we have been replaced by the next new thing ?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.

[2] Comments 

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?

have a comment? 

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!

1 Comment 

city with boots, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

This painting was done off of the Wealthy Street over pass downtown Grand Rapids. I have added collage elements into the painting as a way to break it up and look at a city scape painting in a different way. I like creating images that I don’t understand because it helps me to loosen up some of the controls I tend to keep on my life out of fear. I think much of the time God is truly leading us we are finding ourselves way over our head in situations we don’t understand. What makes sense about Moses at the edge of the Red sea with a stick in his hand?
When you are making a painting you are launching off into the unknown and at the same time you are on the path to deeper understanding. When you are truly looking at a painting, or better yet, living with a painting, you are also on the path to living a deeper life.

1 Comment