The “Mid Time” – spaces between and what to do….

Mid Time is what I’m feeling on the inner world. I am exploring this feeling of mid. Midlife is what mostly comes to my mind, yet as I recently turned 60, I am most likely past the mid point. It shows in my artwork as I took a passionate turn a few years ago, just when I was reaching a great level of accomplishment with my artwork and with my peace work, and started my second attempt to use cast glass as a sculpting medium. After three years of casting, I can now say that the work that I am producing in glass is very satisfying as each sculpture is the realization of what I envisioned. I am dreaming some new ideas, but that is for another day of writing. Today I’m addressing the mid time, between the beginning and the end, the place where I have enough life experience to know that I don’t have to begin again, yet what will carry me through till the end? I hope to capture some of this in my latest sculptures, and stone seems to be my sketch book, though it doesn’t ever feel like graphite on paper. I am happy that my body is cooperating with my passion, though there are many groans and slower movements these days. After nearly 20 years of stone carving, I’m slowing down, lifting less weight, and enjoying making sculptures from remnants of other sculptures. These remnant assemblages give me the advantage of not having to carve every part of the sculpture, just some of the parts and then assemble with my pinning method.

I’ve been partaking in some talks lately with mythopoetic men, Daniel Deardorff, Martin Shaw, and Michael Meade. Some speak of the soul as what one accesses in the forest, and the village is mostly where we access mind. Taking time in the forest experience, turning away from the electronic world, connecting with my inner nature where my true nature lives. The trials of this time of change, are the trails leading me into the forest. Stepping away from the village can be of great risk to the norm. My daily routine and work will suffer from my absence. And what is to gain….maybe this is the mid time, how to hold back from the doing. Oh this is challenges my drive towards responsible behaviour. What will my culture and society say if I no longer produce, if I don’t pay my bills, if I take time for something new to emerge like a spring to fill up.

During the time I wrote about in my recent blog (6months to the day), I found that my body and what felt like “my cells wanting me to stop”, and at first I felt frozen like I was connecting with some kind of trauma, then when I asked my soul what it wants, I was told stillness. I rejoyced in knowing that something wasn’t wrong and that listening and spending more time in the stillness, would give me renewal and strength to face the hard times which might be ahead for me, as the art market and the peace work has slowed dramatically with the economic downturn. Stillness was available to me in each moment and risking “missing something” like a sales inquirey, or the news or the internet, was what I had to let go of. What a difference it made not to follow the political conflict streams and the news of war and economic crisis that pervades our media.

To go ones own way is a challenge yet the rewards are great. The path is authenticity. I hope this gives you an idea of what my mid time is about and what I am doing with the time. May peace and stillness be with you as well as your creative productive self. And if you find yourself in mid-time, know that you are not alone.

Here are some of my latest sculptures photographed around our home gallery. When I get enough of them completed, I’ll do a photo shoot with better lighting. Enjoy!

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