Lisa Thorpe

Caught in the Sticky Web of Life

Early in the week the misty morning revealed this beautiful spiders web that was drawn like a lace curtain across an old rusty garden sculpture in my yard.  The dewdrops unveil the intricacy of the spider’s lair.  The torn and mended spots are exposed as well, illuminating the spider’s labors, revealing her efforts to keep all the strands connected, a structure for her livelihood.  When one piece is torn or worn she must address it or risk the whole entanglement coming undone.  And so it is with life sometime we must address the torn strand laying at our feet and hope that days of visioning and creating aren’t too far off. This week I had every intention of painting a February painting to include in my ongoing calendar series but life got in the way.  An extra day off for my son from school, graphic art deadlines that just wouldn’t quite get gone, emails that needed action on and on and on, you know how it goes.  In my house we say it was a “If you give a mouse a cookie” day (referring to the children’s book by written by Laura Joffe Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond).  This is a favorite with little kids including my son back in the day.  It starts with “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk, if you give him a glass of milk he’ll probably want a straw…. and so on”.  So this week was full of “If you give a mouse a cookie days” in fact it was a whole cookie week.  Like pulling a loose thread on a sweater that just kept unraveling, it seemed I couldn’t bring anything to resolution.  And so it goes.  I’ll finish my February painting next week and share it with you Friday, which by the way will be March already!  Sometimes you just have to follow the cookie crumbs life presents you with, in my case I can only hope there are chocolate chips involved.

Speaking of webs if you are a visual person you might like Pinterest. It is like a cork board in your computer to pin up all kinds of visuals.  You create you own pin board categories and when you find a piece of art, or photo, or recipe you like you pin it on your board, you can follow other peoples pins that connect like strands of a spiders web or not but it’s pretty cool check it out here is a link to my boards http://pinterest.com/artlisa/.  It’s fun.