Three Minutes of Courage

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The other afternoon, I stood in Gallery Prudencia surrounded by artwork by other artists I deeply admire. What a delight to be in this show with them!

The show is called Piecework, a fitting title for a collection of collages, each one built from fragments, intuition, and time. The artists in the room? Extraordinary. The kind of artists (and friends) who make you pause… and then quietly wonder if you belong there at all.

And then came the artist talks.

EEK! Three minutes each. Three minutes to talk about something that may have taken weeks—or years—to understand.

The Quiet Panic Behind the “Podium”

It’s a peculiar challenge, talking about your own work.

There’s the familiar whisper:
I’m not as good as these other artists.

There’s the pressure of time:
How do I compress something layered and evolving into a few coherent sentences?

And then there’s the subtle, very human desire to get it “right”—
to honor the work, to respect the audience, to make the gallery owner happy.

All of that, in three minutes.

The Translation Problem

As artists, we spend hours—days—sometimes years—thinking through a piece. We make decisions that aren’t always verbal. We follow instincts we can’t quite explain.
We respond to materials, to memory, to moments of recognition. And then suddenly, we’re asked to translate all of that into language. Condensed. Clear. Meaningful. It can feel like trying to describe a dream before it disappears.

And Still… We Do It

When it was my turn, I spoke about my own collages.

Not perfectly. Not completely. Not in a way that captured everything I might have said if I had all the time in the world.

But I said something true. And when I finished, I felt… okay.

Not triumphant. Not eloquent. Just—steady. Present. Honest.

Here’s an Instagram link to my brief talk.

What Helped Me (and Might Help You, Too)

Standing there, I realized something important: Talking about our work isn’t a performance—it’s a practice.

Here are a few gentle things that helped me find my footing:

  • Start with what you’re exploring—not what it means.
    You don’t have to explain everything. A simple beginning like “I’m exploring…” or “This work comes out of…” keeps things open and alive.
  • Let your materials do some of the talking.
    When words feel hard, talk about what’s tangible. Materials are a bridge—they give people something to hold onto.
  • Share one small moment from the process.
    You don’t need the whole story. Just one moment of discovery—“At some point, I realized…”—can open the door.
  • You don’t have to be the authority on your own work.
    It’s okay to say, “I’m still figuring this out.” That kind of honesty invites connection rather than shutting it down.
  • Think of it as an invitation, not an explanation.
    You’re not translating your work—you’re opening a door. The work will continue the conversation long after you stop speaking.

Maybe That’s Enough

Maybe talking about our work isn’t about getting it exactly right. Maybe it’s about offering a doorway instead of a full explanation. Maybe it’s about trusting that the work itself is still doing most of the talking. And maybe—just maybe—it’s about standing in that moment, among artists we admire, and saying:

  • This is what I’m exploring.
    This is what matters to me.
    This is where I am, right now.

A Final Thought

If you only have three minutes, you don’t need to say everything. Just say something true. That’s enough.

Thanks for reading –

Lyn

Listening for What Comes Next

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(On stepping back from something good to make space for something new)

The other day, I received a note from a student that touched me deeply:

“You’ve been one of my favorites in Painting With Fire, and I was disappointed not to see your name in the lineup this time. I’ve made several pieces based on your inspiration and really love them.”

I sat with that for a while.

There is no greater gift for a teacher than to know that something you’ve shared has taken root in someone else’s work—has become part of their visual language, their confidence, their creative unfolding. That kind of connection doesn’t disappear. It stays, quietly, in the work.

And yet—this year, I’ve made the decision to step back from teaching with Painting With Fire. Not because I’ve lost my love for teaching or PWF, quite the opposite. It’s because I want to return to a place of discovery.

And let me say this clearly—please don’t YOU step back from Painting With Fire. It remains one of the most vibrant, generous, and inspiring communities I know. Some of my favorite teachers are there right now, carrying forward the traditions of encaustic with brilliance, depth, and heart. You will be in very good hands, as will I, since I will be there as a learner.

But after five years of developing classes, refining processes, and guiding others through encaustic’s luminous layers, I’ve begun to feel the persistent pull toward something less defined. Less practiced. Less known. I want to teach from the edge again.

Winter Dance, Lyn Belisle 2025

Not from a place of repetition—even meaningful repetition—but from that slightly uncertain space where something new is forming. The place where I’m asking questions instead of answering them. Here are the classes I’ve taught with PWF over the last five years:

2021
Myth and Mist
Encaustic Surface Design

2022
Gauze, Paper, Plaster and Wax
Shaman Spirit

2023
Unfolding Stories
The Birds and the Beads

2024
The Lotus Book
Diaphanous Vessels

 

2025
Sumi-e Serinity
Synthography and Wax

In many ways, stepping back for a year feels like coming back to the heart of why I began working in encaustic in the first place. The medium itself resists control. It asks for responsiveness, for intuition, for a willingness to let the work evolve in its own time.

So now, I feel the need to step back into unknown territory again. This doesn’t mean I’m leaving teaching behind (I’ll probably be back with PWF next year – those dear people are my family!). It means I’m just making space for what comes next. And I have an idea, but it’s just that — an idea.

The workshops I offer moving forward will grow out of what genuinely inspires me in the moment—whether that’s vessels and fragments, fiber and wax, image and story, or the complex language of assembled things. They will still be rooted in everything I’ve learned and loved—but they will be more exploratory, and also more symbolic.

And to those who have taken my classes, followed along, or made work inspired by something I’ve shared—please know how much that means to me. Your work is not a continuation of mine. It’s a transformation of it. And that’s the whole point.

So if you don’t see my name in a familiar place this year, it’s only because I’m in the studio—listening, experimenting, and finding my way toward something new.

As makers, we come to recognize that inner turning—the moment when it’s time to step away from what we know and trust what’s just beginning to take shape.

That, too, is a form of devotion.

You may be there, too.

Thanks for reading—
♥Lyn

Influencer or Inspirer?

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Influencers and Inspirers: Two Very Different Currents

Imaginary influencer 🙂

The other day, I was looking through some recent posts online—just checking in, as we all do from time to time. I was thinking once again about “influencers,” since I’d just finished a book called The Inheritance in which one of the main characters describes herself a “professional influencer.”

I saw intriguing work in many posts –  polished presentations, confident voices, a dizzying array of directions.


    “This is what’s trending.” (Fluid art, neon/glow-in-the-dark painting, and spray painting are trending for their high-energy, modern aesthetic.)

    “This is what’s selling.” (personalized jewelry, crochet plushies, cherry or pastry-themed items)

    “This is what you should be doing right now.” (pets/animals, personal expression, local landmarks, and comforting, soul-soothing settings)


They reach so many of us now, shaping not just what we see, but what we begin to believe matters. And these people actually know how to present those great Instagram reels! (I still struggle with social media).

For a moment, looking at all the posts, I felt that familiar anxiety—a persistent question rising up: Am I behind? But then, almost as quickly, something else surfaced, a different kind of voice. It wasn’t loud or urgent. Just steady and a bit humorous — “Go back to the studio”.

I’ve been thinking about that, and about the difference between two forces that shape our creative lives:

INFLUENCE and INSPIRATION

They sound similar. But they move us in very different ways.

Influence Moves from the Outside In

Influencers show us what’s possible, what we can purchase or emulate.They introduce tools, techniques, materials. They also help us discover artists we might never have found. They can open doors and expand our sense of what art can be if we hop down a new rabbit hole.There’s real value there. But influence often comes with a subtle pressure. It points outward:

     Look here.
    Try this.
    Keep up.

It can make everything feel a little faster, a little more comparative, a little more like a current you’re trying to keep up with. And sometimes, without realizing it, we begin to measure our work against what is most visible—not what is most meaningful.

Inspiration Moves from the Inside Out

An inspirer does something entirely different.

    They don’t tell you what to make.
    They don’t hand you a formula.

Instead, they awaken something. A question. A memory. A deeply personal sense of possibility that feels unmistakably your own.

An inspirer might be:

  • a teacher who asks the right question at the right moment
  • a line in a poem that won’t leave you alone (one of my favorites)
  • a piece of art that moves you before you understand it
  • a mistake in the studio that opens an unexpected door

Inspiration doesn’t rush you. It doesn’t compare. It simply says: Begin.

The Artist’s Dilemma

Of course, we live in a new world where visibility matters. We share our work, we learn from each other, we participate in a larger creative conversation. And that’s a good thing. But somewhere along the way, it becomes easy to confuse direction with momentum, to follow what is working, rather than what is calling.

To ask: What should I be making right now that’s good enough to sell? instead of: What is asking to be made through me?

Lately, I’ve been trying to make a small shift, not a rejection of influence—but a rebalancing. When I feel that tightening—that sense of falling behind—I try to pause and ask: Is this influencing me, or inspiring me? “Influence” often leaves me thinking and wandering. Inspiration leaves me wanting to work. Influence fills my head. Inspiration moves my hands.

A Few Reflective Questions

If you’re in the studio—or on your way there—you might ask yourself:

  • Who are your inspirers right now?
  • What kind of work makes you want to begin, not compare?
  • When do you feel most like yourself as an artist?

These aren’t questions with quick answers. And that last one is the most important.

We may be living in a world shaped by influencers and constant sharing, but inspiration is still ours to trust. It hasn’t gone anywhere.

Read these lines by Mary Oliver (one of my Inspirers) and see if they inspire you to explore what “grace” might look like through the artwork that you do – that is inspiration!

As artists, we have a unique way of working with ideas that can’t be seen or delivered by Influencers.. We can take an abstract word like “grace” as Inspiration—a feeling, a question, a memory—and give it form. That translation is where some of the most personal and meaningful work begins.

I hope you find extraordinary inspiration today in a world that needs more beauty.

Thanks for reading!
~~ Lyn

Grace, Lyn Belisle, 2022

Building a Portrait

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An Encaustic Collage of Sam Takeuchi

One of the most delightful things that came out of our recent “Encantos” exhibit at the  Taos Ceramic Center was a commission request. Sam Takeuchi, architect and artist from Santa Fe, requested that I create a portrait of him in the same style as the Santo Niño collages in the exhibition (below).

Talk about an intimidating request! Sam is a master of so much – pottery, woodworking, antique Japanese crafts, architecture. I featured a short video of his Santa Fe studio in an earlier post. How would it be possible to capture the essence of a multifaceted person like Sam in an encasutic collage?

The answer, I realized, was not to try to show everything about him. Instead, the portrait had to grow step by step from a few meaningful clues. That’s actually a wonderful way to approach any portrait collage.

But first, I needed a photo of Sam, so he obligingly stood against the gallery wall while a took some pictures with my phone. Sam has a wonderful face – wise and humorous and lived-in.

It’s a good idea to take several versions. Expressions can change the whole feel of the work – see how different smiling Sam and serious Sam appear.

When I got home from Taos and started working on the collage, I realized that I could incorporate bits of the images I had taken at his studio to deepen the meaning. His workspace is filled with beautifully worn wooden tools, carpets, pottery forms, and objects that reflect his deep connection to Japanese craftsmanship and architectural design. Those images gave me a visual vocabulary to work with.

So, if the first step was to choose a photograph of Sam that felt natural and contemplative, the second step was to look closely at the studio photos and ask myself:

What elements here represent Sam’s world?

Wood grain.
Asian Carpets.
Handmade vessels.
Architectural structure.
Quiet, thoughtful spaces.

Those became the first building blocks of the collage. I even made a tear-up collage sheet of some of the assorted details from his studio elements:

Once I had those elements, the process became almost like assembling a small stage set. The background design echoed the textures of his studio. Shapes and lines hinted at architecture.But I also included other “encanto” elements from the Santo Niño collages to connect them back to Sam, like fantasy patterns and icons.

This is that in-between stage before the wax that always makes me stop and pause:

When I started applying the clear wax, the encaustic layers softened the edges so the images felt woven together rather than pasted together.

Sam and I emailed back and forth after this stage – here was the photo that I sent him when I thought the portrait was probably finished:

Encaustic work is notoriously difficult to photograph, but you can see hints of the complexity of the layers of wax and mulberry paper. Sam make some very small final suggestions befroe it was completely finished.

It’s good to share the process with the subject. This is the final piece that was shipped to Santa Fe (and arrived safely – hooray!).

Sam told me he has the perfect place for his new portrait. We’re trading work for payment, which is my favorite kind of arrangement. I loved this project—but this is still how I picture Sam when I think of him: sitting serenely in his studio.

As you can see, the portrait wasn’t just Sam’s face—it was Sam’s environment, his mythology, and the atmosphere of the place he built..

If you’d like to try something similar, here’s a simple approach:

  1. Choose a photograph of the person.
    Something natural and expressive works best.

  2. Collect visual clues about their world.
    Photos of their studio, favorite objects, tools, landscapes, or materials.

  3. Select a few elements that feel essential.
    Not everything—just the things that carry the strongest sense of the person.

  4. Build the collage around those clues.
    Think of it as creating a small visual story rather than a literal portrait.

  5. Don’t be afraid to add touches of myth or magic.

What began as an intimidating commission turned into something much more interesting: a reminder that a portrait doesn’t have to explain a whole life.

Sometimes it only needs a few well-chosen fragments. And when those fragments are right, the person appears almost by magic. I’d love to see what you do with the concept a personal collage portrait.

Two posts, two portraits — From the courageous gaze of Susie King Taylor in the previous post to the thoughtful presence of Sam Takeuchi in his studio, these portraits remind me that a face is never just a face—it is a doorway into a life, a story, and the fragments that help us see it.

Thanks, as always, for reading SHARDS!  ~~Lyn

A Story for Women’s History Month

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If you’ve traveled along with me on my artist journey for a while, you know about my fascination with images of human faces. I return again and again to the Library of Congress and Flickr Commons to examine the expressions of people who lived ordinary and extraordinary lives, whose faces were captured in the moment with tintype photographs and sepia processes.

If a face is particularly striking, I save it to a special folder to use in my work – this one, for example, is an encaustic collage I did in 2015 featuring the mesmerizing image of an Australian World War One soldier, probably taken in 1917:

There are hundreds of thousands of photographs to explore on these sites. I generally limit my search to “portraits,” often of women or children like those taken by Lewis Hine.

So, on with the story – here is a photographic portrait that literally took my breath away when I found it in the archives of The Commons about eight years ago:

I had no idea who she was, but researched her name and found that Susie King Taylor served more than three years as nurse with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. She also taught children and adults to read while serving with the regiment. You can read more of the story here.

Her portrait inspired this encaustic collage.

Susie
Encaustic Collage, 2021
by Lyn Belisle

_____________

Description: This encaustic collage honors Susie King Taylor, the first Black Army nurse during the Civil War. I discovered her photograph in the public archives of The Commons, where her presence immediately caught my attention. As I learned more about her life, I was deeply moved by her courage and service tending soldiers of the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment. In this piece, layers of encaustic wax, vintage text, gauze, and horsehair evoke both the fragility and resilience of that moment in history. The materials reference the field conditions of wartime care while honoring the strength and dignity reflected in Taylor’s portrait. Creating this work became a way of acknowledging a remarkable woman whose story deserves to be remembered and shared.

______________

I never offered this work for sale (it just didn’t seem right),although I wrote a blog post about her in 2021.Susie has been on a shelf in my studio for the last four years. I also ordered the book that Susie King Taylor wrote in 1902 called Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops to learn more about her experiences.

If that had been the end of the story, it would have been enough just to know about this remarkable woman.  But wait – there’s more!!

Recently, I came across Susie’s book about her life in the Civil War, and was thinking about her when an email came in from the contact form on my website:

“Good Afternoon, Ms. Belisle. I am Hermina Glass-Hill the founder of the Susie King Taylor Gullah Geechee Museum in Midway, GA – Mrs. King’s hometown. I came across your wonderful artwork that includes a likeness of her. I would like to know if it is for sale. The museum has a collection of artwork in which she is the focus. I would be honored to hear from you. Respectfully Yours, Hermina”

Hermina Glass-Hill, MHP
Executive Director, Historian, Environmental Scholar-Activist

Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center
Midway, Georgia

_____________________________________

I was stunned at the synchronicity of the timing. After four years of living in my studio, this is where Susie belonged! I wrote back,

Dear Hermina,

This is such a wonderful letter and a strange coincidence. Today I was replacing some books on my studio bookshelf and one of these was My Life in Camp. I was looking at it and thinking about Susie King Taylor and her remarkable story – and then came your letter!

I’m attaching an image of the encaustic collage I did of her in 2020. Here is an excerpt from an article that I wrote for the Winter Issue of Encaustic Arts Magazine that year which explains how I work with historic images and how that image of Susie King Taylor just grabbed me when I saw it in a library archive.

It would be my honor to make a gift the original work to the Susie King Taylor Gullah Geechee Museum. You are doing a magnificent job of preserving and celebrating the memory and accomplishments of this remarkable woman.

___________________________________________

Hermina answered: Wow! Thank you for connecting with me so quickly. Isn’t it amazing that out all the things that could possibly happen in the universe that two people could connect thoughts like this. My heart is filled with so much gratitude for your kindness and generosity.

With joy, I prepared the artwork for shipping to send Susie on her journey home to the Institute that bears her name and to Hermina, its founder.

We continue to email, and I continue to explore the Institute’s website and learn even more about this remarkable woman – here is an excerpt about Susie’s early education:

“I was born under the slave law in Georgia, in 1848, and was brought up by my grandmother in Savannah. There were three of us with her, my younger sister and brother. My brother and I being the two eldest, we were sent to a friend of my grandmother, Mrs. Woodhouse, a widow, to learn to read and write. She was a free woman and lived on Bay Lane, between Habersham and Price streets, about half a mile from my house. We went every day about nine o’clock, with our books wrapped in paper to prevent the police or white persons from seeing them.” 

Even as a child, Susie understood that knowledge was power—and that learning carried risk. The simple act of carrying books wrapped in paper so they would not be seen speaks volumes about the courage that shaped her life. Education, healing, and service would become the threads that wove through her extraordinary story.

When I read passages like this, I feel even more grateful that her portrait found its way into my studio all those years ago. Sometimes an image calls to us before we understand why. Something in the gaze, the posture, the quiet dignity of the person reaches across time and asks to be seen again.

And sometimes it takes years for that story to unfold.

What moves me most about this experience is not just Susie King Taylor’s bravery—though that alone is remarkable. It is also the intuition that guided Hermina Glass-Hill to reach out across the digital world to a stranger who had once felt the same pull toward Susie’s story. Hermina has devoted her life to preserving the history and legacy of the Gullah Geechee people and of Susie King Taylor in particular. Something led her to search for images, to follow a trail, and eventually to my website.

That kind of intuitive curiosity is something artists understand well.

We follow threads that we cannot fully explain. We collect images, fragments, and stories. We assemble them in our studios without knowing where they may eventually belong. And sometimes—if we are fortunate—those pieces find their way back to the places where they can speak most clearly.

Sending this artwork to the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center feels less like giving something away and more like completing a circle. The portrait that once spoke to me in an archive will now live in a place dedicated to honoring her life and educating future generations.

Art has a quiet but powerful way of creating these connections.

A photograph taken more than a century ago.
An artist working in wax and collage.
A historian preserving a legacy in coastal Georgia.
An email arriving at just the right moment.

It reminds me that when we make art from the heart—and when we share it openly—we never really know where it might travel or whose story it might help tell.

Sometimes a face in an archive is not just an image waiting to be discovered.

Sometimes it is a messenger.

And sometimes, if we listen closely enough, it finds its way home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collage as Conversation

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Can these images be part of a conversation with each other?

I am so excited to be part of the upcoming Piecework collage exhibition at Gallery Prudencia. The generous response to my collage work in the Taos exhibition reminded me how deeply people connect to layered imagery — how instinctively they lean in when fragments suggest a story without fully explaining it. That experience nudged me back toward collage as a kind of universal language.

For years, I’ve been drawn to “shards” — not as broken pieces, but as clues to something larger that once existed. Collage (particularly encaustic collage) allows those fragments to speak again. A child’s gaze, a bird poised between shadow and light, a torn scrap of handwriting — these become visual syllables in a language built from juxtaposition and pause.

Collage does not declare; it suggests. Returning to collage feels like returning to that essential impulse: to gather fragments, to listen for the conversation between them. Below are three collages that will be in the group show at Prudencia. This small series is called “Conversations.” I love to work in series!

The Secret, Encaustic Collage, 2026

This first collage in the Conversations series is called “The Secret.“

Who is telling the secret to whom?

At first glance, the most literal reading is that the child is whispering to the bird. The dove rests in the hand, close to the mouth — a confidant. Birds have always been messengers, carriers of news between realms. So perhaps the child entrusts the bird with something fragile — a memory, a fear, a wish.

But then the dynamic shifts.

The bird may be whispering to the child. Its beak is near the lips, not the ear. The exchange is intimate but ambiguous. Is the bird delivering news? A prophecy? A truth the child is not yet ready to fully understand?

And then there is us. Perhaps we are holding the bird!

The child’s gaze is direct. Unblinking. The eyes are not turned toward the bird — they look outward. Toward the viewer. Which raises another possibility: the secret is being shared with us. The bird is intermediary, but the child knows we are watching. We become part of the exchange. Isn’t it fun to interpret collage as conversation?

The First Right Answer, encaustic collage, 2026

If The Secret is a whisper shared outward, The First Right Answer, second in the series,  feels inward — almost instructional.

Who is speaking here?

The girl’s gaze is lowered. Unlike the first piece, she is not looking at us. She is listening. Her face tilts toward the bird, but there is no theatrical gesture. The conversation is quiet, concentrated. The moment feels suspended just before comprehension.

The bird, darker and more angular than the dove in The Secret, feels less like a carrier of innocence and more like a voice of discernment. Its beak is pointed, alert. The metallic copper shape cutting across its body suggests signal or transmission — like a tuning fork, a frequency.

So perhaps:

  • The bird is giving the answer.
  • The girl is receiving it.
  • Or the answer is emerging between them.

But the title complicates everything.

“The First Right Answer” implies that there will be others. It acknowledges process. Trial. Error. Learning.

In collage, the direction of the gaze alters the conversation. In The Secret, the child looks outward, implicating the viewer in the exchange. In The First Right Answer, the child looks inward, receiving something only she can recognize. Collage allows these subtle shifts to suggest entirely different kinds of dialogue — confession versus recognition, projection versus intuition.

The Dilemma, encaustic collage, 2026

If The Secret is a whisper and The First Right Answer is a recognition, then The Dilemma is the moment of choice.

And here the child looks directly at us again. But this gaze is different from The Secret. It isn’t confiding. It’s searching. Measuring. Almost asking.

Who is speaking in this piece?

Now there are two birds — a black one and a white one — facing each other. They are positioned below the child, like embodiments of opposing voices. Instinct and restraint. Shadow and light. Risk and safety. Memory and possibility.

Unlike the earlier works, the conversation is no longer between human and bird. It is between birds — while the child observes. Or perhaps the birds are projections of her internal dialogue. The title shifts everything.

“The Dilemma” implies tension without resolution. There is no “right answer” yet. No secret successfully delivered. Only the presence of two equally compelling voices.

________________________________________________

Honestly, I had no notion of these conversations when I started on these pieces, but as I worked, they started talking! I tend to work one piece at a time – this keeps the conversation contained in its own “room.”

So if collage can be a conversation, then it is never finished when I step away from the studio table. It continues in the gallery, in the pause between viewer and image, in the stories people quietly bring with them. What I learned in Taos — and what I hope to experience again at Gallery Prudencia — is that these fragments are not mine alone once they are assembled. They become meeting places.

A bird may carry a secret, or offer the first right answer, or argue both sides of a dilemma — but the meaning settles differently for each person who stands before it. That is the gift of collage. In a world that often feels fractured, perhaps there is something deeply human about gathering the pieces and letting them talk to one another — and to us.

2518 N Main Ave. San Antonio, Texas 7821

The Opening Reception for the Piecework exhibition at Gallery Prudencia will be held on Saturday, March 7, from 2 to 4 pm. You will be able to meet the artists on Saturday, March 28, from 2 to 4 pm., with the Artist Talk beginning at 3 pm.

Come have a conversation about collage with the artists — Kim Collins, Nancy Hall, Mary James, Billy L. Keen, Lyn Belisle (me), Sara McKethan, Tim McMeans, Marcia Roberts, Steven G. Smith, Stefani Job Spears, Sheila Swanson, Cris Thompson, and Bethany Ramey Trombley.

♥Lyn

PS And if you want to play with collage, below are two sheets that you can copy, paste, print out, tear up, combine with other pictures, magazine photos,old book pages, and whatever it takes to create your own collage conversation.(If you can’t see them,click on p.2)

Pages: 1 2

From Studio to Printed Page: The Vessel Alchemy Catalog

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The space inside the vessel
is not absence —
it is invitation.

I am genuinely delighted to share this catalog of my students’ work from last week’s Vessel Alchemy workshops. Each time I teach, I am reminded that learning moves in both directions. My students bring courage, curiosity, humor, tenderness, and insight to the table — and I leave each session changed by what they discover.

What follows in this post are a few reflections and observations about this collection of vessels — forms that began as simple structures and became layered, personal, and deeply expressive works. At the end of this post, you’ll find a link to view the complete catalog as a flipbook, where you can explore the entire collection in sequence.

First observation: When I first began teaching vessel workshops in Ireland three years ago, I noticed a shift in purpose. Students were not simply building forms that could hold something — they were building forms that already held something. The vessels were not empty containers waiting to be filled; they arrived filled. Words were tucked into scrolls. Fragments of memory were embedded in plaster. A scrap of handwriting, a small relic, a suggestion of something once carried — each vessel became a small assemblage, a layered narrative.

The vessel, in other words, became less about function and more about meaning. It became a site of gathering — of memory, of language, of intention. Even the simplest forms carried interior lives. You can see so much of this is our new catalog for the Vessels Alchemy class.

Secondly, when I began assembling the catalog, I took a small liberty. As I laid out the pages and lived with each photograph, I found myself responding to the pieces as a viewer as well as a teacher. So I gave each vessel a title — and three words that, to my eye, seemed to describe its spirit. I claimed this as a prerogative of the teacher :). Not to define the work, but to honor how it spoke to me.

It felt fitting. If vessels can hold memory and meaning, they can also hold interpretation.

As you turn the pages of the catalog, I hope you find sparks of inspiration not just for making vessels, but for discovering what creativity means in all its many forms — and that this journey invites you into your own act of making, curious and wholehearted.

CATALOG LINK

So many thanks to the students for sharing their narratives and creative skills!

♥

The Language of Holding: Student Work from the Workshop

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This is Part One of a two-part reflection on our weekend workshop,  Vessel Alchemy: Tactile Poems in Fiber, Paper, Word, Light. Next week, I’ll share more vessels — and more of the words they are quietly holding.

This past weekend weekend, as I walked around the Droste Studio at UTSA/SW watching the students work, I found myself truly astonished.

Not just at the craftsmanship — though there was plenty of that. Careful joins. Thoughtful armatures. Fibers handled with restraint. Plaster edges left raw but intentional. Stitches placed where they mattered. Nothing hurried. Nothing ornamental without purpose.

What moved me even more deeply was the respect for the materials. These students did not force sticks to behave unnaturally. They allowed cheesecloth to fray. They let paper tear along its own logic. They treated wax, fiber, wood, and found objects as collaborators rather than supplies. There is a joy in that kind of making.

But what truly stopped me was their understanding of language.

  • They understood — instinctively — that words do not merely decorate a vessel.
    They define it.
    They anchor it.
    They release it.

They grasped that words can be embedded like relics, stitched like mending, burned like memory, or inscribed along the interior curve of a bowl. They understood that a vessel does not simply hold words — it is shaped by them.

Here are three examples that I’ve tried to describe with words that mean more than size, shape, and color:

The Interior Script: A Bowl That Remembers

One student (Logan) lined the inside of his vessel with concentric, handwritten text. The words spiral inward, like thought itself. Over this interior landscape rests a simple lattice of thin wooden sticks, bound gently with gray thread — a structure that feels protective, almost like ribs. Actually, it cradles a second structure that fits inside this one like a Russian doll! I’ll show you that picture later.

The vessel invokes words like:

  • remember
    contain
    listen
    underneath
    crossing

The spiral script suggests that meaning accumulates over time, layer upon layer, sentence upon sentence. The wooden lattice feels like a quiet restraint — or perhaps a trellis. The words are both sheltered and structured. The vessel becomes a meditation on interior life. Here is the vessel with its nested second vessel – the scrip becomes secret language. The second vessel is lined with gold joss paper. Breathtaking!

The Furrowed Edge: A Vessel of Shelter and Weather

Another student (Carol) created a bowl with torn, irregular edges, rimmed in dark fiber that reads almost like char or earth. Across its opening stretches a small bundle of paper and twigs — bound, weathered, fragile.

This vessel calls forth words like:

  • weathered
    threshold
    endurance
    tenderness
    scar

The torn plaster edge feels vulnerable but deliberate. The dark fiber suggests something elemental — soil, ash, hair, memory. Can you guess what it is? The bound paper at the top feels like a message carried across a crossing. It is not pristine. It is honest. The vessel speaks of protection that has already been tested.

Two Vessels: What Opens / What Remains

These are two vessels created by Dawn, who made a total of five beautiful containers for her words and poems during the two days we were together.

The Luminous Vessel (Left)

This one feels like a breath held and then released.

It evokes:

  • revelation
    offering
    interior light
    vulnerability
    threshold
    secret treasure

There is something tender about its torn white rim. The glowing interior suggests not wealth, but illumination — the kind of light discovered only after something cracks open. The twig-bound element across the top feels less like restraint and more like a blessing.

This vessel whispers:
What is hidden is not lost.
What is broken may be luminous.

The Earth Vessel (Right)

This one feels grounded, sedimentary, layered.

It evokes:

  • memory
    accumulation
    archive
    weathered
    gathered fragments
    ancestral
    talisman
    burial
    keeping
    endurance

The interior reads almost like an excavation — objects embedded, tucked, remembered. The textures feel archaeological. The upright slip of paper suggests a marker, a naming, a quiet declaration among relics.

This vessel’s words are:
Nothing is wasted.
What has been lived becomes structure.

Together

As a pair, they evoke:

light and earth
reveal and retain
blessing and burial
opening and holding
chapter and echo
same story, different hour

They feel like two movements in a single composition — one speaking of illumination, the other of preservation.

______________________________________________________

A final note for this first part – what I saw in these works was not just technique. It was comprehension.

The students understood that when we write inside a vessel, we are mapping an interior. When we bind sticks across an opening, we are negotiating protection and permeability. When we leave an edge torn, we are honoring imperfection rather than correcting it.

They were not simply making objects. They were making language visible. Visible poetry.

And maybe that is what we are always doing — whether with plaster or paper, ink or fiber. We are shaping containers for what matters. We are giving our unspoken words somewhere to rest.

Let’s hope we continue to make vessels that hold what needs holding — and release what no longer does. More to come next week!

Words as Vessels, Vessels as Words

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Valentine weekend will be fun for me – I’m teaching a new Vessels workshop at UTSA/SA.

“Vessel Alchemy: Tactile Poems in Fiber, Paper, Word, and Light” — In this immersive workshop, we’ll explore how simple materials—sticks, cheesecloth, mulberry paper, fiber scraps, ink — can be transformed into poetic vessels that speak to memory, meaning, and the ephemeral.” 

As I’ve been preparing for this workshop, I’ve found myself thinking less about techniques and materials and more about what, exactly, we are making room for. I’ve been gathering sticks, paper, fiber, cheesecloth, ink—simple things—but alongside them, I’ve been gathering words. Not lists or instructions, but the kind of words that hover quietly in the background: hold, carry, contain, remember.

Planning the workshop has reminded me that vessels are never only about form. They are about intention. They exist because there is something we want to keep safe, transport, offer, or remember. And somewhere in that realization, it became clear why words so often find their way into my vessel work.

Words and vessels share the same essential function: they are containers.

A single word can carry astonishing weight. Think of words like home, empty, threshold, tenacity. These are not tidy definitions. They are dense with lived experience, layered with personal and collective history. Over time, they gather residue—who spoke them, who heard them, who needed them. A word becomes a place we return to, again and again, to see what has changed. Echo. Imprint. Signature.

Vessels work in much the same way. A bowl is never just a bowl. It holds what we place inside it, but also what it has held before—food, offerings, tools, fragments, ashes. Its shape remembers use. Its surface records touch. Even when empty, a vessel is never truly vacant.

When I place words inside a vessel—stitched, written, rolled up, partially obscured—I’m not asking them to explain anything. I’m giving them a physical body, a structure that can hold their weight.

This is why I’m drawn to fragments rather than sentences. A single word doesn’t close a story—it opens one. It invites the viewer to bring their own associations, their own memory, their own interior language. The vessel doesn’t dictate; it listens.

What’s the saddest word you can think of? What’s the most beautiful word?
Sometimes they are the same word, depending on when you return to them. Ernest Hemingway wrote an entire short story with just six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” A handful of words conjure an entire life we can never step into.

I’m planning lessons about making vessels with words and verses, but I’m aware that what we’re really doing is learning how to listen—to materials, to memory, to language itself. We don’t pour meaning into words so much as discover what they already hold.

This is where the alchemy happens. A word becomes a container. A vessel becomes a sentence. 

Choose one word –
It might be the saddest word you know.
Or the funniest.
Or the most beautiful.
. . .it will pop into the front of your mind.

Write it down.

Now sit with it for a moment—not to define it, but to enter it.
Ask yourself:

  • When did this word first matter to me?

  • Why has it appeared again, unexpectedly?

  • What does it hold now that it didn’t before?

Notice how the word has changed—not on the page, but in you.
How it carries memory, feeling, and time, all at once.

You don’t need to explain it.
You don’t need to share it.

Just notice how a single word can become a place you return to—
and how each return leaves it slightly altered,
packed with that particular weight we call meaning.

♥

Encantos: When the Work Speaks Back

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I just returned home from Taos and the opening of our Encantos Exhibition at the Taos Ceramics Center with fellow artists Linda Manning and Virginia and Andy Bally.

I’m still processing the experience. There’s a particular kind of moment at an exhibition opening that feels both exhilarating and disorienting—the moment when the work leaves your hands and begins its own conversations.

At the opening, that moment arrived quickly and unexpectedly. Within a short time, all four of the Santa Niña collages (below) had sold.

These were not the pieces I assumed would lead the way. I loved them, of course—but I hadn’t predicted they would be the first to be claimed. It felt less like a market response and more like recognition, as if those works had been waiting for the right room, the right eyes, the right moment to step forward.

That surprise relaxed me. It loosened and changed my expectations and opened me to the evening in a different way.

What followed was not just an opening, but a long, layered exchange—one conversation flowing into another. People asked thoughtful questions about symbolism, materials, saints and fragments, memory and devotion. I spoke about the work more than I usually do, and perhaps more openly. But just as important, I listened. I asked others about their work—their processes, their obsessions, the stories that quietly fuel what they make. And I learned so much.

There’s a misconception that openings are about standing beside your work and explaining it, as if clarity were the goal. But what struck me that night was how much richer the experience became when explanation turned into dialogue.

When I asked, “What are you working on?” or “What draws you to this?” the room shifted.

  • Artists spoke about uncertainty, about being mid-question, about following symbols they didn’t yet fully understand.
  • Two of my workshops students talked about the excitement of their new directions since we all worked together.
  • Collectors shared what they live with, what they notice over time, what stays with them years after a piece comes home.
  • An actor who “moved to Taos 55 years ago in the great hippie migration” shared with me his work on Samuel Beckett’s plays.
  • And my new friend, Japanese/American architect and master woodworker, Sam Takeuchi came up from Santa Fe to talk about portraits.

It reminded me that exhibitions aren’t endpoints—they’re crossings.

Still, I won’t pretend that speaking about one’s work comes easily. There is something inherently vulnerable about explaining art that is born from intuition, memory, and personal myth. Much of my work emerges before I have language for it. The words come later—sometimes much later. Standing in front of people and trying to translate that interior process can feel awkward, even frightening. There’s always the fear of saying too much, or not enough. Or sounding pretentious or too woo-woo.

But then something extraordinary happens. Someone listens closely. Someone nods. Someone offers a reflection that mirrors back what you were reaching for—sometimes in language clearer than your own. And in that moment, the work feels understood not because it’s been decoded, but because it’s been met.

What Encantos offered me was a renewed trust in that exchange. Trust that the work carries more than I consciously put into it. Trust that certain pieces know where they belong Trust that conversation—real conversation—is part of the creative process, not a distraction from it.

I left the opening feeling deeply grateful: for the collectors who welcomed the Santa Niñas into their homes; for the artists whose generosity and curiosity enriched the evening; for the reminder that meaning doesn’t arrive fully formed in the studio.It completes itself in relationship—through artists like Andre and Virginia Bally and Linda Manning, whose thoughtful, generous work completed the Encantos cosmology and transformed the exhibition into a shared experience.

Encantos, after all, is about enchantment—not as spectacle, but as recognition. The moment when something familiar suddenly reveals depth. The feeling that a fragment holds a story larger than itself—and that night, I understood that Encantos was not an ending, but a threshold toward a new direction.

Thanks for reading!