Category Archives: Inspiration

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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!

♥

On the value of a Circle

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There’s a moment in creative life when nothing looks complete, but something feels undeniably alive. The work on the table may feel uncertain or oddly formless—but underneath that, there’s a hum.

In my last post, I wrote about the imaginal disc stage—that mysterious phase when a future form already exists within us, long before it’s visible. I’ve been thinking about how often artists arrive here not because something has failed, but because something has completed. A body of work ends. A show closes. A direction resolves. And suddenly there’s space—an in-between space that eventually became the foundation for The Enso Circle.

Over time, I’ve noticed that artists often reach out during this phase—not asking what should I make next? so much as how do I stay with what’s forming? There’s a desire for thoughtful conversation, for a few steady points of reflection, for reassurance that “not knowing” is not a failure of practice, but an essential stage of it.

This is where the idea of a circle becomes important. This is why the Enso Circle exists.

Applications open Feb. 1

The Enso Circle began taking shape in conversations that Michelle Belto and I started having back in 2015—ongoing conversations about creative practice, community, and what artists actually need. From the beginning, it wasn’t about acceleration or productivity, but about honoring a particular path of becoming.

It’s now in its 11th term. Since 2021, artists from five countries and 20 states have participated in The Enso Circle, forming a supportive creative community grounded in shared inquiry, reflection, and growth.

Each Enso Circle term unfolds over twelve weeks, allowing time for ideas to surface, shift, and deepen without being rushed.

  • It’s long enough for real momentum to build, and gentle enough to accommodate the realities of life and studio rhythms.
  • The residency fee is intentionally modest—comparatively less than many single weekend workshops—because sustained support should feel accessible and humane.
  • Throughout the term, artists stay connected—to one another, and to Michelle and me—through ongoing conversation on Zoom and Slack with shared reflection, and consistent support as the work takes shape.

In the Enso Circle, twelve artists artists come together with work that is unfinished, unresolved, or perhaps changing direction. Some are beginning something new; others are letting go of what no longer fits. What they share is not a style or medium, but a willingness to stay present with the process and let the work reveal itself over time.

The clearest expression of what happens in the Enso Circle has come not through description, but through the residents’ work itself. The Enso Circle residency catalogs—created at the end of each term—speak quietly through the residents’ artwork. They reflect many individual paths, shaped by time, reflection, and community. You can explore those catalogs here.

If you find yourself here now—between what was and what’s coming—know that you’re not alone. This stage isn’t something to fix or solve. It’s something to tend. I’ve just put together a little video on Advice for Enso Circle Residents – if you become one of the twelve new residents, this will be for you!

Applications for the next Enso Circle open on February 1. If this reflection resonates, you’ll know. There’s no push—just an invitation to notice where you are, and what kind of support might help you stay with what’s becoming.

JOIN THE WAITLIST FOR INFORMATION ON APPLYING

Stay warm, stay brave. Thank you for reading. Ours is important work, and courage grows in company.  ~~ Lyn

LEARN MORE ABOUT REQUIREMENTS AND COST

 

Gifts and Presence

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Gifts I’m Carrying Into the New Year

As the year turns, I find myself less interested in presents and resolutions and more drawn to offerings—the thoughtful, non-material gifts that actually sustain a creative life.

It’s been a year that asked a lot of us. One that felt heavy in ways that were hard to name, where clarity was scarce and holding steady sometimes counted as progress. In moments like that, I find myself returning to the work—not for answers, but for anchoring.

Three of the Seven Messengers, Earthenware and Found Objects, Lyn Belisle, 2025

In the Encanto collection I’m creating for the Taos exhibition, nothing begins as whole. Each piece is assembled from fragments: shards of material, memory, intuition, and story. Individually, they hold meaning. Together, they become something new—a vessel, a guardian, an altar that didn’t exist before their meeting.

That feels like the right metaphor for the year ahead. Not a clean beginning, but a gathering. A year shaped less by starting over than by recognizing what is already in our hands—saved fragments, carried questions, pieces that refused to be discarded.

The work ahead isn’t about inventing something entirely new, but about listening closely enough to hear how the shards and clues want to speak to one another, and trusting that connection itself is a form of creation.

For Robert Rauschenberg, especially in his Combines series, the work was rarely about inventing new imagery from scratch. Instead, it emerged from listening to what disparate materials wanted to say together: a quilt, a newspaper clipping, a photograph, a brushstroke, a found object.

assemblage

Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955-59 Freestanding combine Oil, printed paper, printed reproductions, metal, wood, rubber heel and tennis ball on canvas, with oil on angora goat and tyre on wooden base mounted on four casters, 106.6 x 160.6 x 163.8 cm

Individually, these elements carried their own histories. But when brought into proximity, they began a conversation that produced meaning neither could hold alone.

He trusted that relationship itself was generative. The act of placing, juxtaposing, and allowing tension or harmony to arise was the creative act. In that sense, the artwork wasn’t imposed—it was discovered through attentive assembly. This concept means the world to me.

Robert Rauschenberg, Odalisk, 1955-1958 Freestanding combine Oil, watercolour, crayon, pastel, paper, fabric, photographs, printed reproductions, newspaper, metal, glass, pillow, wooden post and lamps on wooden structure with stuffed rooster, 210.8 x 64.1 x 68.8 cm

So, about those gifts — one gift I’m carrying forward is permission—to work slowly, to trust that fragments don’t need to explain themselves right away. Shards know how to wait. They reveal their connections in time.

Another is attention, the soft, ongoing, background kind. The listening that notices how one piece leans toward another. How an image answers a question posed months ago. How intuition doesn’t hand us a map, but offers clues – “a secret handshake“.

I’m also carrying continuity. The understanding that the work doesn’t reset on January 1st. We bring our fragments with us—unfinished ideas, saved scraps, half-formed thoughts—and the new year simply offers a fresh surface on which to assemble them. It also gives us a grounded connection to where we have been.

Santa Nina, Encaustic Collage, Lyn Belisle, 2025

And finally, companionship. The knowledge that we never gather shards alone. We are guided by shared histories of making, by other artists (like Rauschenberg) working in the past or in parallel, by unseen hands that have always known how to build meaning from pieces.

  • Permission
  • Attention
  • Continuity
  • Companionship

If there is a gift in these words, it’s this: a reminder that you don’t need to arrive whole to begin the year. Thank goodness! What you carry—your fragments, saved pieces, unfinished ideas, and intuitive longings—is already enough. My hope is that you’ll treat them with the same care we give to cherished shards in the studio, trusting that when the time is right, they will find their place and become something new.

Thanks for your presence, thanks for giving me attention and companionship, and for meeting these thoughts with the intelligence and generosity that only the best readers bring. Happy Holidays!

Fragments, Forms and Layers: Part Three

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Part 3: Layered Images — The Original Language in My Practice

A three-part series on Fragments, Vessels & Layers
(Part Three: Layered Images)

Series Introduction

Recently, the artist and teacher Crystal Marie Neubauer invited me to talk with her online group about my work. It was an honor — Crystal’s influence on my creative life goes back years — but it also presented a surprising challenge. How do you describe an art practice that moves through so many materials and forms? Encaustic, collage, fiber, clay, found objects… I’ve never been a one-medium artist, and trying to explain everything at once felt impossible.

Then I realized that my work isn’t united by medium at all. It’s united by object and intention — by the three forms that keep reappearing no matter what I’m making.
And when I stepped back, those paths became clear:

  • Santos & Shards — guardians, icons, and the stories held in fragments

  • Vessels — boats, bowls, pods, and the metaphor of holding

  • Layered Images — collage, wax, and the  revelations inside translucence

These three paths intertwine across everything I do. And this series grows out of that realization — an invitation to look closely at where my work comes from and how meaning travels across forms.

Today’s final post in this series returns to the oldest language in my practice: layered collage.

Layered Images — The Core and Heart of My Work

Before my Santos emerged, before I began building boats and pods and sheltering forms, I was working in layers — paper, pigment, image, and – more recently – wax. Collage was my first real artistic home on the flat surface, and it remains the place I return to whenever I need to rediscover what I’m trying to say.

If Shards & Santos are about what we mend, and Vessels are about what we hold, then Layered Images are about what we choose to reveal — and what we allow to remain veiled. I’ve always worked in collage and for the last 15 year I’ve concentrated on encaustic layering thanks to my dear friend Michelle Belto who introduced me to the medium.

Why does Wax play so well with collage? Because It behaves Like Memory

Encaustic wax feels like the perfect collaborator because it mirrors the way memory works:

  • luminous in some places

  • fogged or obscured in others

  • layered with traces of earlier thoughts

  • holding what came before, even as new layers are added

Wax isn’t just a sealant or surface — it’s a way of thinking. It slows everything down. It requires heat, patience, and attention. It asks: Are you sure you want this visible? Are you sure you want that hidden?

I don’t use much colored wax at all – I’m not an “encaustic painter,” rather an artist who uses encaustic techniques to tell mixed-media stories. The pale translucency of beeswax is my go-to collage medium of choice.

A Layered Image Is a Conversation

When I work in collage and wax, I’m not composing an image; I’m listening to it. Layer by layer, the piece begins to speak –a scrap of ledger paper peeks through, a synthographic figure emerges or dissolves, an accidental texture becomes the thing the piece needed all along. Even removal becomes part of the conversation. Scraping back a surface to reveal earlier marks often leads me to meanings I didn’t anticipate. Encaustic is not a linear process. It loops. It reveals. It forgets and remembers.
Just like we do.

A Return to Old / A Portal to New

What I love most is that this old, familiar collage path has become a bridge to my newest work with synthographic imagery. The dream-logic of AI images blends beautifully with the ancient, tactile behavior of wax. One creates possibility; the other brings it to earth. If you’ve taken my recent Painting with Fire Lesson, Synthography and Wax, you understand.

The two together create a layered world where fantasy becomes grounded, realism becomes dreamlike, and the viewer is invited inside the luminous in-between

It feels like a collaboration across centuries — digital imagination meeting an art form older than painting itself. These aren’t just surfaces — they are strata.

Inviting You Into the Layers

Even if you don’t work in collage or encaustic, layering is a language almost every artist speaks. It’s about building meaning slowly, letting some things rest beneath the surface, allowing others to shine through.

Layers give us permission to be complex. To hold contradictions. To let time become part of the piece. As an example, here is a new (almost done but not yet – the edges are still taped) series that goes with my Encanto assemblages and will be in the Taos Exhibit in 2026.

I’m creating four layered encaustic collages, 20″x20″, each representing a child saint or Santo Niño. Technically, some are probably female Santas, but gender is not an issue here. Fusion is, fusion of layers and culture.

These Santo Niños inhabit the liminal space where Indigenous cosmologies and European Catholic iconography meet, overlap, and transform one another. The white-painted faces echo ritual marking found across Native traditions, signaling spiritual passage, ancestral presence, and worlds in transition. Their frames and gold-leaf halos recall Spanish devotional art, yet the children themselves do not belong fully to that lineage.

They are hybrid beings—part saint, part spirit-guardian—born of a cultural collision that reshaped the sacred landscape of the Southwest. 

I’ve layered mulberry paper printed with carpet designs and birds than might be found in a European drawing room with white painted synthographic faces of anonymous children to create contradictions and layers of metaphor and storytelling. Here they are so far – they may end up with one more layer of meaning but I’m just not sure:

Santo Niño of the Antlers and the Hidden Path

Santo Niño of the Sacred Heart Seed

Santo Niño of the Two Doves

Santo Niño of the Watching Birds

There is more color in these layered pieces (surprise!), but the printed color is pushed back by the veiling layers of wax, almost as if time-faded. I’m having an amazing time fitting the images to the layers of history and meaning in the whole concept of Encantos and objects of hope and devotion in a world where such things need to be extracted again from our deep sense of humanity.

Whew! That was  lot to talk about!

Here are a few prompts to bring into your own studio:

  • What early layer in your work deserves to resurface?

  • What do you want to soften — not erase — with a new layer?

  • How might your materials become translucent instead of opaque?

  • Is there an image in your practice that wants to hide and reveal itself at the same time?

Closing the Trilogy

With this third post — fragments, vessels, layers — the series comes full circle. Each path has shaped my work in different ways, but together they form a single through-line:

We create meaning from what we mend, what we hold, and what we choose to reveal.

Thank you for walking with me through all three.

How do you journey?

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“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” — Lewis Carroll

I’m getting ready to leave for Taos, New Mexico, to teach a class called Shards and Santos at the Taos Ceramics Center. We’re driving from San Antonio, and my husband (and beloved traveling companion) has already checked the road for both traffic construction and upcoming weather conditions. He knows where we will stop and how long it will take to get there.

This is hugely reassuring! I’d probably just hop in and head northwest. And this topic a perfect lead-in to reflecting about how differently we chart our artist’s journey. I actually created two Oracle Cards to express this.

A section in the in-progress Enso Oracle book called Subtleties and Pairings: When Meanings Overlap says, “Some cards in The Enso Oracle may appear to speak the same language, yet their tones differ quietly, like two instruments playing in harmony. The Wanderer and The Traveler, for example, both move through the world, but their motives are distinct: The Traveler walks with purpose, guided by curiosity and direction, while The Wanderer drifts in openness, allowing intuition rather than intention to lead. One seeks, the other listens.”

Take a minute to think about this, and then see which card below fits your creative “journey style” the best.

Were you able to choose your “wayfinder archetype”?

As you were reading the two cards above, which one tugs at you today?– (it may change tomorrow)

If you’re The Traveler (purposeful path):

  • Name a destination for this week’s studio time in one sentence.

  • Pick one tool or constraint that will help you get there.

  • Five-minute map: sketch the sequence—Step 1 → Step 2 → Step 3.

If you’re The Wanderer (intuitive drift):

  • Begin without a plan: choose three materials by feel, not reason.

  • Follow the most interesting accident for 10 minutes—no fixing, only noticing.

  • Three lines in your notebook: What surprised you? What changed? What’s next?

Tell Me & Tell Each Other

In the comments, share which card chose you today that describes your approach, and
I’ll feature a few responses in the next post (with your permission).

I’ll be on the road to Taos soon—channeling a bit of Traveler (routes and rest stops – thank you, Beloved Traveling Companion) and a whole lot of Wanderer (open skies, new textures). Which one will guide you this week?

Hopefully, I’ll be able to post while I’m there – I’ll send pics!! Thanks for reading!

The Hump, The Clock, and Creative Risk

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Jo Etta Jupe

Last Friday, three friends and I gathered for an informal studio session to test out a couple of techniques I am going to use this spring at a workshop I’m teaching at UTSA/SW. It’s called Vessel Alchemy: Tactile Poems in Fiber, Paper, Word, and Light

We had just four hours to experiment — I had “borrowed” the Semmes Studio at the Art League for our playtime .Normally, this vessel-making process unfolds over two leisurely days. So the plaster didn’t dry as fast as we expected, and while our asemic writing on tissue was ready, we still needed to try the beeswax on the vessel surface.

Remember the Oracle card called The Hump? That obstacle in the road? We were looking right at it, and the clock was ticking.

There was no time to second-guess. No time to over-plan. We just tweaked the process, took a few creative risks with the wax, and pushed right up against the edges of what felt possible. We used hot beeswax on cold plaster and fiber.

We had already put beeswax over damp “Irish paper” with good results (the hot wax dried the paper) . . .

. . . .so we rushed the process a bit. And here’s the surprising part: the results were beautiful.

Mary Zinda

I’ll admit, I worried we might have compromised good studio practices for speed. But the work told a different story. The pieces had clarity and energy — not the brittle look of something rushed, but the alive look of something made with intention and momentum. And the wax was stable.

Jean Dahlgren

That kind of creative compression can be exhilarating. It really is same energy that inspired the Enso Oracle card, The Hump  — the moment of tension before a breakthrough. When the usual pace isn’t an option, you find new ways to move forward.

You trust instinct over perfectionism. And often, that’s where the real results happen. This is one of the statements on the back of The Hump card:

“Sometimes the best work happens when you don’t give yourself time to talk yourself out of it.”

I’m reminded how much of artmaking is about risk — not the wild, reckless kind, but the kind that asks you to trust the materials, your hands, and the moment. This little four-hour experiment turned out to be a master class in exactly that.

But here’s the thing: there’s a big difference between taking a creative risk and just blowing past good sense because you’re in a hurry. If you don’t have time to do something safely or properly, that’s a sign to pause, not push. The Hump, bless its heart, will still be there tomorrow, patiently waiting. You can experiment, improvise, and trust the process without ignoring the basics that keep you and your work in one piece.

Creative bravery isn’t about being fearless — it’s about being smart enough to take the right kind of risks. And as I’m always telling you (and myself): trust the process. Or in this case, “tweak the process.”

Have you ever had a creative project come together better because of a time constraint or unexpected pressure? Some people swear they do their best work at the last minute. I’d love to hear your stories.

The Art of Magical Thinking

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“If we see three black crows, we will gain the power to fly . .”

A long time ago, I did a practicum in an inpatient psychiatric hospital for children as part of my post-grad Special Ed certification. That’s where I first heard the clinical definition of Magical Thinking. Psychologists define it as the belief that thoughts or actions can influence events in ways that defy logic.

We usually think of magical thinking as something we’re meant to outgrow. As children, we believed our thoughts could make things happen — if we wished hard enough, if we didn’t step on cracks, if we crossed our fingers just right. I have to say that I still hang on to that, because in the studio, it can be an interesting source of insight.

A bit of “magical thinking” allows us to trust the invisible steps of the process: that one step will lead to another, that an image will unfold as it’s meant to, that meaning will appear when we stay open to it. We let imagination do the work that logic can’t always reach.

And honestly, I still do it outside the studio too. I’ll catch myself thinking, “If that stoplight doesn’t turn red before I get to it, that means I’ll get into the juried show.” Or “If the cat jumps on the table before I finish this email, it’s a sign I should change the title.”
It’s funny, but I suspect I’m not the only one.

This isn’t superstition. It’s pattern recognition — an intuitive attunement to the subtle cues that guide creative flow. Artists notice coincidences, accidents, and repetitions, and interpret them as meaningful rather than random. That interpretive act — seeing meaning where others see chance — is our version of magic.

When practiced consciously, this kind of thinking deepens our connection to both process and perception. It reminds us that artmaking is not only about control but about collaboration — with materials, with time, with uncertainty itself. We may not believe that the brush has a will of its own, but we do believe that if we listen closely enough, it will show us something we didn’t expect. Did you ever try mark-making with your non-dominant hand or with your eyes closed? Do you ever choose an Oracle card?

Even neuroscience nods to this kind of enchantment. Studies show that creativity lights up the brain’s default mode network — the same system that activates when we daydream, imagine, or find patterns in randomness. So when we follow an intuitive hunch in the studio, it’s not superstition. It’s the mind’s natural way of finding meaning in chaos.

In that sense, magical thinking isn’t about bending reality. It’s about perceiving more of it — noticing the signals, patterns, and echoes that point the way forward when reason alone runs out of language.

Magical, 2021

Maybe the real magic is that moment when everything suddenly feels connected — when a found object, a stray mark, or a line of color speaks back to you and says, yes, this belongs, when an answer magically appears. Remember the original Pendulum Post from Ireland? Real-life example!

For fun, checkout my Substack post – there’s an “artist-brained” guide to magical thinking – and thanks for reading!

That’s Life!

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Michelle Belto and I are ready to begin the fall term with our Enso Circle Continuing Residents, the group that is sort of like “alumni” from our online artists’ residency program which will reopen next spring.

I am so grateful to that group because they’re often the inspiration for my Enso Oracle cards. Their questions and the information we all share within the group are things that every artist copes with or celebrates in one way or another as we try to fit in our work with our life. That can be a huge job, right?

EEEK! It’s the Death Card! Yikes!

Nobody likes to pull the Death card in a tarot spread—it sounds ominous, even though it often means transformation or release. But what about creating quieter, more complex twin, the Life card?

Life is more unpredictable, more unruly, than death. Death is final; life interrupts. Life barges in uninvited, derails studio practice, pulls us away from the easel or the loom or the kiln. Life collides with intention—family calls, health falters, bills pile up, or maybe you win the lottery?? It not always bad, but it always disrupts.

When I created the Life card for the Enso Oracle, I wanted something as profound as the tarot’s Death card, but with less fear and more practical application to the artist’s journey. Life doesn’t end things in the same way death does—it reshapes them, tests them, and insists on being part of the process.

For an artist, drawing the Life card is a reminder that we live in a field of interruptions and detours. Yet within those interruptions lies the raw material of art itself: the texture of real experience, the unpredictable weather of being human.

What the Life Card Means

When the Life card comes up, it doesn’t say, “Stop creating.” It says, “Look at what is unfolding.” Life often looks like a distraction, but in truth it is the source of the deepest work. The missed studio hours, the detour from your schedule, the unplanned season of caregiving or crisis—all of these shape the inner landscape that eventually makes its way into your art.

In this sense, the Life card is not an obstacle but a grounding force. It tells us that art is not made apart from life; it is made because of it.

An Example: Interrupted Practice

I know an artist (a painter) who had to abandon a large canvas midway because her father grew ill. The painting sat untouched for months while she traveled back and forth between hospital visits and home. At first, she resented the interruption. But when she returned to the studio, she realized the canvas had been quietly waiting. The work resumed, but it carried something new—an undercurrent of tenderness and vulnerability she could not have painted before that season of life unfolded.

The interruption had not ruined the work. It had deepened it.

Another example is my own. Several years ago, I was facing a rushed deadline for an exhibit (I’m a procrastinator by nature), when a sudden family emergency took us out of town for a week. Thankfully, all turned out well with the family, but I came back to the studio in what I thought was real trouble. What surprised me, though, was how the forced pause gave me time to think more clearly. Away from the pressure of materials and mess, I imagined new approaches, and in that space I discovered a collage technique that not only saved the project but has become a mainstay of my practice ever since.

Drawing the Life Card as an Artist

So what does it mean when you draw the Life card?

  • It may be telling you to forgive yourself for missed studio days.

  • It may be reminding you that your creative path is not separate from the messy, glorious whole of existence.

  • It may be inviting you to weave the day’s interruptions—joyful or painful—into the story your art is telling.

Because Life, for all its unpredictability, is the well from which we draw.

______________________________________________________________

LIFE

Keywords: interruption, arrival, change, reality, presence

Interpretation (Upright):
Life comes to the door without warning. You may have had plans, momentum, even clarity—but now, something is shifting. This card reminds you that your creative path exists within the greater rhythm of life, not apart from it. Whether it’s a new opportunity, a deep loss, or a sudden turn, Life is asking you to pause and open the door. It may feel inconvenient or even frightening, but this is part of being fully human. Honor the moment, even if it interrupts your art. One day, it may become your art.

Interpretation (Reversed):
You may be resisting change or holding tightly to plans that no longer fit. When Life knocks, we don’t always feel ready—but pretending not to hear the knock doesn’t stop it. Reversed, this card suggests a reluctance to surrender control, even when the path forward is already unfolding. Can you make room for the unknown without losing your center?

Reflection Questions:

  • When has life redirected your creative path—and what grew from it?
  • What might happen if you welcomed interruption as part of the journey?

Affirmation:
I open the door, even when I don’t know what comes next.

_____________________________

A Closing Reflection

The next time Life shows up, whether in a card spread or in the form of an unexpected event, pause before you push it away. Ask: What is this teaching me? How can I hold this moment as part of my practice, not against it?

The Life card reminds us that without life—its surprises, its detours, its demands—there is no art. It’s the reminder that to be alive is already to be creating. Yay for Life!