Category Archives: Mixed Media

Art has a soul – so what should it cost?

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As part of getting ready for my upcoming exhibition,  I’ve been thinking about the complicated subject of selling art—not from a business standpoint, but from a human one.

Mendicant Messenger: The Nest Keeper
Carries the knowledge that home is not claimed, but tended. Belonging is made through return, care, and the patient shaping of small, protective circles.

While working on my Encantos and Mendicant Messengers for the Taos show, it became very clear to me that there was no rational way to calculate their “value.” Every element was touched, considered, set aside, returned to, and finally placed with care. The work carried intention, patience, and a kind of spiritual listening that doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet. How do you put a price on that?

The Listener of Copper Paths:  The Listener of Copper Paths encanto watches over people who carry hidden worries.

And yet, I still want these pieces to find homes where they’re needed. I want them to be accessible. They need to continue their lives beyond my studio. Somewhere between devotion and practicality sits the uncomfortable question: How do we translate process into money?

The first thing I keep coming back to is this: price is not a measure of meaning. It never has been. Money doesn’t pay for the spirit that went into the work. It simply allows the work to move—from studio to world, from maker to keeper. Price is not a judgment of worth; it’s a translation tool, a bridge between inner labor and outer systems.

Accessibility doesn’t mean undervaluing. Sometimes it means trusting that the right person will recognize the work, not consume it casually. Sometimes it means allowing the exchange itself to be part of the ritual of letting go—an acknowledgment that something cared for is being received with care.

And then there’s the bigger question that makes me pause: Is selling the ultimate goal for artists? If it were, art would feel thinner somehow. More transactional. Less alive.

Historically, artists have been motivated by things far deeper than sales: witness, transmission, service, continuity, remembering. Selling is just one possible outcome of that work—not its moral endpoint. When selling becomes the goal, art loses something. When art remains the goal, selling becomes quieter, more humane—a way of releasing work responsibly into the world.

If you feel sensitive or conflicted about pricing your work, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means your work still matters to you. The sadness isn’t about money—it’s about not wanting what you’ve made to be reduced to a transaction.

We’re allowed to hold both truths at once:

This work is priceless in spirit.
This work needs a number so it can find its way.

That tension isn’t a failure. It’s a sign that the work still has a soul. In the end, pricing is not a test you pass or fail. You can seek counsel, follow structure, and change your mind—but the number you choose is simply the one that feels like a respectful release.

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!

Teacups: Finding a Personal Voice Inside a Shared Theme

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When artists are invited to participate in a themed exhibition, the first response is often analytical: What is the prompt asking for? But the more meaningful question comes later, and more quietly: What does this theme stir in me? This is where artists stop illustrating ideas and begin translating lived experience into form.

The exhibition One in Eight / The Teacup Project offered a clear conceptual framework. Conceived by GAGA Founder and exhibition designer Sylvia Benitez, herself a breast cancer survivor, the project is grounded not only in art history but in lived experience. The result is not a single visual narrative, but a chorus of distinct voices, each speaking without explanation, yet clearly understood.

Artists were asked to interpret a teacup and saucer in response to breast cancer awareness. The idea draws inspiration from Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup—an ordinary domestic object transformed into something charged, unsettling, and unforgettable, and notably the first artwork by a woman acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. (Take this link to read the full story – it’s a good one.)

Those were the verbal guidelines. Everything else had to be discovered through looking, listening, and making. That combination has given artists permission to respond intuitively and honestly, whether through symbolic imagery, altered objects, or direct material references.

The challenge is not to illustrate the theme literally, but to recognize which images insist on being made. Some become two-dimension, some three-dimensional. Some are still unfinished.

Teacup Interpretations in progress

For my piece, Held, the teacup became a container—not simply an object, but a state of being.

A woman’s face rests inside the cup, eyes closed, suspended between vulnerability and protection. The numbers one through eight circle the surface, not as a statistic to be explained, but as a persistent presence. They hover and repeat, blurred enough to resist certainty, yet impossible to ignore.

Rather than making a declarative statement about breast cancer, I wanted to explore what it must feel like to live with that knowledge—to carry it privately, bodily, and emotionally.

Encaustic was essential to this expression. Wax softens edges and obscures clarity. It allows images to hover in ambiguity, much like difficult truths themselves. Layers veil and reveal, holding space for complexity rather than resolution. The medium became part of the meaning. Even though I work often in three-dimensional assemblage, this felt right to me.

Material choice plays a powerful role in how artists interpret a shared theme. While I approached the teacup symbolically and atmospherically, other artists responded through direct engagement with the object itself. A real teacup carries familiarity and ritual. It is something we cradle in our hands, associated with warmth, pause, and care. When altered or recontextualized, that comfort can shift into something unsettling.

My friend Barbara took this idea one step further by placing a bra cup on a saucer. The gesture is immediate and unmistakable, collapsing metaphor and reality into a single form. The bra cup echoes the shape of the teacup while bringing the body directly into the conversation. Domestic object and intimate garment meet at the same scale, requiring no explanation. The meaning arrives visually, intuitively, and fully – and fluffy!

This is where non-verbal interpretation shows its strength. One artist may work symbolically, another literally. One may veil meaning in layers and atmosphere; another may present it plainly and directly. Neither approach is more valid than the other. Each is shaped by the artist’s relationship to the subject, their materials, and their personal history. What unites these responses is attentiveness—to the theme, to the body, and to the quiet knowledge we carry as women, caregivers, friends, and witnesses.

One in Eight / The Teacup Project is still in its development stage as a site exhibit, but the depth and immediacy of the responses so far suggest that it is already doing what meaningful exhibitions do best—opening space for reflection, connection, and shared understanding.  When an idea invites this level of engagement before it even takes physical form, it feels less like a proposal and more like an inevitability—one that will, no doubt, soon become a lived and visible exhibition.

In the meantime, you can see the virtual exhibition on the GAGA website on December 29. Brava to Sylvia for inspiring us to find our personal voices inside this truly interesting shared theme! 

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.

Fragments, Forms & Layers: Part Two

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Last week, the remarkable artist and teacher Crystal Marie Neubauer invited me to speak with her online community about my work — an honor, and also an unexpected challenge. How do you describe an art practice that moves fluidly through so many materials? Encaustic, collage, clay, fiber, found objects… it’s never been about one medium.

What I realized is that my work is held together not by technique but by form and intention. Three recurring paths kept surfacing:

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 quiet revelations inside transparency

These forms thread through everything I make and shape how I think about narrative, memory, devotion, and protection. This three-part series grew from that conversation with Crystal’s group — an invitation to look more closely at how these paths emerge and how others might recognize echoes of their own practice along the way.

Part 2: Vessels of Holding — Forms That Carry Memory

A three-part series on Fragments, Vessels & Layers

In PART ONE, we talked about shards and stories and fragments.

If fragments are the invitations, vessels are the responses — the forms we create when we need to hold something gently, carry something forward, or protect something fragile. In my work, vessels have always been metaphors for care: what we shelter, what we offer, what we carry alone, and what we carry together.

This part of the series turns to the second creative path in my practice, one shaped deeply by my time teaching Spirit Vessels & Boats in Ireland. That workshop showed me how universally we understand the language of vessels — not just as objects, but as personal metaphors.

NOTE: If you read to the bottom of the post, there is some information about a new in-person Vessels workshop coming up in February.

Vessels as Small Architectures for Memory

A vessel is more than a container. It’s a small architecture — a structure built from tenderness and intention.

In my own studio, I return again and again to:

  • cane lashed into curved frames,

  • mulberry paper toughened with wax,

  • bits of rusted metal becoming anchors,

  • fiber and thread creating protection or boundary.

Each material changes the meaning of what the vessel carries. Wax, especially, offers a luminous kind of shelter — the sense that something is being preserved inside layers of translucence.

Teaching in Ireland: A Workshop of Passage and Light

When I taught this work in Mulranny, surrounded by sea light, tidal flats, and the slow breathing of the bay, my students immediately understood that they were making more than objects. They were making carriers — of memory, metaphor, hope, grief, gratitude.

Their vessels took on astonishing variety:

  • Some resembled wind-bent boats, as if carrying stories across an invisible tide.

  • Some were seed-like pods holding untold wishes.

  • Some were protective containers woven from cane, stitched paper, and beeswax, glowing like small lanterns.

There was a shared sense that these forms — however small — were honoring something beyond themselves.

Interior Space / Exterior Form

One of the most compelling conversations in the workshop was about the relationship between:

  • the space inside the vessel,

  • the form surrounding it,

  • and the meaning created by the tension between the two.

In a vessel, the interior always matters. It holds the intention. The exterior only reveals part of the story — the rest is protected within. This interplay mirrors how we move through the world: showing some things, guarding others, and trusting the container to hold what words cannot.

_________________________________________

Speaking of words, I am teaching a new two-day in-person Vessel workshop next year on Valentines Day weekend at UTSA/SW. It’s called Vessel Alchemy: Tactile
Poems in Fiber , Paper , Word, Light. Here’s a partial description from the catalog:

“In this immersive workshop, we’ll explore how simple
materials (sticks, cheesecloth, mulberry paper, fiber scraps,
ink) can be transformed into vessels that speak to memory,
meaning, and the ephemeral. Each day invites an unfolding
of form and story as we sculpt, wrap, write, embed, and
embellish.”

We’ll be doing some writing – words and poems and asemic mark making – here is a beautiful example from my friend Jean Dahlgren, who will be my TA for this class.

I love Jean’s asemic writing – she’s promised to write some lines on tissue paper for us to use in the workshop!

Workshop Registration for Friends of the School opens today, and it opens to the public on December 9th. I’d love to see you there!

If you can’t make it to the in-person workshop in February, you are welcome to checkout my online workshop called Spirit & Form: Creating Vessels of Passage and Purpose.

Here is a link to a sample lesson and the registration information. It’s self-paced and only $59 for lifetime access.

Inviting You Into the Studio: What Are You Carrying?

Even if you’ve never lashed cane or dipped mulberry paper into wax, you’ve likely made vessels in your own way — forms that hold meaning.

So here are some studio invitations for your own practice:

  • Could a boat, bowl, pod, or wrapped bundle be a metaphor waiting to be explored?

  • What would a “protective container” look like in your materials?

  • What happens when you build a structure around an emotion, a memory, or a small sacred object?

  • What materials in your studio feel inherently protective — wax, fiber, metal, clay?

A vessel doesn’t need to be functional to be truthful. It can simply be a place where meaning rests.

Looking Ahead

Next week, in Part Three, I’ll explore the last of the three intertwined paths: Layered Images — how veiled surfaces, hidden elements, and translucent strata reveal what is usually unseen.

Fragments, Forms & Layers, Part One

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Series Introduction 

This week, the remarkable 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 forms that keep reappearing no matter what materials I’m using. And when I stepped back, three clear paths emerged:

  • 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 quiet revelations inside transparency

These three paths intertwine across everything I make. They shape how I think about narrative, memory, devotion, protection, and the unseen layers beneath the surface.

This three-part blog series grows out of that conversation with Crystal and her community — an invitation to look more closely at where my work comes from, how it evolves, and how other artists might find echoes of their own practice in these structures.

Taos Ceramic Center Workshop – Shards and Santos

Part 1: Shards & Santos — Stories from the Broken and Blessed

A three-part series on Fragments, Vessels & Layers

We rarely begin with a whole story. More often, meaning appears in pieces — a scrap of paper, a chipped relic, a bit of fabric softened by time. Over the years, I’ve learned that these fragments are not the leftovers; they’re the invitations.

This first post in my three-part series returns to the roots of an idea that has shaped much of my work — and shaped the work of many artists I’ve taught, especially during my Shards & Santos workshop in Taos. That circle of students helped me see just how universal the language of fragments can be.

How Shards Become Stories

In my own practice, fragments arrive like clues: a small clay face, a scrap of rusted tin, a wooden bit that once held something together. But in Taos, I watched my students discover that same moment of recognition — the instant a found object becomes a story seed.

One student picked up a cracked porcelain doll arm and immediately said, “She’s reaching for something… I don’t know what yet.” Another wound red thread around a bundle of broken twigs, transforming it into a line of healing. Someone else combined milagros and fabric scraps into a small guardian who looked both ancient and brand new.

Their work reminded me that the power of fragments isn’t personal to me — it’s common to all of us who rely on intuition, accident, and memory to guide the creative process.

Santos, Spirit Figures & the Art of Devotion

My own santos and spirit figures grew from this love of broken, found, and humble materials. They echo the devotional folk traditions of the Southwest and northern New Mexico, where handmade imperfection is embraced as a sign of humanity.

In Taos, my students instinctively reached for the same archetypes — watchers, keepers, protectors. Their figures weren’t copies of mine; they were something deeper: their own histories embodied in small forms. Some appeared fierce. Some gentle. Some humorous and unexpected. But each one performed an act of trust and devotion: taking what is overlooked and turning it into things that matters.

Teaching in Taos: A Circle of Making and Mending

The workshop gave me a front-row seat to the creative courage required to work with fragments. No one started with a clear plan. Everyone started with pieces.

And I saw how quickly the shards guided them:

  • An animal bone became the spine of a tiny santo.

  • A found seed pod became a symbol of protection.

  • A scrap of handwritten ledger paper held the echo of an unknown voice.

These transformations reminded me that assemblage is not just a technique — it’s a way of mending meaning.

Inviting You Into the Studio Conversation

Even if you weren’t in that room in Taos, these ideas belong to you too. Artists everywhere — no matter the medium — work with fragments. Sometimes they are literal (material scraps, failed starts, bits of old work). Sometimes they are emotional or intuitive (memories, glimpses, unfinished thoughts).

From the presentation to Crystal’s Group

So here are some invitations for your own practice:

  • What three fragments are asking for your attention right now? Do they go together or are they separate stories – a series, perhaps?

  • What part of something incomplete could become the beginning of something new?

  • How might you create your own guardian figure — a studio santo — from the materials around you?

The beauty of working with shards and fragments is that nothing has to be whole to be meaningful. The “broken” thing is already full of story. Your job — our job — is simply to listen and find its true companions.

Looking Ahead

Next week, in Part Two, I’ll share the second path in this creative trio: Vessels — how boats, bowls, pods, and containers have shaped my work and helped me think about what we hold, carry, and protect.

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.

Juried Shows and Oracle Cards

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When I started developing the Enso Oracle Cards as a tool, I realized that they they can be a very practical resource. Beyond intuitive revelation, these cards offer metaphors that help us navigate the day-to-day challenges of studio practice. They remind us, in a humanistic and positive way, that perspective matters as much as process.

Just last week, I was accepted into the Fiber Artists annual Juried Show with my piece called Woolgathering — wonderful news, because this piece was unconventional enough that I wasn’t sure it would be understood.

Lyn Belisle. 2025

So I also know the outcome could just as easily have been a polite “not this time.” That is the nature of juried competition. When the stakes feel high, reading an oracle card can provide a way to step back, breathe, and reframe the experience.

For example, The Pendulum card offers exactly this kind of perspective: a reminder that acceptance and rejection are simply two ends of the same swing, part of the rhythm of creative life.

When we draw this card—or choose it intentionally in a moment of reflection—it reminds us that the back-and-forth is not personal, it’s part of the rhythm of being an artist in the world. The swing of the pendulum is natural, inevitable, and temporary.

Juried shows are not a verdict on the value of your art. You know this.They are a reflection of one juror’s perspective, shaped by their own experiences, tastes, and the constraints of the exhibition. Just as a pendulum does not stop at either extreme, the outcome of any one competition does not define your entire creative practice.

In fact, The Pendulum asks us to look at where we stand in relation to those swings. Are we letting a rejection pull us too far into self-doubt? Are we letting an acceptance push us into overconfidence? The wisdom of the card is found in the center—the still point at the bottom of the swing—where we can observe both movements without being carried away by them.

As a practical exercise, if you’re entering a show or waiting on results, you might place The Pendulum card on your studio table. Sit quietly with it and ask:

  • What am I letting swing me off balance?

  • Where is the calm center I can return to, regardless of outcome?

  • What steady rhythm of making can I trust more than the verdict of a juror?

This practice shifts the experience of competition from one of judgment to one of balance. The card becomes less about predicting success or failure and more about anchoring yourself in the ongoing rhythm of your creative life.

What matters most is not the swing itself, but your ability to find stillness at the center and keep creating with steadiness and joy. It’s all perspective.

Now if only an actual pendulum could give me a positive yes or no answer about whether the piece will be accepted . . . .or maybe the waiting is part of the game 🙂

If you live in the San Antonio area and wold like to know more about the Fiber Artists of San Antonio Exhibit, here you go! Hope to see you there!

The Cracked Cup: Holding Loss with Reverence

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This week, as floods have devastated parts of Texas, I have felt a deep ache settle in my chest. So many lives lost—families shattered, futures rewritten in a single rising tide. There is no mending of such losses, only the sacred act of holding space for them.

It was with this sorrow that I turned to The Cracked Cup, one of the first cards I created  in the Enso Oracle deck. The cup, once whole, now bears a fracture that cannot be hidden. Yet it still holds meaning, still carries essence. A cracked vessel is a reminder that something precious was once contained, and though altered, its story is not erased.

Loss connects us. Not because we can understand it fully—but because we recognize its shape. We have all carried our own cracked cups, fragile with memory and longing. And when we witness loss in others—especially such heartbreaking, public loss—we may feel helpless. But if we acknowledge it, if we name it, if we allow it to soften us rather than harden us, then something sacred can begin to form.

Grief shared is grief witnessed. In honoring the cracks, we honor the love that came before them.

The Cracked Cup

Keywords: Imperfection, Vulnerability, Beauty in the Broken, Holding What You Can

Guidebook Entry:
The Cracked Cup appears when life has etched its story into your form. In the upright position, it honors the quiet resilience of holding, even with a fracture. You are still a vessel, capable of offering and receiving, though shaped now by experience. The crack is not your failure—it is your history, your refinement. Like kintsugi, where gold fills the fault line, your beauty is revealed in the break. This card invites you to celebrate what remains and flows, rather than what was lost.

Reversed Meaning:
Reversed, the Cracked Cup may signal that you’re trying to pour from what no longer holds. You might be ignoring signs of depletion, overextending despite inner fractures. There may be grief you’ve hidden in plain sight, or a perfectionism that keeps you from offering anything at all. This card urges rest, repair, and self-compassion. It’s okay to set yourself down for a while.

Reflection Questions:

  • What am I still trying to hold that might be leaking away?
  • Where can I find grace in my imperfections?
  • Am I trying to serve others without tending to my own mending?

Affirmation:
Even with a crack, I remain a vessel. I hold beauty, truth, and healing within my imperfect form.

_____________________

In the wake of deep loss, there are no easy words. The grief sits heavy, as it should.

And yet, as artists, we often turn to our work to hold what cannot be spoken. We make marks, tear paper, mend fragments—because our hands need to do something with the sorrow.

Artists can bring gold to the broken.

The old practice in Japan called Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold, doesn’t hide the cracks, but honors them. It does not undo the break. Like The Cracked Cup, it simply says: this mattered, this was loved, this was lost—and it still holds beauty.

When our artwork feels broken, we can follow this same impulse—to mend with grace, to let the light in through the cracks.

Here are five little ways artists can add a touch of gold to their broken places – almost as a metaphor.

1. Gold Leaf or Metallic Wax on Cracks or Seams
Highlight repaired tears, joins, or fractures with gold leaf or metallic wax. Instead of concealing damage, this elevates it—visibly celebrating the healing process and transformation. Even in collages or fiber works, adding a subtle gilded line over a seam can evoke this reverent beauty. Book Foil makes wonderful lines over a wax surface – I use this often.

2. Thread or Wire Mending
Use gold or brass wire or gold embroidery thread to literally bind pieces together. Whether it’s torn paper, fabric, or broken sculptural elements, the physical act of mending with golden thread becomes a ritual of restoration and reverence. My friend Flo Bartell just emailed me this morning about using a gold wire for knitting, to communicate a delicate permanence. Perhaps we are all needing a bit of gold as shining metaphor.

3. Symbolic Gold Marks
Paint or draw golden lines, halos, or marks over areas that feel unresolved or damaged. These can represent scars or epiphanies—places where the work “broke open” and something new emerged. Think of them as visual blessings for the broken spaces. Use a gold Sharpie or paint pen for some asemic writing on unresolved work.

4. Incorporating Found Golden Objects
Embed small gold-tone found objects—buttons, charms, keys, or jewelry fragments—into your artwork where pieces feel lost or incomplete. These additions can be talismans of memory, resilience, and beauty born from imperfection.

5. Transforming Damage into Focal Points
If part of a piece is damaged, emphasize that area with a glowing, gold-infused feature—like a golden portal, sunburst, or frame. This approach not only restores but transforms what was broken into the heart of the piece’s meaning.

In the quiet aftermath of loss, The Cracked Cup reminds us that even when something breaks, it still has purpose—maybe even more than before. Like the golden seams in a kintsugi vessel, the work we do to mend our hearts can become part of the beauty we share.
If you are an artist, know this: your creative practice is a balm, a beacon. Keep making. Keep tending to your art as an offering—not just for yourself, but for the community that surrounds you.
And please, take care of yourself and those you love. Be gentle with your days. Hold your own cracked cup with tenderness, and let your light shine through the places that have been broken open.
♥Lyn
Previous Oracle Cards:

THE SHINY OBJECT

THE HUMP

THE WANDERER

What’s that?? A shiny object????

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We are previewing my in-progress series of Enso Oracle Cards this month, each card based on real issues from real artists in The Enso Circle.  We’ve already looked at The Wanderer and The Hump. More about The Hump later in this post.

Today’s Enso Oracle Card is all too familiar to me. It’s called The Shiny Object. It shows up when I’m knee-deep in unfinished projects, surrounded by half-torn mulberry paper and unanswered emails, and I still think, “Ooh, I need to check out that new cold wax thingy that’s water soluble – ” and off I go to Pinterest or YouTube to “research.”

The reversed Shiny Object is that moment when inspiration turns into avoidance — when curiosity becomes the perfect excuse not to finish anything at all. It’s not judging me (okay, maybe just a little), but it does nudge me to ask: Am I exploring something new… or running away from the work that’s calling me? Sometimes, the most courageous act in the studio is simply returning to what we already started.

So here’s this week’s Oracle Card:

THE SHINY OBJECT ENSO ORACLE CARD

aka The Rabbit Hole
Keywords: distraction, novelty, curiosity, temptation, redirection

A clever crow perches atop a cluttered studio table, its beady eye fixed on a sparkling bauble outside the window. Around it, the half-hidden remnants of abandoned projects and tantalizing tools—paint tubes, half-sculpted clay, unwrapped pastels, a digital stylus, rusted wire, wax pots—whisper promises of possibility. This card reflects the lure of the new and the irresistible pull of novelty.

Upright, The Shiny Object invites you to examine whether your current fascinations are playful expansions—or diversions from deeper work. You may be called to explore something new, but be mindful: every “yes” to something glittering may be a “no” to something important. Choose with intention, not impulse.

Reversed, this card can reveal stagnation disguised as commitment. You may be clinging too tightly to one medium or routine out of fear of getting lost again. Remember that the joy of experimentation doesn’t always equal distraction. Sometimes, chasing a sparkle leads to unexpected treasure—if your feet stay grounded.

Reflection Questions:

  • What am I reaching for right now, and why?
  • Am I nourishing my creative center or avoiding something deeper?
  • Where do I need more discernment—or more freedom?

Affirmation:
I honor my curiosity, but I choose where to land. I can explore without losing my way.

_______________________________________________________

Confession: I chased a few Shiny Objects last week while I struggled with The Hump,  trying in vain to figure out my Altar for Celebration Circle. I knew what I wanted – it was going to be called Georgia’s Dream, a tribute to the legendary painter.

It started out great – I figured out how to attach a deer skull securely to the wooden altar structure. And then I found the perfect photo of Georgia O’Keeffe to use as my encaustic icon portrait. And then The Hump appeared. I was stuck.

The Hump stage:

It took three days and a few rabbit holes to give me the breathing room to get back to the Georgia’s Dream Altar. And then it just came together! Sometimes we need blocks and distractions to force us to look away so that we can come back with fresh eyes.

Here’s the story of Georgia’s Dream:

Georgia’s Dream
Assemblage by Lyn Belisle

In this poignant mixed media assemblage, artist Lyn Belisle constructs a shrine-like portal into the inner dreamscape of Georgia O’Keeffe during her later years at Abiquiú. Central to the piece is the bleached skull of a deer, crowned with delicate flowers and flanked by rusted metal leaves—symbols of both decay and transcendence. A turquoise cross rises behind it, evoking the spiritual landscape of the American Southwest and the sacred geometry of personal myth.

Beneath the skull rests an image of O’Keeffe herself, serene and centered, set into an aged niche like an icon. It is not merely a portrait—it is a mirror of longing and continuity. Below, a brush, thread, and turquoise fragments suggest the tools of her artistic and spiritual communion. The word “MILAGRO” etched along the base speaks to the miraculous transformation at the heart of the dream.

Georgia’s Dream imagines an ethereal journey: an aged O’Keeffe, her physical body frail, dreams of slipping into the spirit of a deer—fleet, luminous, unbound. In this dream, she races across the high desert mesas she once painted with such reverence, becoming part of the land once more. The assemblage becomes not just a tribute, but a vessel of metamorphosis—where memory, myth, and matter blur.

I’ll be back next week with a new card – see you then!!