Metal Things

Here in Bali,Tumpuk Landup is a day that celebrates everything metal. Automobiles and motorbikes are embellished with hand-woven palm leaf plaits attached to their hoods and handlebars. Tools, electric and manual, and knives including the ceremonial kris, are given a good waft of sandalwood incense and a dose of holy water to cleanse and acknowledge the spirits inherent within. 

All Dressed Up 

 

I shudder as the matriarch of our Balinese family raises her weathered hand, a flower drenched in holy water held delicately between two gnarled fingers. She flicks the blossom, breathes out her ancient prayers, while liberally sprinkling the computer and printer three times. I cross my fingers that the blossom-studded offerings stuck with burning incense will stay put. 

Honoring the Flex Shaft 

In the workshop the electric flex shaft, used for making carvings and setting stones, seems miniaturized next to three large platters filled with cakes, a splayed crisply roasted chicken, fresh fruits, crunchy rice snacks and a rainbow of flower petals. This is a gift to the flex shaft’s spirit and a prayer that he’ll protect everyone you uses the tool.

Knives and Kris'

All the knives of the house are cleaned and gathered together along with the garden tools. They also have a special homage while the band saw at the end of the workbench sports an intricately woven palm leaf offering unlike any of the others. 

Band Saw Pretty

My Lovely Stove

The kitchen does not go unnoticed. A simple pinwheel of flowers placed there, seems to my mind, too small for the enormous pleasure my oven gives me and the many friends who dine at our table. As I turn to go out I notice the fridge has an offering balanced on its top corner edge. No metal that could cause problems to the household is exempt from being honored on this day.

Ancient and adaptable Bali merges with the modern world while retaining its unique rituals. How could this culture not influence us artists, musicians, and writers? The air breathes creativity infusing us with its electrons, edging us forward to bring life to new ideas, visions and dreams. I go to my beading table and put together a new bracelet, humming with the spirit of the place.

Ready to Launch

I’ve just sent my book off to a publisher friend to see if it is publishable. I’ve been working on “Piece by Piece - Bali Dreams, Love and the Land of Alzheimer’s” for almost four years. It’s been through two edits and countless re reads trying to seek out misspellings and gross punctuation errors.  I think the words conspire while I sleep to put commas where they shouldn’t be and to veil words so spell check can’t find them.

I’m ready to launch this effort to free up some time for other creative pursuits. The first time I thought I’d finished it, I felt like I’d lost a friend, like I was grieving. See my blog post on this at: 

http://susan-tereba.blogspot.com/2012/04/empty-spot.html

But this time it feels like it’s ready to leave home. I know there will be a lot of work to do to promote it when it finally gets published but the creative part is done. Now it’ll be the business of getting published leading me on and then the business of marketing.

Hand Painted Bone with Jasper

In the jewelry arena I showed some of my experiments of hand colored bone carvings to a collector and friend. She thought they were so nice she bought a pair of the earrings. That inspires and motivates me to get back to my experiments with color.  As much as I love our mammoth tusk carvings, I adore color.  I'm a painter after all!

In the meantime I have my fingers crossed that “Piece by Piece” will be well received and a constructive critique comes out of this professional reading.  I’m already dreaming of the next book - a cookbook with stories.

Creativity is my life and I don’t really care how it expresses itself just so it does.

How does creativity express itself for you? How does it feed you?

Dancing with Bits of Time

Sometimes it feels like life snatches away the creative moment.  I'm filled with inspiration and great longing to transform this into in-hand creations. Lately this strong urge seems to get usurped by other 'more important' issues.

Then I wonder if these are also part of the process - that it's like a boiling pot. The food will be done when it's done. Carrots take longer than zucchini.  And maybe some ideas, in whatever medium you are using, need their own time with interruptions part of that process. 

There's a delicate line between gestation and procrastination and I so don't want to fall prey to the latter, and at the same time, I want to honor the former.  At the moment I'm dancing between bits of time working on new creations and literally taking care of business.  It seems like the computer and emails eat big chucks out the day and every night as I climb into bed I think, "Didn't I just do this?"

'Heart Song'

'Heart Song' is a new design etched out of this dance between busyness and creativity. These earrings remind me to 'keep it light' and follow life's lead. You just never know where inspiration will come from.  Five months ago in California, a waitress was serving us brunch. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her earrings.  They inspired this design produced in Bali.  That’s why we’re called “World on a String”.