I posted yesterday about letting go of wholesale markets for awhile. Then find an excited message on my answering machine from the owner of what looks like a PERFECT gallery for my work....
The universe is a funny animal, isn't it?
Here's another odd story.
I wrote earlier this year about a custom order for a bracelet with a bird artifact. I'd never made a bird, but I came up with a good one, in my faux ivory.
I packed up the order and excitedly called the customer to alert her the bracelet was on its way. She said, "It's a BLACK bird, right?"
That's where my new faux soapstone technique came from. Sometimes my peskiest problems result in beautiful new ideas.
But the bird puzzled me. What kind of bird was it?? I had no idea (and I know a lot of birds.)
I called it "Sea Bird" right from the start. But why?
I sent an image to a friend who's extremely intuitive. (She is another customer, the one who inspired my new "cave bull" image.) She was baffled, too. She thought it might be a puffin, but that didn't feel right.
Finally, a few weeks ago, I was rummaging in my attic for something when I came across a box of books I'd bought at a yard sale recently.
Right on top was a book by one of my favorite authors, Holling C. Holling, who wrote "Paddle-to-the-Sea" and other children's books. http://www.amazon.com/Paddle-Sea-Caldecott-Honor-Books/dp/0808551515/
This was a book I'd never heard of nor read, to my knowledge.
And it was called SEABIRD.
http://www.amazon.com/Seabird-Holling-C/dp/0395266815/
Spooky enough. But it gets better.
It's a story about a young man on a whaling ship who carves a totemic seagull. The book tells of their travels and adventures, with incredibly detailed and beautiful illustrations and diagrams.
He carves the seagull from ivory using scrimshaw techniques.
Wait--it gets EVEN BETTER.
When I leafed through the book, there on page 14 was a profile of the carved gull, like a diagram.
And that profile looks almost identical to my sea bird.
Even down to the tiny wedge of carved black slate (!!) to represent its feet (I carve little feet on the underside of each bird.)
I don't know what to say or think about this. I suppose the rational answer is I MUST have seen or known of this book in my childhood (thought I would swear I haven't.)
Or it's just a bird. I know a gull is a gull is a gull.
But how a tiny diagram out of hundreds of illustrations in this book wound up sheltered in my mind against the day, many decades later, when a customer, attracted to my ivory artifacts, would request a slate black bird because SHE had dreamed of one, well, that is beyond my ken.
If I am going to look for meaning and guidance in my life, then I would rather gladly pay attention to THESE incidents, rather than believe there is no place in the world for my art.
