Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady

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What will YOU do on your artist date?

So I’m in the middle of a national park, in the middle of a bad hair decade. Decade.

I can’t avoid the fact that I’m a Middle-aged Crazy Lady wearing baggy pants, collecting plastic junk fragments from the beach. Plastic junk fragments.

Not to throw away, like any Sensible Middle-aged Crazy Lady does, but to PLAY with, as any Unsensible Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady does.
Plus oyster shells, seaweed and string. Treasures.

Beach Mandala found object sculpture

Beach Mandala
plastic, shelly, junky, funky, probably smelly and washed away by now

A gaggle of teenage girls walks past and

averts its eyes. ‘Groan’, thinks the gaggle. ‘How embARRassing. OMG I’m so relieved she’s not MY mother. Or grandmother.’ Or perhaps the gaggle is guilty for not being at school and it is not judging, but fearing Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady.
Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady was an ultra-self-conscious teenager. Today, she doesn’t pause in her gathering frenzy to wonder what happened to her young person’s desperate need to appear Cool.

Today, she has suspended her Tasks at Hand, along with the desperate need to appear Cool. She has treated herself to … an artist date.

Julia Cameron, Queen of Creative Recovery, originated the artist date in her legendary The Artist’s Way book. You give yourself solo time in a context that feeds your artist spirit. Could be a visit to a book or button shop; museum or mountain.

The outcome of today’s Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady artist date, complete with bad hair and baggy pants?

The inner results and benefits from this arty baggy junky funky, nature-full time, include: peace, joy, inspiration, brain-rest, refreshment and revival.

She wishes to show you some of the outer results.

Well, the Beach Mandala above is one of them.

And…

found object sculpture

Fried Egg
alt title
Ping Pong Pearl
a shell and a plastic ball. celebrating silliness

Banksia Mandala found object sculpture

Banksia Mandala *

*{Banksia, in case of need-to-know, is an Australian native plant. The wonderful illustrator May Gibbs, created Banksia Men as scary characters in her early 20th century books, such as ‘Snugglepot and Cuddlepie‘}

What will YOU do on your artist date?

15 thoughts on “Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady”

  5. The beach mandala is fantastic! Random odds and ends beach collecting is one of my favourite things to do. Things that can be preserved are usually brought home and added to my “beach crap” jar, used as a book end, and one of my favourite things to look through.

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    • Great idea, Joy – a beach crap jar! Would it need to be huge though? What about driftwood and such?
      By the way, Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady was certainly totally absorbed in making the beach mandala. A woman on a mission.

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      • I just use old Moccona jars, or large old Mason jars. I have several, some themed (like the “random” one: bits of interesting drift wood, crab shells, urchins, seed pods, star fish, lures), white shells, all sorts of shells, cuttle fish bones. I use them as book ends. I have a huge rectangular vase I found that on it’s own was pretty ugly, but I shoved all sorts of larger pieces of drift wood in it (for crafting purposes), and it works pretty nicely, too!

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