Author: Joy Murray

Yesterday we got a break in our little April winter weather, and I went to the African-Print Fashion Now exhibit at Brooks, the lovely gallery just a few blocks from my house.  If you’re in Memphis, do yourself a favor and go see this remarkable exhibit.  I’m not a fashionista by any means, but the way people dress and express themselves is a source of inspiration for me as well as a wonderful way to understand other cultures.   I’m sharing my pictures here.  I’m not a great photographer, but I think the energy and beauty of this exhibit will show through in my photos.  It’s only a fraction of what is on display and I intend to go back a few times before the show closes in August.

Color, tributes, humor and patterns dominated these small run fabric prints:

This following piece by Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was so moving, I wanted to pull up a chair and study it for hours:

I couldn’t find a website specifically for his work, but if you google his name, you’ll find lots of images of his work.  It just speaks so profoundly to the human condition in the technological world.

Another piece that grabbed me was by Njideka Akunyili Crosby.   There was so much to think about with this art, too.  The nature of relationships, of the lives around women.  Remarkable work.

The whole show is vibrant and thought provoking — beauty, dignity, identity — how we are defined by what we wear.  Clothing is ephemeral but also an important part of who we are, how we want the world to see us.

The show comes with an accompanying book, but I urge you to see it at the Brooks if you can.  http://www.brooksmuseum.org/african-print-fashion-now

Thanks for reading.  I hope you get to enjoy some of the beauty life has to offer today.

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If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

You can get prints and cards of my work on Redbubble:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray/shop?asc=u

I’d been anxiously awaiting my appointment last week with my neurologist.  I would get the results of my MRI’s and find out if I was definitely going to have surgery.  I worried about it so much, I got depressed.  It felt there’d be no good outcome — if they wanted to do surgery, I’d have back surgery.  If they didn’t want to do it, it meant there was nothing to be done.

It turns out that the neurologist recommends surgery BUT I need to see a neurosurgeon to see if is possible and the surgeon agrees that it would take pressure off my nerves and prevent pain.  So I have to wait another MONTH for that appointment.  I had so hoped that I’d at least know what the future held.  I know I have a bulge in my lumbar spine that might be corrected by surgery, but I still don’t know if I’ll have it, when it will be, or how long recovery will take.

My neurologist gave me a copy of the results of the MRIs as well as a disc copy of the actual images to take to the neurosurgeon.  I started reading it in the waiting room while I waited for my ride.  And I didn’t get halfway through it before I started laughing.  The other patients looked at me as if I was crazy, but the language of the results was incomprehensible — except I kind of understood some of the root words.

I did what I usually do when I’m stressed out but not depressed.  I processed the results in my journal.  This is the first entry:

Okay, I might have been a wee bit depressed still, but at least I could see the humor of my situation.  I tried doing research on the words that made me laugh.

So far the anxiety I felt before my appointment hasn’t come back — at least not in a form that feels too heavy to bear.  In fact, I got a dose of that magic that comes through processing my worries through sketching and writing.  So, here’s today’s journal entry.

And isn’t it amazing that in this chaotic world, people are dedicating their whole lives to figuring out cures and comforts for rare disorders like mine?  The friends I’ve met on this journey have helped me stagger through it all.  Whatever happens, the basic goodness and beauty all around me will remain constant.  Scribbling away helps me keep that in mind

Thanks for reading my blog and giving me a direction for my journey.

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If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

You can get prints and cards of my work on Redbubble:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray/shop?asc=u

I apologize for not posting for awhile, but I was preparing for an art show on March 3, then I was recovering from that show.  It went very well.  I got lots of good feedback, sold some pieces, and saw friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.  I had a friend take pictures, but I have yet to go through them all.  As soon as I do, I’ll post them.

One of the things I missed while working on the show was my visual journal.  I was so focused on finishing paintings that I wasn’t paying as much attention to nature as I like.  It was cold-ish anyway, so not the best weather for wandering around and appreciating the neighborhood.  And then the Oriental Magnolia across the street bloomed — flowers covered the entire tree overnight it seems.  I love sitting under it and watching the petals fall.

It’s easy to get so caught up in life that we don’t see what is blooming around us.  I’ve let deadlines and worries about my health cloud my vision.  Luckily, Spring lights up the world and makes the growth around us impossible to miss.  Sketching and painting is a way to hold on to that, to plant it, really in our hearts and minds.

I plan to work on more illustrated stories in the coming months — vignettes from my life and my imagination.  Thanks for following along.

I hope you see something blooming today and it makes your heart happy.

~~~

If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

You can get prints and cards of my work on Redbubble:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray/shop?asc=u

I’ve worked the past two weeks on a painting for the Family Trees show on March 3rd.  This canvas is about the size of a card table, a 34″ square.  I got it while I was still in Portland and tried to do a collaborative work with the residents of Bridge Meadows, but in the move, it got scratched and slight mutilated.  When I tried to scrape and sand the paint off all the paint, I poked a small hole in it.  So I did the first layers in a collage of papers from my journals, newspapers, and gift papers.

I wanted to do a painting of the trees during the different seasons and had thought for a long time about how to do the roots.  I blotted bronze paint over the pink hearts in the center, then began to paint the trunks and roots.

So much has been discovered recently about how trees communicate.  And how people communicate for that matter, once this central image was in place, the painting sort of designed itself.

It took a lot of layering to get the colors and the seasons done, but by the end of it, I was pleased.  I didn’t strive for realism, but for more an homage to our roots and the seasons we weather.

And in the center, a little planet earth.

The details don’t show up as well in these photos as I’d like, but you can see it live on March 3 at Crosstown Arts, 430 N. Cleveland, from 4:00 til 8.

What do you think?

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If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

You can get prints and cards of my work on Redbubble:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray/shop?asc=u