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POEMS COME TO LIFE!

Open Sky Studio and Gallery is our magical place where we are inspired to paint, write poetry, and find ways to help keep our doors open between sales of our paintings and prints. As with everyone, Covid-19 has made things difficult.

But with our collective talents, including our virtual creative assistant, Robyn, our productivity continues to be amazing.  We have moved our creativity online at Handwords and are pleased to announce our newest addition to Messages from the Heart. Audio Poem Cards! Read by poet, Percy Kleinops and studio partner, Suzanne Murphy, these Audio Cards are designed with beautiful visuals, music and sound effects.

We have 6 Cards for you to enjoy now and will be adding to our Audio Poem Library weekly as we finish production of more audio cards.  So please check back often.  We plan to have at least 50 Audio Poem Cards by the end of October, and over a 100 before Valentines Day. Some of the Audio Poem Cards are also available in printed Poem Cards for mailing.

Simply select and purchase your favorite Audio Poem Cards for $4.95 each. After checkout, they are available for you to download once to your computer and then send via your email to anyone you wish whenever you wish. 

Treat yourself and visit our creative Shop at Handwords.com/Audio-Poem-Cards. Watch these Poems come to life. Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions or relationships with our new Audio Poem Cards. Give someone, or yourself, a little magic.  

https://handwords.com/audio-poem-cards/

Percy Kleinops and Suzanne Elizabeth Murphy approve this Message. LOL

We welcome your comments and suggestions.

MISSING PIECES

As I begin to write today, I find myself without words. I seem to be in the middle of something. Images and thoughts swirl inside my head and heart. If I give them enough time and space, they settle to the bottom and collect like sediment in the river where I can gather them up and put them in a safe place. But where is that safe place? I used to know. The sediment in my riverbed is shifting. I wonder if it is the same for you?

I am an artist. I am a teacher. But I have not taught since mid March. I miss my students, each one so different in what they love to paint and even why they paint. Each one has brought into my classes wisdom, inspiration and patience with the learning process. In teaching them, each one has reminded me of lessons I had forgotten.

"To teach is to learn twice over." Joseph Joubert - French moralist and essayist

Harry Borno

When we all agreed to stay safer by not holding class, my students suggested that I might teach online. Zoom meetings were becoming popular. I thought long and hard about reaching out to them in this way. But my teaching style is so personal to each one. I am not a paint- along teacher. My students create independent work from their own photographs and experiences. I love that. 

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." 

Maria Montessori - Italian physician and educator

Left to Right: Diane Wardlaw, Peggy McCardle, Julia Schoenstadt

I miss them. So I am making this week's Blog about them. I know they are painting without me. I can't wait to see what they are doing. I want you to know them. I want to show you their work. I want you to see why I miss them.  My studio partner, Percy, once wrote ..."you come to know an artist by looking at their art." I am upset that I can't find all of my photos today to represent my many beloved students. But here are the few I could find.

Lori Stamm

Ira Crowe

Left to Right: Eleanor Parker and Carol Van Osdol

Left to Right: Anita Ugalde and Natalie Turner

Left to Right: Janet Tilley, Walter Klingman, Evangelia Klonaris

Margaret DePetro

Teachers and students around the world have been separated by distance. But we are connected by the love of learning and the memory of companionship in the classroom. My students are the missing pieces. I welcome the day when they come back into my life and we can be together again.

"I like a teacher who gives you something to think about besides homework." Lily Tomlin

Stay safe. Be kind. Teach someone something today.

Suzanne

HELP!!!

That's what Percy and I needed two months ago when we were heaped in Ideas and Content.

I've never had an assistant. Wait! That's not true. I did have a shop foreman and two seamstresses when I was costuming in summer stock theater back in the 1980s. But I had long forgotten what it can be like to have an idea, design it and then have someone run with it.

We needed someone who knew Social Media, website e-commerce, and if she didn't know, she knew how to find out. 

My step-daughter, Robyn, came to mind.

Robyn Fountain Sy, Creative Assistant

Two years ago, Robyn went adventuring in Europe, fell in love in Bulgaria and has since been living in Dakar, Senegal with her Senegalese husband, Baba Sy (pronounced 'see'). She has integrated into another culture, even another family, while remaining very much herself. She amazed me one day with pictures of her handcrafted jewelry made from plastic bottles and bold African fabrics. And one of Baba's cousins, a tailor by trade, taught her how to sew by hand so that she could make herself new clothes.

Robyn's handcrafted jewelry made from plastic bottles and fabric

Baba is a contractor and auto body technician, but there is not much work to be found in Dakar. So he sets out on his motorbike six days a week, delivering fabric, sheet sets and other things in demand there. Robyn is happy and has never felt so comfortable in her life. But she needed work and found it online, working remotely as an Executive Assistant for a New York-based company that charters private planes. She learned to navigate and solve problems online. Distance was not a barrier. She became essential to that business.

Baba Sy, sisters, nieces and friends

She is now essential to us, as well. Everyday, she juggles online executive meetings in New York with translating and posting our creative ideas and content to our new website, Facebook pages and Instagram. Our Handwords website is specifically designed to show and sell our Poem Cards, Greeting Cards, WaterBaby Note Card and masks, all printed with our original artwork. With Robyn's online skills and creative thinking, we have been able to add fun features like Poem Readings, videos, voice overs and twirling Note Cards, i.e.,

Click this Link to Hear our Poem Card Readings and see our new Art Masks.

https://handwords.com/poem-cards

 www.handwords.com/face-masks 

I knew that Robyn was efficient. As an entrepreneur, she founded a business that helped people organize their offices, homes, lives. The first thing she did for us was to set us up on a communication-based platform called Slack. We put Slack up on our computer screens in the morning and leave it there to share what needs to be done, to upload images or poems or Blogs or whatever. It is the most wonderful way to share. It allows us to talk quickly back and forth in spontaneously. And everything we upload and talk about is saved in one place. Email would have killed the process. We love Slack. 

 Robyn has become the third creative member of our studio. We could not have gone farther without her.  We are still not organized. (Percy says he works better in chaos.) But Robyn has been able to practically finish our sentences. She has learned our process and intuited what we are trying to convey with our words and paintings. Sometimes she even "ghost" writes for us. We tell her we have an Idea. She says OK. Go! She gets it. She says, "What about this."  We hash it out, and then she begins to put it in place. At this moment, she is designing a website page on Handwords for our masks, printed with our original art.

Baba's beautiful sisters, Robyn and a new friend at the fabric market

I thought you should know Robyn and what she does for Open Sky Studio and Gallery, Handwords, Suzanne and Percy. We love working with her. We love her. We never quite know what her hair fashion will be for the week. But we know we can't do without her. So, the next time you look at something that has come from us, you will know about our "silent partner" who keeps us going and growing. I thought you should know.

Our Creative Assistant at her work station in Dakar

https://www.handwords.com

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/blog

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/email-newsletter

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com

https://www.Facebook.com/OpenSkyStudioandGallery

Be safe. Be kind. Help somebody.

Suzanne

BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE!

Detail from Confluence at the Morean Art Center July 11

Did you know that in his 1852  novel, Bleak House, Charles Dickens was the first to coin the phrase, "Butterflies are free"?

And then, of course, there was the 1972 stage play and movie. I've been thinking about butterflies for awhile now. When the dangers of the Corona virus first began to inhibit our freedom to come and go and be with each other in ways that we took for granted, I had already begun a painting about butterflies inspired by two interviews on National Public Radio.

The first was about the Doomsday Clock on which atomic scientists measure time by how close we are to extinction at Midnight. They look at climate change, nuclear weapons, cyber-based disinformation and AI (artificial intelligence). The second NPR story was about the recent murders of activists in Mexico working to protect the Monarch butterfly.

Detail from Butterflies are Free

These two stories stoked my interest in butterflies and how they make me feel when I watch them flutter across my garden. I sighted a big yellow one just before Mother's Day. My Mother is 98 and recently house bound. Physically fragile but with a strong mind, her memories are long, so I wrote this poem for her:

YELLOW BUTTERFLY

A yellow butterfly

on high

reminded me of you,

your heart flittering

from flower to flower

face to face

alighting on memories

of kisses and laughter.

I saw a yellow butterfly today,

a moment of utter joy,

as when I see your face

and feel your heart 

smile on mine.

 Suzanne Elizabeth Murphy(c) 2020

  But the real  beginning of this painting was a long ago photo I took of a child's hand outstretched, as if reaching for something. The beauty of it and what she might be reaching for has stayed in my mind and was the first thing I sketched on the canvas.

Detail from Butterflies Are Free

I now had a child and butterflies.  I painted them against a yellow sky and a field of flowers stretching back as far as the eye could see. But my eye could not settle into the yellow sky. The butterflies looked 3D, but there wasn't enough mystery. I tried my favorite blues in different values. They looked ordinary. Finally, last Saturday, I mixed a shade of blue violet. I kept adding yellow to gray it, more and more. The yellow background was still coming through, and that grayed it even more. Violet became the color of air that lifted up my butterflies and set them free.

Detail from Butterflies are Free

We all feel the need to be free and breathe. Breath is Life, the Chi that fills our bodies with vitality and energy. Breathe deeper. Find the color that lifts you up and hold it in your mind. A mask cannot steal away your freedom. That's inside you as long as you keep breathing. Me? I'm going to keep painting butterflies to fill my violet sky.

You can always find me at:

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/blog

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/newsletter

https://www.suxanneelizabethmurphy.com

https://www.handwords.com

Be safe. Be kind. Be a Butterfly!

Suzanne