Random Thoughts And Things To Build On

Dreaming of a Love Bird in Paradise, Digital Collage - ©R. Koleilat, 2008

In a column entitled "Be the Change: Living the Me to We philosophy" in Canadian Living Magazine (Feb. 2008), Craig and Mark Kielburger, two very amazing young Canadian humanitarian activists and authors of Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World write:

"... how should we define success?... researchers compared Forbes' 400 richest Americans with the Maasai of East Africa - traditional herding communities with no electricity or running water, who live in huts made largely of mud and dung. The two groups were found to be almost equally satisfied with their lives."

So, for all you thousandaires out there (or in my case, pennyaires), take heart: money really does not buy happiness.

I urge you to find out more about Craig Kielburger - he's the kid who made headlines a few years ago, when he was all of twelve years old, by organizing other children to fight child labour world-wide. He founded Free the Children in 1995 and hasn't looked back since. I love Canada.

Illustration: This is my contribution to this week's 2 Things Challenge, Love/bird. Not only did I actually manage an entry, I also got inspired by Frances' entry, who in turn was inspired by Sue O'Kieffe and John (copyright-dude) Mora, and their fun puzzle-play. If you visited earlier today, you saw a different picture. I had to fix it because Ms. Know-it-all said it could be better. And of course, she was right.

Image Sources: WetCanvas, Gimp-Savvy, my own photographs.

Sunday Funnies

Julia Cameron: How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy),

illust. by Elizabeth Cameron © 2005 - Tarcher (Penguin Books) paperback.

Aaaahhh, Sunday mornings.... leisurely brunch, brainy-enlightened weekend newspaper, adorable cherubs with freshly scrubbed faces ensconced in quiet but creative play, kitties fed, groomed and satisfied, curled up on the comfiest armchair.... sighhh....

YEAH, RIGHT!! Not at MY house this morning, or like, ever! Consequently, no artwork, no updates for you today. How about some funnies, though?

Here are some edited quotes from this cute little book pictured above by Julia Cameron, famed author of "The Artist's Way" tomes. I'm not crazy about her writings, but I found some of these little thoughts funny and pointed enough to be worthy of repeating here.

So, how do you actively avoid making art or anything else you enjoy? Among other brilliant (and oh-so-recognizable) ploys:

• by telling yourself you can only work in absolute quiet
• by going for the royal family's official portrait in your first year
• by throttling your joie-de-vivre every time it crows,
• by talking about it so you don't have to do it
• by considering the odds of selling your book/artwork/whatever you're making
• by demanding that what you do be absolutely original and totally brilliant
• by telling yourself your job prevents you from doing art and then working overtime to prove it
• by demanding fifteen free hours to create and ignoring the 15 minutes you've got
• by deciding you can't afford a drawing class, and buying new jeans to console yourself
• by telling yourself you don't want to be typecast, and turning down that acting job

Are you laughing or crying? What do you do to yourself to hold yourself back? Care to share and get it out of your system? Want to shine a light on one of these self-sabotaging schemes and bannish it from your life forever? No time like the present, my friends.

Early Christmas Present For All Of You

Peace Doves, Digitized Drawing -

Copyright-free, Rima Koleilat-Barrage, 2007

This is my Christmas present for all my friends, bloggers and others. This is one present we're allowed to unwrap and use early, yay!

I drew this peace dove to illustrate my new motto, which you can see on the upper right hand corner on this page. I am offering these 3 different versions of the same image to anyone who would like to use them - on a blog, for non-commercial holiday cards, for artwork, or any other (non-commercial) good use. So feel free to copy it and use it well!

How's that for another DYI?... well, except that you have to come up with the "dyi" part yourself, hehe...

Don't Just Sit There, BUY NOTHING!

Here's something we can all not do: buy stuff! How brilliant is this? For one day (23rd of November in Canada and the US; 24th of November internationally), BUY NOTHING.

Don't go to the mall, don't fill up your car, don't pick up a cup of coffee on the way to work, and don't get groceries on the way home. Use what you have at home or do without.

It won't be hard, I promise. In fact, you will feel hugely contented and smugly superior (you're allowed this one time). Or maybe you will just feel like your neighbour down the block feels every day - the one who has no choice but to buy nothing because she has nothing.

So please, buy nothing on that November day (and any other day you choose). But do think about what it means to live in an overfed, overpampered, overstimulated society. Talk about it with your children, your friends, your coworkers.

Don't you love this? All you have to do is NOTHING, and bam! you've done something!

Une idée de génie - Pendant une seule journée en novembre (le 23 en Amérique du Nord et le 24 pour le reste du monde), n'achetez absolument rien. Rien: ni le journal, ni un petit café, pas d'essence et pas d'emplettes non plus. Aidez cette journée sans achat à faire boule de neige, parlez-en avec vos enfants, vos amis, vos collègues. Petit à petit, on peut tout changer, promis-juré.

For more info/Pour plus d'infos: http://adbusters.org/home/ - This is where I got these gorgeous "posters" from. They are free to download, print and distribute. Wonderful.

Miss me? I missed you too - Sorry I've been incommunicado for so long, but I loved all the personal notes and the affectionate wishes sent my way. I promise I will be making it up to all of my friends (bloggers and civilians) very soon.

BLOG ACTION DAY IS TODAY!

I've posted all the brilliant contributions at Maraya (still need to add a few hyperlinks and some text, please do not freak out if yours is missing, it will all get done before the 15th is technically over). I am too pooped to write anymore (it's past midnight my time) but I'll be back in the morning (or the afternoon).


I am so proud of this collective work - you guys are the coolest on the planet.

Here's my measly contribution - needs work, but it's food for thought at least.

Le New Look

Maraya Galleries

Still working on updating our website. It's taking forever, but once I finished designing the logo, I decided to go ahead and just upload a few pages at a time, instead of finishing the whole website. I'll be talking about the changes here and would love some feedback as we go along.

For now, I'm still waiting for participation in the Blog Action Day artwork project - So far, only Neda and Alfonso have submitted their collages (you can see them in the home page slides).

Que pasa, people? Saving the earth is not inspiring you to come up with something? or, gulp... not worth your time? Time is running out - hurry up, vamos, allez, yalla, andare, пойти

J'ai decidé de telecharger le "new look" de notre site, Maraya Galleries, sans avoir tout fini. Trop de travail à faire - je ferais tous les changements petit à petit. J'aimerais bien discuter des étapes à entreprendre pour en faire un site agréable à visiter, et donc, j'apprècierais énormément tous commentaires, idées et suggestions à propos du design et du contenu du site.

A propos du contenu, que se passe-t-il avec votre participation au Blog Action Day? Jusqu'à présent, je n'ai que les collages de Neda et Alfonso à mettre sur le site. Eh bien? Allez, allez, le temps file, il n'y a plus que quelques jours pour finir votre projet. Le monde attend!

Walk, Walk, Walking/Un Kilomètre à Pied

Remember:

Wednesdays* are International Walk To School Days.

(Learn more here)

Let's shrink that hole in the ozone layer, shall we?

N'oubliez Pas:

Tous les mercredis*, c'est la Journée internationale pour Marchons vers l’école

(Pour en savoir plus, cliquez ici)

Faisons notre part pour assainir l'air que nous respirons

* Bon, d'accord, ce n'est pas chaque mercredi, mais pourquoi ne pas le faire quand même?

Oh, all right, it's not every Wednesday, but why not make it so?

We Can Do It Together/Ensemble, on peut tout changer

Thanks to Jin for turning us on to this very worthy cause, and to Neda

for coming up with this terrific challenge -

Merci, Jin et Neda

Time to get those creativity muscles in gear, folks.

This challenge (this time I am calling it a challenge) is in honour of BLOG ACTION DAY, which will take place on October 15.

This time, I am not giving you a specific image to work off of, nor am I asking you to practice your digital image manipulation skills. You can if you want to, but you don't have to stick to that one venue.

The rules are simple for this Action Day Challenge:

• Come up with an image to promote the environmental cause of your choice.
• Write one line of text to accompany your image.
• Any artistic medium can be used: you can do a painting, a collage, a photomontage, anything that you feel comfortable with. These are only suggestions, not guidelines.
• Submit only ONE entry please. Seriously, I mean it this time. Here's why:
• Once an entry is received, it will be displayed on the home page of Maraya Galleries, in a slide window. (This is a lot of work to set up, and I want to be able to do it before the 15th of October, so have a heart, people, send me your best one, don't ask me to choose for you - this one will be for all to see, not just the blog readers)

What are you still waiting here for? Go on, gather your materials and your best ideas and get going with this - you only have 17 days left and counting. Oh, and remember to tell your friends about this too - bloggers and non-bloggers, young and old, everyone is welcome.