Bits and pieces of a couple of years back

It seems my blog has been missing some updates since 2013. Do people still read blogs?
Anyway, some of the events since that time that have been more or less important and have not been mentioned on my blog (but you could have read about it on my Facebook page):
My collaborative workshop in Cyprus in 2013 – which brought new meetings and new experiences.

The most beautiful experience of the workshop in Argentina!

And my Identity workshop again in Cyprus in 2014

And unforgettable Argentina again in 2014:

Every meeting is a gift and enriching experience, so I value it a lot. Though we all move forward in our own ways, you always stay in my heart, dear students.

Lifetime passion

"It's a lifestyle. It's a lifetime passion. An artist needs to be ambitious and passionate. You don't work nine to five. You breathe your art twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week." (E.Shafak)

collaboration of Vilte & Irit

Labyrinths

Stopped by to visit my blog today, yes, I am more a visitor here, barely a blogger. Though all this Internet thing has broadened the world to many of us and opened windows, if not doors, many times it still feels like getting into the labyrinth of all the information and different sources just coming in crowds at you as soon as you open your browser window. Too much and too many. Especially blogging. Or maybe I just have difficulties to choose the path in the labyrinth, preferring to hold on to my silk yarns in my fingertips at the spinning wheel…:)

Everything it takes. A moment of now

Felt is what brings me to different places of this world. And every journey brings not just the wonders of the nature, but brings me meetings. With many different people who give you a gift of communication. And no matter if there are negative or positive energies in the relation, it’s always one of the most interesting aspects of travelling. There’s always a message, a lesson, a point for your own evolvement in any human encounter and relation.

Though I am still giving classes in Australia, I wanted to mention some little things about one of these meetings, one person in particular. And that’s Wendy Bailye – feltmaker and organizer of my workshop in Queensland. I’ve received so many gifts of communication with her that it will take lot’s of time to go through that all in my mind and heart. One of the biggest gifts she gave me was not just making business of all this relation, but making it so human, so personal, so full of attention. Because…at the end…it’s all that matters.

Wendy is the person who is capable to accept people the way they are, and give the best of her to them. It seems to be such a simple philosophy to really live, feel and experience now and make that now pleasant and good, but actually it’s a very powerful tool in one’s mind that makes a big difference. And she applies it to all the things she does during her day – if it’s learning process – make it feel good, if it’s having lunch – have pleasure doing that, make it lovely, now, not later – and just because it is your life, now, at this moment, not later, you don’t stop from life, don’t make a break because you work or because you come to learn, this is your life – now. And when you think of it, it changes so much. And it empowers the strength of human being relationship…

It wasn’t just me who was blessed with such attention of Wendy and her wonderful family, I think the students in her studio felt the same and were surrounded by her attention and care. They did feel valued and important, it was not just business as it happens in this world quite often. It was human relation that was put above everything at all.

So if you ever happen to be in Queensland and start looking for felting classes, I think that Wendy’s studio is the best place you can actually find yourself in and experience this total focus on human connection while you do your exploration of felt.

Wendy’s studio

Through Wendy I also found a lot of wisdom from the poet she shared with me – David Whyte…

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.”
― David Whyte

P.S. There were photos for this post as well, but due to extremely bad internet connection here in Tasmania, I can not upload anything now... So this post is going to be updated.

The Net. Connections

Meeting people, getting into mysterious situations of coincidences, especially during my recent travels with my workshop program, always deepened that feeling of the NET, the connections in our lives. There have been so many situations when I meet people who are somehow related to the people I already knew, no matter where on Earth they lived, or me myself, when I meet people I never knew in this life but got a feeling we just parted yesterday and met again, that I really stopped to wonder. I can even say I am really looking forward to every single meeting of “my people” that is yet to come. I don’t ask why I do meet those people, I am not really trying to remember what could have connected us in lives before this one, I just accept and respect every meeting. No matter what it brings – is it me or someone else paying the debts from the past lifetimes, it’s that feeling of connections in humanity, in life, the net around us and in us – it’s like closing your eyes and putting your finger on your wrist to feel the pulse of one LIFE for all that doesn’t start and doesn’t end with birth and death.

This net, the connections have been my theme lately in life, and my focus in my new felt pieces – fragile, yet strong, flowing without a start and the end – every fiber entangled with one another, embracing each other in knots that never get undone, building connections, the net…

Music by  Joe Hisaishi

 

 

 

 

“Meetings are not flowers. They do not fade and die without any traces, stepping into shadows.  … you have to open your mind and heart and to understand people not only as personally closely related, but as the companions to the truth. And then all meetings will be blessed.”   (C.Antarova “Two Lives”)

People and wisdom

One aspect of travelling that I appreciate and adore now is meeting people. When I was younger I was so much taken by places I got to visit, the surroundings that people always went to the second plan. Now it’s the other way around. If I had ever developed a talent of a writer I would now have hundreds of characters and their stories to put into ink and paper.

Piet Mondriaan – Passie Bloem. One of my students Bertken gave me a postcard with P.Mondriaan painting “Witte rozen” and told me the story about Piet and how she wanted to give me another postcard - “Passie Bloem”, but couldn’t find it. Touched by the attention of my student I just had to find that painting myself.

 

Besides all the enriching and inspiring communication I get from the people I meet during my trips, I also sometimes hear the special words of wisdom they share.

When I was having dinner with my colleague friend Eveline van der Pas (into whom I just bumped into on my stay in the Netherlands without knowing where exactly she lived) her young daughter musician said that we always admire someone who’s potential we have ourselves, just haven’t developed it yet. And I found it so true and encouraging in everyone’s way of creativity.

On a short visit to Elis Vermeulen and discussing all the impressions from my workshop life and travelling, she said that you always have to get back to yourself and understand what it is that YOU want after hearing what others say you should/could do. And that’s exactly what I am doing now. I am getting back to myself and what I myself want out of my felt.

Meeting and teaching

When I started something like a workshop tour in Europe this March (which started in Italy at Italian Felt Academy), I never imagined what it would bring to myself. Except of the joy or elation that one feels when the students are capable of opening up, setting themselves free and letting the creativity flow; and when the students are advanced and you don’t have to explain ordinary technical things too much, then something special starts in the class, which I could call a play of higher substances.

After returning from a very special trip to the Netherlands and then Belgium, I’ve been thinking a lot of how much this traveling has given to me. Special people, meetings, lot’s of conversations, places, mysterious coincidences, deja-vu, all the feelings that help you to understand where and why you are and where you are going or why you are doing the things that you do.

 

 a card that one of my students gave to me after the workshop: “a whole new world has opened up”. I could say the same about me…

Dunes. Dragonfly meadow. Weddings

My soul land – Curonian spit.
The brides who choose a very unique, natural and handmade look for their special day.  And feel so free like the dragonflies.
Brian Western: “Everything about these images evokes a sense of calm serenity--the felt is practically alive!”


 

 

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Mano sielos kopos.
Nuotakos, besirenkančios unikalų, natūralų, rankų darbo įvaizdį. Tokios laisvos lyg laumžirgiai…

Back from USland

Sitting in a plain from US to Amsterdam one of the movies I watched was “Alice in Wonderland”.  And I drew a funny parallel between what Alice was saying in the movie - “I keep on forgetting that it’s only a dream” and my short trip to US and back. It was like a blink of an eye – I keep on forgetting that it was reality and not a dream.

My thanks go to Susan McFarland who invited me to Midwest felting symposium in Madison, WI, and who made sure my stay there was exciting. To tell you the truth I was really fascinated by this energetic woman! She also runs Susan’s fiber shop that looks like a paradise to any fiber artist and if I had to spend there the whole day, I am sure my bank account was empty in a few hours, too much temptation :)

 

My thanks to Susan’s Teeswater sheep, especially no 29 who’s amazing fleece I took with me back to Lithuania. We used Teeswater sheep fleece in our raw wool felting class and I am sure everyone loved its soft, shiny, springy locks.

 

And my wonderful students at the symposium! Oh, I loved teaching! It’s such a joy to see your students in a process of creating  (not just making!)

Eugene, thank you for the flowers too!

 

Holly and Maryanne – for assisting and driving, Susan once again – for carding and crazy spinning tips ;)

I am sure – Midwest Felting Symposium 2012 will be a hit again!

 

I really appreciate the invitation from the University of Madison where I read a lecture on “Archaic felt and its tradition in Lithuania”. Thank you to all the people who attended the lecture!

Thanks to Donata who gave me raw skudde sheep fleece – probably the oldest Lithuanian breed of sheep. And all my gratitude to wonderful traditional feltmaker from Lithuania – Anelė Radvinskienė and her daughter Milda Stanevičienė who shared their movie about living felt traditions in Lithuanian villages.

 

Thanks to very hospitable Lithuanians living in Madison – Gediminas and Jolanta who showed me around Madison and invited me to their cozy home.

My biggest thanks also goes to my family who made this all possible! And…for the pilots for the safe flights and bringing me back home (well, there were 7 flights during this trip, so it’s worth it, yes? :) )

 

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Didelis didelis ačiū visiems! Mano kelionė į Madisoną, WI, JAV, pilna teigiamų įspūdžių ir malonių pažinčių! Ir…man be galo patiko mokyti veltinio technikų, subtilybių tokius nuostabius mokinius, kokius turėjau Midwest Felting Symposium’e!

Photography of sheep shearing day

Today I have received a link to the photos of our sheep shearing day, photos by professional photographer Victor Morozov. And I just loved how he captured the moments of that day - there is a very warm and kind view on the world in these photos...

These are just a few photos by Victor Morozov, you can see the rest of the photos of that day on Daiva Morozova's blog. Thank you, Daiva & Victor!

The beginnings. Sheep shearing

It's always interesting to know the beginnings of everything. When holding a piece of felt, do you ever wonder how it was when it still belonged to the sheep and where that sheep came from, how it was sheared? Perhaps not. Unless you are so curious as me. I like looking at things and thinking what it was before and how it became what it became.
I remember when I first bought wool directly from sheep keeper (unprocessed wool) I was so happy he sent me photos of his sheep in the fields and himself shearing the sheep.

So last weekend I had a chance to try to shear the sheep myself in a meeting with several colleagues felters. Hands diving into thick warm oily layers of wool and the wool so beautifully seperating from the sheep. It was really interesting experience, a little touch to the beginnings of felt.

Bits of this and that

My blog has been abandonded for some time. For a very simple reason - I am just caught in a period of my life that has less and less computer life on every day. Strange. Strange for me, because I have been quite a computer addict for the last 10 years. And now I've been more and more in what we call reality, not the virtual world (though this topic might be broadly discussed, don't you think?)

Busy with life, busy with felt, guess I should actually say enjoying life and enjoying felt. Enjoying the Summery weather and accepting the Fall coming. Accepting and appreciating life. I guess it is a little theme of this period of my life now.

Artists from under the bark

While walking in the country land and rediscovering the plants I never payed attention to before, my sight was caught by a piece of wood from a pile of chumps. Brown shades overflowing each other and..texture - similar signs all over the piece, as if it was some mage's stick from the black Continent...magical signs. And the damnedest thing was that all that art was made by the tiny artists that lived under the bark - bark beetles (Scolytinae)...

Just a thought that something in nature drives those tiny beetles feed moving in a certain scheme - like drawing a silhouette of a branch of conifer seams miraculous... It's like a little touch to a code of life, matrix of life again...

I put that piece of wood into garage... I don't know what I'll make from it yet, but I will...

Matrix of Life

Do you ever get a feeling of coming so close to the matrix, strange scheme of Life that you can not actually understand consciously or describe it in words? Just a feeling of approaching something so majestical and huge, something alive, something pulsating and so precisely concerted?

I've had a heartfelt conversation recently with a man who lost his colleague - she died in the mountains, killed by snowslide, rockfall...

For almost a year she was losing interest in their business and gradually passed all the burden to him as if she knew she was passing and wanted him to adapt to all the load he would have when she is gone.

She had just finished renovating her house and the colour she chose for all her interior...was white. Architects have a prejudice that a man who chooses all white interior has just put a step to the other world, the world of those who have left this Earth. And she built a round partere in her yard that wasn't filled with flowers..it was all filled with stones. Stones killed her in the mountains.

Just before she left to the mountains, she had her renovated house sanctified. And then she left...

On a day she was killed, the man found a poetry book that she left for him as a birthday present. There was a bookmark in it. It was marking a poem that she dedicated for him: "When the morning comes, I will leave...to the kingdom I've never seen... and when I come back, I will tell you how it is" (the words are not precise, just a recollection).

And then a stork flew inside his yard and then flew just beside his windows... And two storks were flying in circles up in the sky when she was being burried..when her body was being returned to the Earth... Storks - as a symbols of life, birth or reincarnation...

Last books she gave for him to read were "When Nietzsche cried" and "Life continues", that meant a message for him "Why cry, life continues..."

There was something in this story and in that man's voice, his trembling hands when he spoke about her that gave me that feeling of approaching some matrix of life... feeling its majesty..without being capable to understand it and put it in words. As well as some very weird shiver inside, drawing parallels with my life - stoping my business, love of white colour, having attraction to the sky...puting stone assemblage in our land...though I am not going to the mountains any time soon. When I told about this weirdness to my sister, she gave me a wise reply - "It was her scenario of passing away. Yours is different".

It all made me think about what we call fate, made me think about living our lives (this, passed and future, as I do believe in reincarnation), about people we meet on our way - why we meet certain people in our lives - souls we already knew in our previous life times and finding them in this life time in one way or another...

One book has been revolving in my mind for the last half a year - "Two lives" by Concordia Antarova. I've read this book when I was a teenager... And after that conversation, I couldn't stop thinking about it again... I bought it for myself and for him - as a present. A book that approaches you even closer to the matrix of Life, soul wanders and the bigest findings...

Still feel like having my fingers on the wrist of Life, sensing its majestical pulsation...

P.S. I've always loved white...but I've always been a witch in my heart who has a connection with the world of Unseen...

The Pretender. Life of Learning

In 1996-2000 there were TV series shown - "The Pretender" - about the man genius who could be anyone he wanted, i.e. he could "flawlessly impersonate anyone in virtually any line of work".

What is the ability of a genius, is also an ability of every man but to different extent. At least I believe in this. So it wasn't just a charismatic look of the Pretender (Michael T. Weiss) that would grip you watching the series, but the idea of this human potential of becoming anyone he wanted in professional level and in the same life time.

Anyone who has changed his occupation, profession or interest field in life at least once do have this feeling of being a "pretender" and have motioned the human potential of being anyone desired. The extent of it depends individually, of course.

I have had this strong feeling of being a "pretender" several times in my life. Being a dancer from my early childhood years led me to dream only about a career of a dancer and seek perfectionism in it, though in my late teenage year I found passion for photography that I think was in the family as my father has been an amateur self taught photographer having his own old photo making equipment, chemicals, films, shiny papers, dark room...that all built into some magical sense for me as being a child. I didn't go into deep at photography at that time and I have even lost my black and white films and photos of that time.

My biggest transformation was leaving a career of a dancer for study of psychology - I took my BA and MA degree in it and I can say I was passionate about it and yes, I was good at it. I knew I could do a lot in this field. If I wanted to... And that's where I had my first doubts. I sacrificed my biggest passion - dance for psychology (and always had a feeling of being a bird with cut wings since then) and suddenly found myself in doubt if it really was the field I want to devote myself to... This was the point in life where I started my dance therapy groups and my new passionate study on merging dance, art, expression and psychology.

My second biggest transformation was finding textiles - felt and becoming - an artist? self taught. artistic soul? I haven't actually found the right word for myself till now.

I knew so little about textile before and suddenly I was so into it spending days and nights studying and practicing it on my own, experimenting, trying to feel it.

I do feel I am doing the right thing at the right time of my life now. I enjoy discovering the textile world and feel it is so strongly connected with discovering world itself, nature and life. And being a therapy for one's soul as I once said...

What actually made me think of the human potential for "pretending" (which is actually not the direct meaning of pretending to be someone you are not, but in the meaning used in the series - really becoming someone else) was my renewed interest in photography. I must say I don't know any technical rules, even any basics of it, I usually shoot driven by feelings, by something one can only sense without any scientific explanations. And suddenly I wanted to know it all, not just experiment with setting different numbers on my camera, but know what those numbers mean and what exactly I am doing.

I spent a couple of evenings trying to make several self portraits and just got a feeling that I would need another lifetime for discovering what photography really was... Or just felt too tired yet for another potential of being a pretender again in my life.

And there are so many other things I still want to learn and keep on discovering... that it really blows my mind how other humans manage to learn and keep all the information, and skills they develop in so many fields in the same life time... And where do they get all the time in the world for doing that?

We are learning all our life and after. Learning on its' global perspective is living... But I would need hundreds of life times for learning everything I want now... Yet it doesn't prevent me from enjoying those few things that I've learned in life and keep on doing. And it leads to belief that every minute left of this life time would be full of joy of discovery.

And yet I do get confused when someone asks me now - who are you?..

A "pretender", I guess.