Send My Roots Rain, Mandalas & Art Journaling

August 20th, 2011

One of my mandala students and a friend, brings the most wonderful short quotes to our monthly Mandala Making get togethers.  One day she wrote “Send My Roots Rain” in her art making.

This quote has sustained me as a prayer, as I am sure the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins felt when he wrote this in a line of his poem.

In the July workshop I taught with my dear friend Kelly Larson, titled Entering the Sacred through Images and Words, I began an art journaling piece with Native American images of rain clouds and personal thoughts about making rain in my life.   I know thoughts of making rain are a metaphor for manifesting what you desire in life, but I have witnessed actual changes in weather brought on by humans.   So making rain goes deep in my psyche.  I can not control the weather, but I have desires to manifest certain things in my life.  In July this blog was one of those desires.

These thoughts and images  of Send My Roots Rain carried over from the art journaling piece into two more mandalas made with various materials.  All three mixed media pieces  are now the Send My Roots Rain series.  Creating them began with a meditation on Send My Roots Rain, and the intention to find guidance in the images that emerged.  All three are now in my mediation room where I view them daily as inspirations and where over time more is revealed.

On my present Send My Roots Rain list of what I hope to bring about, is adding guided meditations to this blog.  One type of meditation is to be listened to before beginning the creative process. Hopefully soon.  But for now I can share the materials used. These are mixed media art journaling and mandala art pieces that have many layers of art materials applied.  Although there is not a large build up of the surface, there are many layers built upon each other.

– The paper is 140 pound water color 100% rag, with deckled and torn edges
– White carpenters pencil is used to write in white on white paper.  The energy of thoughts is there and somewhat revealed with more layers on top.
– Mixing oil and water and more.  Oil pastels and water soluble caran d’ache crayons were used along with watercolor, glitter watercolor, watercolor glazes, pastel sticks, dorland’s wax to seal the pastels, gold leaf and sumi ink.
– Sumi or Chinese watercolor brush.

If you are making mandalas and art journaling already, enjoy the process. And if not, come join the journey of making art in a personal and profound way.