Looking for a cool gift for the holidays? Why not share a local, handmade “piece of the South”?! These small, framed and original oyster shell pastels make inexpensive and thoughtful gifts. Affordably priced at $35 each.
Eight of them have already made their way into wrapping paper!
Contact Mary Liz today to purchase your own: marylizingramart@gmail.com
On Thursday, December 12, join me at Andrea Lucas Studios from 5:00-8:00pm for a Holiday Open House, where I am so grateful to be the featured artist! Lots of art for sale, and fun to be had!
1910 1st Avenue North, Irondale, Alabama 35210
Watching the asphalt, lost in thought.
Automatically winding my way through the canopied landscape to work, sinking in plans, the weight heavy; not seeing, just moving.
Suddenly blown back, breath caught, time slowed, curve elongated, eyes opened.
A second stretched into a seemingly physical pause.
The trees were like glass, the sun rays palpable. The leaves fell slowly across my view, drifting gently to the ground.
A sense of peaceful melancholy was thick… an understanding sadness, a recognition of life’s complexity, a sense of purpose, or duty, to help the falling gently to the ground.
My mind was haunted with metaphor. The inevitable decay. The grace in falling. The beauty in a life well lived. An acceptance of difficulties. The need for gentle hands to guide unexpected descents. The hope of coming renewal. The recognition of the seasons of life. The determination to aid the process of rise and fall. The need to care for the falling leaves…
One at a time, reaching out for this one, then turning to let that one land safely on my palm; now another, and another, and another.
Taking them as they come.
Calmly, peacefully catching them as they fall, without distress or worry or questions. Just because it is. Because they are.
Whispering, whispering, whispering, whispering
As I pass myself down to my knees.
Whispering, whispering, whispering, whispering
As I fall through the willow trees, and I said.
Who will care for the falling?
Who will care for the falling… leaves?
Autumn shades, calm my shaking hands,
Tender, cool breeze, keeps me where I am.
Suddenly here, when I want to scream,
Autumn calms me down, keeps me in my dreams.
Keep on falling down, they keep on falling down,
Keep on falling down, keep on falling down.
-excerpt from Whispering, Alex Clare
Falling Leaves, pastel sketch
Over the river and through the wood, to Homestead Hollow we go…old cabins and smokehouses, bee hives and broom makers, blacksmiths and craft tents, hillbilly sandwiches and fried pies. A perfect Fall Saturday in the heart of the South, we come, we eat, we see, we walk, we explore, we buy. With the kids carrying their name-stamped horse shoes, homemade brooms and toy bows with eraser-tipped arrows, we truck it back through the field-turned-parking-lot to the car.
Arriving home and practically falling out of the car in haste, the kids bolt across the driveway into the yard, finding the perfect bullseye in a hole in the wooden fence. Target practice begins.
We practice through mornings and afternoons, through a week and into tomorrow. We are good at aiming, elbows up, strong and steady. Bullseye.
The weather turns cold, the children wear shorts: time for clothes shopping. In the midst of “the great purge of 2013,” I have to buy more. Children grow, you know.
I enter the game fully aware, readily on guard. The bullseye stares at me from high above: Target. It mocks me from the carts, the bags, the signs, the door, the elevator buttons.
List clutched, I’m determined to escape with my wits and minimal, resourcefully chosen items. Silly store, you can’t distract me with your fabulous…oh, look at that dress… Wait, wait, where was I. Target, I won’t be swayed by your…aw, look at those little shoes! Argh! Shake it off. That sweater looks so comfy. No! We’re headed THIS way.
Assaulted from every side with beautiful things I don’t need, my children are right there with me. “Mommy, can I pleeeease have these boots???” “Oh, Mommy, I just want ONE of these toys, just ONE, okay????” I try to clear the mist from my eyes and I make a firm buggy-beeline for the toddler section. Watch me focus! Watch me resist! Using my willpower, I explore the $5 mix and match display, ready to choose wisely.
But then the children start spinning. The baby – who was let out of her seat due to ear-piercing shrieks – starts ransacking the sock display and takes off in one direction with a pair of blue socks. My son dives into a clothes rack somewhere to my left. With my scary-calm, slow-speaking mom voice, I regroup my little posse and try to pick out some leggings to match this cookies & milk shirt. The baby hightails it right with her sassy walk and the son chases after. The pattern continues. I don’t even know what I’m saying, or what colors I’m choosing anymore. These look good. Sure, this is probably right. Get back over here. Stop throwing the leggings on the ground! Son, where are you! Get back over here. Don’t grab those. Where are the d@*# long-sleeved white t-shirts??
The arrows start flying; I just want to make it out alive. Sure, you can have those shoes. Here are some pants, these look good. I just start grabbing.
Somehow, I held on long enough to stick (mostly) to my list, only having one rogue pair of pants that somehow made it into the buggy.
With “sucker” written all over me, I trudge my way to the car, all three kids attached to me in some form, my bags – with their red target logos all over them – hang somewhere off my body.
We survived.
Target Practice, Ink Doodle
But seriously. On my quest for less (stress, stuff, waste, and let’s face it, laundry), I feel a bit overwhelmed. But I decided to just start somewhere.
With a mountain of unfolded laundry staring at me, I started in my closet.
Easy enough, I thought. Less stuff should mean less to clean, right?
So I picked out the stuff I don’t wear often. Feeling proud, I decided to have another go. So I pulled out some more. Repeated process two more times. Threw in the towel.
Next day, I felt the need to purge the hangers again. Found a few more.
Third day since my decision to take this journey to who-knows-where to end up at some fuzzy better place, I poked my head in the crowded closet and dug out some more things to give away.
Interestingly enough, I find myself obsessing over my wardrobe the past two mornings more than usual. I probably asked Stephen 10 times if I looked ok. I mean, really…it’s the silliest. It’s like I’m having clothes withdrawals or something.
I’m not completely clear on what’s going on here at the Ingram household. But I’m not worrying too much about clarity at this point. I’m just going with it. I feel the urge to be a more responsible human. I chose a place to start: living with less…first choice, clothes. Should be easy peasy…I mean lots of people have no food, for pete’s sake. But good grief, what a silly problem! We spend a lot of time choosing our outfits. We think that our clothes define us. Now, I’m not showing up to work in a grubby old t-shirt, but I also don’t need a closet packed with choices. This initial purge is intended as a starting place, not just to make room for new clothes (the usual impetus).
We are literally hung up on crap. It snags us and holds us back from things that are important; it distracts us from doing greater good in the world. It hangs us close to selfishness and keeps our eyes on what we want, what we think we must have.
So I’m giving away lots of clothes and, when I’ve finished, I’ll take another step and see what happens…
Blue Dress, pastel on card
Every day was an exercise in survival. Lots of take-out dinners, scrambling to complete daily tasks, to keep up with the rotating chaos of laundry, dishes and trash. I could feel life slipping through my fingers, days passing by without significance.
It made me sad.
I love life. I want to feel it, breathe it, enjoy it, relish it. To soak up the moments wherever I am.
I formulated the first stages of a peaceful plan of attack, which has been in action for a week or two now. Small steps to get me going in the right direction, as I detail a larger front to find a more permanent peace:
Awake with anxieties, I started asking myself, “What’s the worst that can happen if…” I found that the answers were never as terrible as the stress that was boiling in my busy, responsible mind.
For the past week, each morning as I pull out of the driveway I roll down the windows and crank up Carla Bruni’s Little French Songs. It is so nice. So relaxing. To feel the cool Autumn air in my hair, on my hands, listening to music that transports me to Paris, reminding me of a bigger, wider world…happy sigh… I feel the sky open up above me, and I feel my feet more firmly planted in my place. I notice the rays of sunlight wash over me as I drive the beautiful winding roads, and I am ready to live life with my eyes open.
With my car fully loaded with kids one afternoon, I brought them into this peaceful experience. In the rear view mirror, I watched as my 5 year old son closed his eyes to “see” what the songs brought to his mind. They thought it was awesome. On one song, they felt like birds in the clouds. Then things got more elaborate. They envisioned a funny king penguin with an ice crown on his ice throne, and ice palace with penguin servants who slid down ramps on their bellies. Yep. I asked them to draw their penguins later:
A few days later, my son asked me “Mom, can you roll down the windows and turn on that music so we can breathe?”
Pretty much sums it up.
When I hit the peak of stress one afternoon, I was sitting in the car waiting for my daughter’s dance class to end after two failed attempts to run errands (due to uninteresting, but irritating complications). While we waited, my son hung out the open window, singing away to the world, completely oblivious to any cares. My stress evaporated as I watched him, and I gained a new perspective.
Taking a step back from the to-do list and noticing the real, tangible situations around me has helped tremendously… looking at the clouds, the people, the fallen leaves instead of passing by on a mission to somewhere else.
“Pay attention, just for a moment. Think to yourself, This is my life, right now. I need to remember.” -Roxana Robinson
This one is tough. But everyday after I (or more correctly my husband) drag myself out of bed at 5:15am, have that waiting cup of coffee (my requirement for getting up an hour earlier than usual), and wake up a little, I find reward. I have about 45 minutes to just sit, sip coffee, do whatever I want or nothing at all. No getting ready, no requests from kids, no noises, no demands. My husband writes on his blog, and I sit in a leather chair in my warm robe sipping coffee. It’s nice. It starts the day in peace instead of hurry.
“Stillness in your body leads to quiet in your mind.” -Elona Landau
We’ll see if I can keep that one up…
My Favorite Chair, Ink sketch
Normal procedure for a Monday morning in our suburban neighborhood, lined with rows of cute little homes, shade trees and garbage cans.
Little dirty tractors that had been left in the yard too long; IKEA cups that never made it back inside; wood from projects with kid-hammered nails poking out on all sides; sand buckets with cracked sides; empty dog food and grass seed bags; old crocs and dirty garden gloves; and of course plenty of sticks, wisteria vines and leaves.
Watching the little green tractor escape the claw and roll into the street actually made me tear up a little. For several reasons.
The first is sentimental, picturing my little boy rolling it through the dirt, now it’s being crunched by the garbage man…the usual weepy mom stuff.
But more so because of our shocking wastefulness. So much waste, just sitting on the side of the road. An embarrassing pile of American garbage. We buy, we play, we forget. We want, we get, we abandon. We accumulate so much, we have to throw away.
We regularly purge our home. It’s small and crowded with humans and pets, so there’s not lots of space for junk. I just put a big bag of who-knows-what on the porch for donation last Saturday. But the house is still full of junk, and we just keep filling it back up.
I’m reading a book right now with the tagline “An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess.” We as Americans are surrounded by excess, and we always have our hands out for more. We may be thrifty (I am the queen of hand-me-downs, if I do say so myself), but we still crave more, more, more.
I feel swept away in the current of life; we’re all going the same direction, and we’re getting there fast. Too fast. So fast we miss tons of life, so many experiences, because we’re always trying to get to the next place.
We rush, we buy, we use. I want to scream STOP! and get a grip, a hold onto something that will help me pause. Moments flash by in a flood and I’m caught in the current, getting glimpses, a few deep breaths before diving in again. I want to control the current, but it is impossible. How can I work with this current of time and days, to use my strength to chart my own course? To avoid the whirlpools of excess, to escape the “habits of the mind,” and find more peaceful waters?
But I want to.
And I aim to try.
So stay tuned…
Here’s a quick recap of my experience at Birmingham Artwalk 2013… Sold enough I had to replenish! Thanks B’ham!
Lately, as my husband and I have been collapsing on the couch each evening, we have discovered a more defined explanation for our weariness. It occurred to me that all day we slowly and repetitiously teach. We train the puppy, “no bite, no bite, no bite, no bite.” We teach the baby, “sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down in your high chair.” We teach our son to read, our daughter to spell and learn place value to 1000 (in 2nd grade?!). I teach preschoolers to respect their teachers, follow the rules, be kind to others. My husband teaches teenagers to discover themselves, to make good choices. Teach, teach, teach. Over, and over, and over.
It may sound like I’m being negative. It is tiring sometimes, this repetition. But I do not intend negativity. It is a gift, to teach. To mold and shape and grow. It requires a growing patience, which I am trying hard to acquire more deeply each day.
In reflection upon this discovery, I reclined on the couch in a quiet moment and scribbled down a quick, unrevised poem.
Drip, original photography
Teaching every moment
Teaching at work
Teaching my children
Teaching my dog
Teaching myself
Like a constant dripping
Reminding the same behaviors
Reciting the same words
Watching for signs of answers
Proof
Slowly shaping
Gently molding
Patient work
That doesn’t end
A gift
Often unrecognized
To others and ourselves
So we remind ourselves
Teaching brings goodness
Careful
Thoughtful
Intentional
Patient
Teaching
In my 32 years, I’ve traveled to many countries: Jordan, Syria, Italy, France, Ireland, England, Mexico, Jamaica, Bahamas, Belize, Canada…I love it.
Since I had kids, my traveling days have been pretty nonexistent. Until recently.
I prepared myself for a new foreign experience. I don’t speak the language, and my eyes have ignored the culture as much as possible.
I loaded up in the car with my handy tour guide, an expert in the field and walking guidebook.
Dressed for cultural assimilation, we began our 40 minute journey… to Tuscaloosa. On Gameday.
If you are a Southerner, you know what I’m talking about. Football is different down here. Fans go ALL. OUT. I have never cared for nor watched football on my own initiative. In elementary school on “team colors day,” I was confused and appeared lame in my regular attire. Just recently a man bagging my groceries asked me “Do you go for Alabama or Auburn?” When I replied neither because I don’t really watch football, he was aghast and blurted out “What is wrong with you!?” For serious.
But this time, my husband won 4 tickets to the Zone, so Bama shirts on, we loaded up 2 of the 3 kids and headed to T-town.
Gameday rides
Moving down the interstate with throngs of fans, caravans of crimson and white cars decked out in flags & houndstooth magnets, my husband tearing up when the kids instinctively boo the opposing team driving past in buses…This is a new experience for me.
My nature rebelled, asking me why I’m wearing this bill board of a shirt, but I’m taking one for the team…my team, i.e. my family. My trusty tour guide was openly hoping for a conversion to take place in his anti-football wife. His actual words were: “I’m hoping the tradition, the pageantry and the beauty that is Alabama football takes root and you become a diehard fan.”
We did have fun. I went “all in,” wore the shirt, wore a “Beat Everybody” pin. The stadium is a giant monolith, the crowd crimson and dressed to the nines. I was definitely immersed in a culture unfamiliar. But I’ve done it! I’ve been there, seen what there is to see, stood in a mass/line to take a picture of my husband and kids with a statue (still weird…). I have experienced a big part of “my South” that I had been missing. Not a convert, but I at least gave it a taste.
Whew.
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you
Passing it on, ink & colored pencil
I'm a self-taught pastel & watercolor artist and instructor, raised and based in Birmingham, Alabama. I constantly collect stories and pieces of the world around me, turning them into works of art. Inspired by nature, I love to share what I've learned and build connections and community. I invite you to browse and join my site. I hope you find something that inspires you!
Voted one of Birmingham's Best Local Artists 2013, Birmingham News & al.com
Featured in Birmingham Magazine, March 2018
Visit the Commissions page on the top menu to find out more about my pastel & watercolor portraits. Portraits are drawn from photographs in a timely manner with the highest quality materials to ensure they will be enjoyed for generations!
Thanks for visiting my site! I am an awarded pastel artist and instructor based in Birmingham, Alabama. A self-taught artist, I have been working with pastels for over 6 years, selling in shops, galleries, shows and by commission. I teach pastel workshops for adults, and love to help emerging artists on their journey into the art community.
