this month's
inHERview is with the playFULL, insightFULL & soulFULL
danielle marie. this is an extra-special month because it is danielle's birthday month. hip hip hooray!
i have the privilege of being danielle's roomie at
SAW in september! after i posted a message on the SAW message board danielle recognized my name & sent me an e-mail. we've been connecting via e-mail for nearly 5 months.
we both feel we've been "divinely paired" in receiving each other as SAW roomies in september. i am one lucky girl. read on & you'll feel lucky to know more about this gorgeous beam of light.
IN THE RAIN GARDENWho are you?
I’m just a regular, everyday gal— a friend, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mom— you might feel like you’ve already met me when you meet me! I’m also an artist, a dreamer, and a doll maker. I like to write. I am evolving, open, absorbing all I can in this wonderful life. . .
Where can we find you?
You can usually find me around my town or at home with my family. I’m a homebody, a do-it-yourselfer, a list-maker, a volunteer, a rainy-day snuggler. I’m a graphic designer who stepped out of the corporate world for a moment to be home with my children and there is not a day that goes by that I am not thankful for that ability and the wonderful, supportive help of my husband! Now that moment has turned into years in the blink of an eye, and as I look ahead to releasing my youngest to the partial school day schedule, I am flaking the rust off the treasure box— discovering clues about what’s next for me!
Online, you can find a snippet of me at my blog,
myhiddenmuse.blogspot.com. I use that space as an exercise to keep me accountable to my artistic self— I don’t know much about blogging or even if I will keep it up, but for now it’s like one of my little notebooks. Instead of keeping it on a shelf, I keep it online. It’s one of my many projects.
Some of my other projects— you can see some of my mixed media art published in the May/June 2009 Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine, or on the cover of the first ever 2010 Cloth, Paper, Scissors Calendar! I also volunteer my talents locally to design and publish the monthly newsletter for my church in our town. Oh, and I have a little shop on etsy at
bydaniellemarie.etsy.com that I should be adding more treasures to soon.
If you’re going to the Squam Art Workshops this fall, I'd love to meet you there! I can’t wait. Signing up for SAW is what ultimately has led me here— to being inHERviewed by gem! She is my divinely paired roomie, and I am so happy that we have reached out and virtually connected already. Squam couldn’t be happening at a better time for me, and I look forward to sponging up the inspiration— the people, the setting, the challenge of new artistic techniques! Anticipation!
What is your motto for living? Or, what’s on the bumper sticker of your life?
Hmmm. I’d have to say it all boils down to The Golden Rule for me. Do unto others as you would like to have done unto you. How do I want to treat people and be treated? How does this apply to how I raise my kids, be with friends, meet strangers, react in tough situations? I’m a thinker. Always considering. . .
How do you spend your summer days?
Summer is my busy home season. I spend my summer days chauffeuring and accompanying my mini-peeps to swimming lessons, story hours, band practice, soccer camp, playdates, park adventures, grandma visits, and surprise afternoon picnics. The cracks in that schedule are stuffed with good books in rocking chairs on the sunporch, afternoons of art supply immersion, popsicle breaks and quarts of fresh picked berries. It’s a barefoot summer around here. No shoes in the house! And most importantly, the mini-peeps can sleep late while I try to get up early.
How do you spend your summer nights?
After cleaning up the straggling evidence of a full day, I like to relax with my other half on the lantern-lit sunporch or snuggle for a Netflix movie. I like to sneak in a few quiet studio moments, too, but that doesn’t always fit. All in time.
How do you spend your summer weekends?
Summer weekends are even better because we have even more options with the daddy on board. Double the help, double the fun! Kayak jaunts, fireworks, cookouts, drives to the mountains or the ocean . . . it’s all fair game. Sometimes, the best days end up being the ones I don’t expect— puttering around the yard as the swingset squeaks and the long-left project gets finished with cooperation; or we’ll discover a treasure all because of a wrong way turn.
How do you define your tribe?
I think my tribe reaches wide and far. Its boundaries are flexible, if there are any. It’s all encompassing.
Who is a part of your tribe?
You. Her. Him. Them. All of us. We’re like those raindrops on the car window— the ones we probably all watched as backseat passengers on rainy roadtrips— single, trailing, grouping, skipping, joining, racing, slowing, bumping, separating, meeting again. The fluid movement, the morphing shapes, all sparkling— I think that’s us. So, it’s like that. See? Beyond my nurturing family nucleus, I am one who welcomes everyone sharing the window, even for a moment, on our roadtrip through this life. Is that a tribe? I don’t really know. . .
What makes your heart sing?
Oh so many things. On the tip of my mind now: getting lost in the creative process— when the inspiration flows freely and time drops away— the surface builds or the fiber transforms to doll, and suddenly something lovely has been created where there was once just nothing. It’s happy, it’s magical, it’s heart-singing! As if that joyful feeling could be topped, sending those creations out into the world— putting them out there, sharing them, allowing them to be seen and having them be received by people who want to receive them— is a wonderful feeling, a heart-singing high. Lovely.
What do you care about?
Too much! It has been known to keep me up at night. My family, my children, their futures, their health, the trees, that car in the snowbank, the friend in trouble, the homeless at the shelter, the necessity to reduce, reuse and recycle, the economy . . . I am very caring and when I can, I do my best to act on it. If I can help you— I will.
What nourishes you?
Lately, it’s literally been fresh local produce! We joined a Community Supported Agriculture program and it’s a season of yumminess complete with a new cookbook to help us out along the way. I am also nurtured by adventurous wanders, sticky-fingered hugs, the wind, my elephant memory and the snippets it feeds me at odd moments, little lost-my-tooth grins, good music, quiet early mornings, and thunderstorms at night.
Where and/or when do you feel most at home?
In the big, blue chair by the picture window. A cup of coffee in my hand. The sky is just brightening, the birds are in the tree. The house is quiet, everyone is safe and still sleeping. I am awake and at home and there is no rush, there is nowhere to go, there is time, time, time— quiet, breathing, tucked-in time to just simply appreciate . . . being.
JUGGLING * paper collage
What is one question (in your life/journey) you are currently answering?
I went to a yoga retreat for the first time last fall and came away from one workshop with this question: How do you want to arrive? It bumps around in my mind lately as I struggle with the daily routines, choices and changes that happen as I try to achieve a balance between my family life and my artistic life. There are so many ways we are all jugglers . . . How do I want to arrive? as a parent? as an artist? a friend? a wife? all that I am? With bright joy and contagious confidence! I hope I am getting close to that intended answer!
What dream are you dreaming right now?
I dream now about how my artistic life will evolve as I gradually gain more time to pursue it. I dream now about what is around the corner, because I don’t really know. I’m picking up the clues, tuning in to the least static-y channel . . . bzzz, shhhhh, bzzzz . . . and hopefully soon I'll be singing along.
What adventure are you participating in right now?
Well, raising three active little-to-medium kids constitutes more than one adventure, that’s for sure. Everyday is an adventure. So, I think that’s just it! Passing along that joie de vivre— that everyday belief in possibilities— to the three bright little spirits that are in my charge right now, filling them up to the fullest and wisest before I need to set them free into the big, wide world . . . that is my current, active adventure.
What are you reveling in right now?
The fullness of my laughing house in summer and the anticipation of my escape to SQUAM in September! whoo hoo, yee haw, and all that! tee hee.
How do you define joy?
Happiness so completely filling that it makes me want to burst wide, fly, run, spread my arms wide and hug the world! It’s so nice to know that joy is lurking everywhere . . .
I AM: DOLL MAKER, ARTIST, OATMEAL EATER
Tell us 3 playFULL things about you...
1) I am a noticer. My eye catches things that many people miss. The kids love this because they know there’s always the possibility for a whacky find when I’m around. Recently, we obtained a perfectly good discarded wooden chair simply by turning the wrong way out of the usual gas station. Another time, it was spotting adjustable hospital tables left to rust among boulders by the seashore. Score! Reduce, re-use, recycle! Just for noticing.
2) I’m pretty spontaneous. Unpredictable. You thought we were just going to the grocery store? Well, I hope you brought sturdy shoes and a jacket, in case we take an unplanned adventure to find that one tall tree that sticks up above the rest on the opposite mountain or that white farmhouse on the hill. If the light is just right, and we have the time, it’s unpredictable!
3) Let me see if we can fix that . . . Yes, just give me a small tool box, a junk drawer with tape, rubberbands, miscellaneous saved parts, and I can probably mend that racetrack/doll house/necklace/etc . . . And if we don’t have the parts here, we should check the closet in my studio. Because I’ve got pieces of the whole world in there! I’m a this & that packrat with MacGyver tendencies. Look out!
What does summer mean to you?
Firefly winks in the backyard. Smores, family time. SPF. Iced tea, lemonade and hummingbirds. Sand on the kitchen floor. Good reads, lazy mornings, new sunglasses. Birthdays and new beginnings. Summer is relaxation, a necessary preparation for busy Septembers!
If you were to “tell the world just one thing” (as Jewel sings) what would that “one thing” be?
Oh, this is a toughy. Wear sunscreen! Seriously? Okay. It would have to just be: Find your true beat and go with it. Rock on, people! Oh, and smile.
