Mining For.... Gold.....I think?

I'm going down people.  I'm strapping on a hard hat and work gloves and the all the gear. I'm ready to get all black and sooty and dirty and I'm ready to work really hard. Bring it on!.... But first...lets have some tea and chat for a bit.

I made a huge choice in the Autumn of 2015 and it is life changing and it is scary and I'm doing a lot of soul searching and digging and sifting and examining to ensure that this is the "right" choice...if that is even possible. After 25 years working and selling and sweating as an artisan crafter of embellished clothing in the Pacific Northwest... I am taking a sabbatical. And this may just possibly be the first steps toward ceasing the clothing business altogether.  Some of you have known me through all of the incarnations of The Big Fat T-Shirt Co., Hartwork, Hartware and for the past 6 years or so..Cada Johnson Design.  Last year, my 25th year was my best ever....sales were great and I love the festivals and I love using humans as my walking art gallery but my Being is yearning for another step.  I have also been yearning to dig down into my darker innards where there are dreams that have been niggling and annoying me and wanting manifestation. I hope that when I wrestle them into the fresh air they will be pearls, but I can't know till I get them out and while they lie unattended they are festeringly annoying.  How do oysters do it?

Step one of this big mining operation is to work on my baby startup company called Astrea Prayer Flags. If you haven't seen them yet, please check them out here.  The flags are going along swimmingly...or should I say flying along? For fun prayer flag conversations please also visit our Facebook page here.  (yes...we can have fun prayer flag conversations...you might be surprised by how dazzlingly fun they are)  Well....I suppose you could say that I am splitting myself away from the earth plane and going simultaneously air born with prayer flags and underground with....well...that is the part that I don't know yet.

That is the mining for gold...or maybe just some good rotten compost that will be good for the garden. That is the risk of mining isn't it?  You can never know how long or if or what you will find under the surface.  I am searching for fresh artwork, new materials and new ideas and new parts of myself that I've never met before. The best part is I am doing a lot of literal mining of old materials, old boxes of clothing and fabric (oh my lord...the fabric I have)  old artwork that has been stuffed into drawers for years,  and old inventory that wasn't sold before I moved on to the next technique.  Keep an eye out because I plan to be selling some of these pearls on etsy and at the Saturday Market in Eugene.

So this is what I'll be doing this festival season digging into the detritus of my 25 years of t-shirts and art making and bringing up something new and shiny and pretty. Have no doubt that I will miss you. I have loved...really...I have laughed and bantered and cracked jokes and teased so many of you over the years.....and I have really loved it.
Keep in touch!
Cada

Digging To China again

Digging To China

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.     William Blake

It is winter and now I have to face myself. I don't 

have any festivals for a few months. I have unformed 

time. I can twiddle my thumbs or paint my great

masterpiece or build a garden or build a sauna on 

wheels or noodle on the internet and twiddle my thumbs.

Just like my summer break from school the winter is full of 

possibilities. I've decided to experiment with a new way of working. 

That is to use a phrase and to work around that title and build a series 

of images. Its Digging To China this 2013. When I was little I believed 

it was possible. I can remember digging down a little ways into the earth 

and looking into it with all of that potential. My mother never told me 

there was a Santa Claus, nor an Easter bunny or a tooth fairy. She was a 

Christian pragmatist who didn't want these holy holidays confused with stuffed 

animals and polyester. But somewhere along the line I believed for a little 

while that one could dig all the way through the earth. Or at least I 

believed that China was below us with a lot of people walking upside down. So when someone, I do not remember who, a neighborhood friend? burst 

my bubble and told me that it was not true, I was gravely disappointed. I've 

never really gotten over it. I still want everything I believed about 

world when I was 5 years old to still be true in some parallel universe world. And we could send all that food 

that would sit on my plate while I had to sit at the table until I had finished it, how I 

wwish we could have sent it to those children in China.  Oh I wish it could be so.