Balance of Doing or Being

This morning on my walk, I caught a glimpse of a woman sitting at a table in her backyard.  It looked like she was writing notes.  It was a peaceful scene and she looked relaxed.  It caught me off guard and made me wonder if I'm out of balance again. 

I've been in overdrive, rushing from project to project ... all projects that I love and want to do ... but little, if any, blank space in between the doing of them.  Even finding time to blog has been challenging.  I didn't realize it but early fall is a very busy art time ... new shows, exhibits, applications, inventory production, marketing materials, and so on and so on.  The themes of the shows are inspiring and challenging:

Our Wild Lands

Singing the Blues

Telling Stories

The Emperor's New Clothes

But, I need to relax into this busyness so I decided to sit quietly with a glass of ice tea and write this and share a piece I made for one of the shows:  "Singing the Blues."  The primary image for this piece comes from an outdoor concert I attended recently.  The guy is actually playing the harmonica and I loved his expression and the distorted color.  He is surrounded with an image I created years ago as an assignment for a photography class.  We built our own mirror kaleidoscope and took pictures through it.  It made remarkable images.  If you want to try it, it's just 3 long strips of mirror taped together to make a triangle ... with the mirror side on the inside.

Maybe I'm not completely out of balance ... I sat here yesterday afternoon when it got too hot to be rushing around and put this image together.  It didn't come together easily.  I pushed and it pulled.  I tweaked and it rebelled.  Time leaked away and suddenly it was time to walk the dogs, but it had arrived at this state and I decided I liked it.

Maybe the question is this:  is making art "doing" ... or "being?"  I guess it could be either.  All I know is how much it nourishes me.