Soleri Bells

Sometime about a decade ago, during our first year or two in Arizona, David and I had a chance to meet Paolo Soleri.  Paolo Soleri was an architect, who in his early days in America lived with Frank Loyd Wright's family.  He was a great thinker and the very person that created arcology - a happy marriage of architecture and ecology.

Soleri used to hold lecture talks/conversations on arcology every week either in his residence known as Cosanti, or in the city he built just outside of Prescott, AZ known as Arcosanti.  David and I attended one of these talks and bought one of Soleri's books: The Urban Ideal (a compilation of conversations with Soleri from the past 30 years).


Here are some of my favorite quotes and paragraphs from his book:

1. "I think our gravest problem is the technological rage, the rage to do whatever is possible.  There is a difference between desirable and feasible.  We create a catastrophic avalanche of junk because it is feasible, when we should be paying attention to what is desirable.  I call that 'a better quality of wrongness.'  We are getting very skilled - skilled at doing the wrong thing in better and better ways.'

2.  "It is necessity to make the city package small enough so that both the man-made and the natural are at your disposal.  There is a limit to the size of any organism, whether biological or para-biological.  The city is no exception to this imperative."

The pictures I added here are pictures of bells hanging on my front porch.  I bought them during one of the visits to Arcosanti.  These bells are one of the ways Soleri was able to raise funds to build his experimental city Arcosanti, which is still a work in progress.

If you are around Phoenix area, the Scottsdale Art Museum currently has models and sketches of Soleri's buildings and designs.  You can also visit in person his residence in Cosanti, or you can visit his marvelous city of Arcosanti.
Paolo Soleri died on April 9th this year.  He was 93.

Keeping busy

I've been quiet, but busy.  And sad, I've been quite sad and avoiding the news.   Even though there is no working TV in our home, news of bombings, explosions, darn politics and debates find their way to my ears.  I mostly listen to NPR, that's how I get the news.  And then once a week a visit to the office at my work lets me hear the TV in the breakroom blasting the news over and over and over.  Maddening!  I really don't have any right words to even begin describing my emotions, even though no one in my family has been directly affected or lost their lives in any of the sad news in the world.  Sadness fills me in for the people directly affected, and for my kids for having to grow in a world that is in such unrest.

So I've been keeping busy with work, the job that pays me every two weeks.  And with craft/hand work that makes me feel good.
Here's what I've been making:

34

It was my birthday last Sunday.  I turned 34.  I took the week off as vacation to spend time with my family and also catch up on some craft work and sleep. It was a good week off.   We spent a day on the beach in California, we had cake with my uncle in Palm Springs, and I was going to take a class this morning at a local craft shop but it got canceled.  It was a drawing class and I was looking forward to it.  But it's OK, I should learn to draw from Maggie.  She actually gave me the best birthday gift; a drawing of our family.

Moving

A little over a year ago, an apron I made out of an old skirt appeared on the pages of Belle Armoire.  Perhaps it was beginner's luck, but it was enough to encourage me to submit my work to different publications.  Almost every time I've sent something out, it has been accepted and published.  And as it goes with things like this, one is usually asked to share an email, a web, or a blog page, so readers who like to see more of your work can do so.  Without too much hesitation I usually give my blog site (that is this blog).  I don't mind sharing my work, showing off what I've made, what has inspired me etc.
But I've come to realize that my blog is not only about the things I create.  I started blogging to keep in touch with many friends I've made over the years who live around the world.  I read their blogs, they read mine.  This way I don't have to write the same letter a dozen of times.  I often share personal stories, good times and bad times, joys and frustrations.  And it was ok for my friends to read all of that.  But strangers who land on my blog by following a magazine article, shouldn't have to read about what I do with my children, or about my latest vacation, or things that went wrong and I was upset about it and needed to vent.  It's not right, nor it is professional to take innocent magazine readers into all of that.  And also my blog name Becha4779 says nothing at all about my work.  Those who know me, know that Becha is nothing more than my name spelled in cyrilics, followed by my birthday.  Pretty boring, and not very creative.
So because I plan to keep on creating and submitting, I felt it was necessary to create a blog where I can post my creative work only.  That site is Stitch Play and you can visit it here.
This doesn't mean that I won't update this blog.  I will continue to share what I am up to with my kids and family, as well as post about what I am working on. 
See you soon!