I have a fascination with mermaids… they appear everywhere… I have even been mermaids in dreams… have written at least two posts about them and the sea here and here.
I like this bag, mermaid on the front and fishies on the back. I made it so she could give dream energy to the things inside the bag.
Glorious Bags, designs by cliodhna
sea blue and falling into water. Fishes sparkle around me and dart from side to side. I fall into deep water.
the sea holds all our unfulfilled dreams and wishes until we are ready to receive them
she remembers promises we made to ourselves in previous lives
when the mermaids sing then the waves dance and the sea spray casts rainbows high into the air
x clio
I have become the proud owner of a collection of umbrellas! I have had cool umbrellas in the past but only ever one at a time. I had a pink polka dot one for about two weeks before I lost it and for a while I had kids umbrella with a ducks head on the top and two wings out either side. I would walk down the street to a symphony of nudges and cries (in tough inner city dublin) of “would ya look at the state of ‘er”. It made people smile though, made a rainy day a happy escuse to use my bright yellow duck umbrella.
Women use the umbrellas here as Parasols. To stay out of the sun and I have taken up this habit. When you live in the sun you actually spend most of your time staying out of it rather than taking your clothes off and smathering yourself in quick tan lotion and lying very still for hours. I never had the patience for tanning.
Here they are in a row from big to little. The smallest one is a kids one and the blue one was my first and the brown one is a very pretty parasol and the yellow one I just bought in Los Mochis because it was raining.
Paul after I persuaded him to let me take it.
He said I could put this one on my blog if I put another one of him looking tough and being a miner 
so here is one of him looking tough at his son Arthur and Art very obviously taking him seriously.
I also bought some new oil cloth to make some new purses from. Very excited!
Here is a fish I have done in the last while. It is good to get back to fabrics. I got some cool new fabrics in mochis too.
My butterfly embroidery.
On the way to the mine in the morning the air is filled white big white butterflies. They are beautiful and fragile. I used a fabric that dissolves in water to do the outside lacy effect (i wish I had more of it now) and then the butterflies and background were done on chiffon that I pulled and stretched and embroidered over. I want to explore these fabrics further…
So my threadless submission didn’t get very far. I think I am not hip enough for threadless or else I am not involved enough to get comments. Oh well, not really worried. Would be nice to get a design printed though and get 2000 dollars!
So I took the design I did and made it into an embroidery. I stiched the people up seperately and stuffed them and then stiched them down onto the backround fabric so they stand out. To make the people I patchworked strips of fabric together first and then embroidered the people on top of that and then made them into the dolls ready to get stuffed.
Words in the corner, sky dancing, growing, singing, dancing…
It is good to get back on the sewing machine again. I have one more project on the go and another one sitting in my head ready to leave.
Its funny about what other people think is cool or not cool or marketability. Just read this post today from Florence Forrest. Sometimes I do work which I don’t really value until years later when I look at it and see that it is actually a good piece of art work that I just didn’t think was good enough at the time. Or I understand more about the image and why I did it. I think rather than ‘not being marketable’ I think we are just not ready to expose them. They sit until we recognise their value and recognise the value of who we were at that time. She does the coolest toys too, check them out.
I think sometimes I can get lost in needing to be professional and advance my ‘career’ and forget that the best art comes from the heart in the moment and if we loose that then we have lost our connection to ourselves. Marketability comes when it is ready. Of course actually getting out there and showing the world what you do helps also! Its a balance.
and of course to leave you with, the usual picture of a beautiful sky!
First my newest embroidery. I was having artists block, feeling stuck, a bit down about my art, not going anywhere, not knowing what to do when I said Hey! I can do a picture about it. Because sometimes the best thing to do to get rid of a block is just do something, anything to get the energy flowing again. This image poped into my head and I got out the sewing machine and got to work.
Her hair is flowing looking for ideas and she has a paintbrush in her hand ready to paint and the colour green is good because its the heart chakra colour and that is where all the best images and art flows from.
I go through cycles with art. i want to paint big and loose for a while and then small and detailed. I want to do pretty purses and colourful nice things and then i want to express meaningful truths and deep meaning. I like the flow of paint and then the texture of fabric. I like writing and then thats not enough and I want to draw. I lose all inspiration and get lost in doing other work for a while. Like being a waitress for a few months or being a secretary and pure logic, organizing files and putting sense onto chaos. Then it is time to toss the order and explore the unformed and possibility again.
In the Toltec work that I do it says we are all artists that we create our lives every second, every minute, with every thought and word and choice we make. So when we create a piece of artwork or a meal or write we are extending ourselves outwards into the world to leave form on how we are as people. So for me being a secretary or a waitress or working in a shop is not abandoning my art but it is exploring me as an artist and my life as I am creating it right now. and if you think, but I am not an artist look around you at your life and see what you have created. Even the fact that we are here and have existence is a huge act of sorcery. Now if we could only stop taking it for granted and worrying about the little stuff (whats that quote.. don´t stress the little stuff.. and remember its all little stuff)
I finally got pictures of the beautiful spider outside our house. I had thought she had made her egg sac and died but no. Yesterday I saw her legs sticking out from behind the brick and then looking closer her black shiny body. You can just see a shade of red on her belly (she is hanging upside down) from the hourglass mark. She is a BIG spider. Not as big as those hairy wolf spiders but large enough and more threatening looking.
One of her babies and an egg sac. There have been two egg sacs that have hatched but apparently they eat each other and she eats them so they are lucky to survive.
as one more picture of the valleys from around here. I have sooooo many cloud and sunset pictures. This one is from early in the morning when the clouds haven´t lifted yet. Wonderful looking from the outside and grey and misty from the inside.
I love mermaids. I didn’t know this until recently when I looked at the work I had done for my last exhibition and realised there were loads of mermaids. I have dreamed of being a mermaid. I am not sure why the fascination. They are from the sea, from the subconcious, from dreams, from magical possibility. They are emotion and from our deep-selves. My name comes from under the sea. There was a race of Tuatha de Danann living in the kingdom under the sea.
I think i just love the idea of them. I love the sea but it scares me too. Deep water, seaweed. Anyone else get a panic in their stomach while swimming over seaweed? Maybe its because they are at home under the sea, in a strange murkyness, belonging to the moon.
When the sirens sing you don’t feel seasick. Mermaids are the souls of sailors who loved the sea.
Maybe they come from the need for sailors to put a beautiful face on the sea. The sea was changeable and dangerous and uncharted and mermaids were its soul and reflected how the sailors felt about the sea. Dreams about women on the long lonely voyages out of sight and contact with land for days on end. No cell phones or fancy navigational aids on those days.
When you catch a mermaid you had better hold on tight, she is as slippery as a fish and will vanish from your grasp if you don’t keep her in your sight.
Mermaid, who does my dream self love?
I haven’t gotten over it yet. I have mermaids on my wall from mexico. They are still sitting in boxes in my new house in chihuahua so when I get there I will take some photos of them. I want to do some more. I have ideas! I even made a mermaid puppet I was really proud of, she turned out wonderful, until the house cat got a hold of her and chewed her head off. 
Maybe she is my sea soul, my feminine side of my soul, my dream part. I will ask for a dream from her and see what she has to say to me. I would ask her to help me release my fear of deep water, to see the beauty and power of the sea and the hidden treasures waiting for me.
What would you ask her? x clio
we arise today together
through the strength of heaven
light of sun
radiance of moon
splendour of fire
speed of lightning
swiftness of wind
depth of sea
stability of earth
firmness of rock
This is an embroidery I did for my parents to give to my Uncle and Aunt for their 50th wedding anniversary. There are 50 hearts in total and I used raw silk for the red and the creme. The flowers on the backround are a scarf I died a brown and then embroidered over the flowers and cut away the rest of the scarf so the flowers were left. Anyone ever do carrickmaccross lace? same principal.
I hand embroidered the words, they were going to be too small to machine embroider. The words I got from the book Anam Cara by John O’Donohue. But I think originally it is maybe part of St Micheals breastplate. Its a christian poem but I changed the first line from ‘I will arise today’ to ‘We will arise today together’. I felt it was christian enough for them and and this section meant something for me too. Commissions I do for people have to mean something for me too, otherwise I can’t do them.
The photo below is a close up of the embroidery.
