The Art of Creation: The Lure and Illusion of Landscape Art
September 14, 2023 - Today we welcome back Circlewood friend, Jeff Reed as a guest writer for The Ecological Disciple. Today he takes an insightful look at landscape art. By Jeff Reed
The Art of Creation: The Bead King
August 31, 2023 - Nicknamed “The Bead King," Gateja is a mixed-media artist and jewelry designer, known for his use of recycled and sustainable materials—in particular, his paper beads. His large-scale, intricate works are often colorful and tend to a hopeful view of the world. By Louise Conner
Awakening With the Eyes of Nature: The Art of Susan Cohen Thompson
August 17, 2023 - Today, Circlewood friend and guest writer Elaine Breckenridge shares the work of Camano Island artist and neighbor Susan Cohen Thompson. Along with the art itself, Elaine shares how it has influenced her own understanding of the world around her. By Elaine Breckenridge
The Art of Creation: A Different Way of Doing Art
July 27, 2023 - Young artist Eden Overland shares some of the art she has created from natural materials she has found growing or fallen onto the ground around her. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Weaving Innovation into Tradition
June 28, 2023 - Tanabe Chikuunsai IV's most well-known works catch one's attention, but his sculptures are not stand-alone tributes to one person's creativity and skill. They are rooted deeply in tradition, community, and the earth itself. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Starry Nights
June 22, 2023 - The night sky has guided humans and animals in their travels, created healthy rhythms of rest and work, and has invited humans (including artists)to reflect on their place in a vast universe. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Capturing Movement within Clay
June 15, 2023 —Jennifer McCurdy draws on the forms and shapes of nature—translating spirals and fractals, seaweed and flowers into vessels that evoke their source in such a way that the viewer sees into the heart of something beautiful and living. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Shared Knowledge
May 4, 2023 - Through his work as a birch bark canoe maker, Wayne Valliere ties past, present, and future together, water and land, new generations and old traditions. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Delicate Work
April 20, 2023 - Pippa Dyrlaga is a Yorkshire, England-based artist who, with a piece of paper, a drawing instrument, and a precision knife as her only raw materials, creates an imaginative world of creatures and places that evokes awe toward the natural world. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Among the Weeds
March 9, 2023 - On the side of many concrete buildings throughout the world, massive weeds have been appearing, causing people to turn their heads and crane their necks in spite of the fact that most people see weeds as undesirable and worthy only of being eradicated. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Infusion of Light
February 2, 2023 - The Rosary Chapel, created by Henri Matisse, though very controversial at the time of its creation due to the artist's particular style and history, is, to me, a portrayal of how the Church and Creation collaboratively infuse beauty into each other. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Expansive Love
December 22, 2022 - The list goes on and on of who and what we would exclude from God's love, but God's love expands far, far beyond the borders we would make for it. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Advent Hope
December 1, 2022 - I wonder if this Advent, those of us in more comfortable places who have much within our grasp: relative affluence, security and power, might think less about our own need for hope and more about being agents of hope to others. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Foraged Materials
November 3, 2022 - Originally a painter and photographer, British artist Hannah Bullen-Ryner has, since 2019, been creating Land Art, using materials found in nature to form intricate works of art that nestle upon the ground as if they live there. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Four Scenes of Autumn
October 27, 2022 -In today's post, I share four well-loved paintings of autumn along with reflections of how these images can help us welcome the current season. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Raising Funds with Bird Box Art
September 29, 2022 - 27 artists from around the United States started with identical wooden boxes and made them their own so that they could give them away! On October 1st, the online bidding to benefit A Rocha USA begins! By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Storied Tradition
September 8, 2022 - Some art seems universal and could be made anywhere, but some art is rooted so specifically in a particular place that it does not seem that it could have come from anywhere else. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Creating Connections
August 26, 2022 - Creating art is an opportunity to listen well and be drawn into a bigger story than our own personal one. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Salmon School
July 14, 2022 - The art installation, Salmon School, places the plight of salmon and steelhead right before people's eyes through a "school" of blown glass fish hanging from the ceiling, absorbing the viewer imaginatively into their life and movements within a river. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: "Back" and Its Stories
June 15, 2022 - The techniques of the Dutch Old Masters and the accuracy of scientific observation come together skillfully in the work of Isabella Kirkland. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Translating the Data of Change
May 19, 2022 - We can see the effects of climate change through melting ice and changing sea levels; we can watch the struggles of animals whose habitat becomes uninhabitable to them through climate change, but there are some voices that are harder to hear. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: From the Roots Up
May 5, 2022 - If all beings are related, there is a responsibility to consider the way we walk and live in this world. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: A Ukrainian Artist's Philosophy of the Good
March 3, 2022 - One of the losses in recent days from the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a museum that held, among other work, a large number of paintings by Maria Prymachenko, probably the most well-know Ukrainian artist. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Connecting with the World through Whimsy and Ducks
February 3, 2022 - The art of Michael Leunig may appear simple—even childlike—it gives us images of ecosystems and connection that deeply remind us of the beauty and joy within both the individual person and the wider community of creation. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Bringing the Garden Inside
December 30, 2021 - When you lie down a field of flowers, the sights, sounds, and smell surround you—you are immersed in the experience. How do you replicate that for people within a gallery space? By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: The Sacred Particular
November 18, 2021 - English stained glass artist Thomas Denny has completed about 60 commissions primarily, though not exclusively, in English churches; each one of those is rooted in the particular commission, community, and place of their inception. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: View from Beneath
October 7, 2021 - Soaking in a Georgia O’Keeffe painting can be as refreshing as a spell of idleness can be for people with overly-busy schedules. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Leaf on Leaf, Stone on Stone
September 16, 2021 - Sometimes the only way anyone will see his works is through the pictures he takes of them before they change, melt, collapse, or are brought down by a passing wind. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: An Unfaded Tradition
July 29, 2021 - This artist's work lights up the texts, combining the tradition of illumination with meticulous accuracy, creating pages that are vibrant, intricate works of art. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Storks and Other Winged Creatures
July 15, 2021 Can we live with other creatures in a such way that not only we thrive, buy they thrive as well? By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Rocks and Lanterns
June 24, 2021 - Do you remember that feeling when you opened a new, unused box of crayons? That's the feeling that this recycle artist has when he finds ways to use what has been discarded as trash. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Beyond the Frame
June 10, 2021 - Sometimes a work of artistic redemption must go beyond the borders of our original vision to reach a point of greater completion. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Alive with Possibility
May 27, 2021 - True goodness and rightness isn't dull; it shimmers and sings with possibility and joy. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: Icebergs and Islands
May 13, 2021 - When you love something, you want to protect it. That is one reason why these artists want you to love the places they love. By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: In Celu L'ài Formate
April 29, 2021 - We are all old enough to know that we aren't the center of the universe....right? By Louise Conner
The Art of Creation: 163 Steps
April 22, 2021 - On this path in San Francisco, you can walk from the ocean to the sky in just 163 steps. By Louise Conner