The Wall - First Reaction

Here is a video of The Wall when I realized it was finished. I've been working on this piece for three years.During the time when I was creating The Wall, where I started and where I ended up were influenced by what was happening in the world.  From terrorism to great acts of heroism, all of these things made there way into The Wall.

Originally, I wanted to do a large piece and I wanted to do what I wanted to do.  A completely stream of consciousness piece.  I decided to create eight canvases and just go for it.

I always give myself an assignment.  I like learning new things and doing this also helps me to focus. The idea was to have a horse and a turtle in the painting.  They were going to be part of a large landscape and that was about as far as I got with it.  I wanted to use any and all techniques and I wanted to go with the flow.  

The terrorist attack that happened in Paris in November 2015 was devastating.  My heart broke for Paris that day.  As I listened to NPR this sadness came into the painting.  And I thought... how long? I wondered what it is about people that they just feel justified to kill people who think differently? This has been going on for so long.  

And then I asked.... what is it?  What makes that sudden stop before a person decides to react to a situation with violence or compassion?  And that sudden stop made its way into the painting.

The nightclub attack in Orlando, Florida happened in June of 2016.  

Terrorist attacks took place in London and Manchester and I stopped thinking and just felt so much pain and suffering and that made its way into the painting.

The people at Standing Rock, being intimidated and brutalized because they didn't want the gas pipeline to run under the water they depended on for a healthy life sickened me.  How could these private militias treat other peaceful people who just don't want their land and all that rely on fresh, unpolluted water, destroyed was unconscionable.    

I had started the painting listening to Kenny Chesney and Trisha Yearwood and the last year and a half or so I listened to Robbie Robertson and Schindler's List and Leonard Cohen.  Because of my Traumatic Brain Injury I can't really plan or remember what I was doing or what colors I was using when I stop painting.  Everytime I face the canvas it is like I am looking at it for the first time.  I discovered that listening to music could take me back to where I was emotionally and find my way back into the canvas.

And then something happened.  Hope began to stir in my heart and I realized, hope and love, these are life choices.  How we live and the choices we make are a direct reflection of what we value.

It took three years to save up the money for the canvases and paints and brushes and do studies and paint The Wall.  The Wall is a 6' x 9' Oil on Canvases. And now it is finished.

The Prairie Gifted to The Indian Prairie Public Library

This is a video Dave Bunn put together of the time I worked on the painting The Prairie at the library and then when I gave it to the library when it was finished.  This painting took about a year to paint.  It is a love gift to the whole community.

My son Steve Lieto and my daughter Rebekah Lieto are adding their brush strokes and color to The Prairie.  The creative expression we share is very much a family affair.  We had such a good time.  Coco is also in the video.  Coco is my Akita Service Dog who was very much a star at the library while I worked on the painting there.  And she was my constant companion when I continued to work on it in my studio.  There is just a sideways glimpse of Marianne Ryan, who did an awesome interview after The Prairie found its new home at the library.  Thank you Jamie Bukovac for coming up with this interactive project.  I love love loved working on it at the library.  I loved the families, the love, the questions, the curiosity.... just everything.
Thank you Dave for creating this video.  You are a dear.

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

You don’t know 

What you don't know

By Jenn Weinshenker 12312014

some times you don't know what you don't know

until you come right face to face
sa'mack 
thumb in the old eyeball
with a new belief
that contradicts everything you thought was true

shit
now what

yeah so

I was thinking about that

and then it hit me

When I've made mistakes
It was because 

I couldn’t see that huge barrel of crazy
commencing to blast through my life
toppling over everything 
I thought was absolutely
unshakable

As ludicrous as it may seem
I just about always resisted change

Instead of adjusting my point of view
I tried to rationalize what happened
and cram it into my old ways of thinking
some times I kept this up for years
until finally I was so exhausted
from dangling off the edge of nowhere
I let go

and faced the facts

then I’d beat myself up and holler inside my head

If only you would have known then
what you know now
you would have made different choices
life would have been so much better

but life isn't that way
some times

you just don't know

what you don't know

I mean I traveled and experienced lots of things

I lived a self examined life

I was being mindful of my intentions

and quick to weed through selfishness 

and self deception

and I was making some good decisions

A lot of them were good

but man some were like wow

what were you thinking 

And then I'd climb in the ring again

Why didn't I see that

And the valley I'd stumbled through

echoed  back
You were thinking through the lens of your own experience

Up to that point

you didn't know that was a possibility

you had no frame of reference for what was about to happen

Okay then...

I didn't know what I was up against  

I was completely out of the realm of my experience

I couldn't know what I didn't know

I couldn’t anticipate or see clearly what was about to happen

And I couldn’t see beyond it

because there was a bend in the road 
sometimes life is that way

out of nowhere
you get clocked up side the head

because there is this belief you had

that kept tripping you up

its like walking into a wall 
over and over again

and then one day

you see a doorway
and you move on through it

I used to think  
either 
or 
a lot

But the longer I live

the more I think

and 
is the connecting word to all of it

And then so much more became clear

I used to believe this way but now I believe another way

maybe both ways are true

Maybe absolutes are for suckers with agendas

hmmmm

now when I get all crumpled up
and wish I could have made some different choices
or wish I hadn't fought with reality and life so much

I just tell myself to chill out

stop letting unreasonable expectations
Bum you out

I mean none of us are born knowing everything

So you skinned your knees a few times

You were watching which way you were going

And your vision was askew

You couldn’t see what was coming

So what

Join the human race

And just

Dig the day

Learn what you can

Keep living mindfully

And let go of that lasso

That ego that keeps insisting

Perfection exists

 

The Bad the Ugly and the Very Very Good

There's over 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating on the surface of the ocean. Keep in mind that this is what is floating on the surface. I know someone who was part of a study being conducted by scientists, and I learned that climate change and global warming is also happening in the ocean. All of those tiny bits of plastic that become fine as sand are reflecting heat from the bottom of the ocean. Heating up the ocean and changing the currents of water, which also changes the currents of the air moving on the ground above.
I have been thinking about these things for much of my life. I always thought that there were huge currents in space, wavelengths that were too long to measure, that did not have a beginning or end but that were more like the ocean and that is what kept planets spinning and wobbling in a steady sort of way. But waves can change depending on the resistance of what it went through or had to go around. I called them spatial waves. I just found a post about them.
People think that just because nobody sees you polluting the planet or just because it happens underground or in the ocean that is never happened. But traces of the truth are everywhere. All throughout our human history. And here we are. The resources we have are precious, the are finite and they are worth a lot more than money or power.
Ever heard of cutting off your nose to spite your face? Its an old expression. Well, we are dumping crap into the ocean, into the air, into the ground, into the aqua fir, piercing through that tiny OZone layer every time we go out into outer space and people remain oblivious. If I don't see it, it never happened. If I'm not caught, I didn't do it instead of just figuring out what the next right thing is to do and then doing it. But we'd rather kill each other with war and toxic poisons and bullshit then treat each other with respect and taking good care of our planet, our mother and our father for crying out loud.

I just did a search on spatial waves....

Rock topography causes spatial variation in the wave, current and beach response to sea breeze activity
Abstract
We hypothesized that beach profiles that are perched on natural rock structures would be better protected from waves and currents than profiles that are not fronted by rock. In southwest Western Australia many beaches, such as at Yanchep, are perched on Quaternary limestone. Yanchep Lagoon is fronted by a low-crested limestone reef that partially encloses a coastal lagoon. The spatial variation of waves and currents around the rock structures were quantified during the sea breeze cycle at locations: (1) offshore; (2) 20 m seaward of the reef; (3) inside the lagoon; and (4) in the surf zone. The spatial variation in the beach profile response was measured at two beach profiles: (1) the Exposed Profile that was not fronted directly seaward by outcropping limestone; and (2) the Sheltered Profile which was fronted seaward by submerged limestone at 2 m water depth and that was near the lagoon exit at the end of the limestone reef. The Sheltered Profile had greater volume changes during the cycle of the sea breeze whilst the Exposed Profile recovered more by overnight accretion when wind decreased. The lagoonal current drove the strong response of the Sheltered Profile and may have contributed to the lack of overnight recovery of the beach together with the seaward rock formation impeding onshore sediment transport. The different direction and speed responses of bottom-currents in the surf zone fronting the two profiles reflected the local variation in geology, the influence of the jet exiting the lagoon, and wave refraction around the reef that was measured with GPS drifters and wave-ray tracing using XBeach. Major spatial variation in waves, currents and beachface behavior at this perched beach shows the importance of the local geological setting.

Holy Shit! I remember, it had to be a few years after the brain injury, and I all of the sudden thought about spatial waves, like currents. I used to love to study Einstein. I started when I was about 12, reading the Theory of Relativity. But I grew to love physics. It dovetailed with studying Taoism and Yoga. I was intrigued by the thought that everything was connected. Always and in a continuum. I couldn't have said what it was bath then but I started drawing these pictures on the memory board of my refrigerator. I was so excited and couldn't wait to talk to my kids about it. I started picking up papers and drawing pictures. Oh man... do you have any idea how exciting this moment is right now.
See planet does spin and it does wobble.
The closest I could get to why it spins was centrifugal force but then when I realized, this is so cool
I was painting Quiet Desperation in the moonlight on the farm...

I was looking at the Milky Way and I was thinking... there is no such thing as empty space. Because even what might contain it becomes a part of it. So space was more like wave lengths. Like these huge waves that had a rhythm and motion, just like our speech any living thing has waves and frequencies... so we are not isolated. I mean, I think feeling really isolated is what gave me the heart to see it. We were never alone because we were always connected to everything all of the time. Being and Becoming.

Over five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans says most comprehensive study to date on plastic pollution around the world

theguardian.com|By Oliver Milman

And then there is hope.  I wonder what the labels are on these plastic items.  Where are they coming from?  Cruise ships?  From garbage freights? It would be good if we could be informed about the sources of this garbage.

19-year-old inventor finds way to clean up the world’s oceans in under 5 years time

The Mind Unleashed

on 11 September, 2013 at 05:43

By: Jack Taylor, Guest
Previously the idea of cleaning up the world’s oceans with their vast accumulations of disposed plastic material was considered an impossibility. Now a 19-year-old inventor says he and his foundation has a way to clean up the world’s oceans, and not only does he say we can do it, but that we can do it in five years time and produce a profit from it.
It is called the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ or sometimes the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, and it is a massive collection of plastic particles accumulating in the Pacific.  Other oceans have their own collections of plastic wastes as well; furthermore, most of the debris in our oceans are plastic materials that accounts for approximately 90% of all the waste debris.
Scientists have considered all manner of ways how the debris could be retrieved but there was no clear answer for it.
Now a 19-year-old inventor by the name of Boyan Slat says we can remove nearly 20 billion tons of plastic waste with his concept he calls an ocean cleanup array.  It is made from a massive series of floating booms and processing platforms that gradually suck in the floating plastic like a giant funnel.
The angle with how the array is set up allows all of the plastic to go to where the platforms processing centers are floating. At the platform processing area it would separate the naturally occurring life such as plankton an only keep the plastic materials to be recycled.
What is most impressive about the array is that once it goes operational it would clean up the oceans in only 5 years time!  He also makes a point in saying that due to the vastness of our oceans most do not know how badly polluted the oceans really are.
“One of the problems with preventive work is that there isn’t any imagery of these ‘garbage patches’, because the debris is dispersed over millions of square kilometers,” Slat says on his website. “By placing our arrays however, it will accumulate along the booms, making it suddenly possible to actually visualize the oceanic garbage patches. We need to stress the importance of recycling, and reducing our consumption of plastic packaging.”
Slat was able to come up with the idea while in school, and so he wrote a paper on his concept. Once Slat’s paper was published it immediately caught the attention of many marine experts.  His paper won all manner of prizes, which included the Best Technical Design 2012 from the Delft University of Technology.
When he and others realized that the concept would work he took a leap of faith and created a non-profit organization he calls The Ocean Cleanup Foundation.  This group will focus on the goal of developing his invention, raise funds for it and make it operational as soon as possible. His concept would save numerous aquatic species of fish and help reduce PCB and DDT containments affecting all of us.  Best of all it operates on the power of the sun and by the oceans themselves.
Not only is Slat’s concept self-powered, it would also be very profitable from the all the recycling, which is estimated in the amount of 500 million dollars (U.S.) per year.
According to Slat’s website it “would make in fact more money than the plan would cost to execute. In other words; it’s profitable.”

Creating a Painting at the Library for the Library 2014

These pictures were taken the first day I worked on the painting for the library. I'm having such fun working on it there. The first paintings were from the first three sessions and the last is from Friday when Beks Lieto came to the library and worked on the painting with me. We got started and we had so much fun. Just pure fun. The last picture of the painting is where we stopped on Friday.
I am working on this in a way that people will wonder what in the heck is she doing? And by the end, everything will make perfect sense. I thought it would be fun for the kids to watch but the adults are having fun too. It is a love gift to the library. Plain and simple.

It all begins with a blank canvas.

 

These were taken the first day. 

                            

First Session.  This is the end of the first day.

The children said it looked like snow in the mountains.

Second Session

 

The children thought this was a mountain on fire.

Third Session

 

By the end of this session the children started seeing birds.

Fourth Session
My daughter Bek Lieto joined me.

We always have so much fun when we are together.

We gab and gab and then disappear into the painting.

 

Fourth Session

This is what the painting looked like when Bek and I finished painting today.

 

 The children saw that birds were there and wondered

what kind they were and why they were there.

Every time they asked me a question I asked them

what they thought it was. Whenever they told me they liked it

or they loved the painting I told them, 

that makes me feel so good because I am making this painting

for everyone who loves the library.  I'm glad you like it.

Fifth Session

Now everybody is getting wise to me.  People who work in the library

and children and parents who come to the library

are trying to figure out what this painting is going to look like.  

I am so getting a kick out of this.  I am trying to add elements to the painting

without giving too much away.  I love the fun element in this project.

Here is the link to the library eNewslettter about this project.

Embracing the Canvas

Embracing the Canvas

Copyrights reserved By author Jenn Weinshenker March 7. 2014
Excerpt from Behind the Canvas by Jenn Weinshenker

Art distinguished one stroke from the next

One day from the rest

Art embraced me back and it felt good

It felt great

Art walked with me through the solitude

That cushioned me from the rest of the world

And it became my refuge

Art helped me to break free from the constraints

Of conscious thought and reasoning until all that remained

Was its pulse

Beating through me

A pure honest expression of appreciation

A wonderfully reciprocal pledge of gratitude

For all I’d been given

And I was embracing all of it.

And Then I Could

Ok, I'm going to try to put into words what happened at Physical Therapy today. I shared that I have a Traumatic Brain Injury but not many specifics. When I am home, with light textured curtains that let the light in but no glares I function pretty well. If I move too fast or turn around too fast I get dizzy. Its like an optical illusion my brain sends me. It is like being in water and trying to see. Everything is wavy. Even the ground. I can feel my body if I touch it but when I am walking there are puzzle pieces that are missing. So the visual part of my brain has compensated. Once when I was out in the pole barn, working on a painting I didn't realize it had gotten dark. So I turned out the light, turned around and I was in darkness. I fell to the ground and was terrified. There was a light on inside the house so I crawled back to the house. I could not tell where the ground was. It was like being in a dark, wavy pool.

I crawled from that long pole barn up to the house in the dark.

The insurance company made it really hard to get help. Just dealing with bills and all of that got to be too much for me and I'd turn my back on the whole thing. And with the help of my kids, and their love and encouragement, I found a way to live a meaningful life.

Forward twenty years. I have a case worker now and she takes care of the billing stuff so I am finally getting to good doctors. And getting Physical Therapy. My therapist said she was going to help me. I was going to get better. I would not get everything back. But I could do better. I had been so unwilling to be a victim and worked so hard that I couldn't imagine there was anything that could get better. But I had hope. For the first time I had hope.

We have been working on walking and sitting and standing and found that there are areas of my body that I don't have any sense of. Like below my knees. Unless my legs are touching a chair or wall or even each other, I have no sense of them. When things got challenging, like sudden light coming in through a window? My toes would ball up in my shoes and I stopped breathing and my hands went out in front of me. Involuntarily. But I have been working on standing and walking and telling my toes to be flat. And breathing. And we have been focusing on a ball. A brightly colored foam ball that fits in my hand.

I have been doing these exercises where I keep my focus on this ball while moving. While sitting to standing, walking and finding something to focus on, looking up and down, left and right.... little things really. We found that if I looked at my feet I could feel them and make them move but if I didn't look at them they hardly moved. They explained how my brain was reading what my eyes were seeing out of sync when I was moving. That was why I did better holding onto a shopping cart or onto Coco. Because my brain was getting good information from my hands.

The Therapist and assistant and I were talking about what I could feel where and when the dizziness came on I was describing it. And I was very woozy after walking side to side focusing on this ball. I was going slowly and remembering to breathe and to talk to my toes and when I sat down the place was like being under water in a room. So she kept reminding me to focus on the ball. And I did. And we are talking and I said, when I was out, it had to be yesterday, bright sun came in a doorway when I was leaving the store and normally I would have been temporarily blinded. I mean everything turns white blinded. Which is one of the big reasons I need Coco so much. And then something new happened. I remembered to focus on something. I turned my eyes away and focused on something else. I think it was red, maybe even my own car. Whatever it was, I told my self to breathe and I felt better. Now this is the good part. I was telling them this and all of the sudden it hit me. For the first time some thing I thought I was powerless to overcome, I could stop while it was happening and tell myself to focus and to breathe. And I started crying. A joyful kind of crying. And we all cried together. I could not have imagined that this could happen, one way or another. They gave me back the ability to do something when I feel completely helpless and vulnerable.

I have been doing my exercises at home. They promised to do their best and I promised to do mine too. But I had no idea a simple foam ball would do so much good. Keeping my eyes on this ball I can move my torso sideways where before I had no sense of where it was. Soon, they are going to help me do yoga again. No wonder I couldn't continue doing yoga after the accident. I have felt so bad that I couldn't do yoga when I have the time to do it. Now I understand.

I am so grateful. I'm writing this to share with you this break through moment. And so I can look back and see when this happened and feel this great feeling again. Never imagine that you don't have an impact on someone's life when you see the potential and you have hope and you encourage someone else because you never know when your hope and your faith will touch someone's heart in a profound way. These people gave me a moment. A moment when I could...
I thought I could
and I could...
pretty cool.

A Needle and the Damage Done

A lot of talk has been going on about heroin and death. I keep hearing the phrase, demons in his head. For the record, I have a Traumatic Brain Injury. I have learned a lot about the way the brain works. I have learned a lot about anatomy as well. And guess what.... there are no demons in people's heads.

So I'll give you my two cents. For what it's worth....
Life is hard because some times it is fucking hard. Some times terrible things happen and you are left with a life that is unrecognizable. Some times you face cruelty in places and in people you would least expect to find it and it will devastate you. In a life time you have to know these things because it isn't all butterflies and rainbows.

My heart has been broken so deeply that there have been times when I thought... I don't think I can do this anymore. Its just too hard. That too is a part of life. And guess what.... the biggest heartbreaks did not come from an ex-husband or anyone else.... they came from life itself.

If you need a little help getting through those times.... let some one, a real person, know what you are going through. They don't have to be perfect. They just need to give a shit about you.

Drugs will ruin your life. Period. Alcohol, excessive drinking will ruin your life. Not because they put demons in your head. Its because instead of choosing to grow, or grow up, or grow from within, or grow into some integrity people choose to do everything but grow. It doesn't matter what costume we wear or how old we are or what religion we believe in either. We whine and moan and make the same mistakes over and over again because we want what we want when we want it. We want all of life to orbit around our ego and satisfy every whim and every bullshit desire we have. That's being shallow. That's being inexperienced. That's being selfish. No demons. Just us.

Until we get to the point where we are willing to give ourselves an honest look in the mirror and face our bad decisions or bad motives or our ridiculous pursuit of delusional thinking.... we will be chasing the Tiger's tail.
We are all just people. That's it. We aren't angels and we aren't demons. We are just people. We aren't always going to get it right. But as long as we learn from our mistakes and we make sure to choose friends that are good people, then we will begin to understand that everybody makes mistakes and everybody gets it right some times. That is life.

So chill out. Take a walk. Call a friend and talk about something real. Turn off reality TV.

I have known and loved people who lost the battle of addiction. And guess what.... that pill, that bottle, that whatever.... it isn't your friend. If you don't have any friends.... volunteer your time and do something that matters to you. You'll meet like minded people and maybe you will wind up making a good friend. And stop all the whining..... life can be really hard. And it can also be wondrously fabulous. We've got one life... interpret that any way you want to. No matter what people believe we know we have this life right here and right now. Appreciate it and don't waste one minute. Unless you are resting with your feet up and relaxing is the way you choose to appreciate life.

I'll tell you the truth. The hard times I've survived were terrible. But the things I've learned in this lifetime have made it all truly interesting. Truly enriching. And kickin.

Heroin is for suckers. Doesn't matter how smart you are or how brave you are or even how successful you are... don't be a sucker to something that is not your friend and that will, given enough time and money, will kill you.

I have been addicted to hope, to signs and wonders, to idealized versions of purpose and love. Chemicals and the hold of depression and abuse walk with me even now. The difference now is that I decided to face life without pretense (one of the few benefits of survival). Life is what it is. Some times it's messy and some times we're a mess but some how, with all of that, I have chosen to love life with my eyes wide opened. It isn't easy but it's real. When the hopes and dreams and isms shattered into bits and pieces I stopped trying to put it all back together the way I thought it should be. And came to terms with it or with my unrealistic expectations of what I thought it should be or what I wanted it to be and that's when I began to stretch my arms out wide and embraced it all. Because it is what it is. 

I have loved people who struggled with these things too. I have been one of those people. I have been determined to march on, carrying the banner of ignorance so high that everyone could see it and the weight of it but me. I was blind and so sure I was right. 

I understand about love and mercy and that long suffering kind of love that keeps your holding on because of your faith and hope that the person you love and cherish so much will awaken and be present. I have mourned them and been there when they took their last breath. I have gone to meetings where people I respected, who were so wise, killed themselves in so many more ways than one. 
 
It is a heart breaking road to take. And the pain they can cause is nothing compared to the pain that propels them to do those things that hurt themselves and the people they love.
 
We can choose to love them anyway because we just love them.
 
I have read the obituaries of the brilliant and felt a sense of loss because their lives were cut short. And wondered.... would they say now, if they could, it was worth it? It is hard to imagine they would say it was, but in their lives and in their deaths they say it was. 
 
I have kept on putting one foot in front of the other in the midst of the deepest despair and some times I thought it would swallow me up. 
 
It takes a willingness to learn, to grow and to share and yes, make different decisions one day, one minute at a time, that keeps us going during those times in our lives. 
 
It is trudging through the sorrow that keeps us going. When we fall down and our ignorance muddies our path it is hard to walk forward. Our legs are heavy and our hearts are fragile but I will say this with all of the conviction and life experience I have to share... it is worth it. If all you can do to get through and keep your mind right, is to keep your butt at that table, to hear one more heart wrenching story, to remind you of the cost of your decisions, than that is what it takes. If it takes reading a book, making different choices that are thoughtful then that is what it takes. But what life gives you when you become determined to kick some ass through all of the loneliness and wondering and wandering.... is worth it. Worth all of it. 

If I would have given up we wouldn't know each other and share in this unforeseeable moment. And how cool is this?