This Year I Resolve To

This year I've been making my New Year's Resolutions in art instead of writing them out. I've done a few large canvases about my overall feelings of resolve to find peace and I've gone back to my first love, Artist Trading Cards, or ACEO's, to express individual thoughts in a series titled "Resolutions".
The last photo is a 4" x 4" - all are created on Artist's Illustration Board and can easily be mounted and framed.

I've just begun to list these at OPF Studio on Etsy, keep checking in for more!

Resolve to Trust My Voice
This year I resolve to trust my own voice. It may not sound like yours does, but I can trust it. It is mine. I resolve to listen to the music I have within. The canvas is my song and my heart is waiting to play its symphony.

Resolve to recognize my magical thinking
This year I resolve to recognize my magical thinking when I am wishing a problem away instead of dealing with it responsibly the way God created me to.

Resolve to Find Serenity
This year I resolve to find serenity in knowing what I can and can't control, what I am and am not responsible for, and when to take action and when to let go.

Resolve to trust my Creator God
This year I resolve to trust my creator God. I will look to Him instead of my circumstances. I will carve out time each day to spend in His presence and carry His peace and assurance with me throughout the day.

Resolve to grow
This year I resolve to let myself grow into the woman God designed me to be. I will allow myself to explore my purpose and passions and not feel guilty for being me.

Resolve to See Beauty
This year I resolve to see the beauty that is all around me, to count my blessings, to look for the silver lining.

Where Does My Strength Come From?

This series of pendant/brooches began as a found object challenge in my Metalsmithing class last semester. If you know anything about me or my work, you know that for me the challenge was not coming up with a found object to use, it was narrowing it down to which found object to use. In Ruth Rae's book "A Charming Exchange" I was dubbed the "Found Object Queen", a title I'll wear proudly.

I settled on the spine of an antique book, found hidden beneath the canvas of the books cover. I love the tactile qualities it lends to the brooch. I love that the viewer will see the textures and materials bound together 100+ years ago and be drawn in to ask, "what is it?".

I've encapsulated each section into an organic shape to signify movement and growth, as if it were a cell getting ready to divide and begin the cycle of growth. To me this signifies the cycle of growth I am in.

The use of the books spine is especially relevant. It is symbolic of an inner strength. Without the spine, a book would have no structure. It would have no ability to stand on a shelf or be held open to read easily. It really wouldn't be a book. It might be a scroll or a stack of papers, but not a book. Yet as important as this spine is, it is hidden beneath the exterior cover. What gives the book it's strength is really not seen. And what gives me the strength to stand really isn't seen either. It is the strength that I draw from my relationship with God. He is my structure, my support, He gives me the ability to be me.

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;" 2 corinthians 4:7-8

My focus this year will be telling my story through my art and helping others to learn to tell their own story through art as well. You'll see a lot of books and elements from books being used in my work as I focus on this storytelling journey. A kind of signature for this season, if you will. A way of letting the viewer know "this is my story". I'm excited to share it with you.

I've started this series with a set of three brooches:

One to keep....

One to sell....

And one to give away!


From today through Monday the 19th of January you can enter for your chance to win each time you make a purchase from either my Etsy Store or Studio. But you have to enter the words "Where Does My Strength Come From?" in the notes to seller section to be eligible.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Resolutions

I used to make New Years resolutions, long ago, and then I stopped. But I read somewhere recently that making New Years resolutions was a way of committing to living your life. To caring about yourself, so to speak. So I woke up on New Years Day with a desire to do just that. Instead of writing down my resolutions I grabbed a couple of canvases and expressed them visually.

I've been quite the caretaker in my life. Always putting the other guy first. Taking care of those who were in my life to be taken care of. Originally it was born from necessity, this caretaking trait of mine. Becoming a mom at 16 years old was a lot of responsibility. I wanted to be a good mom. I naively swore that my children wouldn't suffer for having a mom so young. It was tough. But I thought I was tough too. I would find myself in a tough situation and say "well if I don't pull us through this who will?"

I really didn't have the skills to know the difference between what I was responsible for and what I wasn't. I easily slid into the mentality of having to earn respect and prove myself to others by not only covering what I was responsible for, but what I wasn't responsible for as well. I tried to earn my way to happiness and love. When you live this way for too long, you find that life really isn't working the way it should.

The left side of the canvas represents this life that I had pieced together, with pockets of beauty here and there, but held together very precariously. My past life as a teen mom, a wife, a divoreced woman, remarriage, step-parent, a child of an alcoholic, a scared little girl full of turmoil inside and confident looking caretaker on the outside

There is an expression I have learned since becoming a Christian. One of those "christianese" kind of things that goes something like "God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way."

Today I am thanking him that this is true. He has allowed me to come to the very end of myself. I can't take care of it all by myself. I can't be everything for everybody. I can only be what he designed me to be.

The right side of the canvas represents my life now. I don't know exactly what I am doing. I don't know exactly where I am going. On the outside it might look like turmoil but inside there is a growing peace as I keep my eyes on the Lord and continue to learn who I am and who I was made to be. It is a new year. I resolve to follow His lead, to learn, to grow and embrace the change that He has planted in me.

Both sides of the canvas work together. Together it is a picture of life. Growth. Change. Peace.

"A New Year" Collage Painting by Crystal Neubauer

Visit my studio at Etsy to purchase.

Feeling Blessed

Today I am feeling very blessed. My application to teach a workshop at Art & Soul - Portland, 2009 was accepted.

My class is called "Collage with a Focus: Let Your Art Tell Your Story" featuring techniques in collage, working with acrylic/plexi-glass, and making tube rivets to create a collage with a focal point.

Along the way we will talk about how to allow the stories we all carry inside speak through our art and we'll talk about alternative ways to use the materials and techniques from the class to continue illustrating these stories outside of the class.

The example here and the one of the bird in the post below are my class samples to give an idea of what this looks like put together, but I am guessing with so many stories to be told there will be an awesome variety of finished projects!

Be sure to mark your Calendar for Art & Soul, Portland. My class will be on Sunday, October 4 2009.

"I Pledge Allegiance To My Denial"

Let Everything That Has Breath Praise The Lord!

"My mouth will speak in praise of the LORD. Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever." -psalm 145:21

I'm praising God today for the storms of my life. I know it sounds strange, but I truly am thankful. Not that I've been enjoying having to go through so many hard times, back to back to back, for literally the past few years. Unemployment, losing our home at the onset of the mortgage crisis, marital issues, health issues, so much more. I wouldn't ask to have the things happen to me that I've been through, no, I wouldn't even ask for these things to be brought on my enemies. But I see how God has been using these times to bring about changes that were necessary. In fact he has used these times to bring about the very things I have prayed for.

I came to a place in my walk with Christ where I began to grow dissatisfied. I grew more and more dissatisfied and hungrier and hungrier for a deeper relationship with Him. I naively prayed that God would give me more of Him. That he would take me from the milk of His word to the meat. I wanted to be a mature Christian believer.

And the storms that I thought had began to pass in my life began again. Hitting in full gale force. Winds that came so strong and so suddenly they knocked me down and for the first time in so long I didn't want to get back up. I was worn out, exhausted, felt helpless, lost all but the thinnest thread of hope that life, my life, was ever going to be anything more then troubled. I cried out to God over and over to deliver me from it. To rescue me. To come quickly and save me. At the very least, could you show me why? Why Lord would you let me go through this?

Amazingly some of you would write to me when I posted about some of these events and tell me how much I had brought encouragement in the midst of your own trials and storms. Sometimes I felt like a hypocrite in hearing this. How can you say that I helped you to want to work on your marriage when I am sitting here wanting to walk away from my own? How can you say that you felt closer to God today because of my words when I am sitting here feeling about as far from Him as I ever have?

I didn't feel worthy of these words.

And I wasn't, but God is.

These past few weeks, maybe longer, God has been lifting the veil from my eyes and showing me the answers He has brought to my prayers. "You prayed for your marriage, your relationships, you wanted a more mature walk with me" He says "and in the troubles you have experienced you sought counseling, you came to me and cried out, you opened to me in ways you never would have before, and now you are starting to see changes you never thought you would see. And you are growing each day."

"You prayed for more money, less debt" He says "but you had never learned how to handle money. And when I let your husband lose his job and then let you lose your home, and let you go through so many financial hardships I got your attention. You went to that class and started to open your eyes and now you are starting to work together in this area too. Starting to look to me to teach you. It has taken a lot of trials, but here you are trying and willing and growing each day."

"You said you were hungry for more of me" He said "but you were looking all around you, at your church, your friends, your husband, your family, to show you where to find me. It wasn't until I had allowed you to reach the bottom of that pit that you were finally quiet enough to hear me right here beside you. With you. You don't have to go looking. I am with you. And because of all these trials you have begun to look to me to lead you to places you never thought you would get to go. And you are learning and growing with me each day."

Recently, the reporter who wrote the story about us when we lost our home called my husband. She wanted to let him know about a phone call she had just received from a couple who had read that article. They said they had been on the verge of losing their home too and their own marriage was nearly ended, but when they read our story they felt encouraged and decided to try again. They were calling to let her know that as a result they had managed to save their home and their marriage and they just wanted her to know. She told my husband she was calling to pass this along to us because we had said "if we could help just one person with our story". When he told me this, it wasn't the reporters voice I heard in my mind, it was Gods "You said if you could help just one other person...."

Praise God. We didn't do it, it was Him. He was just gracious enough to let us have a part in it as a result of our storms.

"My mouth will speak in praise of the LORD. Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever." -psalm 145:21