The Healing Power of Art . . .

Dearest Friends of The Tearoom,
I do so humbly apologize for my absence from The Tearoom as of late!  Trust me, left to my own devices, I would spend all of my time here, nibbling cakes and sipping tea with My Dear Friends of The Blogosphere.  However, Real Life does intrude on our Imaginary Lives, sometimes in the most disruptive ways possible.

For me, when I anticipate something is going to happen to me, I find it helpful to deal with it through my art.  My last blog post was my anticipating the inevitable.

About 2 weeks after my last blog post, I had to have emergency open-heart surgery.  I'll spare the details, but things were a bit scary for me for a bit, due to some unforeseen complications.  However, once I began to recover, I did so quickly and was able to come home 18 days after surgery.  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. David Robaczewski at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine for being such a dedicated and brilliant surgeon.

And music plays a big part in the process of healing as well.  One day, while I was in Cardiac ICU, my darling Mr. V played some music for me.  There is a lot I don't remember from that time, but I do remember this because it helped me to have a normal few moments in the midst of a very surreal and sometimes unpleasant experience.  One of the songs he played for me was one of my favorites from Jamie xx called "Loud Places".  Here is the video of that song:



It is now two months later and I am recovering well.  I feel better everyday and each day I find I am able to do more and more of the normal everyday things I did before surgery.  I have been lucky to have had nurses and therapists who came to my home to help me, one of the best being my Occupational Therapist, who encouraged me from the beginning to get back to my artwork as soon as I was able.  After such an extensive surgery and so much anesthesia and pain killers, I was experiencing motor coordination and cognitive issues. These have now all cleared, as the doctors had anticipated they would, but much of my physical and emotional recovery is due to returning to working on my art projects.

As well as some work I have done of my on-going book project about my paperdoll daughter Victorienne, I have been busy creating new collage sheets for my Etsy shop Velvet Revived as well.

Victorienne's Halloween Party Invitation

Victorienne in Wonderland Tea Set

Victorienne's Birthday Party

Victorienne's Birthday Party Invitation

Vintage Floral Bunting

Haunted Tea Set

And I'm not done yet!  If any of you remember, I did this small collage for the first online Mad Tea Party I participated in.

I'm putting the finishing touches on an updated and much enhanced version to sell in Velvet Revived!  Keep watch for it!  It is my goal to have 100 items for sale in Velvet Revived by the end of the year.

And, as I mentioned in my last post, I am still plotting and planning a visit to a museum by our family of slightly-creepy-but-mostly-adorable dolls!  They will be lurking (in that way that they do!) around the opening of my show of digital collages at Le Musée de Divan Rouge!  I will announce more about this exciting event soon!