Inside the Spin-Mosaic Studio

New Year's Resolutions come and go. What is trending for 2022? Mental health and delegating responsibility seem to be on the rise...along with navigating the atlas of the heart. What about measuring how we place worth on others around us? How we invest our time? How we choose to love or neglect others? As for me, my chosen New Year's resolution dropped on my shoulders in the midst of an inpromptu elimination conversation with my youngest son--which stuffed animals should go...which should stay? All to say, how he measured worth was much different than what met the eye. I can learn a lot from the way he loves. [...]

It is one thing to create, it is another thing to have to recreate once a creation is ruined: by yourself or someone else. What do we do then? Here is one such story that can turn into one such Superpower--if and when realized. [...]

Author and Artist, Christi Ziebarth, takes a step into parenting through the lens of a mother fox and a the reality-check of crisis. 5 illustrations accompany this illustrated blog while bypassing the common sugar-coated persona of raising children. Parenting is hard. We don't always know what to say or what to do. At the end of the day, we hold our children close to our heart! [...]

Artist and Author, Christi Ziebarth (me!) takes a step backwards into a memory of coming in from the cold; and a step forward rolling snowballs with my own son on a blistering icey snow-day home from school. Here is where we find a brand of love that is hard to pin-point, hard to explain, hard to write about, and even harder to capture in a work of art. There is a quieting that comes over a child when they come in from the snow. The wind is not longer whipping at their pink cheeks. Tiny pea-sized snowballs are not longer itching at their neck. They are no longer bundled tight and high-stepping to track through mounds of snow. Sitting with a cup of hot chocolate is the most quieting and calming 10 minutes of winter. The gentle provision of a mother unbundling a child from winter play and a child soaking in the newfound warmth of still air and freedom of limbs, is a very quieting kind of love. [...]

In black and white, neither the butterfly or the chrysalis can show off its fullest glory.   The last blog featured a sketch of Donna's chrysalis dangling above the brick foundation of her house last year. It was so stunning that the fragile memory still swam around in the shallow waters of my mind until my pencil found my sketchbook last week. In process, the sketch went from light pencil lead to pen and ink to watercolor.    A sketch is an unfinished stage, it is not a finished work. Artwork is not exhibited, priced or sold at the sketching stage. As an artist, I [...]