The Incident

Title: The Incident

Medium: acrylic on canvas

 

Figure it out: There is a bird, a cage, spilled coffee, and a cat. Fun piece, I just decided to splash on canvas. There is always more to art, but that pretty much scrapes the surface.

 

What did I learn from the AcidNeutralArt Project?

 

FIND THE FUNNY! 

I am revisiting this because I've learned a lot lately as I forge my way through life. For example, I learned the other day, don't just absentmindedly put a wad of sour cream and onion chips in your mouth without looking when your school desk is infested with fire ants. Just so you know, they were alive and woke me up pretty quickly. A classroom floor filled with spit, half-digested, crawling fire ants, and chips is a sight to see. I had to laugh and be optimistic. It's one more thing I can check off my list in life. Don't eat live fire ants.

 

You have to find the funny. 

 

Another sting I learned a weekend ago while trying to teach my daughter to mow the lawn: bee stings in the butt are not a wonderful feeling. She screamed and yelled. I put ice on her, trying to figure out where those bees came from. Found them, but they found me too. As a curious science teacher, I had to get on my belly in the yard to figure out where they came from. It was not a pleasant experience getting stung in the butt, but I laughed. Tweeted the moral: We bee lawn together but sometimes it's a pain in the butt.

Find the funny.

Wildflower II

Photo Credit: Red Herrera Ellisor

Conejo County, Colorado

Enriching Music: Vivaldi Four Seasons, Spring; Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto #2 (my favorite song)

What did I learn from the Acid Neutral Art Project?

     I am a teacher. I imbibe knowledge. I try to learn something everyday. Here is my takeaway: You can rise above the ashes and become better.

You are fully capable of changing yourself.  You can set an example for your children, and others, about overcoming adversity with gusto and gumption!

     You can achieve what you want, you just have to want to do it, and actually do it. Stop talking and start doing.

Don't let trepidation inhibit your capacity to achieve potential greatness. 
  

       Life is not a random occurrence of cosmic events. We control our choices, our actions, our happiness, our lives. Joy is infinite. Love is infinite. Get out your metaphorical wedding dress and wear that baby with pride and confidence. 

Go forth and conquer. 

You've been given a second chance. It's a new day. It's a new life. Most people don't get that.

You gotta world to rock.

So, go out and rock it!

-30-

Onion Rings

If life gives you onions...make onion rings!

It's a funny thing to wear heels and a glitzy evening dress to a burger joint after seeing Andy Warhol art at a museum. Life is an amazing experience, if you let it be. Live joyfully!

Live Without Fear

I Dare You to Live a Fearless Life

By Clara G. Herrera

FearArt photo credit: Red Herrera Ellisor, a lovely daughter with voice, spirit, and intellect

First posted in the Huffington Post Blog

Fear is a powerful obsession in the human psyche. It is one of the most domineering emotions that we possess.

Some folks are even afraid of door knobs. They got a name for that: ostiumtractophobia. I, like about 12 percent of the population, am not a fan of clowns. That’s called coulrophobia. Humans are weird. We likely fear being weird too.

Fear is a paralyzing place to be. It consumes you from the inside out like a cancer devouring all the joy in life one cell at a time, and you may not even realize it.

I have made a conscious decision to live my life without fear and replace it with the courage to face whatever I have to offer the world.

Of all the emotions, scientists have determined that fear is one of the most powerful. Anecdotally, I know this from experience.

A few years ago, around the Christmas holiday, my fears came to a head like a pus-filled pimple ready to burst. I was paralyzed by terror for months and few knew it.

My marriage, that looked so lovely from the outside, was shattered, bleeding, and in need of triage. I feared I had a communicable disease. I feared being alone. But these weren’t my worst fears.

Here was my horror.

My beautiful daughter, now 18, wanted to kill herself. She’d even picked the date: Christmas Eve and mode: hanging from our balcony. We committed her for a week to a psychiatric facility, all while preparing for Christmas for my two younger children who knew something was wrong but didn’t know what.

This reality haunted my life.

 FearArt photo series taken by Red Herrera Ellisor


For months, while trying to salvage my marriage and teach elementary school children, I hid knives, scissors, medicine, and checked on my beautiful daughter’s breathing in the middle of the night. Terror. Fear. A domination of my existence. A panic attack landed me in an emergency room.

I stayed in my marriage more than year, hoping it could be saved, but knowing if I chose to leave I couldn’t until I knew my child was strong enough for me to make my exit. Finally, after frequent check-ins with her therapist, she was. So I left.

I have been shedding my fears like scaly old skin a bit at a time ever since.

When I “thought” about launching a funny Acid Neutral Art Project into the real world about healing after divorce while wearing my wedding dress from almost two decades ago in funky places, my first emotion was fear. What would my former spouse think? Would it bother him? I almost didn’t do it.

A good friend jolted me into the reality of my new life. “What do you care what he thinks?” I had to reconfigure my thinking. Yes, why was I afraid? Now, it is a constant reminder to myself, Yes, what am I afraid of?

If you think about it, why are we afraid of anything that could bring goodness into our lives? We stay in bad relationships because we fear what would happen if we left. We fear being alone. We live as shadows controlled by the trepidations and worries in life that may never come.

It is the albatross that hangs around our necks visible to no one but ourselves. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s quote: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” used to have absolutely no meaning to me.

Now, I understand.

You stand on the precipice of life. Are you going to stand there or leap fearlessly into the deep blue sea of happy?

Jump in.

The water’s fine.

Have the courage to live a fearless life. I don’t live much in fear anymore, except for the clown part. Still not a fan. They are creepy.

(Enriching Music: Could Have Been Me, The Struts; Shout, Tears For Fears)

Follow Clara G. Herrera on Twitter: www.twitter.com/acidneutralart

FearArt

Photo series: FearArt

Photo Credit: Red Herrera Ellisor

These photos are a conceptual art piece about how fear governs humanity. I thought about how to visualize fear. How does one do that? Then, I thought how suffocating and debilitating fear is. People take action because they are afraid. They abstain from taking action because they are afraid. Life without fear, is a wonderful feeling.  Why fear the unknown, for it is unknown.

 

 

 

Poem: A Life Without Fear; The Rebirth of Venus

           Photo Credit: Red Herrera Ellisor

A Life Without Fear; The Rebirth of Venus

By Clara G. Herrera

Voice

captured in glass jars

sealed tightly with rusty metal lids

tucked away behind a cob-webbed dusty shelf to be forgotten

Mouth

coiled in barbed wire, invisible blood

ripped by fences she climbed to

escape into hay fields

Hair

yanked back by hurricanes of

tempered sweet denials and lies

Eyes

 

smeared with gunks of glue

coated once thinly then

shellac over time

Hands

heavier with children

gripped later into fists

punching at air

Arms

bounded in a Matisse

reverse Icarus

falling

Legs

guided blindly through a maze

stumbling, trudging, into nothing

thorns

bushes

darkness

body consumed

the day ended

the wandered maze reached a precipice

A high cliff

A roaring sea below

She jumped

Unveiled

Title: Unveiled

Photo Credit: Red Herrera Ellisor

This is a photo of me in my bathtub underwater. My daughter did not agree with this concept. I said trust me. I am wearing the wedding veil I made, glue-gunned with flowers 20 years ago.  I am in no way comparing myself to John William Waterhouse, but it reminds me of his art. I am a Pisces but I can not express ardently how much I hate water, oceans, drowning.  Water is not my BFF.