Chakra Class

GramaTortoise /

at the Creative Underground, in downtown Fort Collins -deep healing and exploration of your chakra’s subtle energy

Chakra Class invites you to explore and heal the subtle energy of your own body, one chakra at a time.

Chakras are energy vortexes in the body. They can be damaged by many common negative influences. It is exciting to repair them and watch how our lives grow and shift in response. As we learn to see and alter the energy in our own bodies, so too do we learn to heal others. cleobuchanan.com

Sign up now for seven nights of peace and wonder 

 This is for you. You can stretch this far, its just a short distance. You are ready to begin this voyage. Let it roll into your life!

  • Chakra Class, 7 nights of guided meditations.
  • at The Creative Underground, downtown FoCo.
  • 1636 S College Ave, parking in the rear 
  • Coming soon on Thursdays, 6:30-8:30 
  • 175$ for the full session of seven classes

contact us today to reserve your spot! email Cleo at gramatortoise@gmail.com

To learn more, go to www.cleobuchanan.com

Compassion Speak Cards

GramaTortoise /

So every day I pick a deck of cards on my dresser, angel cards, or affirmation cards, or oracle cards, goddess cards. I flip up a new card and figure its a little divine message for me to carry thru the day.

Bizarrely, it is unfailingly accurate as to what is going on in my life at the time, and the angels or goddesses or witty phrases point unerringly to my current weak-spot. Im grateful for these little creative cards, the artwork, the inspiration they offer daily.

Recently I began writing my own inspirational messages for myself. When I sit on my meditation cushion, I scribble a note about the lesson that has visited me in my quiet time. These become more and more helpful as I keep up the practice. I can look back at the black scrawl in my notebook, I trace my journey, and remember the truths I have forgotten already. There they are for me to celebrate all over again, like new.

I began pairing my own messages with my photos or my artwork. The exercise is inspiring, and the resulting pieces I share with friends. Finally I stopped turning cards on my dresser. I look at my own cards.

I asked Sean Allison, my creative teammate, if he would allow me to put his writing in my cards. He and I collaborate on a blog site called Compassion Speak. When Sean saw the cards, his creative spark ignited, and he began producing all kinds of quotes and photos for this new collaboration.

Now I have one deck of cards on my dresser. And they are created by Compassion Speak’s creative team. And I love to turn one over each day, and see my own divine inspiration reflected back to me.

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Sandcastles – grains holding together for a moment

GramaTortoise /

Its so close!

These pieces are made from powder loaded in plaster molds. How perfect the detail! How perfectly the kiln ran, no alarms! The kiln company, Paragon, (thank you kiln guru!) gave me advice on my kiln schedule and it was actually the source of all my grief with the controller. 

Of course theres still a distance to go – these have not fused together. Next time – higher temperature, longer hold time. The little marks poking out of the horses jaw are tool marks caused by me picking the wax out of the mold. So that technique needs to change.

Progress! Soon, amazing and super incredible glass casting! 

Its coming!

Glass Casting – so exciting!

GramaTortoise /

OMG!! Look at that detail in the Bison!!

Sometimes I open the kiln and there is a little miracle. Something worked. I am utterly dancing. I can’t believe how beautiful the detail came out, how lovely the colors in the bison tile I just fired.

Yeah, OK, I know its cracked. Its really cracked. Its split and sundered and quite messed up. But thats just an annealing schedule failure – no problem! I know exactly what to do – lengthen the time the annealing takes. Excellent.

Its tantalizing me! The promise of a glowing glass piece is just dangling and Im reaching and it will happen.


Glass Casting – the good, the bad, and the great

GramaTortoise /

These are the lovelies that evolved after the long process of casting from the clay originals in my previous post.

Three of these are my best pieces, and for each of them is another version of the same in a box somewhere, with damage from some part of the process.

If you look closely at the yellow figure on the upper right, you’ll see the mold split and glass poured thru during the casting. And while I have ground it off, the mold shifted so much that the forehead sits about a half inch out from where it should be. Much of the hair got broken in removing the mold. And there was a never more than one casting from that original, so sadly, that broken piece is all I have for all that work.

Glass Casting

GramaTortoise /

Clay originals

I love glass casting.

I love the challenge, the promise, the glory of a satin, cats eye reflective, deep and living, translucent sculpture.

These are some clay originals. While all this information and promise is in each, only two of these became a glass reality. The other two have nothing to say for themselves now but these images. And while they were lovely, something about that destruction fuels me forward.

When I was a kid, riding in the backseat across country, with my sister beside me and my parents in the front, we stopped at a National Park Cave visitors center.

I remember standing at the top of the stairs that led into the depths. A cold damp wind flowed up from the dark and poured over me. I was DYING to go in there. Photos on the walls showed stalagmites and stalactites and it was magical and enticing. Due to travel pressures, we didn’t go in the cave. We had many hundreds of miles to travel and time was running out. There were not hours and hours to spend on an underground tour that day.

Years later, persistently haunted by that moment of standing at the top of those stairs, my husband and I visited a cave on every vacation we had. We visited them all over the United States. In a way, I was forever searching for that cave, that I had been robbed of as a child.

And so, today, when I lose a sculpture I’m so so painfully excited about, I find myself in those old shoes.

Yearning, rather than dissuaded. Excited rather than discouraged. Driven to complete this design I started, no matter how difficult or crazy. I hunger for the eden I glimpsed, dreamed of. I suppose all artists are sharks, seeking renewal, seeking new waters, unable to stop without suffocating. Its a good feeling, to be moving, to be searching with a promise of a garden at the end.

Blossom

GramaTortoise /

Every artwork has a story. And this one is about rebirth.

I moved from Maryland to Colorado in August of 2017. My husband, son and I were in a car with a 17 year old cat, two bonsai trees (big ones), two tortoises ( big ones!), and a tank of hermit crabs (seriously?) for three days.

Yes.

We left behind an orchard we had planted which had borne fruit for the first time that year. We left behind an intricate and beautiful tree house/ jungle gym that my husband hand crafted out of whole tree trunks cut down from our yard. We left behind my studio, which my husband built for me, with industrial quality ventilation and work bench and windows, and beauty and joy.

And we arrived in Colorado and moved in with my sister, and brother in law, while we waited for our house in Maryland to sell.

This was our rebirth.

I thought when we told my sister that our house had sold, in October of 2017, she would be relieved, and ready for us to move out of her home. But she and my brother in law were sad. It was poetic. We all loved living together. We loved it so much, we spent months shopping for a new house we could all live in together.

Now we share every day, and are so blessed. My son is thrilled to have his aunt and uncle in the house. They are thrilled to have their nephew to play with daily. My husband loves to talk endlessly to my brother in law, who enjoys the same. I thought women could talk until there was no oxygen left; these guys are like senators! Its wonderful to hear them arguing subtle points of science endlessly.

We could not have imagined this miracle, yet we are blessed with it now everyday. And the image of sitting in a waterlily, just accepting the unfolding around me, tells the story.

Cleo Dunsmore Buchanan

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