When Tammie of Beauty Flows chose the theme "sticks" for this week's art challenge, I knew I had to jump in! I love sticks - in the woods, on or off of the trees, in art, or laying in a pile in my studio. Here are a few of my favorites.
Snow and ice accumulated on these sticks in my yard to make a lovely black and white abstract...
Sticks with seeds overhanging the Kinniconick Creek...
I used a smooth bleached stick from the creek in this mixed media piece called, "Flight Talismans".
Sticks outlined in the light of the super moon...
Weathered, twisted sticks on the sand dunes at Cumberland Island.
My friend, Mish, trying to hide behind some bamboo sticks. Not working too well.
Indigenous
Years ago, I used to make sculptures from sticks, grapevines, rocks and copper. This was the only example I could find. The background is a topological map of a region in Kentucky that is very important to me, the rocks, which have seeds or flowers of indigenous plants glued onto them, have holes in them and are hanging on - you guessed it - sticks.
Sticks from a tree submerged in the Kinniconick Creek...
Beech sticks still hold onto their leaves in winter...
A redbud tree in bloom...
Do you think that's enough, yet? Thanks for inviting me, Tammie! Go to Beauty Flows to see what the other participants came up with!
The lovely Tammie Lee of Beauty Flows is hosting this week's drawing challenge, Prayer/ Meditation/ Still Point. As soon as I heard what the theme was, I knew I was in; much of my art revolves around these concepts, so it was right up my alley, as they say.
While I worked on this piece, I asked myself what "indestructible truth" actually means to me in relation to the theme of the drawing challenge. When I come right down to it, the only indestructible truth I know, that I feel sure of in my heart and soul, is that everything in the universe is connected to every other thing. Every human being, every blade of grass, every rock, every animal, every tree. When one thing is affected, it can have far-reaching consequences; this is known as, "the butterfly effect". Here's how Wikipedia describes it: "In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state." I prefer to meditate/pray while outdoors in nature; that "still point "is the moment I feel that connection, or 'become one with everything'. The experience cannot adequately be described in words.
This reminds me of a joke (and who doesn't love a good Buddhist joke, right?) A Buddhist walks into a vegetarian restaurant to order a veggie burger. The server asks, "What will you have?" The Buddhist replies, "Make me one with everything." (Sorry, I can hear the collective groan, but I just couldn't resist.)
Notes on technique/strategies:
Going back two posts ago, I wrote about strategies for pushing your art to another level. I incorporated a couple of them here, one being the "throw out your first ten ideas"idea. I really didn't keep count, but I threw out a lot of them, because I've developed habits of doing the same things over and over, and I felt the work was getting stale. I also limited my materials, in that I decided not to include any representational objects, unless they were real, such as the flower and the feather. Then, just to make it even more frustrating, I tried to limit the amount of compositional elements, because I've been feeling like my compositions were too busy. That required a great deal of restraint on my part; I just had to keep asking myself, "Will this improve the piece, or not?", and frequently the answer was "No!". As a result, I am happier with this piece than some of the others I've made lately.
Dont't forget to visit Beauty Flows for links to more posts on this drawing challenge!
The drawing challenge for this week, hosted by Tammie is 'pollinators'...
... and I just couldn't pass this one up, since my husband keeps bees... Don't forget to go to Tammie's beautiful blog to see what everyone else did for the challenge!
