Weekly Quick Collage: Summer Sweetness

Summer Sweetness

collage, 5.5 x 4.75

It's so bitter-sweet, saying goodbye to summer. While fall is truly glorious here, with perfect daytime temperatures, crisp, cool nights, and the riotous colors of the changing leaves, I can't help feeling a sense of loss, and a sadness that comes with knowing that winter is not far away.  Of course, this is the natural way of things, the cycles that are a part of the balance of seasons on Earth. Yet, it's difficult to reconcile myself to the coming darkness, cold, and seemingly colorless landscape. So I remind myself that the trees and plants are not dead, just taking a well-deserved restorative rest until spring, when they will burst forth with life again and continue to grow.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?
                                                                                                                  ~ John Steinbeck

Happy fall, everyone!

The Patina of Age

As I was walking through my flower gardens yesterday, I was disappointed to find that many of the summer flowers were winding down.  My first thought was that it wasn't very pretty; heat, lack of rain, and time had taken their toll.  Perennials that had produced lavish displays of color all summer were finished blooming, leaving brittle dry stems and faded flowers that were going to seed.  But as I slowed down and really looked, I began to see that a transformation had taken place.  They were still beautiful; I just had to look at them differently to see it.

The colors are muted, with more variation in tone than before...

grays and browns are mixed with soft mauves and peaches...

 ...with petals dried and curled until they look like crazy dancers in a windstorm.

They embody the Japanese aesthetic quality called wabi-sabi. Put in simplest terms:

 

Wabi is the beauty that comes from the right kind of imperfection,

and Sabi is the beauty that comes from age.

And aging means changing...

 

...it's a different kind of beauty...

 

 but beautiful, still.  I can see that now.

Better, Worse, or Just the Same?

In a recent post, I mentioned that I wasn't happy with the first of three pieces that I did for a client.  I had hoped to send her photos of at least three, so that she could choose one to go with two others she had already purchased.  So I added some plants on both sides, interrupting and covering most of that big horseshoe-shaped area on the bottom, which I felt was competing too much with the focal point.

       Is it better, worse, or just
              the same?







 Sometimes I debate with myself over whether I've actually improved the piece when I make changes like this.  Often I wonder if what I'm putting in is as good as what I'm taking out.  Was it better before?  Was it worth the risk of losing what I covered up?  At these times I hear the eye doctor's voice echoing in my head, "Is it better, worse, or just the same?"  Looking at an eye chart, though, the choice is usually far more obvious.

In life, as in art, the choices are not often so clear.  So, what do you do?  If we doubt all our choices too much, indecision can easily turn into paralysis.  The outcomes of this type of thinking are that you do nothing, which is a waste of your talent and precious time, or that you let circumstances and/or others make your decisions for you.  And believe me, you might not like the ones they make.

Of course, major life decisions are much more difficult to make than choosing what to glue onto a collage.  If you don't like what you've done to a piece of art, you can glue something else on, tear something off, paint over it, or cut it up and reuse the pieces.  If you make a bad choice in life, you have to live with it, literally.  For many of us, this thought is pretty scary.  Lately, I have found decision-making of any kind daunting.  For example, I'm seemingly unable to figure out what direction I want to take with my work.  This is not a life-or-death decision, so why is it giving me so much trouble? 

                                                                  photos by Colin Reusch

In his article, You Cannot Choose the Wrong Path, Stephen Mills writes, "You can’t possibly know what experiences you would have had if you had chosen differently.  Life is too contingent for that kind of after-the-fact-it-might-have-been obsessing."  He sheds more light on this subject in another post, Why You Should be More Decisive:
"When you spend too much time analyzing a decision, you are usually less satisfied with whatever decision you end up making.  People who consider more factors when making decisions are more likely to worry later that they didn’t make the right decisions.  So they agonize during the decision making process and then worry even after they’ve made a decision."  Yup, that's me.

I like the way Larry Crane puts it:  "Often, it is not the end action that creates the most fear; it is the decision to act or not act. Since life offers no guarantees and you would never know that your decision would be wrong until you have made it, then you might as well let go of all of your fear, take the risk, and decide. It is definitely better than keeping yourself in limbo. Although it is true that one wrong turn could get you seemingly lost, it could also be that such a turn could be an opportunity for an adventure, and even open more fantastic roads. It is all a matter of perspective. You have the choice between being a lost traveler or an accidental tourist of life. You have the choice to let go of your fear of deciding."

IT IS ALL A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE.   Can someone remind me of that every three seconds or so?

 OK, these are the three pieces I'm sending to my customer:

Transformation 41

 Transformation 42

Transformation 43

                                                           

That's my final answer.  I'm not phoning a friend.                       

Currently on Display...

 ... in my gardens. It's that time again.  Time to plant the hopeful seeds, to lay them down in a bed of soft, warm soil, to nurture them and wait for nature's blessings.  To begin again, again.

It occurs to me that part of the magic of Spring is that we're given the gift of another chance.  In an existence where there are few "do-overs", we can start over once again.  Reminds me of a Chicago song, "Listen, children, all is not lost, all is not lost..."  It's all about hope.











The onion sets are in, and the strawberries.

 But my flower beds are looking pretty bad.  Yikes-  they could use some work!  I hope I'll get them cleaned out today!

In the meantime, here are some of the flowers currently on display...

Convergence + Totally Tweaked

Transformation 42 - Ingredients: monotype scraps (oil-based litho inks on Rives BFK), Caran D'Ache crayons, watercolor pencils, acrylic inks, acrylic gel medium, PVA glue.  7" x 7"

Here is the finished version of Transformation 42.  As you can see, the only big change I made was to darken the lighter blue area around the seed.  I felt it was too light before, creating an unintentional focus on that area, and too much contrast to the rest of the piece in general.

I've been working on another piece over the last week or so, and I think it's finally complete.  This one is made from some of the recycled pieces that I washed off a couple of weeks ago.  I've been thinking about simplifying my work a bit, and I believe this is a tiny step in that direction.  Okay, you can stop laughing now; for me, this is simpler, you have to admit.  It is, really.

Convergence - Ingredients:  Recycled monotype scraps, Caran D'Ache crayons, watercolor pencils, acrylic gel medium, PVA glue.  11.5" x 7"

Still a Freak

A friend of mine recently referred to me as a "tree freak."  It was not an insult, he was just alluding to the fact that we both love these beautiful, huge, sacred beings.  It would be hard to think of a higher compliment.  Allow me to introduce you to some of my newest friends.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.  ~John Muir

Trees outstrip most people in the extent and depth of their work for the public good.  ~Sara Ebenreck, American Forests

I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.  ~James Russell Lowell

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
~Kahlil Gibran

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods.  But he cannot save them from fools.  ~John Muir

The trees are whispering to me, reminding me of my roots, and my reach... shhhhhh... can you hear them?  Selflessly sharing their subtle song.  ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.  ~Cree Indian Proverb

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914

Waiting (The Seed)

One of the primary symbols repeated throughout my work is that of the seed. 

Germination 2 by S. Davidson

I'm sure the connotations are pretty obvious, but especially at this time of year I'm reminded of the seed's message.  All of nature, where I live at least, has placed every bit of its energy and hope for the future inside a magical little package. 

 Nature has complete faith in this tiny, unassuming container of potential.  Doubt does not exist.

But for us short-sighted humans, it's different.  I clearly remember when I learned about seeds.  I was six years old, and we had just moved into a new house.  My grandmother, who I generally followed everywhere, gave me some tiny, funny-looking, dried-up brown things and showed me how to stick my finger into the dirt, put the seeds in the holes, and cover them up.  When I expressed my puzzlement at this, she told me something that seemed absurd to my six-year-old brain:  these little brown things would turn into flowers!  I was skeptical.  I guess, being outside of my very limited realm of experience, this just didn't seem  possible. 

Boy, was I surprised when, a couple of weeks later, these things had turned into marigolds!  This cemented my belief in the powerful magic of seeds, right then and there. 

At this point in the cycle, nature is once again sealing up her little packages of magic, knowing that they will come to fruition in their time. To the universe, waiting is nothing.  For me, it's a little harder, but I'm trying to learn.  I'm planting my seeds, and waiting.  I have to believe that faith and patience will eventually produce beautiful blooms.

 Secret Garden by S. Davidson

The waiting is the hardest part; every day you see one more card.  You take it on faith, you take it to the heart.  The waiting is the hardest part.  -Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers