Fall Photos

Winter is almost here, and as I sit here thinking about Christmas shopping, it's hard to believe how quickly fall flew by. Before I even knew it, I was trying to pretend I wasn't watching the first gaggle (that's the right word for it, I swear!) of honking geese speeding their way south.  "Noooooo, come baaaaaack!" I called, looking pretty silly to anyone who might have witnessed my fruitless pleading. Luckily, I was in my car alone, feeling a bit sad that summer was ending, because close behind fall follows the cold, gray season we call winter.

The autumn season is notoriously beautiful here in Kentucky. Without summer's sticky humidity, the air seems to glow- a freshly-scrubbed crystal clear blue. Temperatures are perfect, and the still lush green grass contrasts with the bright golds, crimsons, and oranges of the changing leaves. The trees have actually been mostly bare and brown for two or three weeks now, which is quite a letdown after such a sumptuous feast for the eyes. Here are a few of my fall photos for your enjoyment- a little taste of my life in Kentucky.  Goodbye, fall...

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.   
~Rabindranath Tagore

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
~Albert Camus

  There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
~Henri Matisse

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
~Henry David Thoreau

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

 Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
~John Lubbock

 For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.
~Martin Luther

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
~George Santayana

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
~Anton Chekhov

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
~Wallace Stevens

In the depth of winter I learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
~Albert Camus





Alright, winter, I think I'm ready for you, now...

Work in Progress

Message from a Dream

ingredients: vintage book cover, vintage Japanese envelopes, vintage stamps, vintage book pages, image transfers, graphite drawing, watercolor pencils, metallic oil crayon, mica, stitching

This is a piece I'm working on for the upcoming (February) Print Club show at Northern Kentucky University, the theme of which is "In Your Dreams".  This part is not quite finished, and will eventually be glued onto a larger book cover with more images. So far, I'm actually liking it, and when do I ever say that?

Stay tuned for further developments!

Language of the Earth

My intention was for this to be a multi-panel piece, but as you may know, artwork seems to take on a life and mind of its own, quite carelessly ignoring our plans. Since these pieces didn't turn out as I had envisioned, I'm not sure they say what I wanted them to, and so the purpose of attaching them to each other may now be moot. I'm wondering if they might work better as separate pieces. Has your artwork ever mutinied on you this way?


In this post, I introduced the first panel, which I'm posting here so that you can see what they look like together. (I apologize for the horrible photos- the colors are affected by less than optimal lighting conditions, and I haven't had time to get good shots.)

Here's the second panel.  I'm now going with the working title, "Language of the Earth", though I'm not certain that's right, either.

ingredients: vintage book cover, vintage map, found metal objects, fossil, ash seeds, ginko leaf, metallic ink, stitching (embroidery floss).

Some details:

So far, so confused. Let me know what you think, as I seem to be fresh out of thoughts right now.

Halloweenish Humor

Frankenangel

vintage book cover, vintage book pages, image transfer, magazine cut outs, old window screen fragment, vintage watch part, brads, map fragments, graph paper, graphite drawing, water soluble crayon, mica, vintage watch part, brads

Well, you may think this piece is a bit weird and creepy, but I prefer to think of it as Halloweenish humor!

 Have a hilariously happy Halloween!

Playing Favorites

A big hunk (is that the right unit of measure? should it be pounds? or maybe liters? ) of gratitude goes out to Seth Apter, collaborator extraordinaire, for including my response in today's installment of

In this part of The Pulse, artists were asked to: share a picture of a favorite piece of art that you have created and explain its meaning to you...

So head on over to The Altered Page to find out which piece I chose, and treat yourself to artwork by talented people such as Miz Katie, Pam Carriker, and many more.  I've immensely enjoyed each and every installment of Playing Favorites so far; I have no doubt that you will, too.

Wabi + Sabi = Perfect Imperfection

As time goes by, I find myself coming to appreciate the beauty of imperfection- a concept the Japanese call "wabi sabi."  The aesthetic of wabi sabi encompasses so much more than this; I can't explain it in words, but I think that maybe I'm learning to see it.

Words exist because of meaning.  Once you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. ~Chuang Tse

 Wabi sabi acknowledges three things: "nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished."  ~Richard R. Powell 

 Wabi-sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else. Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view. Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace. ― Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers 

wabi ... simple and quiet, austere refinement

  Nothing to do with grandeur or symmetry.  ~ Wabi Sabi:The Japanese Art of Impermanence by Andrew Juniper

 The moon’s setting, a crow caws, the sky is filled with frost
Maples by the river, fishermen’s lights, the traveler faces a sad sleep
Outside the City of Suchow, from the Cold Mountain Temple
The sound of the midnight bell reaches the traveler’s boat               ~Cheung Chi

 Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all.  ~Noble Harbor.com

wabi is ...tranquil simplicity;
austere elegance;
unpolished, imperfect, or irregular beauty...

...rusticity;

 things in their simplest, most austere, and natural state;
a serene, transcendental state of mind...             

 

sabi is... the beauty that treasures the passage of time, and with it the lonely sense of impermanence it evokes;
the patina that age bestows...
which is true to the natural cycle of birth and death...   

 ~from Wabi Sabi: The Art of Everyday Life by Diane Durston

"Wabi sabi" was a phrase conceptualized by the Japanese poet Basho, who was also known for writing haiku.

if I took it in hand,
it would melt in my hot tears—
heavy autumn frost

Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.    ~Lao Tse

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.   ~ Hans Margolius




On a completely different topic, I was excited and honored to be asked by artist/blogger Nanci Hersh to do a guest post as part of her "The Artist as Collector" series. Please check it out and see which piece from my own collection I chose to feature.  Nanci's blog, On and Off the Walls, is well worth reading any time, as she is an accomplished writer and artist with lots of inspiring ideas.Thanks, Nanci!

The Earth Remembers...?

That's the working title of the piece I'm now working on- or, maybe not.  The title is just not coming to me right now, but it's not really important at this stage of the game.

So this is the top part of the piece, loosely representative of the earth's outer layers. It's made from the cover of an old geography book, and will have additional panels attached below this one. It's more structured, organized, and formally composed than I wanted it to be.  I attribute this tendency to my original training in graphic design school, but I'm working to overcome it.  Baby steps, right?







Some things to think about:  What artistic "stuckness" are you working to overcome, one baby step at a time?  How do you go about titling your pieces?