Digging

I sometimes question why I keep  coming back to this platform (the blog) for writing. But I know in my heart that somewhere I might leave a spark when someone receives my humble words with gusto.

I am a teacher – “by trade,” I always add.  I was trained and have the degree to pass along information.  But I am a sharer, by nature, wanting to pass on a seedling of small value that may grow in the imagination of the right soul.

I am also a storyteller.  With words and my camera, I catalog for self-reflection the mysteries of my journey before the truths are realized.  And maybe, someone out there can identify.

I was driven (by car) from my homeland and dropped (by faith) into this new country, the Low Country of South Carolina.  The homeland of friends, of profession, of identity behind, this new country beckoned with it’s gentler climate, it’s unique beauty and a pace that was most necessary for me to learn at this point in life.

I am acquiring a new language, surmounting personal obstacles, discovering meaning as I dig and gather.  Nothing new.

I am often alone, which allows time for pondering and creating.  Lots of making, experimenting, analyzing, not always in that order.  It’s a circle, all connected, rotating in either direction to the most essential point at a given moment.

In“The Alphabet of Trees”  Margo Fortunato Galt’s writing exercise uses a circle as a mind map.  She says “On the circle, every place is equal and every place is important and every place is the same.”

Yes; no matter where where you land.

 

This weekend I was faced with rethinking a decision to landscape the beds in front of our house.  Each time we decide to change or renew an outdoor feature, we must submit for permission from a governing board.  They questioned the distance from the bed to the road and my puzzlement, became frustration, became opportunity, became bounty.

We decided to forego more shrubbery and plant grass.  So I busied myself with salvaging some bulbs before they were bulldozed away.  As I dug small holes and moved dirt with my hands, I felt something unexpected.

It wasn’t the airy soil of my vegetable garden, but a dense and spongy clay.  I was amazed by the random marbling of red ochre in the grayness of the glob.  I added potting mix to the bulbs and collected a flower pot full of clumps to dry.  From gray to red to golden.

I know the eco-folks gather soils on their jaunts and use it to color their papers.  Here, in one spot, in my front landscape is a palette of earth ochres and Helen Fitzgerald’s video shares the ancient connections and explains how to make watercolor paint from it.
And another thing.

This weekend I added something very special to my circle.

A simple message.  Just keep digging!

Yellow Perspective

This month I am searching for YELLOW with Jennifer Coyne Qudeen and Julie B. Booth.

I thought I would start with a rather yellow page from the 1961 text,                                                Elements of Design by Donald M. Anderson.  His research indicates that Yellow has a bad rap.

More recently, YELLOW spins positive.  Color Matters notes that yellow is the “most luminous” on the color wheel.  I’m not surprised that as I searched for yellow, signs were popping up everywhere.  It’s a real attention getter.

It also seems to blossom earliest of the spring flowers.

Beyond that…this is what I spied from around the globe in all its yellowishness.

All You Can Art

“Who knows, maybe the root is the flower from that other life.”                   Mary Oliver

Being an artist is sometimes like having an endless smorgasbord of inspiration and ideas. I try to tend to it. I never take it for granted. I like to share regularly. Most days I can’t help noticing the density of life around me, the lushness of sight and sound, making note, taking shots with the camera, cataloging and processing in darkness and silence.New work can emerge from playful splashing in muddy puddles – in the garden, in the palette or the dye pot.

Like the germinating Japanese indigo seeds in my kitchen window that warm and incubate, imagination simmers, distills, materializes.

Even my seedlings enjoy a view of the mountains.

Some pods birth today. Others will relish the soil a bit longer before promise turns green with fuchsia stems.

How will I tend to the seeds of imagination today?

Piles of raw eco-printed paper-mordanting

Raw Material

Turned into something

Done or not-so-done.

Making sun tea. Or rose dye from the wabi-sabi petals.

Marks on paper, paint, pencil, stencil?

Over leaf impressions

Straight to paper

Plotting for the “Roy-B-Giv Game.” with Jennifer and Julie.  A hint…

Tutu’s on the brain.

Tree climbing tutu.

Digging with bare hands into the microbes of well-balanced soil.

Reading: The Alphabet of Trees Rearranging the furniture to make more room for the creative mess.

Finishing some stitching from “yesterday’s” bits and starts.

And stitching and stitching.

It must tell me “done.”

Let the floss bin spill thread formations in perfect bends and turns.

Fabric wisps blowing into position.

Looking at friends projects on the internet – stirring my duende.

Going to work at the little quilt shop up the road.

Pleased and pressed to celebrate lots of babies with sewn confections of another sort. Binding, binding, binding, Thimbles aren’t enough to save my fingers this week.

Some things never change:  Birds, feathers, houses rear in abundance.

Minor mechanical malfunctions: resolved.

Making a list.

Trying to find meaning.

“Who knows, maybe the root is the flower from that other life.”                   Mary Oliver