A good long walk. A full fridge. Healthy fam.
That’s it, really, a gratitude post.
But here are some collections of BLUE*
* prompted by Acey at SparklingLotus
She asks, among other things: what blues are you drawn to and what blues do you avoid?
** Harriet Tubman print of a painting by Natalie Daise aka GullahMama on Instagram
The last prompt response to Acey’s collage Month* is big, perhaps 15 inches tall. I may not glue it down.
Stepping stones was the prompt. “Imagine our challenge experience has been a literal path with a stepping stone for each person.” I haven’t attempted to represent others here, but rather the sense of collective opening and movement.
The big rock arch formation giving passage to the sea represents one opening, the shell and bay window represent two more. The computer is a rather literal nod to how we connect, while the shoe stands in as metaphor for continuing on… stepping on more stones on more paths winding out ahead of us.
The melon’s bounteous seeds represent the fertility of the imagination, particularly when held in a collective vessel, here, the rind. I wanted to bring wings back in, so the cranes took pride of place.
I might not have been drawn to that shoe, but for what Grace said about how much she appreciated the gender-fluid quality of many of my images. The shoe itself mixes things up, but then, too, the laces touch the very female image of the melon, suggesting relationship.
It’s a sunny day here. Kids play with exuberance at the neighboring elementary school. Finn relaxes in the sun. It’s clean-the-bathrooms day, so I’ll do that and I want to make a meatloaf later. But otherwise, it’s back to SC 1738, with occasional peeks at how the Iowa caucuses are going.
*
Go to sparklinglotusink.com for more info on the collage challenge.
Prompt #26
Consider aspects of working style you’ve grown to admire about each of your virtual collage table-mates
See what you can come up with that pays tribute/serves as an active homage to as many admired aspects as you can manage.
This is a nod to Grace, bringing in her themes
in particular, her consistent awareness of the sanctity of all life (trees, trees, trees, flowers, children, our ape cousins) and her awareness of the CRISIS part of “climate crisis” (changing Arctic landscape, upper left)
and her method of ripped edges too. I like how they add a sense of urgency.
The wonderful themes and methods of other participants have not gone unnoticed and I look forward to trying out new things later this year.
Acey and her organic layering of paper and meaning, using time as an element in composition, too, by walking away and coming back. Also, she makes her subjects from marked papers and doesn’t rely wholesale (as I do) on pre-existing images. I want to try that.
Joanne inspires me with her courageous mark-making, on top of already stellar compositions, no less! I’ve gotten out my oil pastels and ordered some gouache paints.
PS Joanne knows this but others don’t. I try to leave a comment on her blog roughly three times a week and they never “take.” So we email and it ends up being private.
Liz’s inclusion of words and personal ephemera is going to have me rethinking what papers I collect. Also maybe using the light box for pix, something I have yet to do.
Prompt #25 (the just-because prompt)
Select a few pieces that keep catching your eye.
bonus points if you choose some things you’ve been mentally pairing off and on throughout the challenge but they’ve had no direct or even tangential relationship to the prompt of the day. make THAT collage.
*
See also my Flickr album, SoulCollage, and the tags for SoulCollage and collage here on the blog.
Such as: I see you’ve gotten your hair cut.
Another example said to me years ago by a psychic: “you’re in good shape, considering what you’ve been through.”
Okay… I’m sure she meant to be encouraging but the fact that I’ve never forgotten her words kinda suggests otherwise.
These three scraps of paper, from the top down: 1) an aerial view of a lake in Colorado; 2) antique linens beautifully cared for; 3) a young impoverished girl sunk in a wading pool, somehow managing to look both defiant and defeated.
Above/Below/Within — Tell a 3 piece story about who you are in relation to the sacred directions
Reading from bottom to top — the girl represents what I was given (not literally, I grew up comfortably middle class), the linens represent the mediating power of creativity, the clouds and lake, call forth the bigger picture, the place of transformation.
Without intending to so do, this collage reveals the strength and beauty of such an approach.
The collage below also came together this morning — similar in structure, but more grounded, specific and joyful.
*
See also my Flickr album, SoulCollage, and the tags for SoulCollage and collage here on the blog.
And from last night, another slide show made, in part, while sleepless last night. We were away this weekend, so I hope to catch up by Wednesday.
Indigo cloth dyed by me at Rebellion Farm, SC during Donna Hardy’s weekend workshop; gateway view from a barracoon on the coast of Africa, photo probably from Smithsonian Magazine; a collage I made ages ago; the cemetery is in Charleston, SC and the magnolias too; Angel Oak from Johns Island, SC; a river scene from Boone Hall Plantation, Mount Pleasant, SC and finally, cabins at the fairly recently refurbished McLeod Plantation on James Island near Charleston, SC.
Continuing with Collage Month.* Sort of.
Prompt #22: Breathe deeply and visualize a place that you love. Send it a Valentine.
It may be trite to say that home is a place I love, but it truly is. What follows is a little bit more of a meditation than a valentine — one that includes ‘home’ as well as intellectual/heart preoccupations that have taken place within its walls. Maybe a valentine is to follow.
I put the photo of the prison work force picking cotton behind the nest as a way of saying that from the comfort of my home (and my white privilege), I’ve been able to delve into the darkest period of our nation’s history — a history that some would say hasn’t really ended because ‘slavery didn’t disappear, it evolved’ — unpaid or barely paid prison work forces who are disproportionately black standing as one piece of evidence.
When I noticed what looks like tufts of cotton in the bird’s nest, I thought, “how appropriate,” offering symbolic testament to how the comforts and ease of my life are facilitated by the color of my skin, purchased with black sweat and suffering.
It is my belief that once you truly internalize this, you cannot help but support reparations. (See the Atlantic Article on sidebar).
Home (below), from this morning.
Prison vs home.
And then, because it came up, here’s an old SoulCollage card about America. You’ll recognize the lead from True Blood.
Not sure you can see, but there is a tear falling down her cheek.
Okay, one more. A less literal more Feeling State card about America.
*
See also my Flickr album, SoulCollage, and the tags for SoulCollage and collage here on the blog.
