7 Images

I have been quiet about hanging the show. Shy about seeing my pieces displayed publicly.  Views of evocative imagery; scenes of the private rooms of my heart; swirls of creative urge. Not one of those 7 prints is easy. They came hard. Each one a breakthrough. Working with layers of image and word is the panning for gold in my artistic trials. It feels like tedium--bending over a cloudy moving stream as I hold the strainer focused on the gold that is sure to rise. Somewhere from the wetness and clouds it comes through--Oh, that's it! That which is here in front of my eyes with only thin air separating. And this "it" is remarkable at first sight before critical mind comes to my side with long pointy finger and jabbing words. What I see of the 7 prints? There is beauty there. I could sit with each one as a friend and each one would move naturally and without emotion to my side with an arm around my shoulder and in a fantasy my picture becomes something, someone else and we talk for hours mostly not saying a word. Each print tells me why they are. They say there is no creator only an emergence of art through the creative one--the artist facilitates the coming of the art that was already there. Just here on this side of vision--the other side of the way we think things are. So 7 prints came through me and are now hanging on the walls of Waldo Pizza in Lee's Summit. Today I walk by the tables and see silhouettes of talking and laughing heads in front of the art hanging above each table. What's going on here I wonder  as I watch this dream and I see the prints that told me just a moment ago that they are not mine--they emerged through me, that is all and I think "Why art?" and I see my art with strangers eating pizza: sitting at the table with families and friends and business partners. And like a mother at the prom I see my darlings with others and I stand uncomfortably fine about with others. There is a chance that one or two may go home with their new admirers and preen and be hung in just the right spot that is not my spot at all . . .

Creating Something

This a simple observation but on mornings like this my heart is laughing adolescent-ly at the thought of making something new--joy that I can do this. The thought of new or old words repeated in a row of color and dance or black and mourning or somewhere in between gives perspective--releases immediate view. A way of wording words. Stopping the reading as the reader looks up re-putting the words in the back of his brain until he finds a connection of memory or not.

A place at the table

Is this the beginning?

I want to write a poem but what do I say? I have nothing to add to the conversation. No springtime celebratory words. No weather reports of approaching thunderstorms with dangerous lightning and high wind. I seem to have forgotten how to feel the inner joy of writing a tragic poem. Writing artful words plays perhaps within the top 4 or 3 or 2 favorite things to do each day forever. The land that I play on is dry. No sprouts of words or paraphrase. No droplets of iambic pentameter falling into a couplet or two. Dairy Hollow I'm coming to you. Save a place for me at the table. Feed me and give me rest, but please, expect nothing.

Garage Art in Winter

We finally had a snowfall! The roses are dormant and the Downy Woodpeckers are meeting at the feeder. The paintings I finished on the side of the garage have not slid off but remain bright behind clouds of falling snow. This is the winter view of the poem I wrote a year ago when freezing temperatures were rare and not a snowflake fell. I have lightly edited the poem on the website at http://wordlayers.com/GarageArt.htm  and here is how it begins:

Slightly lightly we began to notice and
to speak of wildflowers growing
by the garage in the back garden
and placed lawn chairs there just right
for evening conversation.
   
In the waning warmth of September days
we painted those wildflowers
on the white stucco garage wall--
the celandine poppy and prairie aster
the primrose and purple coneflower.

Now in December we stand
at the kitchen window just right
for mid-day sunshine and
in silence watch as winter's light 
plays across the colors painted
when the flowers faded in the fall.

Solstice Socks

Ten socks. Ten solstice socks and all are hung above the fireplace in our December home. Five pairs ready for family gals. What a wonderful project this knitting socks throughout the months and seasons of 2012. Learning to knit in the round with four bamboo needles was a challenge so wonderfully accomplished because I didn't think I could do it. But I needed to do it. I needed this steep learning curve to turn my mind around and into the math and logic of stitching stitches that held together in a mutual sockness. When I knit close, elbows in, fingers touching, eyes focused on the stitch moving from one needle to another there is no room for anything else in my thinking brain. If I stray in thought a stitch is dropped, a row falls, the pattern dips. The recovery is an arduous task but recovery does happen. Knitting is sometimes dedicated to a process of recovery. It is a "work through" like baking or gardening or painting. Low these many months I have worked through a dilemma and now I can celebrate gifting. I am grateful to have people I love to give these pairs of socks to. Warm feet make for warm hearts--truly.

Within the Thunder (Pt. 2)

within the thunder. . .I've been working on a revision of the first poem written after that mind-numbing concussion where only color and image existed. Perhaps this is where I belong for the images I put down were from heart and not from mind. Seriously, the dyslexic that I am has always struggled with word. Making sense of words through spelling and grammar continues to be a struggle. Either I accept that I cannot write or I continue in battle. However, out of the mess of speaking through writing came the magic of WordLayers which is a personal victory out of war into art. I go in and out of consciousness not from concussion but from creativity.

See Website

Creative spoke to me

Creative spoke to me
and developed out of me
only when I was backed against the wall
only when I recognized hatred
only as I stood face to face
with the force of it
did I know to put the potency  

of my words forward.

Discrimination marked hatred's hostility.
I tried to write about this and
struggled with the language of this and

found myself rummaging through an

old attic trunk filled with alphabet letters

and words.

Dyslexia, a central character in my story

enabled me to see    inside-out    and    center-to-edge.

Librarian skill, also central, cataloged the contents of this attic trunk~

words of nonsense? to the trash~

words of daydream? fly them out the window~

cruel hateful words? erase them like grease pen on whiteboard~

words of judgment? light the match and watch them burn.

In my rummaging, I discovered words of understanding and words of love 

words of equality and words of kindness and I said

Oh, please come and sit with me 

show me what you are

teach me all of your words and 
I will write them until I can write no more.

Since the accident I have had no zip for writing or art. I've been busy with the after effects of trauma. Family love and care, doctors and therapists have brought me to a place of return and recognition. I saw an add for Color Reform ABC carpets in the NYT's Magazine. It was art I wanted to look at and study simply because of the pleasure it gave me. I cut the page out and placed it by my favorite coffee mug and pot of pens. Today, I'm going up the stairs I fell down. My studio is there waiting to be cleaned and arranged and opened for whatever comes next. Creativity has shown itself as a strength that cannot be shook, rattled or rolled out of my body, mind or spirit. Good day, today.