I snapped this picture of my niece, Tori, playing in the hay. She was enamored with it, shouting "My hay, my hay!" I couldn't get over how happy it made her. Editing it tonight, it reminded me of a picture I took last year of my niece, Catherine, playing in the snow. We had taken a walk in the fresh snow when she just reached down picked up a pile and through it in the air. Both girls seem lost in a world of bliss,
Avery and Raine stopped by after Tae Kwan Do the other night and once again I found myself fascinated with their hands while they were playing in the freshly mowed grass in the backyard. It's as if they are intentionally making art in their presentation. The way they touch and hold the objects they find seems so deliberate.
Here's definitely a case where a picture says a 1000 words. These are photos of my friend Joan's pug Soup, who came to visit Alfie and me the other day. As Soup has aged her tongue has begun to hang out more and more. She also has interesting markings on her one side from when she sat against a heater as a young puppy and burned herself. Her markings have earned her some interesting nicknames -- Racing Stripe, Moccassin. Even Soup isn't her real name. Originally, she was named after Moses' wife in the Bible, Zipporah and for a very brief time, Zip. Soup evolved from that.
So you all know by now just how much I love taking photos. I enjoy the excitement of trying to get that perfect shot that captures the emotions of the moment. I have taken classes and continue to try to improve my skills. It is a humbling blow to the ego then when I hand the camera to a four-year-old or a seven-year-old or a 10-year-old and they take shots that just naturally do what I've been trying to do. It is also an awesome experience. The camera teeters, they crouch down low and you worry that they'll drop that expensive piece of equipment that you sold your soul to get. They forego the strap, touch every button but the shutter button with very sticky fingers, but these photos are the result. Maybe not as focused as they could be, a critic could certainly offer some critique, but Tori, Avery and Raine, the nieces and nephews responsible for these shots, certainly caught the moment. Tori took the shot of me and Vader the week before he died. Her mom was away and we had these special moments when we took Vader for walks (in a baby stroller!) and she would ask me how long until Vader goes to heaven as if he was preparing for a grand vacation. Raine took the one of Alfie and me last night and his brother Avery caught the trio of us -- Tori, Alfie and me. I love these photos not because they are perfect but because they are perfectly realized.
A group of friends and I used to play Magic the Gathering. Because some of these friends and especially my brother, Mark, would take an exceptionally long time to contemplate their next move, I would doodle on these card boxes while I waited. Listening to artist, Donna Wynbrandt (www.donnawynbrant.com) talk about her work and how the images flowed one to the next, I remembered how I used to doodle these drawings, freeform, non-thinking, letting one image meld into another. I went and dug up the boxes tonight, which was not too difficult. I still play Magic the Gathering with my nephew on occassion and have even started to doodle on the boxes again. It's relaxing.
It's a busy week. Spent tonight getting my collages ready for the Pig Barn Show. When I first started creating them, a friend told me my collages reminded her of bookcovers so I've been sending them out into the world with short descriptive stories ever since. Had to create tags for those tonight as well as price tags.
The theme of the show is "Anointing the Goddess" and if that means celebrating the feminine than I believe my three pug collages do just that. First, they are of the three female pugs that I have owned. Second, these pieces are about body image and celebrating one's body and one's ability to dance. Many people consider pugs ugly. I know, shocking, right?! I think they are beautiful. It was partially this and my own insecurities with my body and those nightmarish gym classes that led me to combine the pug imagery with these little ballerinas. The three can be viewed as a set or individually so I decided to offer them both ways at the show. They are entitled "Come Dance with Me," "Don't Be Shy," and "You Know the Song."
See the full gallery on Posterous
My friend, Joan, has been after me to paint her garden gnome for a year. It is an important project to her. Charlie, her gnome, named after Charlie, her late husband, has sat in her driveway for years, guarding over the place. Now, she is moving. Only down the road, but symbolically it is a big move. Gnomes were her husband, Charlie's, love. The house she is leaving, she shared with him. This is a big move, sifting through her memories and possessions deciding what she can throw or give away and what she absolutely must hold onto. Charlie, the gnome, is making the move down the road with her and to celebrate their new chapter, Charlie is getting a coat of paint. Joan chose the colors carefully, consulting me, the encyclopedia of gnomes, the man at the hardware store and I got to painting. We had to repair Charlie's hand in the process as it fell off moving him, which meant some epoxy. He is too heavy for us to lift, so his move thus far was to a new stump. He still has to make it down the road aways. He is not finished, but it's a start. Sometimes creating a new life is a matter of baby steps, just like painting a gnome.
Yesterday, I picked up Vader's ashes. Today, I visited a pet crematorium for an article I am writing. At first, I thought about turning down the assignment, but then I realized I wanted to do it. I was curious. I visited the web site and saw that the place looked friendly, the owner had even created a wooded path for the communal remains of the pets whose owners couldn't claim them. When I arrived for the interview, I was greeted by two dogs, a five-year-old black Lab and it's 9-week-old yellow lab sibling. They danced around my car, fought over a bone, worked on establishing a pecking order. I talked to the owner about Vader, saw the inside of the crematorium and watched the dogs enjoying life.
Tonight I had the privilege of sitting in Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY and witness the beginnings of something good. You could feel it in the air -- the nerves, the excitement, a creative spark -- beginning to crackle, getting ready to ignite. Six of us gathered with writer Jon Katz and his dog Lenore to begin a writers' workshop, telling stories of rural life. "It's scary," I admitted. I'm a writer and teacher by trade, but it's been a long time since I've told my own stories or been on the other side of the desk, but I said, "it's going to be fun."
I tried to post these the other night from Laguna Beach but ran into a problem with my iPad. Here's the post that should have run: More pictures of Laguna Beach from yesterday. Not much in the way of photos today. Spent most of the day in a room of like-minded individuals talking about creativity, community, God and story. More and more people seem to be using the word 'story' to talk about how we define and come to understand our lives. A group of people I ate lunch with had just come back from a conference that asked them to think of the key events in their life as story elements. This week I also begin a writing workshop with Jon Katz that asks us to gather stories of rural life. My memoir students ask why anyone would care about their stories. The artists I met at the artist luncheon last week are using their various art-forms to tell big stories of femininity, spirituality, and our relationship to the earth and to each other. As a writer, few words are richer than story. Sometimes it is good to sit back and listen to the stories we tell and see what we her it doesn't hurt o do so while listening to the ocean as well.
