i wasn't fully satisfied with my wordplay project for bloom. i just loved the word so much, and though i enjoyed my studies of the peonies, i didn't feel that i had done justice to the word. so i worked on a second project.
well, that was a longer pause than i expected. but summer is like that, i think. at least for me it is - the days are long and slow and lovely and when you blink you realize how many of them have gone by.
if you're a fan of the noticing project (and i am a huge fan), you've surely seen the beautiful way that heather and alicia are doing their daily noticing while alicia's camera is away for repair. and have you seen this? it's bits of heather's polaroid project from last summer. these two projects inspired me so. so, so, so. so much so that i wanted to begin my own artist's journal of sorts.
happy independence day to those of you in the united states. happy friday to everyone!
a new painting. alice and louise, 22x30, mixed media on paper. (see it a bit larger here. at least i think it's larger. is it larger?) it was an important painting for me. it's not the most beautiful, or the most perfect, or the one i love most, but the process was exceptionally important to me. i might talk about that next week.
i had every intention of sitting down right away last wednesday evening, and typing to you all about my visit with tracy.
but then there was painting, and then camping, and then my grandfather, and then wordplay. and now here we are, a whole week later and i haven't even shared with you about my fun - really, it was so much fun - day with tracy and her husband and their friend.
there was the harbor. and there were crabs. messy, crazy cracking crabs
(have you cracked crabs? if not, you couldn't begin to imagine. the hammers and the mess and the claws that make these teeny little cuts in your hands and the spices that get into those cuts and sting just the littlest bit so that it doesn't hurt, really, it just heightens the sensations of the day. it's an experience. i don't actually eat them, by the way. but i love to crack them. takes me way back.)
we sat at that table opening those shells for three hours. eating and drinking and talking and enjoying each other and the breeze and the glorious june day. there were several trips to the bathroom to wash the spices off our hands. and there was more talking and laughing and talking and laughing.
i remember thinking to myself, and then saying out loud, that i didn't feel at all like i was sitting with people i had never met. it felt an awful lot like sitting with old friends, catching up, filling in the cracks of time and space.
and then - ooh this part is so good - they agreed to stay in town for the afternoon and come for dinner! i loved having tracy - and her loved ones - in my home. i loved sharing my space with them, the new kitchen, cooking for them (such cooking as it was! a bit rudimentary, to say the least.), introducing them to my children, sitting on my deck eating, listening to the kids sing camp songs, talking more, laughing more. until it was time for them to go.
the details of the day have blurred a bit over this last week. (you can read tracy's accounting of the day here.) but i am left with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for this blogging neighborhood. for the connections i've made. for my friend who drove all the way from wisconsin to washington, and then drove some more to meet me for lunch. for creativity and connections and oil paints and meditates and wordplay. and for being alive at a moment in history where such encounters are possible.
round 2. and this one was hard for me, harder than round 1. it might be because i was so pleased with my first project, or because the word - "bloom" - it's so straightforward and strong that it intimidated me. it might be that the incredible print jen sent with the word screams bloom. or that when i took this photograph last month i thought that could really be it for bloom. i struggled some.
there were pages and pages of notes. ideas about monotypes (which i've been wanting to try) and carving stamps and the gocco. ideas about studying a single flower over the course of a month, about simplifying the blooming flower into its most basic form, about creating a chart of wildflowers, about a series. there was the thought of pressing flowers, and there was an idea for handmade paper with flowers in the pulp. there were so many ideas. but in the end, it was always about the line, the mark, the gesture of bloom.
and i kept coming back to the idea of a series, and a chart, and peonies.
in the middle, there were poppies and ranunculus. there were elaborate drawings with india ink and oil pastel. there were different kinds of paper. there were lots of peonies. and i kept coming back to the series, the chart, and the flowers. so here it is: peony in bloom::a study.
i studied a single bunch of peonies in bloom over a number of days. and when the rest of the flowers had died, this single bud began to open. or so i thought. it began to open, and it sat like that for days and days. it's still sitting, in a jar on the kitchen windowsill, looking very much like it does here. peony in bloom.
i used a variety of media - charcoal, ink, marker, oil pastel, colored pencil - all on velum, which is mounted on a heavy paper stock. i had thought, initially, that the velum would be pinned or taped to the paper, making each piece of the semi-translucent velum behave like a specimen in and of itself. but that pinning/taping didn't work. so the piece and my thinking evolved in tandem.
i was aiming for something in between field journal and specimen chart, between science fair project and science lab; something resembling early-stage gestural drawings, something oversized, and raw, kitschy, maybe. i'm not sure i've quite captured it. i think i could have further developed the idea. i adore each of these studies individually, but i'm not sure i'm crazy about their final presentation. (you can see more detail photos here.)
in hindsight, i do wish i had studied a single blooming plant for 7 days - or for 30 - and charted that. i can see now that's where i was really going with this. but that's in hindsight. i learned a lot in the process of creating this piece. i learned how much i need to write my thoughts out as i go along, how useful it is for me to talk things through with another person - just hearing my own thinking out loud is so helpful to me.
and i wonder. will i keep this piece intact, or will i take the pieces apart and enjoy them independently? will i always use pins in my wordplay pieces? will there always be a linen covered board? i wonder. (i feel like i ought to say next, "tune in next week to find out!" like on tv when we were kids, you know?)
i'll open blair's envelope with word #3 later today and share that here soon. but now i'm off to check out erin and tracy's creations. i can't wait to see what they've come up with!
my grandfather died yesterday morning. and i feel like a piece of my history has slipped through my fingers.
it's been a whirlwind few days.
