Viewpoints 9-2 Reveal Day

For our first Challenge in this new cycle of Viewpoints9, Martha Wolfe posed the question:  Where does time go?  Just up my alley...a question I ask myself every day.

Actually, I have been working on this Challenge for 13 years....the last 3 with more urgency.

"Autumn Turns to Winter:  Unraveled and Frayed"

Let me just say that a few years ago I discovered that 50 is NOT the new 40.  AND, 60 is NOT the new 50.  AND, 70 is not the new anything....anything, that is, but for me, an urgent need to create.

Thirteen years ago I thought of myself as being in my 'Autumn Years".  My visual language included fallen leaves, bare trees, autumn moons and ravens, reminding me of Nevermore.

Those images remain still, darkened perhaps, but continuing to insist that I keep creating.  Everyday.  In the hopes that I will know where my time has gone.

Check out the varied, interesting interpretations:  Viewpoints 9 !

Full disclosure re my Unraveled and Frayed:  

Details:  18"x18" vintage, reclaimed, recycled cotton dinner napkin, raw edged appliqued with hand-dyed, block printed, hand-painted and soy wax batiked cottons.  Machine and hand stitched.

Viewpoints9 Post

Today is my turn to post about our upcoming challenge, Naturalistic Intelligence.  Check it out and find out how 'Gibbs' relates...or doesn't ;^)

Viewpoints9 Reveal Day

This, Challenge #8, was a toughie for me.  Viewpoints9 member Lisa-Maire Sanders asked us to consider a preconception and depict it in landscape form.  Preconception!  Really!  Where does one begin?

In reality, I try NOT to have preconceptions.  I work at it.  Now, I was to actually think about preconceived ideas and their results...and be inspired.  Really?  Hmmm.

One of my earliest preconceived ideas that turned out to be very wrong occurred when I was five.  (I have a pretty good memory.  I remember also not liking to be wrong....even then)  My father was transferred from Andrews Air Force Base in the DC area to Carswell Air Force Base outside of Fort Worth, Texas, just after I finished kindergarden.

As we settled in, I remember thinking 1. it was really dry, 2. not many people lived there, 3. it was pretty flat and 4. there weren't many things growing there.  This, of course, is comparing a major metropolis to one that was not in those days.  There followed months without rain.

Then it rained!  Oh, my!  I was stunned with the tiny flowers that began to bloom on what had previously looked like pickled grass.  A stream formed at the bottom of our property where none had been when we moved in, and shortly, it was full of crawdads!  I was so surprised that I could have been so wrong.

Okay.  This is ancient history.  Kid stuff.  Except that I took away how wrong one can be.  My first memory of a preconception and how it might be good to avoid having them.

And Then It Rained! detail

And Then It Rained!

Ordinary Magpie

My first attempt at Sue Dennis' Viewpoints9 challenge was miserable at being ordinary.  Not that the piece was so extraordinary, by any means...but rather..I created a piece depicting an extraordinary place, missing Sue's point entirely.  I ended up posting the way too ooooo long message previously.

It did get me thinking.  And I never mentally left Australia as I looked for the ordinary in an extraordinary location.  When I think of what I miss when I'm not there.....  What ordinary thing I miss most?....it's the magpies.  I love their songs. I also love that they are very plain looking in their black and white suits and that they are collectors.  Gosh, it's amazing how much you can have in common with a bird ;^)  Except I can't sing.

Pardon the my amateurish camera-work in the video.  After you listen to the maggies, go see what everyone is posting on Viewpoints9.  This is a fun challenge!

Viewpoints9 Reveal

Today is the reveal for Viewpoints9's Challenge 6.  This is my submission for Masks.  Check it out!

Scent of a Memory

Rain Dancer

 My challenge to Viewpoints9 members reveals today:  create a piece inspired by one's memory of a scent.


I bounced around several ideas for this challenge:  burning leaves in the autumn (ages ago, of course...we don't do that anymore...we compost), chlorine in the Air Force Base pools where we spent hot summers,  the smell of Yokohama Harbor as our ship approached decades ago, the smell of the gyms where we played basketball.....

Each time I remembered more and more details particularly surrounding my memories of the scent of rain.  Two of my most distinct memories occurred in desert climes after long dry spells.  As rain was so desperately needed in both regions (Los Angeles and Fort Worth), I'm sure it was not too far from my consciousness at the time.

Years ago when we lived in L.A. the area suffered a horrific drought.  All we talked about was when the rains were going to come.  My daughter, then two, heard it all, naturally.  And I remember distinctly the day I smelled rain and called to her....'Come quick!  The rain's coming!'  She hurried to the screened door and stood in silhouette watching the big drops plop onto the sidewalk outside.  Slowly she turned to me.  She had the saddest, most dejected face.  "Rain is water" she declared slowly.  All this talk of rain coming...heck...she must have thought something incredible was coming...it had only been a few weeks since someone called Santa had come.  But, rain.  Well, that was something different.

Rain Dancer is inspired by one of my childhood memories during the time our family lived in Texas.  I'm the eldest child in my family and I was charged with the care and, particularly, the good behavior of my youngest brother, David.  And, he was a challenge for his sister!  One morning a peculiar colored light filled our living room.  We stopped our play and looked out.  Simultaneously, I smelled and blurted "Rain!"  With that, David ran out the screen door like a thing possessed.  Had he forgotten what rain was?  It had been a very long time since he'd seen it.

He was a wonder dancing on the sidewalk, face up and mouth open.

It was this last memory that won out for today's reveal.

Oh, and that gorgeous background is from Mickey Lawler Skydyes :^)  Thanks, Mickey!

Viewpoints9 Challenge #3

Seven Sisters: 18”x24” artist dyed, painted and stitched

Our third challenge was posed by Lin Hsin-Chen: "Horizon" refers not to a real line but to the infiniteness of the line which can only be perceived by feelings.  Therefore, we should not search line, but rather find a way to perceive the line.  Lines are indeed a medium that can spark human beings' creative genius, as well as their impulse for communications, by which the texture of knowledge is born.

Nature is separated into upper and lower sections by the horizon, generating spatial vocabulary and dialogues.  Humans unknowingly come to accept the linear attributes captured in time and space, and meanwhile some sense of awakening, some sort of subtlety, also arises in their hearts.  Yet, where on earth do these feeling come from?

Delicate lines carry emotions and expressions, and also other aspects than that should be explored.  I want to challenge all kinds of prospectives about lines and discover the touching consonances and fascinating textures composed by lines.

I started with ‘horizon’.  I didn’t get too much farther in my thinking with ‘line’.  As I began thinking about horizon, with ‘lines’ in the back of my brain, I began looking at the heavens.  In my research the words Astronomical horizon had captured my imagination.

I’ve always been intrigued with instances of groups of people, quite separate geographically and culturally, coming to very similar places in their descriptions of their environment, their explanations of the outside world and their mythologies.  While I was looking heavenward metaphorically, I remembered that many peoples have similar stories of the spirits and deities that reside in the heavens.

Pleiades, for example, is know as “seven sisters” to Australian Aboriginal communities and the Nez Perce of North America, “daughters of the night” to the Berber, and “seven sisters-in-law and a brother-in-law” for the Ben Raji of Nepal.

We are all similarly hard-wired with a need to survive.  To survive we must understand our environment and, sometimes, that means we impose meaning on natural phenomena.

Across the world peoples have drawn imaginary lines in the sky, describing creation tales of morality and explanations for earthly people, and, of course, those that navigate the globe.

Be sure to check the Viewpoints9 blog for other, sure to be interesting, interpretations of Lin Hsin-Chen's challenge.

post-script:  You might remember seeing this fabric pictured as it was being dyed.  The post was Dyeing in someone ELSE's yard on Sunday August 5, 2012