For this month's art collaboration, I am introducing Jason Limberg, an artist from Michigan, USA, who specializes in pen and ink drawings. Jason explains his artistic vision thus:
'I’ve always had a deep fascination with the forest and it’s inhabitants. There is a mysterious, ephemeral quality of the natural realm that captivates me.
My work is a personal journal of the inner peace I find in the woods, integrated with musings of the animal’s lives weaving among the trees.
I create in a way that comes most natural, through drawing, primarily in pen & ink. Much of my passion lies in translating the intricate details and subtleties of the environment, alongside the surreal elements of my imagination.
With an empathetic eye, I strive to reveal the spirit and essence of the animals I draw. I am a draftsman aligned with the night, captivated by the natural breath, & searching for the timeless dance.'
'I like to envision the rabbits of the world being interested in the cosmos and night sky. I'm very fond of how smart, feisty and full of personality rabbits can be, so of course they would love to sit in wonder underneath the stars. Capturing it in a drawing just seems natural to me.'
If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to Jason, using the following link: http://www.jasonlimberg.com/
Feel free to pay a visit to @jasonlimberg on Instagram or the Jason Limberg website where more of his amazing pieces are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt. Jason can also be found on facebook.
If you post your poem on Instagram, using Jason's image, please tag @jasonlimberg and mention him as the collaborative artist in your post.
There are no restrictions placed on this challenge: Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic or prose form of your choosing: Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!
For this weekend's art collaboration, I am introducing Tomasz Zaczeniuk surreal artist and photographer from Poland. Tomasz has kindly given permission for us to use his amazing piece,The Temple, for our poetic inspiration.
A completely unreal vision from the Polish coastline.
It took me a decent few hours to create this with around 20-25 layers.
The Temple by Tomasz Zaczeniuk
Used with permission @fotowizjer
If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to Tomasz, using the following link:
https://www.instagram.com/fotowizjer/
Feel free to pay Tomasz a visit on Instagram or check out his website, FotoWizjer, where more of his amazing pieces are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt.
If you post your poem on Instagram, using Tomasz's image, please tag @fotowizjer and mention him as the collaborative artist in your post.
There are no restrictions placed on this challenge: Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic or prose form of your choosing: Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!
As an alternative, you may write a Flash 55 inspired by the photograph, or on a subject of your choice, in memory of Galen, who first imagined this challenge.
"He felt a strange sense of relief as he watched the documents fly off into the street.."
For this weekend's art collaboration, I am introducing David Bülow, Danish architect and imaginer in ink. David has kindly given permission for us to use his amazing piece, The Turning Point, for our poetic inspiration.
The Turning Point
David Bülow
Used with Permission
If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to David, using the following link:
https://www.instagram.com/bulow_ink/
Feel free to pay a visit to @bulow_ink on Instagram or the Bulow Ink website where more of his amazing pieces are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt.
If you post your poem on Instagram, using David's image, please tag @bulow_ink and mention him as the collaborative artist in your post.
There are no restrictions placed on this challenge: Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic or prose form of your choosing: Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!
As an alternative, you may write a Flash 55 inspired by the photograph, or on a subject of your choice, as we keep the memory of Galen alive, and send our love and support to Hedgewitch, during her time off from hosting.
It is a New Year, and a good time to reinvent our FLASH Challenge.
This weekend, I am introducing Luke Eidenschink, self-taught, left-handed Artist/Illustrator working in ink, from Arizona, USA. Luke has kindly given permission for us to use his amazing piece, Moth-Woman, for our poetic inspiration.
Moth-Woman
Luke Eidenschink Used with Permission
If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to Luke, using the following link: https://www.instagram.com/luke.ink/
Feel free to pay a visit to @luke.ink on Instagram or Luke Ink Art where more of his amazing pieces are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt.
If you post your poem on Instagram, using Luke's image, please tag @luke.ink and mention him as the collaborative artist in your post.
There are no restrictions placed on this challenge: Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic or prose form of your choosing: Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!
As an alternative, you may write a Flash 55 inspired by the photograph, or on a subject of your choice, as we keep the memory of Galen alive, and send our love and support to Hedgewitch, during her time off from hosting.
Welcome to the weekend garden, toads! May you enjoy its abundance.
Today's mini-challenge focuses on a very simple concept:
The Color Violet.
Flowers in Violet, original encaustic by Kim Nelson
The color violet appears in the visible light spectrum, and has the highest vibration in that spectrum. It combines the energy and strength of red with the spirituality and integrity of blue; and it represents a union of body and soul, a balance between our physical and spiritual energies.
Violet is said to expand our awareness, connecting us to a higher consciousness, and is thus associated with soul transformation. Philosophers are often attracted to it.
Psychologically, violet promotes harmony between mind and emotions, contributing to mental balance, stability and peace of mind. It also supports the practice of meditation.
The color violet encourages creative pursuits, uniqueness, individuality and true expression. Artists, musicians, writers, poets and psychics are usually inspired by the color violet.
So… are you inspired? I hope so. Write away! Post your poem on your site and then link here.
I began the "Birthday" series of prompts for our Poems in April, and it has proven to be very popular, so I have decided to make this a regular mini-challenge on the first Sunday of every month.
Edward Lear
W. Holman Hunt-Walker Art Gallery Liverpool
Edward Lear was born on 12 May 1812, the twentieth of twenty one children, and one of the few to survive his infancy. He is known as an English artist, illustrator, author and humorist. As an artist, he first became known for his paintings of birds and, later, for his landscapes.
In 1846, Lear published A Book of Nonsense, which was well-received in his lifetime and he popularized the limerick form.
Public Domain
Another well-know nonsense poem is The Owl and the Pussycat.
Public Domain
Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper". A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud". His heroes are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. His most famous piece of verbal invention, the phrase "runcible spoon", occurs in the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat, and is now found in many English dictionaries. (wiki)
From A Book of Nonsense (1849)
Our challenge today is to write a poem based in some part on the work of Edward Lear. Whether you choose nonsense verse, limerick or opt for an ekphrasis piece inspired by one of his paintings or illustrations is left entirely up to you. I would encourage you to browse through his artworks, as they are many and varied.
The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so please do not link up old work which kind of fits an image. This is in the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities for poets to be newly inspired. Management reserves the right to remove unrelated links but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open Link Monday.
More particularly, I would like to share the beautiful old storybooks illustrated by Virginia Francis Sterrett, American artist and illustrator. At the time of her death from tuberculosis, aged 30, the following tribute was made of her work: "She made pictures of haunting loveliness, suggesting
Oriental lands she never saw and magical realms no one ever knew except in the
dreams of childhood..." Her pictures seem to tell a story all their own.
Virginia Francis Sterrett
"Rosalie"
Old French Tales (Penn Publishing Company) is one of her best-known illustrative works. To get a feel of the book, flip through a copy online HERE. Even the chapter headings are inspirational: "The Forest of Lilacs", "The Fairy Detestable" and "The Lark and the Toad".
Virginia Francis Sterrett
"Europa and the Bull"
Sterrett illustrated two other books of tales, Tanglewood Tales(Penn Publishing Company) and her own interpretation of Arabian Nights before her death in 1931. The illustrations may be viewed HERE. All images displayed in this post are from the same source. Artsy Craftsy offers downloads of several illustrations. For this prompt, choose an illustration and write a story poem based on it. Your story may be entirely original, or in the case of well-known literary characters, a re-telling of a popular tale.
Greetings, toads, toadettes and fellow pond travelers, Hedgewitch coming at you with our weekend challenge. By now we're all well into our second week of April poetry
madness here at the Garden, so I'm not going to tie anyone's brain in knots
trying to learn a new poetic form. Instead, I'm choosing a simple ekphrasis challenge
today, to write to one of the paintings of Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla.
If you don't have time to read all my blithering, you can get to the lowdown on the challenge by scrolling down to the end of the post.
The First Child
As a child
growing up in the slums of Chicago, eldest of three daughters of a single
mother on welfare, Art was not somethingto which I had much exposure. A Superman comic bought with pop bottles I
patiently collected and returned for a two penny deposit, or the cheap print of
Jesuscut from a magazine above my
grandmother's bed were about it for me back then. I am nowhere near an expert or even truly knowledgeable about Art, but I do know that when I met it for the first time, it changed my life.
Another Margarita
This change happened in junior
high (middle school to you sprouts) when we took a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw sculpture, I saw art ancient and modern, from medieval religious paintings that seemed
like a child's drawings, primitively sketched and colored by a species beginning
to feel its way from survival into something larger, to the bewildering abstracts of Picasso. I saw my first Van Gogh,
my first Seurat, my first Monet. It was like a door opening into a fantastic
palace of unbelievable treasures to me, and I spent many, many days walking its
halls when I became old enough to get there on my own. It
was there that Impressionism became the first Art love of my life, and where I stared for hours at Renoir's softly blurred, bright women and the ballerinas of Degas.
It's only recently, though, through the equal magic of the blogosphere, that I've discovered a new
favorite, the artist I'm sharing with you today, Joaquin Sorolla
y Batisda.
Cafe in Paris
To quote wikipedia,"Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (27 February
1863 – 10 August 1923) was a Valencian Spanish painter. Sorolla excelled in the
painting of portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of social and
historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous
representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native
land."
Beached Boats
Girl with Flowers
His flavor of
Impressionism is to me often a warmer, brighter one, reflective of the color and light
of Spain, more dazzling than other Impressionists, with their muted blues and greys. He painted everything from formal classical pieces
to vibrant landscapes and idiosyncratic portraits and has a wonderful way with
children, the seashore, and sunlight, as well as the everyday life of the
people of his country.
Mending Nets
You can browse through a collection of his works here at wikipaintings.org,
to get a feel for his subject matter and method, and also look for a painting
that speaks to you beyond the few I have included here. All of his paintings
are in the public domain, so it's fine to reproduce any of them with your poem.
Seville~The Dance
Mother
Skipping Rope at La Granja
The Challenge
Because Sunday is
normally the day for our mini-forms challenge, I'd love to challenge people to
write from any one of Sorolla's paintings, employing their favorite of the many short forms we've been exposed to here at the
Garden over the months: haiku, slijo, senryu, nonet, sevenling, triolet, cinquin, or any
of the many others Kerry and others have shared with us. This is purely optional!
For those who prefer to write in free verse, of course please feel free to do so. I'd just ask that in the "mini" spirit
of the mini-challenge, you write an original poem inspired by one of Sorolla's
paintings (either in a short form or in free verse) using approximately 100 words or less.
A Rooftop With Flowers
That's it, toads. Have at it and enjoy! And if you've
been keeping up with the challenge of Poetry Month, congratulations on writing
your fourteenth poem.
Today it is my pleasure to feature the artistic talent of someone who is well-known to us on Real Toads. It is the poet, the painter, the photographer, Kim Nelson. This feature also serves as an introduction to Kim as a member of Real Toads.
Kim shares with us a selection of paintings for our poetic inspiration, as well as her process notes on her many creative pursuits. As an added bonus to this challenge, Kim has kindly offered a giveaway in the form of a lucky draw to be made among the participants. The winner will receive an original artwork from Kim. Entries for this part of the challenge will close at 12 PM CST on Thursday, 17 January, when the draw will be made.
My processes
for writing and creating art are simple and the same. I start. Never
without a moleskin book, I pick up pencil or pen and sketch an outline. Then I
fill gaps and spaces with color and life. Not afraid of erasure or removal, I
edit quite a lot, getting rid of the extraneous or unnecessary.
As a
wordsmith, I respect (perhaps adore!) the power of words, the power of every
word. I want only to use that which is necessary to convey meaning, message or
thought, neither wasting nor wanting. With a natural inclination toward
rhyme and meter, I spend a fair amount of time in wordplay as I work to convey
the nuances I intend.
My visual
work is layered, both literally and figuratively. I paint in, paint over, add
texture and depth with various media and ephemera. I use my fingers to apply
and alter material as well as brushes, palette knives, toothpicks and popsicle
sticks. I use a variety of textiles to remove and alter what I've put on the
canvas. A blowdryer and heat gun often come in handy. I find it easy to
keep my writing simple. In creating art, I tend toward abundance,
over-exuberance. I'm working to pare down my approach to create cleaner
pieces.
Kim has generously offered these amazing works of art for use on our blogs. If you add an image to your
post, please acknowledge the name of the artist and provide a link back to her website.
The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so
please do not link up old work which kind of fits an image. This is in
the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities for poets to be
newly inspired. Management reserves the right to remove unrelated
links but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open Link Monday.
And here we are, the first Sunday of January is already upon us. Last week, I asked for suggestions and volunteers to keep our Mini-Challenges fresh and interesting and I'm happy to report that we have some wonderful new ideas and guest appearances lined up for you.
Day and Night by M.C. Escher
1938
One suggestion came from Hedgewitch, when she mentioned the possibility of the occasional Ekphrasis challenge. Ekphrasis is the graphic, often dramatic, description of a visual work of art. The word comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and as a verb it means to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name. Ekphrasis has been considered, generally, to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness. (wiki)
Mother and Child by M.C. Escher
1921
Our challenge is to view an artwork and speak out about it through the medium of poetry. For this purpose, I have selected the art of M.C. Escher, a Dutch Surrealist. His subjects range from portraits, landscapes, city scapes and he has a style of optical art all his own. I have given a few examples here, but invite you to view the gallery of his art provided here, on wikipaintings.org. Most of the images are copyrighted but displayed under fair use principles. Select a piece that speaks to you, and invites poetic expression.
Puddle by M.C. Escher
1952
Here are a few examples of Ekphrasis poems from both Hedgewitch and me, for those who would like to take a look before getting stuck into their own.
The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so
please do not link up old work which kind of fits the image. This is in
the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities for poets to be
newly inspired. Management reserves the right to remove unrelated
links but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open Link Monday.
