Framed in silver

The clouds open,
blue sky at
the end of a grey day,
framed in silver.

Southbank Shadows

Here’s another of my Southbank photos and an accompanying haiku that I’m using for a small series of Little Gems.

The suncast shadows
were longer than
the sum of their lives together.

This was taken around 3 o’ clock on a sunny, cold New Years day in London.  For me it was one of those ‘haiku moments’, a moment of clarity.  I love the movement in this photo – the long, late afternoon shadows stretching into dusk;  the tree reflection in the footstep scattered rain puddle;  the groups of people strolling along, each in their own worlds and always the River Thames flowing towards the sea.  The people especially capture my imagination – someone turns back to look at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, a man sits alone on a bench, the two pairs of  lovers in the foreground are who I have written about.

But is it a beginning or an ending?  A realisation that their love is eternal, always, forevermore and they have at last found each other after centuries and aeons of searching.  Or a sad acceptance that their love has reached a limit, come to the end, grown very small.  The realisation of an ending.  Their time together is shorter than the suncast shadows.  Soon dusk will fall into another long winter’s night with no promise of spring.

I’ve printed this photo onto silk chiffon, acetate, lutrador and vilene.

I wanted to use typescript for the text, in keeping with the reportage quality of the piece.   My typewriter script is too small, so I went online to dafont.com, downloaded ‘Fucked Olympia’ and printed the haiku onto tissue paper.

For one of the pieces I zigzagged the photo onto fabric, made a pillowcase binding and collaged the text on with acrylic gel medium.  Next I’ll hand and machine quilt it.

Here I used some fabric I’d monoprinted as the base and bondawebbed the photo into place. I mixed gel medium with black paint to darken around the text and then put a layer of black tulle over the piece before machine quilting it.  I put a strip of gold mesh along the bottom to give some brightness and hope.

After the quilting, I zigzagged around the edge.

I’ll post a couple of others when I’ve done some more work on them.

Two White Horses

Two white horses

in a summerlush meadow,

the longest day is gone.

Summer pond

Raindrops fall

on a summer pond

where waterlilies

float and flower.

angel feather

buddha

When I hold a feather

in my hand

my soul remembers

the angels.

Little honeybee

I had a new experience this morning. After I had gotten dressed I heard a buzzing insect. Since I live in a drafty barn, I often find winged creatures inside. I had a hunt and realized that the buzzing insect sound was coming from my person. It was a honeybee in my left jeans pocket which had apparently settled in there yesterday while they were drying on the line and had spent the night in the dresser.

After breaking the world record for removing a pair of jeans, both the bee and I emerged from the experience unscathed and she flew away out the window, hopefully back to her hive.

I’ve always loved bees and have felt a special kinship with them. When I was about three, a bumblebee landed on my head and several years later a swarm of honeybees rested in a tree in our front yard for a few days. A tree that I often used to climb to sit in and read a book. They left the beginnings of a honeycomb on one of the leaves.

Bees are an ancient symbol of the Soul, industry, creative activity, wealth, resurrection: death and rebirth. I found an interesting website called The Bee Goddess which is filled with images and information about the bee and honey in many ancient cultures.

Egyptian heiroglyphic

From Symbolica: the bee symbol is a good reminder that our works of art can nourish and sustain our community as well as ourselves. Because of the major role of the queen bee and the thousands of female ‘workers’, the bee has long been associated with the feminine aspects of nature. Therefore she can be used to develop the creative feminine aspects within us all.

Maybe this bee came to me with a message, a reminder to set my ego to one side and get on with my artwork. It’s been quiet in my studio for the past 2-3 weeks. The excuse: I’ve been working part-time at the University, but I really need to finish up two quilts I’ve entered into the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. They are 80% complete and I know what I have to do next, I just procrastinate. This morning I wrote down what I need to do next on each one, then I will do the next step and the next.

I am also designing another quilt in the riverjourney series, or rather this piece is ready to be made. About the winter forest weeping when the remaining Muscogee people were removed to Indian Territory in November 1836. On Monday, I made a monoprint on cotton fabric at the Double Elephant using water-based black ink, which I will set with spray fixative and I plan to buy some white silk dupioni tomorrow. I’ve been experimenting with paper and pastels and working up a design of the piece before I get started.

I’ve written a haiku for the piece:

The winter trees

wept a river of blood

when we were torn

from the land.

Winter trees sketch

Winter trees fabric