POETRY!

From my friend Jim LaVilla-Havelin

SLAM THE TOWN!!! National Poetry Month in San Antonio 2012 - March 10-May 13,2012

Wherever you are, on April 1 (and because April 1 is a Sunday, April 2, as well): Use this sheet  to type, hand-write, print – a poem you like (your own, someone else’s, famous, unknown). Make copies and get them out to everyone you know, and folks you don’t know, too.

Under windshield wipers, in work mailboxes, at restaurants, on chairs, on buses, to your email list. SLAM THE TOWN with poems, poems as gifts, poems as a way of letting everyone know how important poetry is in all of our lives.  (If you use a poem that is copyrighted, in a book, please note where the poem can be found, cite the source.)

Hold Everything Dear

as the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe

and blossoms like the wind

as the thinning birches whisper their silver stories of the wind to the urgent

in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light

that the moment thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a wren in the morning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky

and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning

the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth

one step ahead of time

the broken teeth of tribes and their long place

steppe-scattered and together

clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug

carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking

the map of the palm held

in a knot

but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass than unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days

as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words

the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together

animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

–Gareth Evans

I found the poem on this wonderful art blog by painter Deborah Barlow, http://slowmuse.wordpress.com/. She (and many others) have picked it up from painter, essayist, political activist, writer and Marxist John Berger's book of the same title. (The poem was written for Mr. Berger and before you slink away from the term Marxist, read his comments in Orion magazine here.)

I have not been able to exactly trace Mr. Evans, but he might also be a producer. Anyone who knows if there are more poems of his out there, let me know, as I would like to read them!

Traveling with Text

With my aquisition (thanks to birthday bonanza from Linda) of a NEW iPad with the camera, I am afire with digital imaginings. Here are some of my most recent experiments using several iPad apps one on top of another, as well as a few text-based Mixel collages.

The one above was a "physical" collage made with text cut from magazines (one of the exercises in my Text on Textiles courses, like that I am teaching on Joggles right -- and in the summer semester, too). I then photograhed it with the smart phone, sent it to the Cloud and my iPad and altered the colors with an app called PhotoPad (free, and a good photo editing tool). Then I drew on top of that saved image with some other tools and also erased part of the  image -- it looks to me like "Pollock takes on text."

Below is another physical collage that was altered, first with an iPad app called ArtistaHaikuHD that gives one a variety of watercolor effects/filters to use on photos.  Then I loaded that saved image into the PhotoPad App and played around with the colors. Que Cool!

Here's the watercolor versions in ArtistaHaikuHD:

How did I start? You can see the original here. 

 Or, rather the intermediate stage that was done on Mixel. The first product was actually this little 4 by 6 collage (shown here with two copies taped together):

WOW! It's amazing how these tools can morph one image SO MANY ways. I love to play with the possiblilities -- so the challenge is not in fluency, it's in when to quit and put my hands back on the wheel, so to speak. Where does what I can do only with hands happen?

Here's one way:

Print it with inkjet transfers on an old piece of tablelinen:

Archetypes and Artist Identity

Above: Photo of Suzanne Wright Crain's altar in progress.

Deep work and deep play took all of us into wonderful work this past weekend. Here are some photos of artists at work -- some made altered books, some altars. Everyone, including me, found some insights pertinant to our particular time, space and needs.

 

Robin Early and Suzanne Wright Crain and Martha Grant work on their Archetype projects.

As we looked at various approaches to exploring our "inner teams," I had found some work by creativity coach and author Eric Maisel that shed light on the ways identity as an artist (or should I say identities) can both help and complicate our work, identity and paths. Am I artist the beautifier, artist the visionary, artist the businesswomen, artist the  producer, artist the activist...??

Recently an infographic came across my path that also informed this pondering:

http://www.swiss-miss.com/2011/12/how-photographers-actually-spend-their-time.html

Certainly teaching a workshop such as this Archetype workshop calls on my skills as teacher and mentor, while I also try to do my own work ast least part of the time as a way of modeling and demonstrating the processes and products involved.

Then, as the weekend came to a close, a friend called and told me one of my large textile pieces was included in a "home" section report in the San Antonio Express News. I called the collector and thanked him (and his wife Suzi) for giving the reporter my name (read the story for more info!). Ah, another artist identity -- published and out there. 

The dining room in the home of Suzi and Dennis Strauch, near Pipe Creek, has a quilted piece of fabric art on one wall.

Photo: BOB OWEN, San Antonio Express-News / © 2012 San Antonio Express-News

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/real_estate/article/Spaces-A-global-chic-Pipe-Creek-home-with-more-3431078.php#ixzz1qLiJe3Zi

More Fun on Mixel

OK admission. I am addicted to Mixel now. It's totally taken up all my FB time (thank you). And the chitchat is minimal. Mostly you just make stuff sort of together. Now the warning. Anything you upload becomes public property. I am mostly just adding a few detail images and nonart snapshots to the process. But I love the cropping and layering soooomuch. And I am printing some of these on fabric, too.

I have figured out how to use the software to  make collages (fun-- crop with your finger or a sylus from any of your own photos or web images or images other Mixel users have contributed) without making images public or getting involved in the public arena of this software. You do have to have an account (no longer only possible with a FB account) but you do not have to post to "the world." After making a Mixel, just go to the upper left corner and take a photo -- saves to your ipad. Then DELETE the image.