A site to test WP on HM
Next text: what does that mean? Perhaps it could mean that the petals of a flower (ie Nature), superimposed over twisted lines of text, give a new and urgently needed view of “next”; perhaps it could mean that there is some text, of whatever kind, that is especially meaningful and deserves to be decorated with a flower? Or perhaps the background is not text at all! Whatever it suggests to you, that is what it “means”!
I have always been fond of Oriental carpets, particularly irregular tribal ones, and have usually had one or more wherever I have lived, from childhood on. My most recent move was to an apartment where there was no space for my favorite rug. So it remained rolled up in storage. Later when I went to unroll it, out flew hundreds of moths! They had had such a good meal that, though I considered it, there was no sense in trying to restore it. So, sadly, out it went. A rug which had flown across several continents, both before it became mine, and afterwards as I moved, made a final journey into the garbage!
This is made from a photo of a poor replica of such a carpet, a small factory- made rug. The resulting twist reminds me both of a butterfly (a relative of the moth, I suppose!) and of the flying carpets of myth and children’s stories, both of which could be a metaphor for flying away to some wonderful place or state.
It is interesting to consider why you love to have certain objects around you in whatever place you may live. Is it because your childhood home had them? Is there a symbolic reason? For instance, I have lived in many types of dwelling, from one room to a large house, but just to name a few things, there always have to be cushions, handmade pottery, lots of little wooden drawers, in my home, and because I am a bookish woman, many shelves. (My ex said once, “you are a shelfish woman”. He had to build them!)
Do you have certain musts in your furnishings or decorations?
The edge of the woods… Did you think that meant looking in to the woods, or looking out towards the town from inside the woods !
SOME QUOTES ABOUT EDGES:
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and you take the first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid for you to stand upon
or you will be taught to fly.
-Patrick Overton
“Life” is a concept, like the Universe, that expands as soon as we reach what we think is the edge. – Kamand Kojuri
Sooner or later, we will come to the edge of all that we can control and find life waiting there for us . – Rachel Naomi Remen
This is a picture probably best left undescribed, but if you do want an explanation . . . read on!
It shows a view of trees through one of those long roll-up patio blinds . Actually, there is a view of trees through that blind, but it’s not those particular trees. They are somewhere else! This is a composition using two different photos. The colours of the top one, the blind, are intensified.
Sometimes our distant memory actually does confuse or put together two different events!
Everything that we see, that we experience, is seen through filters of one sort or another: the amount of light (physical or mental) which we can shed upon it; our own personal and cultural history and our memory. Of course, generally speaking, we have to proceed, day by day, taking things as they appear to be but it is good to remember that whatever we see, it is always from a certain angle, from one physical, emotional or mental point-of-view, at a particular degree of magnification!
This one is to emphasize the importance of exercising. I really miss my weekly Essentrics exercise class at the community centre, and when I had to stop because of Covid, I realized that just walking, though excellent in itself, is not enough to exercise all of our muscles.
If you’d like a chuckle, here’s the photo from which this picture was made.
Believe it or not, the inspiration was my lunch after coming home from an exercise class : a bowl of carrot soup on a pottery dish. A lot of twisting and turning and adding in Photoshop and Just Bend arrived. That’s how far my artwork gets from the original photos!
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Covid-Time 1 : Time Stretched
Covid-Time 2: Time Shrunk
One of the odd things about this Covid time is that for me, and for many people it seems, time itself appears to either speed up or to crawl! It’s hard to believe it will soon be Summer when I have hardly become used to the idea that it is Spring .. and what happened to Winter? Some days I can’t believe it when I see that it is only 3:00 PM when I thought it must be at least 6:00 PM; other times, the days speed by faster than ever and there isn’t time to do all the things I meant to. And it always seems to be the weekend again every few days! Strange.
So I thought I’d have a bit of fun and try to depict that visually.
At the top, is a picture which might represent a chunk of normal Time, with all its ups and downs, ins and outs, lights and darks. (Dont take it too literally: perhaps this was a day I spent looking at flowers, waiting at traffic lights, or making a spinach and tomato soup, then trying not to snooze while watching TV) : ) Then to follow there are Time Stretched and Time Shrunk.
All three are made by manipulating the same original picture, just as our brains seem to do with time!
There is no such place as Kefiristan! This is to show an example of making a picture of branching trees out of something else that branches : dregs of some kinds of liquid, in this case of dregs of kefir (a fermented milk drink) in a glass, turned upside down. Many slightly thick liquids, such as kefir, thin yogurt, some flour-thickened liquids, pea soup, and some paints will leave a pattern like this on a glass or bowl. The photo below is the original, turned upside down.
Both the trees and the dregs are examples of the Branching Pattern found in nature. To read more about the pattern, see the page in the Header: The Branching Pattern in Nature. ( Under construction. Coming soon)
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Tapestories. No that’s not a typo! This is made from a photo of a tapestry, which did indeed wear thin. It was also attacked by moths and it became so worn that, sadly, I had to throw it out.
Stories are a part of everyone’s life: family stories, family histories, (not to mention history and herstory), religious and cultural histories, myths and folk tales, even nursery rhymes. Then there’s the personal stories, the ones we tell ourselves and those we tell other people, not necessarily the same thing!
There are schools of thought which say that we are our stories ! Our self is our story. I would not go so far, but I do believe that all these stories, from those of our culture, to the personal ones we hold inside ourselves, play a large part in who we are.
The stories we tell ourselves can often be very limiting. “I’m just a person who can’t do this or that”; “this is the way it’s meant to be”; “it’s all so-and-so’s fault I am the way I am”; “I’ll never get over it”; or whatever! We run these tapes, stories, over and over again in our minds. Part of growing older is the joy of finally seeing that these tapes/ stories are wearing thin, and we can toss them!