Mindwhisperings: still life

Showing posts with label still life. Show all posts

The Four, no. 20

I found I could say things with color and shapes

that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

-Georgia O'Keefe

challenge posted on The Four

In honor of those things wild and free...

I climbed through a fine patch of poison ivy for these luscious beauties (dressed in my long-sleeved, rugged finest of course; I'm not completely mad) and at the moment I'm thinking they were worth it... Let's hope I'm still thinking that a few days from now :)

*These photos were inspired by this lovely image...

BLUE

Finally, I have an image for the Four's no. 12, Jaime's challenge: BLUE

Happy July 4th!

#55 The Four, Maddie's Challenge

I love each new challenge posted by The Four, seeing how they interpret the chosen words so differently, and how beautifully their interpretations overlap. Challenge no. 6 is from Theodore Roethke: 'a small thing, singing...'
For my own response, I'm torn between two. I've decided to post both:

#51

throwing flowers against evil

#48

"How does our intimacy with each other, or lack of intimacy, affect our intimacy with the land? Like death, I think our sensuality is something we're afraid of and we have avoided confronting it. I am interested in taboos, because I believe that's where the power of our culture lies. I love taking off their masks so we can begin to face the world openly.

I believe that will be our healing."

-Terry Tempest Williams

in interview with

David Peterson of The Bloomsbury Review

1991

#46

#42

"This morning hour"

#37

"me, a scarf and one angry thorn."

#27

"...if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get."

-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

#25

Next month (Feb 2009), I'll be participating in the Shutter Sisters creative challenge, the One Word Project. We're to pick a word that will inspire our images through the month of February. As I began to search for that perfect February theme, waiting was the first word that popped into my mind. Waiting for spring, waiting for the completion of an arduous Masters program, waiting for the move from the Boston area back to my roots in south central small town PA, waiting for a place to call home (it's been a good ten years feeling without one), waiting for space to dig and plant and grow and harvest...
But alas, I am here still. And as I recognized this, along came a second word: Being. With being I think of stillness and of patience but most importantly, I think of connection. The word "being," implies to be with, to be in relationship to all other things.

But with connection comes visibility, the next possibility for my February word search. And Visibility involves allowing myself to be seen, to be known, to be engaged...

This terrifies me. And as I sat bent over paper, a pen in hand, jotting these words one after another, I realized that I had been holding my chest tight and barely breathing. This is how I finally arrived at my word for the month of February: Breath.

From Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver:

"Metrical poetry is about: breath. Breath as an intake and a flow. Breath as a pattern. Breath as an indicator, perhaps the most vital one, of mood. Breath as our personal tie with all the rhythms of the natural world, of which we are a part, from which we can never break apart while we live. ...It is as good as a language. We sigh. We pant. We reveal ourselves."