Harvesting Color (Lughnasadh 8-9 2015)

It has been a joy spending my days developing a new creative rhythm and then sharing each day’s image and reflection with the Art Journey Support Group each night. I’ve learned a few things already:

• I really really really need to prune my stash of fabrics.
• The hardest part of the process is attaching the art to the canvas. A blood offering seems to be required.
• Breathing into curves remains a challenge.
• When in doubt, add beads.
• and Beads will take the time they take…like pregnancy.
• If you are going to cut, cut boldly.
• When you are faced with a blivet, sometimes you need to stop and think and sometimes you need to keep on moving. Which to choose is the trick.
• My husband sees the most amazing things when he takes off his glasses.
• Tomorrow is another day.

If you would like to see the whole week in one place, here it is. Two of these pieces are still for sale (Day 4: Fire at $35.00 and Day 7: The Art of the Fan for $40.00)
If you have not been following the journey and would like to, please contact me today so that I can get you on the list.

Day 1: Creativity (Sold)

In childhood,
I had a complicated relationship
with the orange crayon
(which seemed of distinctly limited use
to my single-digit-aged mind).
Imagine my surprise:
Belly Chakra – seat of female creativity –
resonates bright orange.
(Who gets to decide these things, anyway?)
So I try to channel winter squash
and dahlias,
apricots, cantaloupe, salmon…
succulent and beautiful.
But really:
what part of a peach is actually peach?

 

Day 2: Rainbow Walk-About (Sold)
What if rainbows don’t melt away?
What if they go walk-about
to discover what it feels like
to be the taste of lemon
in the hot sun?
Or the upward leap of
delphinium in late spring?
What if they vacation as the
iridescent scales of fish,
or the flash of feathers
on a hummingbird?
Maybe soul-beings
don’t melt away, either…
but just go walk-about,
practicing the glory of creation.

 

Day 3: Sister Water (Sold)

‘Never waste water’
my (great-) Grandfather said,
pumping it by hand
into the farmhouse sink
from the deep, sweet well he dug
as a young man.
So I hunted out the blue strip sheet
pieced for a project long since forgotten,
and thought about waste
and about water
while I cut and sewed
and drank deeply of tea
in a geography where the water table
is steadily depleting.

 

Day 4: Fire (Sold)

Sacred Spirit, Flame of Wisdom,
illumine me.
Sacred Spirit, Forge-Blaze,
temper me.
Sacred Spirit, Radiance of Starlight,
cast me into vision.
Sacred Spirit, Heart-Fire of Love,
impassion me.

 

 

 

 

Day 5: Arcs and Orbs (NFS)

‘Judging by your genes,
you’ll have to come to terms
with curves someday,’
my mother informed
my baffled adolescent self.
I didn’t, though –
so my collar interfacings never
lay smoothly,
and geometry remained a mystery.
Then, one day, I fell in love
with the curve of my daughter
in my belly,
and the arc of the Milky Way
across the sky,
and the glory of the moon
at the full.

 

Day 6: Plain and Fancy (Sold)

A cousin called me Fancy Pants
because I loved the swish of tulle,
the luxury of silk and velvet,
and the crotcheted edges
on my great-aunt’s pillowcases.
It was not a compliment.
I haven’t changed
in all the decades since,
but for all my patent leather heels
and drop earrings,
I still hold to the
plain-speaking, plain-dealing
I learned at the knees
of my Yankee kin.

 

Day 7: The Art of the Fan

There was a time
when fans didn’t languish
in the props departments
of theatre companies.
There was a time when
they spoke their own
subtle language,
beckoning and rejecting,
giving the cut direct or
enchanting a lover.
Now it is only in the
summer heat of the South
that they still murmur
prophetic encouragement
and soft “amen”s.

 

Next week: How many ways can I create texture? Stay tuned.

–Andrea

Text © 2015, Andrea La Sonde Anastos
Photos © 2015 Immram Chara, LLC