Wishing You Deep Peace

Deep peace of the running water to you,

Deep peace of the flowing air to you,

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,

Deep peace of the shining stars to you,

Stars and moon pour their healing light on you,

Deep peace of the light of the world to you.


A Gaelic Blessing

Thanks so much everyone for a wonder filled year, for the meeting of new friends, for joining me on the journey, for making me use spell check, which you may of noticed but have been far to polite to mention, I sometimes forget to use, for leaving comments, for making me laugh and think, for expanding my world in ways I never dreamed, and especially a huge thanks for providing a place for my work. So 

here is a toast to you all, with all best wishes for 2012.

Fun With Christmas Lights

The sofa beckons but I am resisting; only because I have found a new way to play. Think I will call these Drawing With Lights. Should I warn you that you could be seeing a lot of these? I'll try and restrain myself.

Drawing with Light 4,

Drawing with light 2

Feet up and contemplating

It's over for another year.  And while I love seeing family and friends I find Christmas exhausting, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Perhaps my favourite time is when it is all over, everyone has gone home, the house is still clean or as clean as it can be with Zoe, the fridge still jammed full with lovely bits that we have been given, and John and I put our feet up on the coffee table and contemplate which book out of the pile of goodies we received we will start to read. Bliss.

Feet up and contemplating which book.

Listen:

"There was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I 'A feather on the breath of God'."

That is how one of the most remarkable creative personalities of the Middle Ages describes herself. Hildegard of Bingen has been one of my heroines for years and when I found this feather on the floor of the hall the other day I thought of this sublime music. I  had used this music in a sound-scape I created for a show many years ago.  Here is a link to just the music [link] and  to the sound-scape The Sweetness of Truth the Body Reveals  [link]. You will need to scroll down the page to find it . Below are the words in Latin and the English translation. Perfect words for any time of the year, but especially resonant now. 

Caritas abundat in omnia, de imis excellentissima super sidera, atque amantissima in omnia, quia summo Regi osculum pacis dedit.

"Love lives in everything, from the deepest depths to the highest stars, and she is the most charming of all, because she has given the highest King the kiss of peace."

A feather for  Hildegard of Bingen

Light Retourning

We've made it. The shortest day of the year. Tomorrow the light stays longer; small wonder we celebrate. John and I put our tree up Saturday and like most, checked the lights before they went on and preceded to decorate the tree. Well actually its' branches and they are a bit fiddly to decorate. Then we did the one for the kitchen. Congratulating ourselves, we noticed that the living room tree didn't seem quite as bright. One strand of lights had gone out, but with some gentle shaking they decided to work again. The next night we noticed it was getting darker in the living room. Two strands out and no amount of shaking, and a few broken balls, was turning them back on. On to plan B. Buy more lights, but I have to admit I hate the LED's and want my old fashioned tiny white, electricity sucking lights. Sir Galahad to the rescue, he finds 4 BIG boxes of them and so the challenge today was to take out the old ones and replace with the new. Easier said than done. However we are now alight and looking very fine. Happy Solstice everyone.

Christmas light reflected on fridge door

The Most Beautiful Sunrise

O.K. maybe a slight exaggeration but it was a beauty. Only a couple more days to the solstice. The light is so far south, the sun rising after 7 am, and with last nights' cold and a dusting of snow we watched the wonder unfold. Rubies, amethysts and emeralds sparkled in the snow. Feathery hoar frost coated the trees. The sun came up in all her glory. When I ventured out I found the frost had also made the most beautiful patterns on the pond.

Sunrise, Dec 18, 2011

Frost on pond Dec 18, 2011

Needs

Ordinary Light

The snow has stayed on the ground these last few days and the sun has shone making the light inside the house quite wondrous. There is a window on the back wall of the kitchen that we call the moon window, and because the light is so horizontal at this time of year, it shines in casting the most glorious light and shadow. It stopped me in my tracks yesterday morning. Later, when when I got out of the shower, light was illuminating the facet. I began to pay attention to the unexpected places that the light was finding. It also highlighted all the dust, but that's a job for another day.

Light and shadow from the moon window

Light under the facet

Light under my studio speakers

Temporary Alphabet or A Time-Based Alphabet

This alphabet continues to elude me. Every time I think I have it, it's somewhere else. Maybe I need to tie string to it. Yesterday I decided I was taking the whole thing way to seriously and decided to play. Take a roll of paper, staple it to the wall, add a container of joint filler, and a paint scrapper and let's see what happens. The letters only lasted a few moments as I kept smoothing over the surface before writing the next letter; and I only forgot one letter, which I faked for the photo below. Next time I will use heavier paper and if I am really smart use a gessoed board so I can really move into the surface; the wet joint filler and my use of the paint scrapper ripped the paper several times. Oh well, just smooth that into the whole.

The Temporary Alphabet

Christmas Cards

One of my rituals is to make our Christmas cards every year, and even with the event of email, Face book and all the rest of the virtual world I still want to keep in touch with friends that we never get a chance to see, but still are a part of our lives. I make them and John writes the notes or letters to that keep us connected. It's all very satisfying except when you realize it's Dec 8th and they need to get made, printed, written and in the mail. Thank god for Ah ha moments [ don't know how that should be spelled and can't find it in the dictionary]. So here is this years. I think you need to hold your phone up to the code and it will tell you what it means. Which in this case says  Everybody wake up! Open your eyes! Stand up! Be children of the light, strong, swift and sure of foot. Hurry, clouds from the four quarters of the universe. Come, big snows that water will be abundant this summer. All hearts be glad. Love Liz and John. The words are from a Pueblo Song. Love this grid. Wonder if will read if I print it in red.

The Montreal Massacre, December 6,1989

About 4 pm, December 6, 1989 a lone man carrying a semi-automatic rifle and a knife, walked into the Ecole polytechnique [an engineering school, part of the University of Montreal] and into the classrooms. He separated the men from the women, telling the men to leave and shooting the remaining women before moving on to the next class room, and the next. At the end of the rampage 14 women were dead, 14 were injured. Collectively we were in shock and as the years passed a group of committed people helped to form Canada's gun registry, now under attack by a misguided conservative government. This anniversary day always brings up a lot of mixed emotions, rage that the gun laws seen to be going the way of the dodo although police chiefs across Canada praise it, sadness that women in the world still hold little value, cynicism that much will change, hope that it will. But really what's important to me today is that we remember their names and the vows we made to them to keep on with the struggle. To help create a society, a country, a world that will not tolerate the discrimination and abuse of women.

In Memory of 

Geneviève Bergeron

Hélène Colgan

Nathalie Croteau

Barbara Daigneault

Anne-Marie Edward

Maud Haviernick

Barbara Marie Klueznick

Maryse Laganière

Maryse Leclair

Anne- Marie Lemay

Sonia Pelletier

Michèle Richard

Annie St-Arneault

 Annie Turcotte

Stone Circle on my studio floor

Quiet Light

For the past month we have been experiencing the most beautiful light. Sharply angled and illuminating forgotten corners of our world. This is usually a gray time, the withdrawal walk towards winter; not this year. Yesterday morning we had our breakfast coffee out side, bundled up, the sun almost as far south as it goes. Not quite 3 weeks to the solstice, my favourite day of the year. "Ah," I say," done it," as I eagerly count the increasing minutes of daylight. So, if you are living in a dark place where the sun sets at 4 pm, this light is especially for you.

More Paper Shots

I can't believe I wrote that title. Yesterday I got a friend to use his nail gun on a book block to try and do my alphabet. We used finishing nail. Not pretty. What the title is referring to is my latest love affair which I am being most indiscreet about. Last year a friend moved into a new house and while she was waiting for the curtains to be installed, she covered the windows with white paper. Needless to say I was over there with my camera. Couldn't believe the soft, diffused light. Think we should call this decorating tip Minimal Curtains.

Love Affairs

Just wanted to tell you about my latest love affair. Crinkly, sensuous, velvety, rippled, fragile, [w]holey, dare I say it, holy paper and show you a few photos of  of my love. And just for your information, not only did the paper enjoy its' bath, I put my thumb drive through the wash today and it works just fine.

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After The Bath / Desperate Measures

After I had finished drilling the other night I soaked the alphabet in water and tied it up in desperation. I was giving it a bath. It needed to relax, probably I needed to relax. A friend, Rosie, [link here and here] talking about the [w] hole thing, quipped that the process was getting violent. She mentioned drowning, shooting. Mmmmn, she had a point. Things were not going the way I expected or hoped. Not being able to saw through the holes was a blow. It's still not totally dry but some of what has happened I love; the wrinkling and curling of the paper, the new texture of the paper [it feels so much thicker, more substantial]. I love the bound edge curling back on itself. In fact it's the paper, that has so much vitality and life, that intrigues and moves me. The holes give it the sense of braille, another form of an alphabet.

After a bath the bound alphabet

Opening the pages

View through the holes

Curling pages

Water meets binding

Folded pages

Another Day, Another Lesson

Spent most of yesterday drilling, and not for oil. I may have demolished John dremel. It wasn't too happy about what I wanted it to do. Clouds of smoke were rising from the book block, but the big drill, which I might add, weighs a tonne, held up to the job. The holes aren't as pretty and there are no scorch marks or the smell of burnt paper, but I was able to see if this idea works. It doesn't. But some more ideas came out of it so all is not lost.

Using John dremel, smoking paper

All drilled out

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Hidden Worlds

This is one of the reasons I am so taken with my macro lens. It is allowing me to see into hidden worlds. This photo captured the tiny air hole, covered with frost that my nemesis, The Moles [see previous links to the moles] use to breathe in their tunnels. Now maybe I am dreaming, or seeing things, or telling tall tales but there was this tiny, tiny area, completely different from anywhere near. A lightbulb went off; or was that the flash on the camera? Have to give them credit though. It's a beautiful place .

Entrance to the Mole World

More From The Minimal Garden

It's a white world this morning, but until now our weather continued to amaze us. This has not been the November we dread. The other morning was a wonderland, thick hoar frost everywhere, soft, golden, slanted light and the pond frozen over completely. Wandering around the garden [note to self, put on your boots, your feet are freezing] I found one of my favourite stones perfectly capturing the light and frost.

Moon Rock

This One is for Matthew

When I was an art student I had a love affair with ortho film. It was a very high contrast black and white film. Then I moved on to photocopy machines where the image degraded with each copy until you got a very high contrast image rather like ortho. But in the last fifteen years or so photocopy machines have become so good that you can no longer get this effect, which is when I started to use the camera and computer. All this preamble leads me back to black and white and meeting Matthew Beale, a photographer, painter and friend whose photographic work continues to inspire me. Check out his web -site here, or his Blog here. I love how saturated the blacks are, maybe velvety is a better word. I always want to touch his photos.

And my love affair with echinacea continues. Every stage of this plants' life is a marvel. The emergence of the leaves to the forming of the flower head. The budding process with the formation of the crown to the withering away and exposing the bare seed head. A plant of great structure and beauty, it has wonderful medicinal purposes. Like so many I use it all winter to boost my immune system.

Tilting and Twirling

Every night, the dog takes us for a walk. And while Zoe is busy hunting, J. and I are star watching. On those clear nights we watch in awe, the milky way spread above us. Sometimes we are ever so lucky and one of us will see a shooting star. It's the immensity that is so wondrous. That, and the fact that the light from the stars has taken billions years to reach earth. And here we are, 2 tiny specks with an even tinier speck [the dog] along with 7 billion other tiny specks, walking on this round blue ball, twirling through space with the rest of the stars and planets. Amazing.

November Beauty

We have been having the most sublime November. Now, here in the Eastern Townships, November and sublime are not often used in the same sentence. Usually we spend our time complaining about the Gray and the lack of day light hours, the drizzle and even worst the freezing rain. This time around everyone is walking about with a smile, the smell of a BBQ drifts by, the terraces in the village are still open, it's bliss. In a ski town it is not politically correct to say, but I'm hoping this goes on 'till Christmas. The fire wood is stacked, the few precious plants are wrapped, the garden furniture put away, the 10 tonnes of duck manure is on the garden, the leaves are mulched, the double windows are on; we're ready. Just checked the weather forecast, snow tonight. Oh well, it's been great.

the last of the oak leaves

Minimalism

The dominant ethos of my art collage days was minimalism, defined as work that set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. And like any earnest student I embraced them fervently. These principals guided me for the first 10 years as young artist, mixed in with a dollop or two of conceptualism, add a drop of Arte Povera, etcetera, etcetera. Well you can see where this is going; a mishmash. But I still love and honor the core of minimalism, the search for the essence of the "thing". While I was preparing for the exhibition last summer, this was the guiding principle in the work; to strip away, lay bare, to reveal somehow the essence of the garden. An impossible task, but thrilling to try. Some of the photos I rejected using for the show as being to bare, to abstract; but now, I am re thinking that idea. I'll call these The Minimal Garden.

Tree Peony 11

Building Bridges

My x-acto knife and I have become good friends over the past couple of days as I cut out more and more letters, and better yet, not my fingers. Because I am trying to use both the positive and negative shape of each letter, and keep the negative shape page whole, the process is definitely trial and error and tiny pieces of scotch tape. Must say that some of the mistakes look great but I really want all the letters to hang together, which is where the bridges come in as I connect white spaces. In the 1st photo you can see that I have finally gotten all the letters to connect. In the lower left photo is the page they are cut from [the negative shapes], and the lower right are some of the trial and errors.

Layout Ideas

I am still making maquettes for this alphabet. Every idea seems to generate more ideas, try this, mumm, try that...what about this. It's exciting, frustrating, and baffling. At this rate I will have 102 alphabets. Need to get clearer...HOW??? Ah yes, my tried and true method, sleep on it. Here is the latest ideas. Using a laser to cut out the letters, all the letters cut from one book block.

layout, need to put the bridges in so all the inner spaces don't fall out

letters cut into the book block

The World of Wonders

This short video, Murmuration, by Sophie Windsor Clive, has been making the rounds on Facebook and I thought I would post it here for any of you who have missed it. It really is a beauty and I have a couple of links for any of you who want to know more about Murmuration.


Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

And here are the links to a fascinating piece in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/21/starlings-flock-together-study?INTCMP=SRCH

and another in Wired [again thanks to Leigh for this link]
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/starling-physics/

And because I have decided today is fun day, a treat for all the font, lettering, kerning ect. types out there. Another way to productively procrastinate. It's a game to help you learn to kern type. OK, so I know it's not for everybody, but I LOVE it. Thank-you Suzanne for this.
Kern Type, the kerning game

Notebook, Nov. 6.11

Letter B. The negative shapes are more interesting, except where the positive shape of the letter is bound.  Love the pages splayed open, the play of the cut words. Check font used by BBC. Check that off the list, ugly, even if it is a square. DECIDE : upper or lower case, and stick with it. Why not both? Try frame around each letter and maybe lose the interior of the letters.

 Love the pages splayed open

From My Notebook

Nov. 4.11. Some elements I want to incorporate into this alphabet. The old books I have been collecting because the paper is so beautiful and the text is usually so elegantly set up the page. I want to use the negative and positive shapes of each letter. The letters need a certain weight and mass, they want to occupy actual space, 3 d. space not just as marks on paper. Considering: after the letters are cut, wet the paper, free it a bit, maybe bind the letters before soaking them, use the spine of the book, what about the covers---  encase the letters in them in later? Buy more x-acto knives and emory boards at the $ store N.B. do another A without the slice in it, problem with the negative shape then, but figure it out later.

Trials on the letter A

Feeling Very Guilty

I have not started my second alphabet yet. And I signed up with a fine bunch of people over at A Letter A Week. Well I have thought about it, done some sketches, thought some more, bought old books a various library sales this summer, thought some more, procrastinated; well you get the picture. Now I am ready to start, still not sure quite where I am going but the only thing I'm sure of is that I will be breaking the rules. Maybe I should have warned them that I am not so good at following guidelines. Wandering through some of my books the other day I was reminded, again, of the work of Jacqueline Rush Lee. I love how she understands the physicality of paper. What it wants to do and be. I hadn't realized that she uses "used books" in her work. Here, in her own words "For almost a decade I have found myself drawn to the intimate, tactile, and symbolic qualities of used books. I am interested in how these recycled books come with their own histories of use and meaning and how they serve as potent vehicles of expression." How this will translate into my alphabet, I can only wait and see.

Volumes Series 2001-2003, Manipulated, soaked, dried books, Copyright Jacqueline Rush Lee 2010

I can't get her web site to work but here is the URL: http://www.jacquelinerushlee.com/

you might find her Facebook site easier: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001255745685&sk=wall

Our House at 8.31pm

One of the challenges about getting older is bedtime. I used to love working all night, sometimes I still do. But it seems, more and more, this is the way I feel.


Was it for this I uttered prayers,

And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,

That now, domestic as a plate,

I should retire at half-past eight?




~Edna St Vincent Millay

P.S  Forgot to thank Leigh for posting this poem last week, that got me laughing, then got me thinking.  Just love the line "That now, domestic as a plate'. Thanks Leigh

And More Drama Queens

As you can see I have a new obsession, Drama Queens, but I think it is almost worn it's self out. It's been fascinating to go back through my files and see if I could create dramatic lighting in some of the photos. And while I love hops with their curling tendrils that wrap about everything in their path; trees, barns, telephone poles, it's time to move on as they say. The world is no longer green and vibrant, snow is on the ground, so this is my last gasp of summer. Today I face reality, winter is coming and this won't make it go away.

Fascinating hops

More Drama Queens

For the past few years I have been opening my photos in Photoshop using Camera Raw and the wonderful dialog box that comes up is full of hidden treasures, most of which I am only now beginning to use. It's amazing what you discover when you start to press buttons. A zillion more ways to play with the image, a lot of which you can do in photoshop but this feels more intuitive. I find I am doing more and more of things like curves, levels and white balance here than in photoshop. Wish there was away to re-open my photoshop file using camera raw, really don't want to save files as jpegs, which might do the trick. Meanwhile here are some more Drama Queens. Thank-you Camera Raw.

Hollyhock

Grans Yellow Iris