Halloween Treats

Please feel free to grab a handful of that Halloween candy you bought for the neighborhood kids, and munch down! Wait--it's only August, isn't it? Never mind--my macabre imagination generally kicks in about this time of year. Once it's dark by 9 PM, I dust off my broom. Mother Nature (aka, the Goddess) knew what she was about--we long for summer, yet we anticipate the cooling weather and moody skies of Autumn with a frisson of pleasure, as the heat of August drags on. And Halloween! Who could not love this shadow-laden  celebration? As with Mexico's Day of the Dead, here is a holiday where we flush away that fear of death and dread of evil, and embrace them instead. For how could we celebrate life, without occasionally taking off our hats (or putting them on) to death?  Dark is only the other side of light.  Would light matter if we never experienced the dark? So here's to the Dark--keeper of secrets, nest of conjugal coupling, bridge to our land of dreams. Or nightmares.

3SIXTY5 for June 19, 2010: Bad Dream

Well, this piece is pretty dire and intense. Fortunately, it does not reflect any actual dreams I've had (that I can recall.)  I love using marbled papers for collage work. I took a workshop in paper marbling back in 1986, but didn't pursue the craft long enough to get good at it. However, I have a stash of  hand-marbled papers that I acquired for a ridiculously low price when a local book binder closed up shop 30 years or so ago, which has been satisfying my marbled paper needs ever since.

3SIXTY5 #11: Garden Dreaming

Please accept my apologies for the awful image. The original is too big for my scanner, so I did what I could with the hand held digital camera. My son is going to help me set up a copy stand with a tripod (of which I have several, from the old days of taking portfolio shots with the 35mm camera) so I can avoid bulgy, distorted pictures like the this. Later I will replace this image with a better one.

I call this collage Garden Dreaming, because that's about all I'll be doing garden-wise this year! What's cool is that all the flowers in the piece (and even the swallowtail butterfly) were cut from photos I took of my own garden over the years. The view through the gothic window is the actual view through my bathroom window. I added the gothic window frame, which, alas, my bathroom does not have. The Botticelli angels have yet to appear in my garden, but I keep hoping.

Tonight I attended a performance of Pittsburgh Ballet Theater's Swan Lake, and got to see my ballet assemblage box with the other works in the exhibit. It's amazing the spectrum of ideas and interpretations that the artists came up with for transforming pointe shoes into works of art.