Reprise: July 8, 2010: The Birdwatcher

 

Today I got email from a friend who visited my blog for the first time, and generously complimented my artwork. This made my day and prompted me to go back and take a look myself. I clicked on a tag at random, and was taken to this collage, which I made on July 8, 2010. Coincidence? Of course…

I have often wondered why, given how much I love my garden, I don’t do art inspired by it. I guess because I don’t need to. I have the real garden, and that is sufficient. Gardening moves me into another place, another state of mind, as does making art, but the two don’t intersect. Very little of my art has ever come from my day-to-day life, rather it comes from a place inside myself--where I would much rather spend my day-to-day life, if only I could discover how to merge the two. For me, that place contains mystery, humor, beauty, longing, and a magic lantern of images lovely, nostalgic, and sometimes bizarre. They flit across my mind, often so quickly I wonder if I’ll ever capture them on paper. In an instant the whole totality of the work, its flavor, colors, mood, vividly appears. The challenge of all art making is to fashion a piece that catches the viewer in a similar way and compels them to share the artist’s internal experience.

One evening last week while trolling through iTunes, I played some music (Manu Chao) that I listened to a lot when I was making collages for 3SIXTY5 last year, and I was amazed at how much the music awakened echoes of that most creative 7 months of my life. I had to turn it off and won’t listen again until I’m ready to make the time to work. But it’s tantalizing to know that this trigger exists to help me recreate that magical state of mind where creativity rules.

For now, back to the garden...

Greetings to Junibear!

This post started as an email to my friend June of Junibear's Jottings, http://junibearsjottings.blogspot.com/. For some reason, I find I cannot leave comments on people's blogs from my home computer. I think it might have something to do with the draconian security settings my ever-vigilant son-in-law put on. So, I end up emailing people directly instead of posting a comment on their blog. But I like to leave comments that other visitors can read too, so my way around the problem, this time, is to post the email I intended to send to June. Here it is:

Hi June,
Thanks as always for your encouraging comments on Collagitation! This is the sixth month of collage-a-day, which I should rename "collage-almost-every-day" I'm so far behind--probably around 10 days by now : (  It really matters only to me, but I hate to set a goal and not follow through!!!

As usual, I am unable to leave a comment on others' sites, I still don't know why. Curiously, when you or someone leaves a comment RE an entry on Theme Thursday or Three Muses challenges, I am able to follow the link and leave a comment. But not if I go directly from my computer, which tells me something (although not anything helpful to me.)

June, your post about being wheel chair bound is very moving, not maudlin at all. I do so admire your courage and cheerfulness in the face of such a life-changing event. I hope you are not in pain. My Mom is still ambulatory, but she often has severe pain from gout and arthritis. She has a whole slew of health problems. As my daughter says, we are lucky to still have her with us.

I had to smile at your comment about where I get my ideas for my art, because that particular piece, which I call Nocturnalia, came about mostly by chance. I keep cuttings in shallow boxes where they live until I need them for a piece.  Yesterday when I started to work, I picked up a box and noticed the way a bunch of elements had arbitrarily arranged themselves in the shallow box. (That's why the pillared arch is upside down!) Here's the digital photo I took after I started playing with the image,while everything was still in the box, so I'd remember the arrangement when I really got to work on it. It changed quite a bit but still recognizably the same piece.

Sometimes inspiration is just a matter or having enough stuff laying around the worktable! This is not the first piece that came about that way. Which is one of the reasons I love manual as opposed to digital collage. The main reason being, of course, because I don't know enough about digital art to make the images I want to. But I'm working on it!

My mother and I are both feeling much better today, thank you for your kind wishes, and I hope you are feeling good too, Junibear, because you are a treasure of a friend and we are all so lucky to know you!

Hugs from Diane