Nature Girl

Tonight's collage was inspired by Three Muses "Back to Nature" challenge. The labels tell it all. The skull is there because death is also nature at work. Sleep tight!

3SIXTY5 for Tuesday, August 3: Melody

3SIXTY5 #57-3 for June 3: Beautiful Flower

Growing god-knows-where, on some surreal plane, in a parallel universe. Which, nevertheless, has lovely butterflies, and Bugs. Demonstrating the universality of yin and yang, the sustaining and the destructive. If you garden, these are principles  that you encounter on a regular basis....for Theme Thursday "bright colors" challenge. ThankQ

Collage a Day #36: Flora

On this chilly, drizzly Pittsburgh spring evening, my thoughts turn to a lush fantasy of brilliantly colored flowers sending rich floral scents wafting on warm breezes, attracting hummingbirds and fair ladies alike.

Flora is also the name of a favorite movie character:  Flora Post, heroine of "Cold Comfort Farm," one of my all-time desert island movies, directed by John Schlesinger and starring Kate Beckinsale in that role. The outstanding cast also includes Joanna Lumley, Eileen Atkins and Sir Ian McKellan. If you've never seen it, and I am always surprised at how many people have never even heard of it, you are in for a treat. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

3SIXTY5 #31: Clever Parrot

Parrots are wonderful creatures! I have one in my family, and she is smart as a whip and lots of fun. She lives in Brooklyn, and when she visits our town we get to hear sirens, trash trucks backing up, cell phone conversations, and myriad other city sounds. Of course she also talks, but it's the sound effects that amuse me the most! She loves fruit, also eats hard-cooked eggs; I'm not sure about seashells and flowers, but my parrot in the picture likes those things too.

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.