Thursday, September 23, 2010

Thursday -- September 23, 2010 Mag 33 White Ginger






You speak of Acquade Parma,
But my dreams go back many years.
I opened the tiny package
You gave me.
Along with all the other gifts
You brought from the islands.
So long ago...

Pan-Am had only one flight a day,
You were greeted
By a man, ambassador round the world,
Dressed in feathered head-dress,
He played the role of King Kamehameha
And placed a lie around your neck.
In my dreams there remains...
The sweet smell of white ginger...and you.



Theme Thursday -- Stretch

I am often stretched in every direction.
As an artist,
Like my role of woman,
My work is never done,
A project completed
Only leads to another.

I go to yoga to stretch
Beyond where I have been before.
I write words,
Look for meaning,
I have the opportunity to be
A Super Hero, Rubber Woman
Stretch to my limit.

http://themethursday.blogspot.com

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Tuesday September 21, 2010 Afternoon in Taos



Monday as I worked in the studio, I was aware there was a lot going on outside. Like a child -- without a sound -- seriously building sand castles to fill the sky. I had not really taken time to see, but at the end of the day when I left the studio, I was amazed! When clouds build up, they become a pallet, that catches every color of the sunset.














Friday, September 17, 2010

Friday September 17, 2010 Theme Thursday - Reveal



Oh dear, reveal....
To conceal?
Or to reveal it all...
That is the question?

Pandora opens her box
And spreads before you
Her treasures,
All soft and warm,
Beautiful colors,
Glitter, sparkle and shine
Laughter is heard......

The precious things
Are returned to her box,
Never to see the light of day,
Don't even ask.
They are hidden in a place
You will never look
Buried beneath your own heart.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Thursday September 16, 2010 Magpie Tales 32 -- Time Runs Out




Instructions
1) Write a poem or short vignette using the picture featured in this post as your inspiration. Feel free to take the photo to use for your post.

2) Link back to Magpie Tales from your post.

3) Sign up in the Mr. Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you've posted.

3) Post your piece on your blog no later than 8:00 a.m. EST Tuesday.

Easy peasy free fun.






A Time of Your Own

I opened the window to see,
An hourglass if you please,
A reminder of another time
And how they kept track....

When to get up?
(And I'm wondering about this?)
Appointments to be kept,
Let's meet for lunch?
What time would school get out?

Probably the way people said
Things would be different,
You probably couldn't say, ten fifteen?
It all happened when the sands ran out,
And then of course someone had to turn it.

There is a saying, we still use today,
"The sands of time."

And then the sands ran out for the last time.
And people had a new way to keep track,
It had to do with the circle,
Circle of time,
One would have to wind it up.

But no more turning over.
You could have one in the hall,
Or wear it on your wrist.
Never late for an appointment.

Then from winding to batteries,
The end of the circle,
Only numbers,
But with all of our inventions,
And drive to keep better tract.

Sometimes we're late,
The battery runs out,
And has to be replaced.
Time stops,
TIME STOPS!

And when our life is over,
Time stops for good,
No more keeping track,
Well leave that task to another
It's a job that's never finished

It lasts a lifetime,
And that's a time that cannot
Be measured
It's something individual
A time of your own.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Wednesday, Septemer 18, 2010 One Shot Poetry, Autumn

http://oneshotpoetry.blogspot.com/



Autumn
Oh.............
My favorite time of year,
Off to school
Pack my things,
--in memory of course --
Projects began or draw to a close.
Time for unexpected things.
The first frost
-- comes in anticipation --
Drives in the country,
Camp-outs,
Hikes,

Dig out warmer clothes,
Achu, achu, allergies abound,
Even though my nose needs a Kleneex,
My eyes have so much to see!

Monday, September 13, 2010

Monday 13, 2010 The Friends of Contemporary Art --Annual Studio Tours Taos

On Sunday I joined the Friends of Contemporary Art Studio Tour, here in Taos. It just happened it was the same weekend that the Taos Art Association was having their studio tours.



We joined the bus at the first studio, which was Larry Bell's studio.



Here's Larry on the portal, ready to greet the tour to his studio. He was patient with us, and answered every question. He opened the studio, and gave us a tour of the office, the studio, and the "work" studio. He had a printed sheet of information about himself to give to us. And from that sheet: Taos artist Larry Bell's sculptures, cubes of tinted glass that are intended to work with available light, may stand today as his signature pieces. But Bell started out as a painter. With a career that spans nearly fifty years, his work has evolved and changed in numerous directions.






This is inside of his studio, and if you look carefully you will see the glass cubes that have become his signature pieces. Over the years Bell has experimented with different ways of working with glass to make his cubes, including plate glass that rests in a metal frame to glass plates with beveled edges.





This was a new work, as well as the works pinned upon the walls, were new. The one on the table was waiting manipulation from Larry. He said these new works have more curves in them than the work before, which had more right angles.



Larry speaks to the group in his "work" studio. Since his work is very technical there were many questions.



This is the vacuum chamber Larry tried to explain to the group.



In the 1990's Bell worked with architect Frank Gehry on a commission involving stick-like figures that are at once whimsical and sculptural, with a linear quality that makes their reductive forms appealing. Bell created the prototypes on a computer program and developed an idea of basing the figures he created on Babylonian mythology. The commission resulted in the fabrication of two bronzes for a Gehry Home designed for an insurance executive.

Larry has lived and worked in Taos since the early 1970's. In 1990 he received the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in the area of visual arts. His work is in numerous private collections and museum collections including the New Mexico Museum of Ar where it was recently featured in the exhibit Flux: Reflections on Contemporary Glass, curated by Laura Addison.



Thomas French graciously welcomes the group to his home, where we had lunch.



Then it was off to the studio of Zoe Zimmerman. Zoe is a photographer, whose work is a convergence of contemporary imagery and nearly obsolete printing techniques. Harkening back to an earlier time, Zimmerman employs an albumen printing process, out of fashion since the turn of the last century, creating images that reflect the tonal quality of photographs made in bygone days. However, her subjects range from surreal, modernist imagery to traditional nudes to still-lifes.





Zoe explained much of her work is about choices. And she pins the prints on the wall to determine which photos go with which, which is best?













Her photographs are beautiful and richly detailed compositions. "The images themselves," says the artist, "distill peripheral psychological states, played out side-by-side with the quotidian. Their aim is to be alluring and daunting at once. I find beauty the keenest when it is also forbidding."



Then it was to the studio of Carole Sue and Johnnie Winona Ross. Which he built and they share. Ross and Carole Sue Ross have lived in Arroyo Seco since 1999. In addition to painting, Ross created a series of prints working with master printers at Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque. His work is the subject of a one man show at the New Mexico museum of Art called Traces. The exhibit will be in view through January 9, 2011.



Johnnie had few examples of his work, because of his show in Santa Fe, and a show in New York, at the Stephen Haller Gallery, September 10 -- October 16, 2010. But he was gracious to explain his process, and to share his working space.





What first strikes you about the work of Johnnie Winona Ross is the almost elegant surface quality of his paintings. Lustrous and smooth, they are the result of numerous applications of paint that are added and subtracted, in a time consuming process of layering that includes scraping away, repainting, and burnishing the surface. From 50 to 150 layers are used in each painting. The nuanced colors and details within each painting reveal themselves only slowly, rewarding, as curator Laura Addison has stated, close up inspection. From a distance an overall color tone appears dominant and the rich variety of Ross's color schemes are apparent when seeing a series of his paintings side by side. That, as well as the horizontal bands of color that echo from one painting to the next, have drawn numerous comparisons with the work of Agnes Martin (1912-2004) whose own work similarly focused on line and grid patterns.

Ross's work is best understood, up to a point, as landscape inspired imagery: rhythmic compositions that utilize the line as a starting off point to explore our sense of the natural world rather than to mimic or capture that world's attributes. Looking at natural features of the landscape does not inform these paintings in a direct way. The idea of erosion or of superimposition of layered rock over older layers distorts or hides a history where it occurs. Ross strives to distill the essence of the experience we have when engaging with the landscape: seeing first the over all sense of color or large-scale feature then settling into the minutiae. Balancing the somewhat strict and repetitive order suggested by the horizontal bands with a more drip-like quality in vertical lines that run in a more haphazard fashion down the length of each painting he creates complexity within them.



Carole Sue shares the studio with Johnnie. She is a potter and her work is equally inspired by forms found in nature.



Carole's work reminds one of the tangible, close to the earth appeal of working with clay.



Her ceramic vessels have no traditional footing. They find their own center of gravity and rest at various angles in relation to each other.



Shell-like and fagile looking, Carole works the soft clay until they are as thin as she can get them.



The pit-fired ceramics are coated with terra sigillata, a substance that lends an iridescent finish to the work.

Carole's work can been seen at Santa Fe Modern Home, 1512 Pacheco Street, Building A 105, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Sunday 12, 2010 Autumn Song



Autumn Song

So much I need to do,
To find my way to you --
Today I dream of your,
White winter's blanket.

I watch and I listen,
For your Autumn song.

The greens have only begun,
To slip into the brilliant colors.
Yellows, oranges and reds.

The signal that,
This year will be over
Before you know.

Without your help,
It will be complete.

A benediction.
You have had the opportunity,
To walk through one more season.



(This image I took from inside the studio, thus the reflection, looking West.)

http://writersisland.wordpress.com/
Prompt #20 for 2010: Last Redwood

They are all gone,
Each in it's own way.
I stand alone,
But not for long.

Without the heart,
To love and care,
Life cannot continue.
The heart has been eaten
By a terrible worm.

It's over,
But life will begin again,
Rise up from the ooze,
There will be another chance,
To get it right.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Friday September 30, 2010 Theme Thursday: The Best Things I ever Tasted



As a child my favorite thing to eat was fried chicken, and my Grandmother's was best. Her cream gravy, which was always served along side the fried chicken. Sometimes so thick you could cut it with a knife or stand a spoon upright in it and it would hold. But her gravy, thick as it was, was a melt in your mouth experience.

My Grandmother was small and kind. Even as a small child I knew she was small, not much bigger than me.

I loved my Mother's homemade blackberry jam spread on homemade biscuits, hot and tender. And I loved corn on the cob, fresh from the garden, and warm sweet tomatoes, with just a little bit of salt. In the summer, tree ripened peaches, so juicy, when you bit into them, juice would run down your chin. And homemade peach ice cream, cold and sweet. Other favorites were, tapioca pudding, and strawberry shortcake, piled high with mounds of whipped cream.

Freshly caught from the bay, sweet juicy crab. Fried okra, hot and crunchy, piled high on the place. There can be no end to this love of food and what tastes best.

Corn bread, roast beef, sweet potatoes, all kinds of sandwiches and potato chips -- potatoes; baked, fried, mashed with gravy -- soups and salads, popcorn and peanuts.

Depending upon the level of hunger, maybe I've never eaten anything I didn't like.

http://themethursday.blogspot.com

Friday 10, 2010 The Gown for the Willow Ball September 30th

Like Helen I've found more gowns that I like, and I need you to help me choose!

First Choice: This one is designed by Dagnez & Ewa Dunikowska





Second Choice: Designed by Carolina Herrera


Third Choice:


Fourth Choice:


These are things I already have or have selected:





>



I'm very excited and can't wait to see you at the Ball! It should be a night to remember.

I have asked and I have been accepted. My date for the ball is Father Antonio José Martínez (January 17, 1793[1] – July 27, 1867[2]) was a New Mexican priest, educator, publisher, rancher, farmer, community leader, and politician. He lived through and influenced three distinct periods of New Mexico's history: the Spanish period, the Mexican period, and the American occupation and subsequent territorial period. Martínez appears as a character in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, which cast him according to the black legend view of the Spanish clergy.



Martínez was born, Antonio José Martín, in Abiquiu in 1793, when New Mexico was a very isolated and desolate territory of the Spanish Empire. In 1804, the Martín family, including his father Severino and five siblings, moved to Taos, a prosperous outpost, where they came to be known as Martínez.[3] During his upbringing, Martínez's father taught him the importance of ranching and farming at the Hacienda Martínez in Northern New Mexico. In 1811, Martínez married María de la Luz, who died giving birth to their daughter less than a year later, when he was 19.[4] Their child was named in honor of María de la Luz. Six years later Martínez moved south after much thought and correspondence with the Bishop of Durango. He decided to travel there in 1817, and become a priest, enrolling in the Tridentine Seminary of the Diocese of Durango.[4] Martínez not only excelled at the seminary but also in understanding the ideals of liberal Mexican politicians and teachers of his day, including Miguel Hidalgo. After six years, Martínez was ordained, and he returned to New Mexico, where after a few years in other parishes, he became the parish priest of Taos, and from then on was known as Padre Martínez.[4]

So now you know a lot about Padra Martinez, but there is so much more. I could go on and on. Now some of you might look upon his picture, and think, "He's probably a sourpuss." I think this picture was taken on the day he lost his kitten. I wish you could have seen his smile when the kitten was returned. He is a really fun kind of guy, he can really dance! Knows all the latest steps!
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Not Just A Cup

  Not Just a Cup       Southern born Not a tea drinker Always coffee For me   Although I often find  Bitter taste Of the dark brew A bit muc...