Having not blogged regularly over the last few months I have some catching up to do.
Our photography theme for December/January was Glimmer Moments. You can read more about what these are here.
The instructions for the photography group were: A glimmer moment is something that brings joy or a sense of safety.
This isn’t about taking the perfect picture. It’s about snapping an image that probably only means something to you. It might be an image that represents a moment rather than the moment itself. After all we should be living in the moment.
An example might be the dirty plates after a family meal.
I only took two photos during the 4 weeks - one at each end of the time - both of which were about meals out with the same friends.
Ceiling lamp at the restaurant
Painting on the restaurant wall
The next theme was to choose between 5 and 10 of our best or favourite photos from 2023.
My lack of creativity wasn't total during January & February. I did manage to attend some online poetry workshops. The good thing about zoom is you can turn the camera off so the other participants don't know whether you're even there. And certainly one of the sessions I was particularly vacant, even though I was actually in the room with computer!
For this first poem we were asked to make a list of words that go together. For example, pencil and paper, cats & dogs, up & down, etc.
Where? Let’s stay here. Here where comfort lies. Here, where my concerns are contained and specified. Here, where I feel safe.
Let’s go there. There where adventure waits. There, where worries fade amidst the new found space. There, where I feel free.
The second poem we were asked to write was about travelling solo.
Frustration What if I packed a bag and ran away from home? What if I leave no note or explanation; no forwarding address or plan of destination? What if I turn off my phone to enjoy the silence of a solo retreat? Retreat to times past when communication was simple. What if I set out one sunny day choosing a road to travel to who knows where; then turning East or West after half an hour?
What if? What if I don’t?
This third poem is an ode to make something unimportant become significant.
Taking Out The Bins
Monday’s chore. To empty inside bins into a plastic sack and place it in the grey bin. Outside whatever the weather, ready for Tuesday’s collection. A simple task held lightly by him, but seen as a love language to her.
What a journey I have been on over the last three months.
Regular readers know that I usually blog twice a week. This year I have managed one post: Lets Start a Conversation. In that post I told you how I was stricken with anxiety attacks and unable to do much creatively.
In order to finish the textile piece I had started in mid-December I attended two studio days at Littleheath Barn, taking only this piece to work on. The choice was to sit all day doing nothing or actually working on the piece. I did the latter.
Towards the end of February I managed to do some handstitching at home without too much anxiety. But there were days in between when I was paralysed by anxiety and unable to pick up the work.
Last Friday after another anxiety attack midweek, I finished the piece. And miraculously, all anxiety left me completely and I have experienced the best week of 2024 so far.
But let me tell you about the background to the piece before I show it to you. I have had this picture of a river in my head for around 55 years. I know! A long time.
When I was at teacher training college in the late 1960s, one of our assessments was to write a cross-curriculum project introducing a piece of classical music to 7-11 year olds. I have no idea how I came across this piece of music but it has appealed to me ever since.
Vltava is the second of six symphonic poems by Bedrich Smetana. He described it: The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Studená and Teplá Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer's wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the mermaids in the night's moonshine: on the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces and ruins aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St John's Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Elbe.
Inthe 1990s we were singing 'The River is Here' quite often and I had this picture in my head of making a textile piece about the journey of a river through rocky land, desert and into lush greenery.
I eventually made the piece as part of my City and Guilds course. I dyed various types of fabics and cut them up into rectangles and sewed them onto a backing piece. I really didn't know much about dyeing at that time. Whilst I finished the piece I was never totally satisfied with it. I felt the greens were all wrong but didn't have time to do anything about it.
It hung in my office when I was a church administrator but when we closed down the office I threw it away.
It is 20 inches wide and 56 inches long. As a river it would perhaps read better in landscape format but that would need a really long batten and would present a difficult storage problem. And although my husband thought it was about a waterfall, it isn't!
