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Fun mini art pieces today

Experimental handmade paper cut-outs
with a practical purpose

Imagine Something Other

Ursula K. Le Guin

(1923-2018)

"I think that hard times are coming, when we will be wanting to hear the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.

We will need writers who can remember freedom; poets; visionaries; the realists of a larger reality.

Right now I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art."

                                             [Excerpted from an event, November 19, 2014.]

Le Guin's words challenge and inspire us to be more mindful of the way we practice our art--and its potential role in suggesting the possibility of something more, something better than the reality one is presented with.  John Lennon is an example of a voice that asked us to imagine a world without war.  (He also asked us to imagine a world without religion, borders, or greed.  Then, as now, however, not everyone wants to change, or to be one with the "Other" in today's or tomorrow's reality.)

Still, I like her conviction that writers, poets and artists offering creative alternatives to the status quo need to have their voices heard.  Writers can create stories that transcend the reality we're given, to imagine a different, better one.  Poets could give us words that profoundly resonate, leading to life-changing insights.  And artists can make us see, instantly, what words often struggle to say, and can't. 

In all this, it seems to me, it's less important whose voice is doing the voicing than the meaning of the message conveyed. That messages can be misinterpreted (or go unheard) does not mean that some aren't or that their impact is unfelt.  Grounds for hope.

Thank you, Ursula Le Guin, for your words and the reflections that resulted. R.I.P.

______________________________

Click here for Ursula K. Le Guin website.

Blitzbuzzed

awynart

Too much attention to a mountainized molehill clouds the purview . . . 
you can't press PAUSE or mute the buzz, it's now too shrill.
Escape to sleep?  Evade time's march, as whirlwinds of every sort
sweep past?     Look, when you awake it's all still there, at every edge, in each nook.  
It's all around, you cannot hide, don't try.  
At each new crash you still rush to look,
it's all a game (they've said as much). 

Those mountains still beckon. 
Just don't get trapped in the woods.

  ____________________________

*The above art image is tweaked from an early original sketch/watercolor  in an ol, forgotten practice notebook.  It seemed to fit the mood of this draft piece, a spontaneous reaction to having too many things coming at one all at once -  but rather than question the urge to instantly react, this imaginary person attempts to reset the clock to allow for time "out".   Or something like that. 

End of Year Summations

At the end of our lives, they say we get judged.
At the end of each year, we have a tendency to sum up ourselves . . . kind of:

       Here's what I accomplished this year.  Here's what I didn't.  
       Here's what I'm going to/ not going to/  do next year.

Mostly, though, some of us just keep repeating the same old patterns.

It was interesting looking at what some fellow bloggers posted along the line of end-of-year personal summations.  Some had to do with announcement of change of habits (mainly to do with creativity:  I'm going to stop doing this; I'm now going to start doing this, etc.)  The mere mention caused me to reflect on what things I've elected to continue doing, and which things I feel most need changed.

One artist blogger  tells us he no longer feels like painting. Just like that.  Doesn't need it anymore--and it's mutual, he writes, likening it to a friendly divorce. Speed biking makes him happier.  Some things will always (always) make us happy.  But we sometimes have to take a break from even  them temporarily, to concentrate on something of more compelling interest.  It is not always temporary.  Nor always an Either/Or situation. But sometimes it is.

Some writer bloggers list the number and names of all the books they've read during the past year (one noting that 80 of them were written by men and 80 were written by women, disclosing his preference). (Sorry, ladies, it weren't you.)  :)  One writer blogger reminds us of kitchen pantry 'culling' as a metaphor for assessing what's stored but forgotten and what needs to be discarded.  It's what we do at the beginning of each New Year, we take a look back and assess what we've accomplished (or neglected to), and declare our intentions for the coming year.

These such all led me to examine my own reading, writing and creativity in general during the past year, and in this imaginary scenario I see myself quietly slinking to the back of the Input/Output Judgement Line - the one where you're asked  "What have you learned?  What have you done?  How have you spent your time?"

I haven't kept track of the books I've read but I can tell you, sadly, they're nowhere near the number others report that they've read.  But I do read--constantly.  And I'm always writing something.  So I'm engaged in the process and have produced a certain quantity of stuff.   (Nice try, but what have you actually produced worth bragging about?  I query myself.) 

Voracious and prolific describe actions an Energizer bunny can relate to, in terms of stick-to-itiveness and unstoppability.  But that same energy can also manifest as frequent, instantaneous bursts of direction-turnings  elsewhere, with equally satisfying results.  Some might call this Distraction, because it takes you away from the self-programmed usual run track. What it's labeled is irrelevant, and disruption of  routine is sometimes a necessary wake-up call.  Bread can't stay fresh forever and sometimes you get tired of duplicating the same 'ol same 'ol.  Inspiration is needed.  This year has been a dam-burst of ideas, possibilities, new projects and plans, the mere thought of which has yanked me from certain customary, passive-type habitudes to more active redirection.  Not to say this may have been jumping the gun a bit, dreaming up more than I could handle or am equipped to effect, but this was an unforeseen change where a pattern kind of reversed itself.  A new window opened, I'm deciding to run with it. 

Try to take on too many new things and you can immediately get overwhelmed.  As to the question, what have I (so far) to show for it, that would depend, I suppose, on who this would be important to.  A lot of things one does never gets put out there, intentionally.. And what does is sometimes sporadic, off-the-cuff experimental type pieces as one tries to get better.  (In other words, 'practice.' )   Have I made progress?  Well, yes and no. Depends on which year, which project. 

The stuff I'm more inclined to share on a regular basis is work done by others.  I get real pleasure in discovering and sharing, for example, really good poetry - poets who've written poems I wish I had written - and am  appalled to realize it'll be soon be three years (THREE.YEARS!!!) (!!!)  since I've worked on Salamander Cove, except to tweak the design. That is one of the things that's going to change in the new year.  Look for more frequent postings of more poets' great poems!

One of the new time-takers that's graduated from mere dabbling into full-blown interest, has been researching.  A number of years ago friends asked me to help them find a new job, an apartment, or information about something.  This was pre-Googledom.  I  discovered I not only enjoyed it but apparently was good at it (so they tell me).  I loved the challenge and soon became hooked. It changed the way I deal with puzzles.

Congenital curiosity led me to begin fact-checking when something didn't make sense, which set the pattern, for I began noticing things I would normally not have noticed before, which is, as it's turned out, both a blessing and a curse.  Because I soon developed a real interest in, of all things, investigative journalism.  Some years ago I helped  with certain researches, which sharpened analytical skills.  Who knew, ha ha.  I do so poorly at math.  Scanning documents and pouring over reports, looking at 'wordings', tracing the history of something, noticing anomalies, contradictions, and  intentional obfuscation, led me to probe further, where I'd sometimes find  unrelated, but incredibly interesting 'other' information that proved even more intriguing. 

 You see where this is going, right?  It's like octopus tentacles, you wind up hopelessly entangled. But it did introduce me to fields I'd normally have little to no interest in (the financial field, contracts, legal transcripts, real estate transactions,  regulatory codes and all that boring stuff you avoid getting into because your eyes just start glazing over and you can't decipher the acronyms or understand the jargon.  Not that I do (understand it completely) but it's written in English and there are ways you can say (or not say) a thing which you can learn to spot when something should be there but isn't, or what is that suggests other than what is presented.  Sometimes it's absolutely blatent, and you wonder how nobody's noticed.  

Some people sit down and read a dictionary, the way others sit down to read a novel.  Bizarre as that sounds, it's all in how one relates to words on a page.  Understanding the jargon, decoding the meaning, exploring places one normally bypasses as a dead-end but from a different angle - what can I say, some people spend hours playing digital "complete-the-mission" skill-games on a tiny digital device or days positioning little cardboarded images together or solving difficult crossword puzzles.  I enjoy finding stuff and solving certain mysteries.  Unfortunately, it's taken time from other pleasurable pursuits, which are demanding equal time.  Plus it's probably ruining my eyes.

So, in sum,  there's not much to actually show for time spent this year on personal or selected creative projects.   There are just not enough hours in the day,  but that's no excuse.

My New Year's resolution this year is - to stop making New Year's resolutions.  Stop resolving to act, then revolving back to what went before;  start solving the problem and evolving, stop getting sucked into the whirlwind where you get so involved in something, you forget what day it is.  Change the damn pattern.  Perhaps I could advance a tad farther up the Input/Output Judgment line. Yeah. but stop explaining, Yabbit says.  Wrap it up already.

Happy New Year, all.  Let's all keep trekkin'.

Onward!

_________________

The Threads in Our Life

Went  to an exhibit last summer of the 6th biennial of contemporary sculpture where the artists all focused on the same theme--perdrePied  ("losing one's footing")

"Losing one's footing, to no longer be in control,

being disoriented, being overwhelmed,

no longer knowing where you are"

This was one of the presentations highlighting that theme.  The artist exhibited a model church sculpted entirely of thin, fragile, translucent fabric, held together with thread and suspended from the ceiling in a stark, bare, otherwise empty white room.    At its base, cloud-like tulle hugs at its foundations, as if trying to anchor it.  It seems to move, and breathe, or tremble, as you walk past.  The effect was ghostly.

Nearby, a crane ominously awaits.

Side View.  These photos don't do it justice.  The whole thing  was absolutely exquisite.

"I decided to approach this theme in a figurative sense," says the artist, "exploiting the topic of the disappearance of the heritage built up in Québec, and more specifically, the religious heritage." 

 

What interests this artist is "the gradual removal of these monuments of the past that allow us to identify with our history, and to position ourselves in relation to it."  

"The church is in some way the physical incarnation that endures through time of a system of values and of an ideology that were formative of Québec society.  Our culture results from key events in our history and is as much coloured by the Great Darkness as by the Quiet Revolution.  On this point, I wonder about the impact of the vacuum produced by a certain rejection of our past.  Won't this loss lead to a search for meaning, a search for identity, a loss of balance?"

"I raise this questioning through the production of a textile installation that notably presents a church where demolition is imminent."

The demolition crane (detail)

"This architectural structure was built by a work of sewing, using sheer fabrics, giving the impression of lightness and fragility to an item that is normally solid, which seems to us indestructible, immutable."

Jannick Deslauriers was born in 1983 in Joliette, Québec.
She lives and works in Montréal and teaches art at the Cégep Marie-Victorin.

To see more of this artist's work, click here.

Her web site is here.

I particularly liked this earlier piece (not part of the above exhibition):

lethe (from series battlefield series) 2009

Artist: Jannick Deslauriers

A poem I encountered around the time I'd gone to this exhibit seemed to speak directly to related thoughts on  the disappearance of familiar traditions, objects or landscapes that are part of one's past.

Of Things Past

                                                                Draw as you will you cannot
                                                                Hold on to them as they slip

                                                                Like water through fingers
                                                                Frozen in marble round

                                                               The ring of a well.

                                                                    ~ ~ Vassilis Zambaras

The artist Jannick Deslauriers wonders "about the impact of the vacuum produced by a certain rejection of our past,"   asking:

"Won't this loss lead to a search for meaning, a search for identity, a loss of balance?"

One's identity--how one defines oneself with respect to one's culture, heritage, country--is subjective.   While loss of a tradition or native language can indeed be unsettling, the loss of the meaning one attaches to them can be even more of a disconnect - because it positions you outside, so to speak  (standing away, apart from, not experienced as "one with" it anymore).  Loss of  meaning in something does not always result in disorientation, however, if one fills the void left by its loss with something more meaningful.  It may actually ground or stabilize, rather than serve to dislodge, one's future life "footing," so to speak  But that's a whole other topic.

A  fragile, soft sculpture that cannot stand on its own and needs support from above, this church floats and  "breathes",  as clouds of tulle gather at its base, attempting  to anchor it.  Take away the strings holding it up and it collapses in on itself. 

What does it mean to think of something as indestructible, a kind of "given" - only to discover that it  perhaps . . . . isn't? 

That beautiful old churches get razed to become trendy new condos saddens me.  When in 2001 the Taliban destroyed two giant  6th-century carved Buddhas at Bamiyan in Afghanistan it sickened me, a loss felt even by those outside these cultures, as a universal reminder of the impermanence of 'things'.

There's a big difference, of course, between changes wrought slowly by time or inevitability, and those deliberately  and systematically engineered to erode or eradicate a people's identity. Native American Indian children taken from their families by early religious groups, renamed and forbade  to speak their own language;  and Tibetans today, having had thousands of their monasteries burnt down, their way of life now tightly controlled by the Chinese, are two examples that come to mind.  When your land is no longer yours, your language no longer spoken, your culture not something succeeding generations find easy to "identify with", except as a handed-down story or inherited label, then not the where you are but the who you are may cause you to examine what this all means to you personally.  Parallels flooded my brain as I was drawn back to the scene before me.

 I marveled at the sheer craft involved in the creation of this floating church.  Anybody who's ever worked with certain fabric, trying to get needle and thread to cooperate, will appreciate the enormous amount of time and effort it took to design and produce this magnificently constructed artpiece.  (I understand  that it was still being worked on up to 40 minutes before the exhibit opened.)

I peeked inside (or tried to) but saw only complete white space.  A gently held Emptiness.  I became fascinated with the black threads holding it all together--their intricacy and sometimes whimsical randomness.  For example, on the crane boom, they appear to be both clinging to and escaping from that which they are tasked with holding together.  I like that the artist allowed for this threadly ambiguity, the visual play of being both attached to and moving away from -- even the church's front bannisters and steps seemed to undulate to this rhythm.

Lost footing with respect to identity--what we identify with, or as--like the meanings we attach to ideas and things--is mutable.  What we accept or reject (or are simply indifferent to), how we respond to their loss, and who we become (or remain) as a result,  largely depends on their meaning to us not just collectively, but individually. Does this loss to "us" (the culture as a whole) make you feel more--or less--connected?  The answer to this question perhaps holds the clue to the nature of the connection, where we stand in relation to its absence, and whether that makes a difference or not.

This particular artist focused on the loss of religious heritage.  Wider considerations presented themselves in the overall theme as well:

  lostFOOTING, is to lose one's physical support, one's usual perspectives, one's aesthetic values, one's physical anchors, whether in a corporal manner, metaphorical, emotional, mental, or creative. It is also a rupture in equilibrium, a change of scenery, a rout, a stumble in the rhythm of walking, in the momentum of a journey, in the thread of life… All artists participating in the various exhibitions, events, and other activities will explore the proposed theme.

 Loss of one's physical, emotional, or metaphorical anchors, stumbles in 'rhythm' (who of us hasn't?!), lost momentum, ruptured equilibrium, loss of creativity (or in interest thereof) - whole pages could be written on any one of these 'threads'.

This all gets so murky.  But the subject is fascinating.  Utterly.  I like art that makes you think.  And this artist's work certainly did that. . . and then some! 

Thank you,  Jannick Deslauriers, for  this visual and reflective adventure.  The exhibit was outstanding.



.

Frottage Collage Experiment

Textured rubbings taken from (1) a wooden bench, (2) a brick wall, (3) a floor tile, (4) a table surface, (5) some letters on a wall plaque, and (6) the buttons on a vending machine.  Experiment was to make a collage from these rubbings; to "create something". Got ready with scissors and pencils.

The frottage (rubbings) I worked with:

Detail from Collage, Panel 1

"Child's Head" - Detail from Collage, Panel 1

 

"Skull" - Detail from Collage, Panel 1  [magnified]

Complete Collage, Panel 1
"NO to War"

Detail from Collage, Panel 2 [Enlarged]

Complete Collage, Panel 2
"Untitled"

Disclaimer:  The last time I made a collage was in elementary school.  So I'm a bit rusty.  I had no idea when I started what the outcome would be.  This was a timed exercise.  I beat the clock, but would prefer not to have had to 'create' under such pressure.  No time to repair the Smudge-Lady's left arm!! 

Materials used:   11" x 14" (65 lb) sheet of white paper from my Canson Sketchpad, scraps of paper cut from six art rubbings (frottage);  graphite, charcoal, and colored pencils (black, brown, blue, red, white); scissors, glue, eraser. 

The child's tiny bald head and face were the first images I "saw" in the mass of blotches and striations from the rubbings; as well as one round 'possible face' (which morphed into the Smudge-Man).  (He looked sad, so I found him a mate). 

The Smudge-Couple were originally also just smeary blotches that I then cut into circles and gave them faces, eyebrows, eyes, noses, lips, hair and pasted the heads onto some rather unconventional necks.  (The clock was ticking, I felt rushed).   I call them Smudge-People because the texture I had to work with was basically smudgy, shapeless blotches, so they appear a bit battle-scarred.  Perhaps they have some relationship with the small child on the opposite panel, with whom they share the Collage.  I never learned their story, but I'm sure there is one there. 

Ship's Orchestra in verse

photo by awyn


Now there's this trumpet-player, Henrik, come out of the sickbay at last. . . .  Cadaverous, sallow man, with cropped grey hair and big moulting brown eyes that weaken his mouth as they move.
. . . . .

Horsehair, the padding of an old chair, pulled out in a flat tangle. Sometimes a man's star stains like a cigarette burn on yellow wood.

Suffering and love in Henrik's eyes. A thinking love. Temptation to make him happy, then outwit him.

~ ~ From Roy Fisher's The Ship's Orchestra (London: Fulcrum Press, 1966).

One of the least known of Fisher's works, and one of his two favorites, this book is comprised of short "prose units"  intended as "extended compositions" to catch a particular kind of discourse and tone--"controlled, but at the same time as wacky as I wanted it to be", says the author in an interview with John Tranter. [Source]

I was intrigued by the book's title and description.  "A poet of international reputation has broken through the barrier between poetry and prose with this disturbing and original volume."      (Quote from the book's jacket, in 1966.)

Where did the idea of "The Ship's Orchestra" come from? I wondered.  It reads somewhat like the recollection of a dream--or possibly, nightmare.

It was inspired, Fisher said, by Picasso's painting "Three Musicians".   

"What kind of band is this?’  Fisher asked himself.   [Fisher made his living as a member of a band.]

So I looked at this, and after a bit something which was nothing whatever to do with them came up. It was the idea of a completely confused sort of Kafkaesque set of people with their own comedy, on a ship. 

A story without a beginning or an end, a "Kafkaesque or Beckettesque fable, of people who are musicians but don't play.  So who are they?" Fisher asks.  "Is it musicians that they are?  What is it to be a musician who is not called upon to play?"

"And then they fictionalized themselves, and turned into characters," he added.

What does it mean to be a writer who doesn't write?   And how exactly do ideas or images that just sort of "come up" when we look at something, go "fictionalize themselves" and turn into characters? 

So here’s the beginning of The Ship’s Orchestra. The character who’s speaking is the piano player in the band. The whole thing takes place in his consciousness. He’s an indeterminate sort of character. You don’t know much about him except the way he sees things.  He may or may not be sober, he may or may not be telling the truth. He may or may not know whether he’s telling the truth or not.    [Excerpts from interview, "Roy Fisher, In Conversation with John Tranter", in Jacket I  (September, 2001).

In his early twenties, Fisher became interested in the ways dreams unfold and would write his dreams down, "with great care", night after night. He described them as "beautifully written." In contrast to his poems, which he said were penned "with enormous sweat . . . appallingly written, and full of bombast." The Ship's Orchestra was an experiment, a kind of writing he admits was "unusual" for him at the time.

"What is it to be a musician who is not called upon to play?" he'd asked in that interview with John Tranter.  (What is it like to be a writer who is not called upon?   Is a poet who hasn't been called upon in twenty years and has stopped writing poems still a poet?  Musicians who've stopped making music/ writers who write only for themselves/ painters who no longer paint--what are they?  Formers?  Retireds?  On temporary or permanent hiatus?")

The jacket blurb calls the book a "barrier breaker between poetry and prose", a disturbing, surreal journey through a tunnel, in prolonged darkness--not exactly nightmare, more like slipping into a dream, one foot still in reality, both worlds merging into this bizarre experience you struggle to make sense of.

Time has stopped here.   "The ship does not proceed on its cruise, but opens and closes itself while remaining in one spot."    An apt description of how I felt at the end of reading it.  An almost 60-page book of compositional vignettes in the form of "prose units"--that read like someone taking notes, registering reactions. The character's observations (I can imagine them as journal entries) sometimes choppy, staccato-like.  It reads like a report: This happened. That happened.  I did this. I did that.  Here's what I notice.  Here's what I don't understand.  No reflection, just unpursued wonderings. "Someone's playing with my perceptions", the narrator murmurs at one point.

 I found the concept intriguing, some of the images compelling, the format enticing.  But once the style  was established, it became a little too . . . predictable.  It took me out of the scene, so to speak, and suddenly had me looking in from the outside, noting the how of the writing instead of becoming absorbed in the content.

Akin to being stuck in a carnival fun-house with no exit, its enactment on the page nevertheless registered as an interesting experiment in verse that might be duplicated, albeit with a different style of writing.

(Maybe "style's" the wrong word here. Authentic for the narrator, perhaps, but it became a bit one-dimensional.  I kept wanting to climb outside the character's mindset, explore the ship a bit on my own, get to see some of the other characters more than just through his eyes.  Maybe I ask too much of  words on a page.  I was becoming impatient, feeling as 'stuck' as the narrator.  Maybe that was the point--to put the reader in the narrator's shoes.)

Disclaimer:  This is not a book review.  To do a proper book review, one should know something about the author, and before I'd picked up this book I'd never heard of Roy Fisher. I had to google him, which is how I found the John Tranter interview. I actually found that interview more interesting than the book, because it brought up questions I myself have asked, it offered a glimpse into how and why one chooses to write, and the creative process in general, not just for writers but musicians and painters as well.  Too many book reviews put too much emphasis on the poet/writer's reputation (or lack thereof), what school/ movement/genre he/she is associated with, and the inevitable comparison to others, not to mention  detailed analysis of individual lines.  I'm not equipped or knowledgeable enough to do that, so have just given my personal impression based on a single reading.

 Sometimes you stumble on a poem or piece of writing knowing nothing about its creator,  later to learn it falls into a categorical niche you normally don't ascribe to.  I'm not a big fan of rap music, for example, it puts me into a kind of trance where my mind suddenly starts searching for the Exit door, but I recently searched for, and listened to, a particular rap performance by a young Quebecois poet whose written poetry I'd stumbled upon at a booth at our local annual Salon du Livres in March, whose words jumped out from the page and spoke to me.  Turns out he works with a suicide prevention organization and uses his poetry to speak to youths, in a venue they could relate to, to try to convince them life is worth living.  In the end it was the words themselves, not their method of transmission, that won me over.

So thank you, Roy Fisher, for sharing (via John Tranter) your views on the creative process and for the little trip with "The Ship's Orchestra."  For the idea of experimenting with a fictional story told in "verse units" (which may solve a problem I'm having resuscitating a neglected novel-to-be, gone seriously mothbolly).  For challenging me to experiment with verse, as you have done .  And inadvertently, for introducing me, however roundaboutably, to the work of John Tranter. 

Feng Zhu Design

 I still get flashimages of that pianist locked in the bowels of the ship, wandering about confused, taking mental notes, reminding me of that oft-repeated question  "What kind of thing is this? (applicable to just about anything).  And the too-too-familiar image of the "suffering and love in someone's eyes" (in Fisher's book, it was "Henrik"); and the concept of a "thinking love". 

Another day in the life of words--

        stumbled on, 

                spent time with, 

                      released, 

                             remembered.   

This (scenario) would make a terrific one-act play.   Imagine!  Six poets trapped on a barge in the middle of the ocean, sans paper or pen or computer, duration of voyage and destination unknown. What interesting versed recallings might later emerge and find their way to readers' eyes!

More about Roy Fisher's poetry, reviewed, with examples::

http://www.leafepress.com/litter1/baker02/fisher%20review.html
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/57-1,%20Morrissey.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/26/standard-midland-roy-fisher-review

Itinerant, by Choice

Sometimes we have occasion to meet someone--whether in person or vicariously-- with whose story we are so taken, that we cannot not share it.

Such a story is that of Rima Staines, nomadic writer and artist, traveling about the English countryside with her partner Tui, in a converted 1976 Bedford Horsebox. (I am not the only blogger to discover, and want to introduce others, to Rima's traveling world of creativity. Look here. )

In keeping with my "Everything Gypsy Week" theme, I have chosen to highlight Rima as my first representative of the 'gypsy soul', as it were. She is not just a mind gypsy, but a real one.   Not everyone deliberately chooses to be itinerant, when other alternatives are possible.  Rima carries her workshop with her, weaving her words and artistry within nature, under the open sky.

Who is this artist and why am I so excited to have found her postings? She describes herself as a "Painter, Illustrator, Maker of Things & Teller of Tales, " and her Hermitage as "a Phantasmagoria of Fancy, Museum of Myth & Realm of the Ridiculous."

Rima grew up in an artistic, loving household where creativity was not only encouraged but strongly supported.  She believes that everything is a story, and "creativity has something to do with the way we look at the world around us, and a desire to express that seeing and the feelings it evokes in us." And create she does--stories and poems and paintings and little videos that introduce us to her marvelous creatures young and old, happy and melancholy, bizarre and wickedly funny.

She reminds her readers of a Rumi saying:  "Let the beauty that you love be what you do", that "There are many ways to kneel and kiss the earth"--and who best to show us this than this artistic nomad?

One of the first things that attracted me to Rima's webpage was her warm and gracious welcome. She seemed to be speaking directly to me, in her "Song of the Periphery People." Periphery people everywhere, will understand what I mean.  (Note that sages, poets and dreamers are included here as Perhiphery People, right up there along with imbeciles, lunatics and scoundrels.)

Ho and come inside

You are welcome all…

Wayfarer and Witch

Jester and Jezebel

Renegrade and Wretch

Urchin and Untouchable

Hermit and Hellhound

Rascal and Rapscallion

Freak and Fremd

Scoundrel and Slubbergullion

Outlaw and Oddity

Vagabond and Villain

Juggler and Gypsy

Mage and Mooncalf

Sage and Simpleton

Madman and Musician

Imp and Imbecile

Fire-eater and Fool

Lunatic and Loner

Mummer and Monster

Devil and Drab

Knave and Necromancer

Peddler and Poet

Beggar and Bedlamite

Tomfool and Trickster

Dreamer and Delinquent

Stranger and Seer

Dreg and Deviant

Oaf and Outcast

Crackpot and Crone

I will build you a home here…

What wonderful cast of characters! Is there anyone she has left out? ha ha

Come visit  The Hermitage and prepare to spend a while.  A long while.  You will not be disappointed.

Travel along with Rima and Tui, as they pass through vagabond villages and transient towns, traveling from town to town on their house on wheels.

It was through Rima's website that I learned about transition towns and realized that there are small groups of people actively trying to address the dilemma of decreasing resources and the problem faced when oil peaks, offering "exciting ways to look at community, and all the many things that come together to create and sustain it", including a drive to self-sufficiency in food, energy and money.

What's it like, really, to live like a gypsy today and travel about, not knowing where you'll be next week, next month, next year?  What's the reaction of people whose town you pull into, and how do you manage to create and sell your art under these circumstances?  Rima describes it in "A Tale of Two Tinkers who travel from town to town selling their wares on Britain's streets and managing to gather pennies enough for life for a while by selling their artwork directly to the people who pass them by.."  How many of us would be willing to live on 'pennies' just to create what we create where and in the way we want?

"Making a living as an artist can often be a trudge down a rocky and pot-holed street," says Rima. As to the two tinker artists:  "Some towns welcome them... and some towns do not understand them and walk by with noses skyward and tuts on their tongues or offer unimaginative taunts, official badges and clipboards...."  But cold weather, unreceptive towns and the difficulties of a life on the road do not deter them.

The Hermitage (Rima's blog) offers something for everyone.  For the more academically inclined, check out her wonderfully illustrated thesis (here) titled "Misrule, Mockery and Monstrosity in Marginal Medieval Art" where she discusses art and people that are marginal, the Outsider Figure, and the concept of 'otherness'--a wealth of interesting information and insight about which I found much to ponder.

There is a difference between engaging in the itinerant life as a project and choosing to do so as a way of life.  Not everyone, I think, could do as Rima and Tui are doing.  (What if I end up without fuel for the winter?  What do I do with all my stuff while I'm out living on the road?  A household's accumulation of 'things' to store: can one's necessary possessions be whittled down enough to fit inside a cramped and crowded box on wheels?).  Rima and Tui represent, in very real terms, two gypsy souls out there putting their principles into practice. 

I am delighted to have made their acquaintance, if only by way of an email.  For me the greatest unexpected surprise that resulted from this was the whirl of new perceptions surfacing regarding Creativity:  where it comes from, what influences or quashes it, how it thrives, where to find it. 

You can see more of Rima's art work here.  As one of her many followers and supporters comments:  "Ah Rima, what wonders you share with us!"

I concur.

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Many thanks to Rima Staines for permission to share these photographs.