Every Available Space

Corn is planted up close to the edge of town and often squeezed onto every inch of soil.  I am looking at the lovely grey green of it in some lights and realizing how naive I've been about my food supply, about agricultural practices in general.  My mom used to call me a dreamer, especially when there was some task at hand.  Is there a place for a dreamer in the larger scheme of things?

Every available moment is becoming more and more valuable to me.  Now I am in a place where I often can see off into the distance. Space seems much more spacious than in a big city.  At least it did until I see this corn-focused use of every available space.   I'm thinking more about light and space, about work and dreams.

I am thinking about Grandmas and knitting and stereotypes.  I am thinking about dreaming and working.

Actually I am not always thinking.  I dream.  I work.   I live.

I live trying to fill up every available space.

I am making a vest using linen stitch but currently I am back to square one, having ripped out an entire section due to an error that seemed to be spreading, could not be confined and began to take up every available space.

Pause and begin again.

Knee High, Fourth of July

In contrast to the CSA farms we also have many fields of corn, corn corn.  Its looking healthy today on the Fourth of July!

Having watched the documentary "King Corn" which is excellent, I am very aware of the challenge to our country's health in the lack of biodiversity and the reliance on large scale operations.  Meanwhile we all keep growing in many ways, often wider as well as taller.

We all hope to prosper and certainly that's my hope for all of you.  Thanks for checking out my posts.

Small Family Farm CSA

A little bit of heaven and lots of hard work

There is something about being outdoors and working at a meaningful task with healthy young people, that is truly life-giving.  Surely we all will benefit from being more aware of our food supply.  To plant and live and harvest so that even the soil is renewing itself is terrific.  What a wonderful life!

"Land is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit 

of soils, plants and animals." 

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Alamanac

What a wonderful place !    http://www.smallfamilycsa.com/

Abundance

goodness of life meant for all, not just a few

I am thinking about harvests here in Vernon County, a place that feels brimming with organic health and opportunity.

I am thinking also about my grandchildren, all american kids whose families are both Korean and Hmong.  A book just published called Eternal Harvest by Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern describes the secret war the United States was fighting in Laos between 1964 and 1973.  The reason this is crucial today is that no other country has been bombed as heavily.  The harvest and abundance of bombs even 50 years later continues to cruelly damage Laotian families.  My own grandchildren's heritage and country devastated by a  secret war.

When will we take responsibility for the abundance we've left behind even fifty years later?

http://eternalharvestthebook.com/videos/

www.smallfamilycsa.com        Summer Harvesting and my first gulps of goat milk...yum

To paint or to weave, to pull weeds or to help harvest 800 heads of lettuce, life gets busy here in the summer.

I am substituting for a friend's share in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) organic farm once a week for three weeks.

It is such a contrast to the snowy cold beauty of winter.  Its all abundant life and I am learning so many new aspects of life everyday that it is hard to put into words.  

Hopefully your life is also being blessed with healthy abundance.

Black Ants, Peonies and Painting

What are the limitations of "pretty pictures" to the search for beauty, authenticity and dare I mention, truth?  Without the black ants,  the short lived breathtaking beauty of peonies doesn't quite emerge.  Is an artist part of the scene or an outsider evaluating from afar or both? Is my presence as an artist better if hidden like the ants or out there like the peonies?

This past week I have been enjoying the companionship of outdoor painters.   I was working on evolving my process into maybe stronger statements by exploring new ways of seeing.  I value including the off beat and quirky into my process.  I am trying to avoid formulas. Sometimes, unknowingly,  I merely exchange one formula for another.  Every once in a while I try something that makes me uncomfortable.  I enjoy keeping a journal rather than creating "hoping to sell" paintings.  It is more meaningful to me. Black ants are an important though hidden part of the scene. As usual I am writing in metaphors and only using those wonderful black ants as a way of saying that I am struggling with how much of the real/unpleasant to include in my output.

In the meantime, I recommend the poem "Peonies" by Mary Oliver

on left page, a collage, using snippets from a painting workshop

The Silence that Music Opens

Before a human voice was ever heard here,

This place has known the respect of stone,

The friendship of wind, always returning 

With news of elsewhere, whispered in seed and pollen,

The thin symphonies of birdsong softening the silence,

the litanies of rain rearranging the air,

Cascades of sunlight opening and closing days,

And the glow of the moon gazing through darkness......

John O'Donohue

 Tahigwa Girl Scout Camp, 2014 Village Fire

This past weekend I participated in a community singing gathering in Northeast Iowa called Village Fire....three days of singing, camping, and campfires and did I mention singing?!
There were more than one hundred of us from infants to the elderly.  We sang and sang and sang.  And I'm surprised to admit this, but my favorite part was often that last full chord and then the silence following.

As the poet John O'Donohue says ...."As surprised as the silence that music opens,  May your words for each other be touched with reverence..." and from another poem....

"If you remain generous, 

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet 

Again on fresh pastures of promise,"

Laurence and Pelle on drums, Liz and Ida Rog and the rest of us on joyful listening

I am very grateful I had the chance to go, its one of the many ways we can learn to lift each other up.

Lots (of paintings) on One Beautiful Day

Wandering around Viroqua, Wisconsin

On a marvelous day in May, I did a series of "thumbnails", very small scenes, often working from one location but looking out in all directions sequentially and trying to quickly capture the spirit of the weather, and the wonder of the sunshine mixed with birdsong.