one step
Some days we just have to take it one step at a time
Slowing down, remembering, empathizing
Grieving the loss of a dear friend
Grieving with his wife and their sons
Grieving loss of her mother only two days before
Remembering
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by Marja-Leena by Marja-Leena insomnia
“That ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia.” – James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake
She, looking for a clever quote, but not sure what this means…
by Marja-Leena industrial art
There’s beauty even on an industrial site if you open your eyes wide.
by Marja-Leena photo expedition
Much of my art practice since the later 1980’s has been photo-based. I have often expressed in these pages my desire and need to go on photo expeditions to build up my image library, and the more exotic and archaeologically interesting the better.
In the meantime, it’s amazing what one can find around the places we live and work. For years I’ve eyed the concrete floor in the printmaking studio with its rough textures such as embedded metal rings, cracks from former wall joints, and general rough patches left behind as traces from its previous life as an industrial shop of some kind.
A couple of months ago when I had our older digital camera with me in the studio, on impulse I took a number of photos of the floor markings. I wasn’t entirely happy with the results, though the idea still attracted me. Today, I took in our new camera which I’m still learning to use, and took lots of shots. Hey, most of them are really great, like abstract paintings with textures, some even show the patches of colour from various accidents. These images may well appear in some new prints in the future. It was a good day.
Later: I’ve been doing some housecleaning in the older entries, eliminating a strange diamond shaped icon with a question mark inside it that has peppered itself here and there. I was intrigued to reread this one on creativity, centred on a wonderful post by Beth of Cassandra Pages. It seems to fit in with what I was doing with the camera today, don’t you agree?
by Marja-Leena footprints
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life (1838)
I was looking through some older photo images, and came across this one that I really like. My husband took it for me a few years ago when we were walking along a seaside park. Numerous walkers, joggers, and cyclists travelled along the path and I was captivated by their tracks on the sand. The photo above has been manipulated a bit in PhotoShop and was even more manipulated for Nexus/Sandfrieze.
Looking at this made me recall the well-known phrase “footprints in the sand” so I went to my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and learned that it comes from Longfellow!! On the same page is another great one for artists:
Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;
Dead he is not, but departed, – for the artist never dies.
(on Albrecht Dürer) – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nuremberg (1844)
Strange thoughts on a Sunday morning… Gotta go make some footprints now, it’s sunny out!