This early summer, we are having sunsets in vivid magenta, frequently enough to surprise, amuse, worry – an earthquake premonition? – many of us over here.
Drawings in the photos – extended, drawn, traced – are for “Spider Lily Red”, the newest series of dyed garments.
Spring wrap up.
me: You kidding.
flower: No, really. This is the look I’m after.
From Top:
Clunky patchy job extending the drawing, of a spider lily petal. For my “Spider Lily Red” series.
Clematis, one of the many crazy-blooming in the yard right about now.
Drying petals and stamens of Clematis, in macro.
“Dada Tote” that I’ve been working on.
Many ways to blossom. I would have never known how this tiny thing looks had I not macro-ed it this afternoon.
May a rainbow follow your stride…
This recently-finished pencil drawing is to be a reference for a dye sample/swatch I’m gonna be working on next, that is for the newest of my Dyed Threads series, “Spider Lily Red” project. The line-oriented approach you see here is of me teaching myself a new trick, that I think would best capture the extreme curliness of the spider lily petals.
The said petals start out fairly straight-edged. As the blooming progresses however, they go into this full-on abstract free-form red wavy anarchy that feels more like a perfectly-choreographed theater. Petals themselves are quite tiny but hold within so much passion, that’s how I sense them anyways.
The project is gradually gaining momentum so swing by again when you get a chance.
Thank you for your visit.
持て余すほどの情熱ではちきれそうな彼岸花の花びらをモチーフに創ってみようと思いたったのは何故だったのだろう。
メインストリーム的人気のある桜の花などに比べるといわばカルト系な彼岸花たちにある日河原でそそのかされたのであれば大変光栄な話だとおもう。
そうやってご信頼いただいたからには何か新しいやり方を試してみたいと考えたのがこのドローイング。
これをもとに染め見本を作るのが当方の『Dyed Threads』シリーズの通常の手順。
通常といえばいつもは句読点をつかうのだが今日はなぜかその気になれず。
にもかかわらず最後まで読んでいただきどうもありがとう。
ぜひまたお越し下さい。
Lately, much of my evenings I spend visiting fireflies.
Early summer rice fields, the plants are already at their full-height. They host a small family of the delicate insects come alive each evening as Twilight falls.
In the pitch dark their fluorescent yellow lights draw weightless lines visible only to my mind’s eye.
Flashing on, off, on, off….I stand amidst the invisible web of Organic Elegance and say to myself:
I get it, it’s that Pulse again!!
Just then in distance a Wave breaks one more time, with its most wholesome assertion Sea replies:
it’s our Heartbeat honey, yours and mine.
The Night then trembles, suspended in time.
Photos are of various beach finds and a dye test swatch for my “Spider Lily Red” series.
The last photo is of a new pencil drawing, incomplete, of a petal of the said lily, for the said series, trying something different from how I usually painted with dyes.
Additional note on April 10, 2019:
This post was originally titled as “Bounds melt. Time stands still.”.
For the reason I do not disclose (i.e. not that interesting to you) I removed this post from this site for a while.
I revived this under a new title and with revised text on April 09-10, 2019. The reason being:
The red lily petal dyed on a silk (the photo in the middle) was the first dye test for this project “Spider Lily Red”. I painted in the same way as all the previous Dyed Threads series (example). And it didn’t quite work.
The bottom drawing is what I came up with as the alternative. The rest of photos are the main sources of inspirations. The drawing – of the same petal, had progressed into 2 part series (references: drawing 1, and drawing 2) – are both completed now. I thought it would be kinda neat to show you how it all started.
Originally posted on Cargo Collective circa June 2011.
Piece: Wing Dress – Velocity (2009-2011), acid dye on silk.
Originally posted on Cargo Collective circa June 2011.
Piece: Wing Dress (2007-2009), acid dye on silk.
Originally posted on Cargo Collective circa June 2011.
Piece: Indigo Dragon Top (2006), acid dye on silk.
“An Ally”, self portrait as a child – 2014, pencil on paper.
May 10, 2014
May 11, 2014
“Souls who are closely related in one lifetime tend to meet in another lifetime. If the relationship was one of love, then the love persists. If one of enmity, enmity must be overcome. If one of obligation, the obligation must be met.”
May 16, 2014 (completed)
Top photo is made public for the first time, the two others uploaded to Flickr around the same time as were taken. The words in the middle photo is supposedly (ie. I wasn’t present when he did) uttered by Edgar Cayce, jotted down years ago as they appeared in a 70’s film.
This is drawn from a photo of me circa 1974.
As seen in the first photo, initially me the girl was looking directly at you. Then I was inspired to add a bird, a fragment of it, and as I added the “winged messenger”, somehow the girl’s eyes progressed into the gaze-into-space look.
It was not intentional; I was in the flow so to speak, that’s what took me there.
—
I harbored a rather uncanny intention since quite early on, that stated itself firmly, “this time around I am going to choose all my educational materials. I will feed myself only what I feel drawn to and see what kind of person I am gonna turn into. It’s an experiment!!”
This time around. That’s right, you heard me right.
No, I dunno what that means. Several decades since, haven’t figured out the secret of the Universe just yet.
However, there have been handful plus instances / recollections of the similar sentiment, that tells me not only of the possible multiple lifetimes bit but also of me having memories of the future. Which made me ask a very uncomfortable question: how does the ‘time’ work then?*
I was a thinking kid, gazing into the space looking for answers.
Several decades since, as a solution to my such predicament I’ve developed skill set of letting the question marks hang in the air so I can gaze upon them like they are flashy Christmas ornaments.
I’ll know what’s what when I’m done with the “this time around”.
Until then, I be busy with the physicality of me; the ways they make me feel, the colors, the flavors, of despair, of delight, the sand beneath my feet, a chocolate I wasngonna eat. Fatigued by gossipy rural Japan towns people**, comforted by a small number of you who support me/my work***…
My heart that sunk, may soar again any minute. I came back, just perhaps, to arrive at the most important question of my life: how does it feel to come alive, to savor it all, to birth again and again into the purity of the moment as if nothing could deter me, nothing could taint me.
Grammatically incorrect, the last sentence does not end with a question mark; they’d all gone out of stock, every single one of them.
*”There is only one time. There is no timeline you cannot rise above and see the entire timeline and every part of it is alive.” – John Van Auken, Edgar Cayce Foundation, on Ed’s take on the subject of time, from a YouTube video about Atlantis that I cannot find. Interesting input I thought, who wouldn’t want to hang more question marks.
**Just thought I’d throw that in there, as the issue seems to trouble too many people. Lemme propose this important idea: your assumptions about me reveal more about you. And wrong is wrong, even if everyone around you is doing it.
***Just so that you know; you are profusely thanked by me without your knowledge.
Written: November 08 – 30, 2022.
Published on: November 30, 2022 at 18:19 JST.
Edits:
December 08, 2022 at 14:11-20:11 JST.
Edited out the film name from the paragraph 1. For the following reason but also, to simplify. Objectivity oft. arrives with a lag.
Prior to publishing this post I somehow didn’t think to double-check the movie plot as I usually would, to make sure that the mentioning of it won’t sound like I am passive-aggressively ill-wishing someone. Although not an angel, I don’t go there with myself, I take care so that I don’t have to. I was thinking about how ‘karma’, for lack of a better term, too often gets repeated as if nothing could be resolved. “Collective learned helplessness” may as well be the term. And from that place we then end up striking at each other…
Furthermore, the internet seems to have descended into a hotbed of trolls, haters, and otherwise very nosy people. Understandably as a result, many of us may have grown jumpy-tender-triggered weary. But here’s the thing:
It wasn’t like we were living in utopia until internet. Rather, the net brought our woundedness to the fore, more so than ever. In my line of thinking, that then means an opportunity. For there, in every wound is a seed, no matter how deep / old the cut, of our potentiality to become more, than ever before because of it.
In any case there are so much more to the story, anyone’s life story, than meets the eye, and those who take sickly interest in someone else’s life might really wanna have a look, instead at your self. You may eventually find your best friend lookin’ right back at you. Yes, you may be that lucky after all.
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Actual lilies, spider or otherwise, are long gone, but my study continues on.
Not that I planned it that way, but each spider lily drawings somehow brings out different characters of the blossom.
This is for a dyed piece I’ve been working towards tentatively called Spider Lily Top. For those of you who are here for the first time (welcome!), may I refer you to the previously dyed items here.
I am at the stage where I study the, in this case, quite complex shape of the subject. Until I can sort of ‘CAD’ it in my head. That’s my usual plan that is totally subject to change. Stay tuned.
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