The story that I’ve been working on for my next animation is somewhat folk-tale like, and is inspired by Carl Jung’s account of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico. He found that they believed that the sun was god, providing light and life, and through their own ceremonial practice, they helped the sun move through the sky every day.
In usual Kansan fashion (we like to talk about the weather), it’s a beautiful day in January. I just enjoyed a few minutes on my deck without a coat or shoes drinking up a concoction of freshly juiced beets, carrots, apples, ginger and cucumber.. Revitalizing. And this is after running this morning in short sleeves. The downside to the amazing weather is that I have a to-do list 60 miles long and I’m trying to get through it at my desk, and I’m aching to go lay on a soft patch of ground in the sunshine and soak up the warmth while it’s here. My tulips and crocuses (crocii?) are already sprouting out of the ground. I’m afraid they’re in for a shock at the end of the week…
“Friends… They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.” Henry David Thoreau
Why I Am Happy
Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.
I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.
And I know where it is.
— William Stafford
“Antonio Frasconi has always believed that art should come from a place deep within one’s self.” (North Dakota Museum of Art website)
(c) Antonio Frasconi
One of my favorite woodcut artists is Antonio Frasconi, whose work I learned about just within the last couple years. This morning as I was wandering about in my usual morning routine, a book I have about his work published by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, jumped out at me and I sat down and looked through it for the thousandth time. I decided to look him up online to see if any other works that I had not seen before would show up in an image search (since the internet is a constantly shifting landscape), and I was sad to read a New York Times article, just published yesterday, that he had died on Jan. 8. Read it here: Antonio Frasconi, Woodcut Master, Dies at 93
(c) Antonio Frasconi
“”The tide is coming in,” he said, before turning back. “And it is bringing all kinds of things. You just have to look and something will show up.”
Read more (from a 2011 article on his life and work): http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/entertainment/article/Norwalk-artist-Antonio-Frasconi-has-had-970850.php#ixzz2IigoSlKO
I spent a small portion of the day walking around the rocky shore of a very low Lake Perry (NE Kansas) near the mouth of Slough Creek looking for neat rocks and fossils and artifacts that in non-drought times would normally be covered with water.. It was frigid with no sun in sight, and my hands and feet were frozen despite many layers, so this little adventure got cut short. This was the only photo I took from the car since it was too cold to handle the camera outside. It was a good time nonetheless. I followed lots of tracks in the frozen mud – including deer, raccoons, geese, and either a dog or coyote. There were also several bald eagles flying nearby, lots of puffed up juncos making their way around low limbs, and a couple deer running along the road as I was driving away. It was great to be outdoors breathing fresh air for a short while. It’s even greater to be typing this from my well-heated home.
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Happy Monday. I’ll be spending the better part of my day with my hiking boots & camera tromping around the dried up rocky area of Slough Creek looking for birds and artifacts. Surely some photos to come.
Today was my lucky day to find an owl on the roadside while I was out for a little country drive. I made sure to thank him (or her?) for the photos as it flew off…
“Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.”
-May Sarton, from ‘The Invocation to Kali’
Another great from the National Film Board of Canada – an Eskimo folk tale in stop motion animation, directed by Co Hoedeman.