Snoqualmie River Arts Tour

As some of you may know, I'm participating in the Snoqualmie River Arts Tour. I'm also the chair of the event, so my life is a bit busy right now.  Check out our event website  www.RiverArtsTour.com and take a look at all we are offering in the way of open studios, art fairs, tour e-maps etc.

The Glimmer Shore

Autumn waves wash softly now

Upon the distant shores of future bliss

O all connecting ocean

I hear you call across the infinite

And thus I lay now

In this autumn grass hollow

Where the lapping foam

Sighs in warm distance

Hiding the breeze from my skin

Fae amphitheater for the cricket song

Marais La Mer

Singing the Hypnotic symphony that unites us

Déjà vu refuge

My bones warm so nicely in the penultimate autumnal heat

Winter’s inevitable rage but a premonition now

The tortured limbs of Cedar and Spruce splay against the azure

A testimony to the once and future fury

Of Sea Witch gales

Even now, sea breeze whispers in their branches all gently asway

Thusly she enchants

The salt licked wind but a vector of her spell

Like a cythe of memory wielded so deftly––Her sacred molten art

Yea, thy foundations must be strong and built of stone

And thy broad timbers hewn from a prince of trees that fell in the tempest

Thus do I Remember the house I will build one day

And the secret grains

Hidden in the heart of all things

Joinery of the master carver’s hands

I will inscribe the ancient connections upon furrow and prow

Woven lace talisman to salvage life’s love

To protect what will one day forever be

When eternal spring’s bloom resurrects what once was so sweetly yet again

Winter Alchemy

The hibernating Mage wanders underground now

Lost in the labyrinthine caverns of winter's grief

Each chamber like a dream recorded:

The sighing room of leather wombs,

The shimmer chambers shaped like dancing skirts

The shuttered basements where the moths flutter for the memory of the moon

And the cave of alchemy

Where he painted the sun upon the wall to remember warmth

In that place he gathered the spring blossoms come to soon

Vibrant blush upon the branches that danced

Capturing all that delicate snow

Until the bower beams shattered

Hung now like slaughtered doves

Dripping wet magic

Upon the Seeing Orbs

One for darkness and one for light

Frozen orbits of the infinite

Her silver chalice ever overflowing

Moistening the very marrow of the universe

Here he will await the true spring

Carving ancient wands from the branches

willing the shattered stones to meet with a kiss

In this secret healing place

Dream Time

See how she dances for me

Like branches of embrace

Touching in the wind

I feel vapors of the sea breeze

O infinite and liquid desert that denies

Like kisses from afar

Swirling now about my inner eye

Tis’ Winter now at this incline

Chill wind to awaken the senses

The autumn leaves scattered long ago

The vermillion fever buds yet but a premonition

Now the dance must consume before hearth and fire

Entwining paths of embrace in the darkened folds of long nights

Close your eyes in this warm dark and you can see entire worlds

Dream time

Each night a pageant of imagining

…and the Mage all a merging

Gifts from some other place

Visitations

Of the Goddess breath of myth

While stars wheel above the slumbering

And pine bowers sway

In their moonlit way

Sometimes the dreams come from afar

South of the tropic

Where summer heat hath burrowed so fine

And the Goddess dances like the saltine seas

Each undulating curve

Like a wave

Enwraps

And impresses

Like jeweled toes in soft sands

Footprint tapestries of the swaying siren

A Calligraphy born of the desire to move

And the waving waters of the lagoon

That float the flesh as if in a dream

Lapping the slope and rippled curve

Waves upon waves

Underwater Undulations

Thusly wrap the sun so watery upon her forms

Like two branches brushing in a dream

And so I awake to make what art I can

To echo but a fraction of this bliss

Solstice Sea

The pilgrim came to the shore of the infinite sea    Feral Gardens of the mermaid's lonely song    There he chanted the gift of reprieve    To be sent across the ocean where the rivers merge    At dusk he waded in    And climbed the pinnacle of island    In solitude he reached out to the wheeling stars    Loving hands grasping the Goddess constellation    Fervent madness for her forms    Enchanting the bridge of sighs    Memorizing the dancer's line    For a moment he heard the laughter of ankle bells     A patchouli breeze exhaled by the crash of wave   O Sacred Sea    And so The Solstice passed    And light began its flow to Summer's promise

The Evolution of Vision

How do we perceive the world? Photographs allow us to see places we are not physically visiting at a given moment. they illicit imagination, memory, and desire. But how much of the reality are we seeing and how much of statement of the artist? To the casual observer, a documentary image may be mistaken for reality, while a heavily processed image can be dismissed as fanciful. In my work I've become more and more fascinated with how much the act of making a photographic image can evolve beyond the mood and tone of the actual place it was taken.

In  late july

When the forest brims  a thousand shades of green

And the river flows lazy to the sea

This tritone image was taken on the Alsea River in Orgeon, the summer of 07.  When I took it I imagined nothing like this. I was a bright sunny day and the scene was bursting with every shade of green imaginable. Insect hum and the lazy flow of water made me want to set the tripod down and have a picnic. Now, two years later I revisit the negative and have created something suggested  more by the possibility of the tonal range of the negative than my memory of the day. To see a more 'true to life' interpretation, go here. I'm not making any value judgement on either version, both have vibrance and vitality  to me

Into The Mystic

I have been slowly evolving a new painting style... its really a continuation of my sumi-e style but I feel like I'm finding another variation of it and a mature voice with this series I'm working on now. Here's a little preview.  More Coming Soon!