Author: admin

graphic designer, photographer, videographer

Woodland Dunes Photo Hub

A Facebook group formed by mutual interests in: photography, place, nature, flora and fauna.
Enthusiasts share photographs made with cell phone cameras, point and shoots, as well as the latest, auto-focus-on-your-critter-eye mirrorless cameras. All photographs shared on the group’s Facebook page are made within the Woodland Dunes Natural Area, Two Rivers, WI. So I, for one, find myself getting to know that area more intimately.
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Art as Poetry. Poetry as Art. Call and Respond. Creatively Encounter.

Waves of revelation wash over me with each and every participatory moment of the Art as Poetry as Art process. Making art is a very solitary, mind-body-spirit experience. Submitting a piece of art for participation in an exhibition can feel like taking your child out in public, where it may be judged, criticized, rejected… it qualifies as a “call for a response.” …we dress ’em up, and begin to feel the anticipation: “what will ‘they’ think? will they accept her? will they think he’s beautiful? how will they compare ours to all the others?
Yesterday, as I allowed myself to absorb the Art as Poetry as Art exhibition at the Rahr-West Art Museum, I began feeling like, I imagine, and have occasionally experienced before, a community gathering, around a fire, with dancing and storytelling, and masks, and costumes, and quite a bit of synchronicity, harmony, and rhythmic movement to drumming, calling out and responding, …in kind …appropriately …touchingly …with heart …and understanding. Once more common. Rather rare today. Thank you Jenna Rindo, Lakeshore Artists Guild Rahr-West Art Museum, and last, though certainly not least, Jen Anne

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Art as Poetry / Poetry as Art: A Remarkably High Level of Poignant, Pertinent, and Profound

Art as Poetry / Poetry as Art, presented by the Lakeshore Artists Guild,
and hosted by the Rahr-West Art Museum in Manitowoc, WI, May 14 — June18, 2023
did what I hope to each art experience does: gave me goosebumps and tears.

Don’t miss this exhibition. I don’t remember when I fell in love with the combination of words and pictures. But I was quite young; seven or eight. Life magazine, Look magazine, National Geographic… showed me different views of the world. This exhibition demonstrates both power of words and pictures working together and independently. The “Call and Response” nature of the show resonates like a fine musical instrument.
(the right to use and/or copy these poems and works of art belong the creators)
(click image for larger view)Tanya Steele, Peter Sherrill, and Anneliese Finke “calling and responding”

George Lottermoser and Jenna Rindo “calling and responding”

Anecdotes About Aging

As I approached the Sconza Lemoncello Almonds sample station at Costco
the young man filling the little cups said, “Out fighting monsters today?”
Puzzled, I asked what he meant.
“with that vest and that hat you must be a super hero hunting monsters.”
As I walked away munching my almonds and considering the price,
as I do enjoy them, I thought about his comment.
He was not wrong. Though ‘aging’ seems the only monster I’m struggling to hold at bay.

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“Phenomena of Being. Missing.”

…the working title of this recently completed encaustic painting.
Though words seem to interfere with visual aesthetic experience:
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Encaustic paint, on stretched fabric, and RC silver print, ruined by flood.
I found myself unable to throw away this particular scratched and ruined print,
with the others which were laminated to it by moisture.
I’d soaked the stack for days; hoping to separate and save the memories.
This photograph was made on the Eastern shore of the Great Lake Michigan;
sometime around 2005; give or take a few years.
This encaustic painting was created on the Western shore of the Great Lake Michigan in 2023.

Strictly for the Birds…

This phrase apparently originated as US Army slang towards the end of WWII.
My backyard, all-you-can-eat buffet,
while “strictly for the birds,” also serves at least 3 species of squirrels;
though I have finally managed to restrict them to only ground cleanup.
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Lost in the Beauty Full Mysteries of Attraction

How many billions of leaves lay on the forest floor?
I’m attracted to one of them. Why?
I pick it up. Gingerly. It’s dry and fragile. I put it in my pocket.
And hope that it does not turn to dust there.
It joins other found objects brought home to ponder.
Bones, bark, stones… attracted to their hue, texture, form, hidden stories…
Over days, weeks, months, years, I watch them.
They seem to my eyes as songs to my ears.
We change together. I see them differently. As I hear songs differently.
As the light changes, or the point of view changes.
As I change.
Do they continue to attract my attention? Why? Just me? or You too?
Universally attractive?


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No time like the present to yield to desire…

For reasons unknown
I’ve wanted to creatively engage with a “bonsai tree”
most of my adult life.
I’ve been gifted with 2 or 3 over the decades.
The little super market varieties. Pretty much destined to die.
Sooner rather than later.
I did manage to nurture a wonderful bonsai box elder
which seeded itself in a beautiful, ancient, landscape rock, at the Mequon Road House.
I moved that rock and little bonsai tree to the Wasaukee Road House in 2014.
But was unable to move it; or remove the tree from its rock; when forced to sell that home in 2022.

Today. My final attempt, to engage in a creative encounter with a bonsai, arrived in the mail;
along with instructions, proper soil, pruning shears, shaping wire, fertilizer, and an $8, on-line, video class, access code.
This Juniper is old enough to withstand some minor mistakes on my part.
Yet not so old as to be unaffordable.
So. Repotted as instructed. A bit of minor wiring and trimming… and we’re in a relationship.
Sort of like my new “adopted” bird friends:

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