‘Magnolia’ photograph by Galen Garwood, 2015
I captured the image of this incredible magnolia when I was back in Georgia in 2015, visiting my late father’s sister, Nancy, on her family farm in Donalsonville. The magnolia, ubiquitous flower of the south, is a such a languid surrendering of white, as if it has just made love to the sky. I suppose it has.
In my last journal posting I wrote about the river in front of my house and its desire to leap the banks. Several weeks ago, it did just that. Other than a few canvases in progress that got partially baptized, the water came in peacefully, left gradually, leaving a residue of brown mud across everything. I was fortunate to have had no more than such a gentle kiss. No real damage. The water was back in the river bed by the next day.
WHY ART MATTERS….AND THE WINNERS ARE:
My three judges had a difficult time deciding on which three to choose from all the wonderful submissions. I do wish to thank all of those who participated.
WINNER OF THE ARRIVAL: “Art uplifts us to a sphere beyond the material and mundane. It touches us with the power to excite emotions and feed our souls.” Lisa Muller, Wellington, New Zealand
2nd: “Art loved me before I did. Now a love for art arises with fervor of birthright: expression of world and self, unfolding, unfurling, I awake.” Nirupa Umapathy, New Jersey
3rd: “Contemplation of the artist’s canvas stage, beautiful, wretched, or neutral like strokes of gray matter, soothes my soul, massages my heart and ignites my brain.” Reba Lewis, Alaska
AMAZING INTERVIEW WITH THE AMERICAN ARTIST,
ANNE HIRONDELLE
Partners Drawings
Graphite and Prisma color on tracing paper
17″ x 23″ 2016
OVER AT MARROWSTONE PRESS
COMING SOON!
TWO…yes, that’s right, two launch celebrations for JOANNA MACLEAN’S newest publication: PORTRAITS OF MYANMAR
In CHIANGMAI
Tuesday 28 Nov, 6-8pm, THE HOUSE Lounge, 199 Moonmuang Rd, Si Phum, Chiang Mai
RSVP: 089 635 8418 / joanna@2cglobal.com
In YANGON
FRIDAY 8 DECEMBER, 6-8pm at RIVER GALLERY
Chindwin Chambers, doors on 37th and 38th Streets, Yangon (by Strand Hotel)
RSVP to: rivergalleryart@gmail.com / cc: joanna@2cglobal.com
a New Book by PETER WELTNER
Heidegger extolled language as the “house of being” but Peter Weltner in this exquisite and deeply moving new collection finds it “betrayed by lies spouted each moment in every known tongue.” Daring “to be ceremonial” in face of our constitutive dishonesty, Weltner’s poetic craft is revelatory, allowing the singular things of the world to show themselves. Weltner’s temporal horizon is “unbecoming” in two ways. On the one hand, it is the wistful, implacable, and often elegiac flow of time—“Most of the men I knew then have died. Every day I think of them.” And “Why must I leave you, the earth I love?” as even “memory’s streams” are “fated to flow seaward.” On the other hand, these poems enact a powerful unbecoming of time, momentarily halting its flow so that the silent preciousness of the past becomes audible. These are compassionate, appreciative yet doleful epiphanies in which the grace of what has been comes forth as it is also slipping away. “One last, uncertain glimpse of earth is all I ask from dying: to leave the life I love, forgiven and forgiving.”
This is a book to help us with our living and dying in a time of seemingly endless chatter.
…Jason M. Wirth, Professor of Philosophy, Seattle University, author of Mountains, Rivers and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis
Last month: INTERVIEW WITH GENE RAMEY
On behalf of the river, of water and light, of art and why it matters,
I wish all of you the best of holidays, the turning of the year, and a quiet reflection of all that is good.
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