So It Begins

I've been thinking about doing a blog for some time, but wasn't sure that I would have enough to say to sustain it. A few of my friends have encouraged me to give it a try, so I guess we'll see what happens. Since I am new to this, I'm sort of groping in the dark. I plan to focus on the art in my life: that which I produce (including my spinning and knitting), the art I see in nature, the various aspects of the arts that I have an opportunity to experience, and probably some things like my family life, my pets, and whatever else strikes my fancy and lifts my spirit the way art does. This is a work in progress. We'll see how we progress.

I am calling this "Art in the Wind." This is a phrase that my daughter and I came up with several years ago after we spent the day at our local arts festival that is held each spring. One of the kids' make-and-take booths featured windsocks that the kids could make using strips of Mylar, ribbon, beads, feathers, and other goodies. After she made hers, we brought it home and hung it in a tree in the back yard (I also got to make one and it went in another tree). We decided that this would be the first of many pieces of "tree jewelry" that we would make during the summer. We looked for a name to call our tree jewelry and settled on "Art in the Wind" because it is art and it blows in the wind. I liked it so much that I began using it for all my other artistic creations and eventually came up with a logo. I used a fine, broad Sheaffer calligraphy nib to draw two wavy lines, one above the other, over which I wrote "Art" and allowed the wavy lines to form the crosses for the "A" and "t." As soon as I'm a little more proficient at this, I'll try to post a photo of it.

I also like "Art in the Wind" because art refreshes my spirit like a gentle breeze on a hot summer day. And there is something fleeting about it, too, in the same way that the breeze blows past us and is gone or the notes of a song or a musical composition or birdsong give us a brief moment of artistic experience and touch the spirit, but do not linger; though tangible while we hear them, the notes are gone as soon as they are heard. Even though we can create works of art and architecture that may last for many years, nothing we create will last forever. I am reminded of one of my favorite poems that I had to memorize in high school. It was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in the first half of the 19th century.

Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.



The poem is about the remains of a colossal statue built for a powerful and egotistical Egyptian ruler who thought his dynasty would last for all time. Neither his monuments nor his reign were everlasting. I think there is a lesson for us all.

I create my art for my own enjoyment and that of my friends and other folks who share similar interests or who enjoy the things I create. It is fleeting. I know it will not last. It will blow away on the winds of time, but while it is here, perhaps it will give someone a momentary smile.

(photo courtesy way2egypt.com)