By Jove, I think she’s got it

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020 ~ Liz A ~ 9 Comments

Today was pure flow … first reading Acey’s prompt #23 directing us to revisit the tree prompt.

Yes, please!

This time quickly scanning the book covers in the box, not thinking so much as just pulling out what called to me …

One in particular was not a book cover at all, but an original watercolor my mom found at one of her many tag sales. One of a pair of underwater scenes, unsigned, on rather thin paper, I believed it to be of no particular “value” …

So I tore into it, extracting the coral fan shape that whispered “tree” … then further cut into the book covers that had started to tell me a story of suburban landscapes underlain by fractured limestone …

The bit of red that caught my eye because it appeared to have a tiny bit of tree growing from it, inadvertently ended upside down … and as I edited the final shot, I realized the red had morphed into the roofline of our last house in Williamsburg (which we always called “the barn”) …

And I might have taken the collage to the photo box for that final shot, but the sun was shining and I was simply happy as could be that it all came together so fluidly … so I just went with it.

I think I’m on to something …

Where my heart lives

January 23, 2020 ~ Liz A ~ 12 Comments

It’s a good thing I worked on Prompt #22 first thing this morning …

because things got a little complicated when I went in to brush my teeth and looked up …

And yes, there was a hail storm recently. Looks like a new roof is in our future.

Crazy country redux

January 21, 2020January 21, 2020 ~ Liz A ~ 8 Comments

At first I was psyched by Acey’s collage challenge prompt #20 …

“Sun and wind,” I thought, “light to expose the evil done in darkness, wind to sweep it away.” And on a more practical note, solar power and wind energy to replace the oil and gas that fuel our wants and needs.

But as I started to go through the book cover stash, it occurred to me that wind is challenging to find in static imagery. That was when I started to notice words and phrases, started tearing into them, started the adrenaline rush that would leave me feeling like hell by the time I was done …

Don used to love a roadside sign in Austin (no longer there) that read, “We the people don’t have a clue.”

For sure recent events (defined as anything and everything over the past four years) have been, are, “CRAZY.”

And I think of our grandkids … “someday all this will be yours.”

“The great transformation” would be, could be great “strength in what remains … when the king/man is gone.”

Fingers trembling (like a dose of too much caffeine or the drag of low blood sugar), I pasted the scraps down … then recklessly tore the backing, realizing too late how badly off square it was. The collage was/is also far too large to fit into the journal, or onto the bed of our copier. Ugh, seriously?

So I photographed the collage and did some major keystone adjustments to square it up, then printed it at reduced size …

and added it to the journal …

Fortunately, Don is back to painting, having finally reached the point where all is well-ordered (enough) in our world …

Such a rest-full place for my eyes after the intensity of the collage.

Wanting to put the morning behind me, I decided to get this post over and done with. As I considered a title, I recalled a long-ago post written about our journey to Texas. Entitled Crazy Country, it reminded me not to take myself so darn seriously … again.