Here are some photos I took at the Ajijic Society of the Arts show. It will be hanging at the Casa del Sol Inn until June 4, Javier Mina 7 off Constitution.
“Davy Jones Locker”
Mixed Media Assemblage
17″ X 21.5 “
by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Davy Jones‘ Locker is a metaphor for the bottom of the sea—the final
resting place for sailors who are the victims of shipwrecks and is used
as a euphemism for drowning. Silver coins spilling from a pirate chest
seem to be doing these victims of shipwreck at sea no good at all. Media
includes sand and shells collected from various Mexican beaches by the artist.
The slingshot, cloth and even the plastic cup were found on the beach. The cup is covered with coral and was obviously once on its way to being incorporated into a coral reef. The tiny chest, the silver fish and the skeletons were the only objects added to help tell the story that were not collected on beaches.
For Jez’s Water Water Everywhere prompt
Art Imitates Nature
Suspended in this plastic world, my heart a gaping wound
if not for all the beauty in which it is cocooned.
How would we salvage anything from war and greed and lust
without art’s kind revision of all that is unjust
to make us reclaim hope in life simply because we must?
It’s the alchemy of nature to which we are beholden.
It takes our baser natures, transforming them to golden.
Prompts today are golden, salvage, wound, plastic, suspended, and revision.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Oops.. I got mixed up and thought “Paint it Black” was a photo prompt. When I tried to link it, I found it was a short short writing prompt. I couldn’t find a comments section to link it to anyway, and since it is clear I was not meant to complete the link, here is my response to “Paint it Black” in pictures.
“True” Art
Ugliness invades the exquisite hall:
brazen rude truths hung up on the wall.
Training the rich to see the real world—
the truth of the starving so crudely unfurled.
Exquisite lives overlooking the grime
of ghettos and junkyards, pollution and crime.
Riches amassed while refusing to see
how greed contributes to poverty.
Idiosyncrasies. Truth told in chrome.
Sad themes and base metals invade the rich home.
Landscapes with hardships depicted in oil:
rusted-out car frames returning to soil.
Thus crude art invades the beautiful world
with the ugly truth blatantly unfurled.
And though robber barons might greedily yearn for it,
and they might hang it, they sadly don’t learn from it.
Prompt words today are chrome, hardship, landscape, brazen, trainer and idiosyncrasies.
(Click on Photos to enlarge.)
Egg Carton Flowers: Art Day at Judy’s House
Fairy breath and greedy flush, scissors, paper glue—
they go about the mutual task of everything they do.
Twin sisters, they spill out in life, perpetually torn
apart since that rude splitting the day that they were born.
One demands the pink paint, the other requests blue—
their lips stained orange by Cheetos, fingers covered by goo.
Voices raspy with excitement, they call each other’s bluff
as their grandma hisses fondly, “Girls, that is enough!”
The yellowing sun descends to orange as they end their day
out on the back terrace where they have gone to play.
Safe now that frisky littler dogs are locked behind the screen,
they pet the Scottie’s matted hair, soothed by his gentler mien.
Inside, their older sister helps us clear away their messes.
Not the first time, right? I ask, “No, not quite,” she confesses.
She fondly rinses paint brushes and points out the incredible—
blue fingerprints on cookies that someone had turned inedible.
The prompt words are bluff torn spill yellowing fairy breath greedy flush soothed safe hiss raspy for Wordle 583 on The Sunday Whirl
Last photo by Harriet Hart. Others by me.
When my good friend Harriet asked if I’d think up a project for her visiting grandaughters, I was pleased to have an excuse to get to know these lovely young ladies. Egg carton flowers it was!!!!
(Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.)
Art and Acquisitions
Those who patronize fine art
start out congenial at the start
but then upset the apple cart
by arriving early at the mart
and increasing rate and pace
so they can win the prestige race
by obstinately using cash
to win the collector’s ten-yard-dash.
Marble statues and fine oils
are thus simply used as foils
used within the competition
between those whose one ambition
is to amass all those things
that a pile of money brings.
But in fact, it is the making
of great art, and not the taking
that produces joy in living.
Buying can’t compete with giving.
Prompt words for today are congenial, race, marble, obstinancy, patronize, art
Agastopia*
(For Bob)
At my dear departed husband’s behest,
my ode extols the female breast.
In a dream world of his making,
breasts on beaches would be baking,
naked in the sun, to gold,
then, unashamed, to brown and bold.
No petty thoughts would cloud his mind,
his excitation, an artful kind,
and as he paints or sculpts or molds,
each scoop of plasticine he holds,
will take a shape of his devising,
as he works, his hands revising
all that God and nature wrought,
their perfect beauty therein caught.
While some malinger at their tasks,
a breast is all my true love asks—
to do what nature first has done
and duplicate them, one by one.
*Agastopia is the admiration of a particular body part.
Prompts today are dream world, petty, malinger, revise, excited and agastopia (the fetishestic admiration of a specific body part.)
Forgottenman reminded me of this post of more of Bob’s sculptures: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/07/12/mentor/
Candid shots taken during a presentation given by Deborah Kruger during her exhibition at the Old Train Station Gallery in Chapala, Mexico.
Seduction
The canvas is my suitor. It holds me in its sway,
seduces me with reaching arms that draw my brush its way.
I paint upon its surface and in turn it draws me out.
All those pains I hide inside on canvas learn to shout.
It stands mostly unnoticed when others are around,
attracting no attention and making not a sound,
but when alone, it prompts me to bare my soul to it,
and all the angst that crowds my mind finds a place to fit.
Written for this prompt: https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2022/08/01/what-do-you-see-145-august-1-2022/ Image by Marti Alonso @ Unsplash
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 