Click on photos to enlarge.
Lampmakers
My husband
trapped light.
Sculpted it.
Forced it to his will.
Made art of it.
Made me
complicit in making it
more than something to see by.
We surrounded light
and channeled it.
Held light before releasing it
in the directions
of our dreams
For dVersePoets Quadrille Light Challenge.
See how others responded HERE.
(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
For Cee’s FOTD
The plaque was carved from Walnut by my husband Bob. It says “And Owl Moved to Some Other Tree.” It is a quote from Winnie the Pooh, I believe. It sorta looks like this brand new hibiscus is photo bombing the shot. Note buds above. This bush has dozens of buds on it and usually a minimum of 5 blooms. I can see it both from the hammock in the lower garden and from my desk in the sala up above.
I can’t see tools without thinking of my husband Bob who had every tool on earth. Here is a poem I wrote about him. It’s been on my blog before so hope this is acceptable. Click on this link to read the poem: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/11/27/you-have-become-the-art-you-lived-for/
Here is a photo of him at his happiest, in the studio creating:
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/
The Poet Artist
“Poltroon!” He calls out in his sleep,
caught up in words, even when deep
in dreams—those places where he goes
where fresh ideas, rows upon rows,
spreading farther, stacking higher,
crowd his brain . And now, “Pismire!”
Is he building poems or sculptures there?
What new dream, what bold nightmare
will he allow to come to light
as soon as he has finished night
and carved his way into the the day?
The worker ant come out to play?
Carving stone into a face
or moving words from place to place.
All those schemes conceived in dreams
turned into his creative schemes.
I intrude, a kiss, a cuddle,
bringing love into the muddle
of his early morning head,
still sleeping here in my warm bed.
This is no coward sleeping here.
He has no qualms, displays no fear
of any challenge of his art
or adventures of the heart.
Metal, wood, paper and stone—
no one material alone
can solve his lust. He needs them all.
No stone too heavy. No scheme too tall.
And, alas, no woman will
manage to completely fill
that questing heart. That grasping soul.
seeking to reach that final goal.
See some results of those dreams HERE.
Prompt words today are poltroon, cuddle, pismire, allow and worker.
Click on photos to enlarge.
The first tiny sculpture of a bear attached to a branch of driftwood is exactly as I found it on a branch on the beach. I haven’t colored or shaped it in any manner. Nature’s sculpture. The second photo is of a lamp made of elements found in nature by my husband, Bob Brown. The shade of handmade paper made from tree bark and liana was made by me.
My husband Bob carved this plaque that I’ve hung on the palm tree where I pass it every time I go down to the garden. The quote on it, “And Owl moved to some other tree,” is from Winnie the Pooh, I believe. It looks like flowers just want to grow nearer to join it!
I see hibiscus, thunbergia grandiflora, bougainvillea and crown of thorns blooms in the photo.
For Cee’s FOTD
Mentor
As an old man, he grew his hair long
and wore it unsecured, flowing white over his shoulders,
hiking it back as he walked with one sure toss of the head.
Few except himself would have judged him anything but superior.
His art, original and finely-crafted, showed him as the rogue he was,
yet he pored over art books piled around his chair—
large books rich in imagery and heavy to lift—
a laborious chore to plow through
page by page for anyone except him,
looking for himself in the pages, perhaps,
or looking for part of what he would become.
She thought he thought too much,
looking for answers in books
instead of in himself.
Religion, philosophy, art—
he searched for solutions
in Swedenborg and Picasso.
Compared his poetry to Sarton, Frost and Whitman
while others compared their art, their words to him.
Every piece he completed, he saw himself in as he created it,
but once done, it was as though he’d lost a part of himself in it
and so he started the search again in metal and wood and stone
larger and heavier each time, risking everything
to build himself ever higher.
Seven feet, then twelve, then eighteen feet—
stretching himself to the heaven
that he sought, also, through books.
Searching for what to be.
Wood, stone, metal, clay, glass, paper, words.
None quite solved the puzzle of himself.
Books on the shelf he read again and again
never had all of the answers.
He went as deep into himself as he could go.
Digging for the words he mined
from the parts of himself he most feared,
he often came up empty-handed,
as though he could not bear to see
all of the truth already revealed
in the pure instinctual lines of his sculpture
and those few fine poems he got out of the way of.
A virile man, he worked his angst out
in the shape of children—ten of them
with three different women—going through women
as he went through plasticine or wood or stone,
leaving crumbled remnants to reconstruct themselves
afterwards, as he built poetry out of their mutual pain.
He moved through the world
as most beautiful things do—unaware of his swath.
I rose from his rubble, missing him but remembering
all he taught. The scrape and cut and vibration of a fine machine,
the shaping with hands, the dip of the mold and deckle,
the power of a 20-ton press, the fine hiss of a torch.
Showing me how to get the beauty out of myself,
he formed that confidence within me that he lacked in himself.
Looking in books for what he already had,
looking in the faces of women for love
he never quite believed in,
he never fully realized that it did exist,
even during his worst rages,
right here in the heart
of one who so long afterwards
tries to sculpt his essence
through these words.
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
Here is also a write-up and photo shoot that a gallery owner did of our home and studio during the Santa Cruz Open Studio Tours a few years before we closed down our house and studio to I move to Mexico: http://www.wmgallery.com/cruz/brown.html
And here is another blog I did on him and his art: https://judydykstrabrown.com/tag/bobs-sculpture/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 