072. More variations

yes, continuing the sunflower theme - I have pictures & I am damn well going to use them...

light bends

colours appear

my wavelength sees

these things, but yours?

071. Sunflower variations

While staying with my brother, I did plenty of playing in the garden with my nieces. Splashing pools, spraying hoses, swings, playing school, trampolines & hammocks. And taking pictures of some past-their-prime sunflowers, following on from Sina's series yesterday; and as always loving Billie's b&w photography & Dorothee's extreme cropping...

               come closer, come closer
                              see into the pieces of what I am
               that is no heart
                              organelles only
               more details make for
                              more fascination
                                             come closer

070. Sunflowers

It's not just the huge scale of sunflowers that is striking, although it is because of the scale that you can see so many details of how the flower is built up. Sina's picture (from Day 59½) shows the underside and the gorgeous coloured petals of a prime specimen, mine shows the aftermath...

                              my bloom has become fitful
                              I have to wait that much longer
                              until someone finds me intriguing
                                                  and always
                                                  I have to stifle
                                                  the cry of
                                                  pick me
                                        pick me
                              pick ME

069. Floops

Circles and swirls and loops and spirals. Folding over one another, piling on top of each other, kittens nesting, piglets scrabbling for the teat. Going around and around but not really going anywhere. Tasting the air each time you loop, different each time and what does it matter if the perpendicular distance is not great? Movement is all... Inspired today by Silvana's "Dante sitting", my picture is a rendering of a sculpture seen in Millenium Park, Chicago, and I have still to find the name of the artist...

petals ovals flakes leaves. you peel me like petals. sepals.when does a leaf become a flower? does it acquire the arrogance of the born-to-be-beautiful? my aloof fuschian softness keeps the combat khakis at arms length. i fleer past you, stunning in the moment but the moment is always too short. fold, roundness, circle. soft underside of pale breast. and up again for air and taste the difference of that extra, that repeated experience, does your forked tongue taste two things at once? me in the past and me in the present and my flower is gone in the future.

068. Ripples

Today I am taking Janelle Stone's "What's that in the water?" from her 100 Snapshots project; and pairing it with more ripples from January this year. After wandering out to the flooded river to take some beautifully atmospheric photos of pearly silver water and contrasting wet black trees, on the way back I cross a stream, mostly channelled between concrete but in some parts more natural. The ducks were in the backwater, the quietwater behind an island out of the rushing floodwaters, pushing the ripples before them, fragmenting the reflected tree branches.

it is nice

weather for ducks

but the rabbits

are flooded out of their

bijou riviera homes

and pile their pellets

now

above the high water mark

first at practicemakesperfect here

067. Where are the storks?

Looking for storks as a celebration today, a new nephew to welcome to the family, and I will see him in a few days... Instead a couple of squadrons of miscellaneous beach bum birds... with thanks again to Billie for her "reflection - swamis"

To the newest little (6lb 10oz) Davies xxx

066. Loops

Tired, so tired. It's 7:30pm and I am already in my pyjamas. Mind not thinking properly, making loops around the whole thinking thing. With coming back from the heat in mid-west USA, to a cool and verdant Germany; and with a number of changes (actual or just scaring myself imagining the potential changes) it kind of feels like something has ended. I am not sure what. I pinched Steve's "Globes" today as it went with the loops in my head...

                                                            l      o      

                                                     d                  o

                                                 n                           p

                                                     u                  a

                                                            o      r         

065. Green Man

Nature and lines intersecting. Is it true that nature has no straight lines? Even the horizon is curved when you take the bigger picture... but of course, crystal structure is full of straight edges, diamond hard or deliquescent salts. Today I was inspired by Emily Ayres' "balloon man" picture of nature with lines, and used this to develop the green theme further in "glowleaves"

your fingers wriggle through me, tracing lines across my inside organs                          

your breath filled my lungs and you oxygenated me, my blood                          

was redder because of you, chlorophyll creature, sessile one                          

you stay there, I will come by and pick the droops, my reward                          

for tending your blossoms when you drew me to you, and for                          

keeping the birds off                          

064. Daisies

After the Chicago night, the daytime, wandering in Millenium Park and coming across an oxymoron, a cultivated meadow. Despite that, it was lovely to see, I was not quite sure at first if the flowers were meant to be just there, some did seem to be growing wild, but eventually I came to the conclusion that it was meant to be that way. It was lovely, and restful to see, even with the skyscrapers and the sculptured bridge shining, reflecting for all they were worth behind the "nature". I picked one of Valerie's flower images, "Buzzing About" to go with the image (cropped only - no photoshop trickery!)

"It takes a lot of work to look this scruffy, you know!" she protested... too much...

063. As night falls

Inspired by Katie Bentley's "Isolated Event", and the Chicago night skyline. The storm rolled into town in a strangely subdued manner. The sky flashed, strobed, clouds were suddenly backlit and then they weren't. Sheet lightning, no forks, and no thunder to be heard either. Whether this was due to the traffic noise, or being in a talking group of people I'm not sure. Later in the hotel, behind plate glass I closed my eyes and the lightning didn't even register as I fell asleep.

the horizon looking away from the sea                                        

human horizon, we build with lights                                        

cover the land so that the dark                                        

is above us only, build skyscrapers                                        

and deck them out with lights too                                        

so we push the black away from us                                        

turn it to a burning orange                                        

062. Shaped

Today the vibrant colours of Dorothee's "pyramide" struck me, and the beautiful crossing lines as you go around and around the image. Of course, in playing with it, I did almost lose these, they are faint and underpinning.

The rules constrain me

ironwork corset

pulling me into shape 

061. Grasswritten

Today, Stephen Hastings-King has a beautiful picture of grasses that I couldn't help but steal and experiment with again. I travelled from the rolling wheat-and-cornfields of rural Indiana back to the baked concrete of Detroit, and the green is still speaking to me...

     there are blades
          between my toes
               my fingernails pierce
                    accidental wounds
                         and the grass gets in
                              chlorophyll under the skin
               you grow into an earth mother
                    and forget me for bigger things

060. Fireflies

As the dusk fell last night, I was sitting with my feet in a pool, and the temperature slid all the way down to 95°F. And then a marvellous thing happened.

fireflies

evaporated

from the lawn

as the sun fell

down

059. Missing

Back at work today, far removed from the NC mountains and trees and cool rain. Meeting meeting meeting people. Heat and humidity. Early night to try and reflect on HoW2. The pictures helped a little.

coolness and water and leaves

nature, oblivious to the hurl of writers

in it's midst, throwing words to the breezes

off the verandah into the night, the morning air

058. Towers

Katie Bentley's "Moral Agency" and Dorothee's "names" inspired today's image, the redness and regularity of the triangles bringing to mind the Forth road bridge, and jumping from there via the Eiffel tower to the Tokyo tower. I visited on the day a typhoon came calling, the orange red metal seemed vibrant against the greyness of the sky, wind and rain.

I lay on the ground with my arms out, under the tower, looking up at it's foreshortened shape. Triangles turn into curves, hard edges into soft ones. I can't quite see how it is done, but I think about the reverse. If practice makes perfect I can will myself into the armoured cage. There are some gaps that you could get through, but then there are gaps between the atoms themselves and we all seem solid. Orange red threads shimmer around me as I wrap myself in the net.
I lay on the ground with my arms out and they think I fell from the tower.

057. Green

Rain, hot tubs, tequila, bourbon, late arrivals into the early morning. The greenness of the trees and the mountains here in North Carolina is surprising after the spine-sapping heat in Michigan last weekend. And so Sabin Aell's Day 48 image of tangled jewellery with it's green threads appealed to me today... and yes, more development on the abstract foam theme...

The porch goes all the way around the house. I walk out of the living room, people converse under the verandah in clusters and I mingle on through to the empty side. I watch the leaves recoil and jump when a fat raindrop hits them directly, and listen to the murmur of conversation from around the corner. I like being alone but I also want to be found, if not by you then I guess one of the others would do. It doesn't matter if it is the tall one, or the sympathetic one, or the one who has trouble hearing, like me; it doesn't matter who if it isn't you, but it does matter that no-one does find me.

056. Words swirl

Away for a long weekend with a group of writers, we get up in the morning and reach for notebooks, laptops, novels. Up in the hills with trees hiding the sky and clouds; the weather not exactly keeping us inside but encouraging us to gather in groups for discussions and chat and laughter & drinking. Picking up images, I chose Stephen Hastings-King's beautiful photo of sand dunes; and developed more foam/sand writing images.

reason     redolant     incumbent     detergent
tenterhooks     obvious     disagreeable     black
caresses     recluse     blonde     off-white
paprika     argent     tidal     in truth

(word prompts used for 10minute stories - each writer had to use the words in a unique story)

055. Distemper

Working on 100days2011, I usually browse through everyone's contributions, saving the images or links to those I really like and think I might be able to do something with, and sometimes it takes me a while to find the right images to pair together. I saved Nicolette's "Disquiet" nearly a month ago, and only through further experimenting with the foam pictures did I find something that balanced.

plaster over me, lay down the foundation, smooth me out                                                 

touch me up                                                 

make me look like something you want                                                 

a line here, a blurring there                                                 

mould my features until                                                

until                                                 

they are what you expect                                                 

054. Foam

Billie's "stay calm but alert" sent me back to look at a group of photographs taken at the end of June in the Netherlands, of foam that lay on the beach, and the idea of developing more asemic writing from them. I didn't quite get that far today but I like the image as something to be developed further...

                                       the water flows and churns,
                                                                              encapsulating the air in iridescence.
                                                          ... and fades

053. Stripes

Sina still keeps coming up trumps with the zoo residents, and today I have stolen away her zebra patterns from Day 54. I am eating striped (crinkled) crisps and drinking wine from a glass with striped indentations, crenellations at it's base. And to go with it I pulled a picture from 2009 that was taken in a hotel bathroom the other side of the world from here, in the Indian Ocean. I was experimenting also with overwritten asemia, but I am not really satisfied with the finished product yet, more playing required...

this is what happens

if you insist on 

seeing it all, and

cut me complete, 

bisected, you at

last believe that

I am multi-layered,

striped through.

052. Floating

Kevin Calisto's Day 48 brought some gentler travelling to mind, after the hustle of airports and aeroplanes and conveyors and buses and trying to go up and down (especially down) escalators when you have large bags...
Travelling by water is, I think, my favourite way to travel. I do like driving on a sunny breezy day with the roof of the car off, but travelling by boat, whether under your own steam in a kayak, or on a ferry, there is just something more relaxing about it...

The sea here is warm, and filled with life, the tall legged birds dip their beaks below the pearly surface and come out with full throats. The rope ties the prow to the shore, bowing gently, not straining to keep the boat tethered there. Everything here is just where it wants to be. If it wants to be somewhere else, it will drift there, peacefully but purposefully. But here is where it wants to be, now.

051. Travelling

With Susan Gibb's wonderful piece "The Plane" and Steve Veilleux's "The Cube Unplugged No 2", the theme was really set for travelling half way across the world today. I put their pieces together, not really sure it's doing either of them justice, but I wanted to embellish on the box theme rather than planes being plucked from the sky... Against that, an early morning (very cropped) picture in the airport; not this morning as I was there some hours after sunrise, but a morning last week..

I folded my wings today too, not around you, not enveloping you in my prickly feather warmth. I folded them around myself, overheating in the warmth of my thoughts, the flames that are only fantasy. I left the ground, I flew, but it was cheating, not under my power but that of petrol fired whirlwinds.

050. Shell

I have been enjoying Sina's up close animal shots these past few days, starting with the elephants on the run, and when I found the glowing colours of her "Turtle topography" I knew I had to use that too! And finally made it through to number 50! I would be half-way if I had caught up on the backlog... those 3 missing pieces from the beginning are weighing on my mind, and I need to get them completed, but oh, when? I have some strange internal rules about doing them, which is why it's taking me so long... anyway, using Sina's image and adding more asemic text...

You think I built my shell to keep the world out. You are not sure if the world includes you or not. It annoys you if I say it is only there because it looks pretty. You do think it looks pretty, it has a certain sheen and you like to think you can see below it to the pink huddled fragility underneath. The pinkness does not look like a shell to you because that is what you expect to find there. The blackness at the end of all the layers would frighten you.

049. Monochrome

The last couple of days I have been happy to see Catherine Singer has some new posts over at 100 Days of Art 2000 - Iceland. I could pick every picture for inspiration but I chose today her "Small 1" for the beautiful simplicity of the image, and the monochrome palette. Paired with a heavily cropped & edited image from Iceland in 2009. The base of the image was a pattern in a bubbling grey mud pool. and some colour/overpainting was added in the editing process.  Today I am very concious of time pressures, & the gaps in this 100 days that I need to go back and fill; but I wanted to post today's so that the backlog would not prevent me from keeping going.

"They" say Hekla will erupt soon, but soon means different things to journalists and to geologists.
Your timescales are different to mine, but the colour in my world is there because of you.

048. Smarks

I have been continuing with the asemic writing/images theme; just because I like the idea right now, I am not convinced of any great merit in the pieces I have been doing so far but I am enjoying playing around with them, being a little self indulgent. I had a thought-thread in my head, about textile design, and the swathes of fabric with texts in "ancient" writing, or vaguely runic; and wondering what the words said, would a cheeky textile designer include an old Roman joke in the texts, as for all I know they could mean anything? And that is kind of the point...

your words

scratch into me

skin peels

you see into me