Time Project Bonus of sorts

I guess it's hard to shake a year long habit.  I took a walk this afternoon and this was the last shot I took and the one I liked best.  I'd been thinking about what to put for the profile on my blog and then I saw my shadow.  I took several shadow shots until as I was almost to my car and I saw this tree and the late afternoon light. 
I couldn't resist sending it to the Time Project ladies with a haiku for old times sake.  If you check the little picture by the profile section you'll see I used it there.  Kay Dolezal

Week #52 - Time Project

On one of my walks I came across three hubcaps lined up against a fence neat as you please.  This shot had the reflection, which amused me. So here it is to end our year which has sped by.  The verse is a tanka, a relative of the haiku which has two additional seven syllable lines.  I guess I felt I needed a little more space to express my thought.
Kay Dolezal

Week #51 Time Project

I love Queen Anne's Lace and so took a number of photos of it, all of which I wanted to use.  But I settled on this one and then I saw the bugs.  First I saw the big fly, then the smaller one and then the smallest.  So this is an instance where the image came before the writing. 
I find it hard to believe that the Time Project year is just about up.  Maybe I should say the first Time Project year.  That's what I'd like to say.  Kay Dolezal

Week #50 for Time Project

I was still influenced by the lovely Time Project meeting last Sunday and forgot to post this yesterday.  It's actually a haiga I created last summer but was unable to post till now because it was published in the winter on an online journal called Haigaonline.  I have revised the haiku somewhat since, so this is a somewhat different haiku.
When I first wrote it the reference was to the soothing quality of a cat's nature.  However, this cat has a bad habit of waking me up if she gets hungry at night, either by meowing or by nudging the closet door till the sound wakes me. Her name is Sweetie Pie, but I have said I should have called her Bossy.  I liked that Photoshop could change a color photo into a black and white which better expressed what I wanted to say and also related to my cat's coloring.  Kay Dolezal

Week #49 - Time Project

This is more experimentation with Photoshop and collaging photos I take in walks I take.  I'm impressed a lot with the force and determination of plants as they thrive in seemingly impossible spots.  Here are two I came across.  I was especially taken with the "brown-eyed susan" but I didn't want to leave out the small petunia.   Kay Dolezal

Week #48 - Time Project

This week I am using a quote that I had jotted down a number of years ago - I'm not sure when.  But it hit me between the eyes when I came across it this week.  So I have included it with a drawing I also did a number of years ago, about twenty I think.  I called it Night Driving. 

I had to google Maurice Merleau-Ponty since I had jotted down the quote but nothing about who he was.  He was a philosopher colleague of Sartre and the other existentialists.  Not much else he is quoted as saying makes too much sense to me, partly because it's the sort of dense intellectual prose that leaves me cold.  But that sentence seemed such an interesting way of thinking about time that I had to take a break from haiku and share it with the other time travelers.  Kay Dolezal

Week #47 Time Project

This week I've been taking early morning walks and snapping pictures of what I notice.  The heat wave this month has forced me to change from a night owl to an early riser and I hope against hope that the change will stick.  I love walking around the hill I live on.  There's a wonderful mixture of houses, most of them cheek by jowl.  There are houses that could have been farm houses, houses put in last week by developers and also small houses built after WWII.  Some yards are carefully tended, others less so.  Some are full of statuary, some full of swings and children's equipment. There's a great sense of individual choice rather than that everyone has to be the same which I appreciate since I tend to do other things before yardwork.  And there are strips of woods and trees and that's where I found this little cave.  It looked as if someone had placed these rocks there, but who knows.  Naturally it made me think of Joan's goddesses and the magical places they inhabit.  Kay Dolezal

Week #46 Time Project

I've loved the blue of chicory for some time.  Usually it turns up in front of my house, but this year it didn't.  So I had to pursue it.  I didn't have to search very hard.  I found some stands of it in a small near-by sports park.  Chicory is definitely related to time in my mind - mid summer - which it certainly feels like as I'm writing this. As I get older I find surprising things assume significance - in this case a wild flower - for its brief beauty and its reliability.   Kay Dolezal

Week #45 Memories - Time Project

Thoughts about the summer which is upon us and the group trip to Martha's Vineyard and being part of a group of females all made me remember sharing a cottage at the beach with high school sorority sisters.  Those were the days when we did endure sunburn in order to tan.  And those were the days when Lake Erie was so polluted that we would see dead fish floating along with trash.  I think that the pollution has been repaired to some extent and that gives me hope for the Gulf of Mexico.  And hope is what we need these days in the face of what seems so much human recklessness.  I guess the trick is to still dive into life.  Kay Dolezal

Week #44 of Time Project

By the entrance to my part-time day job there is a wonderful stretch of meadow flowers.  The ground slopes steeply so that the company built a kind of bridge from the building to the parking lot.  Looking down on these flowers and grasses always slows my steps as I leave.  You can also hear birds.  It's an unexpected pleasure.  Kay Dolezal

Week #43 haiga for Time Project

This could be viewed as a retreat from the world's problems to my garden.  That would probably be right.  It does seem as if things are going to hell in a handbasket. 
I guess a spider isn't exactly a peaceful symbol, but there she was sitting pretty, right in the middle of her magnificent web. 
Kay Dolezal

Week #42 of Time Project

I don't have much to add to this piece, which is partly a poster in my mind.  I'm sure I'm not alone in finding the news photos hard to look at.  I certainly don't mean that we should not see them or not know what is going on with the oil spill.  I just mean that the implications are so discouraging and complicated that the work ahead seems an overwhelming task.  Kay Dolezal

Week #41 (I think) Time Project piece

Pardon me for using a picture of myself  but it did seem to go with the sentiment expressed - which definitely feels like an effect of time.  The photoshop layers are of a moire fabric remnant from my stash and a small piece of flannel.  The time aspect comes in there too, as I think I inherited a love of fabric and clothes from my maternal grandmother.  I'm told she was a seamstress and loved to sew more than anything.  I like to think of that love of cloth and clothing having passed through time (and my mother) to me.  Kay Dolezal

Week #40 Time Project haiga

This week's effort is a memorial to a cactus I had with me from the sixth grade.  As the haiga indicates it came in a snall cat shaped vase and it was the tail pointing straight up as in the comics.  It lasted all that time growing bigger and bigger.  I cut off and planted the top and then over the years they became two big cacti.  They were around my height by this time.  A year or so ago I decided I had to just leave them outside in the garden (where they spent the summer) which I figured would be fatal - and it was.  I didn't have the strength to lug them in and out.  Plus I felt crowded out.  I made four cuttings, two from each.  They are now in the garden and seem to be doing well.  They are under a foot tall so we can live in harmony during the winter.
This torso - or so it seems to me - is what remains of one of the cactus ancesters.  And the background is from a piece of tissue that I peeled off the torso. 
That's probably more than you cared to know about my cactus dilemna.  So I'll end this tale of the cacti from Ohio. 
Kay Dolezal

Week #39 Time Project Haiga

This piece was inspired by an actual robin's nest in my front yard.  And it also was an attempt to balance the impact of the bad news that seems to be all to be seen on TV or read about.  The moons are from a small piece of cloth I dyed with indigo about 20 years ago.  Tonight I'm beginning to review what I read about haiga almost a year ago.  As I've been making my own I've kind of forgotten what I read about the form.  The review was inspired by the great discussion we had yesterday at our monthly meeting - another good balance of positive input and congeniality.  Kay Dolezal

5/29/10  I've revised this haiga and image since I first posted it. I've been reviewing all my time project haiku and tanka and doing what I hope is improvng them. 

Week #38 of Time Project The Oil Spill

This event seems to say so much about human arrogance that I felt I had to join Marnie and speak my piece about it.  It relates to time in so many ways. What strikes me at this point is the slow motion of its unfolding consequences.  Kay Dolezal

Week #37 for Time Project

This piece needs some background.  I learned about the Kanellos, greek protest dogs, on the Internet and kept thinking about them after seeing the photos on the Newsweek and Guardian web sites.  They seemed somehow to embody a peaceful, even playful spirit, which seems so absent in our present day world - at least as shown in "the media".  At any rate, I spent a lot of time making a piece using two of the photographs as part of the haiga.  But then I felt uneasy about the ethics and legality of using them, even in part.  So this is my resolution.  I'm hoping that this link to the Newsweek site will work, so you can see them.   Also I learned on google that kanellos means cinnamon in greek. http://photo.newsweek.com/2010/5/greek-protest-dogs.html 

Kay Dolezal

Week #36 - Time Project

Water was on my mind today because of the "boil water order" that effected my town and so many others.  Its quality as well as its availability is something I've taken for granted.  I'm not a bottled water fan, but I was thankful I could get a six pack.  I've had gallons of distilled water in my basement for over 25 years!  But then I was aftraid to use them because of all those years in plastic. 

The rusty water in this piece comes, I think, from underground pipes that run through a small park in Lexington where I like to walk.  Kay Dolezal

Time Project - Week #35

This is another from my walks in the lovely spring weather.  It doesn't show the greening up aspect of spring.  The only color is a faint pale orange that I saw behind the scraped bark. Before all the leaves come out there is a rich layer to observe - a kind of subtext - the preparation or basis for the leafing and flowering. 

What I was seeing struck me as mark making and connected with a concept I've been thinking about lately which is how we "read" situations and objects and so much more.  I've been thinking about what the term "close reading" means.  Kay Dolezal

Week #34 of Time Project

This piece is an experiment in layering with Photoshop and  also layering of memories of my mother and her life - which it seems was very different from mine.  Along with memories she left me a small, brown newspaper clipping which I think she referred to when she made a special dinner one time of Hassenpfeffer.  And also she left her novena book.   She did a lot of praying for me as I had left the Catholic church.  I found this page recently when I was trying to recall what prayers the rosary consisted of.  The actual rosary which I used to form her silhouette was courtesy of the undertaker after her wake.  How's that for haunting?    
Kay Dolezal

Week #33

Spring is springing.  I'm doing some yardwork - not as much as I should.  I'd much rather play at my computer and fool around with haiku.  Kay Dolezal

Week #32

Had to reflect the big weather events. These shots of the Charles River were actually taken between the two storms.  I'll let it speak for itself.  Kay Dolezal

Those who were at our last meeting saw this as this poor fish was on the supermarket parking lot and I literally stepped on it.  It seemed too good to pass up so I "power shot" it several times and this is the result.  I'm not sure how it got to that particular spot, but it gave me the challenge I needed, for which I'm grateful.  That's why I thought in terms of a sacrifice.
K. Dolezal

Week #30

After the meeting on Sunday I was so mentally busy processing it that I forgot to post this latest.  Although presenting my thoughts and work is still hard, it is so valuable, and such a heart-warming experience in this group. 
This is from one of my walks in the sunny weather that had everyone outside.  Today we're back in the stormy and gray atmosphere.  A good day for catching up on postings.
K. Dolezal

Week #29

This photo was taken before the long nor'easter which is blowing as I write.  I had been enjoying my new camera on a walk.  Also of note this week is that I ordered and received a new printer which will allow me to print a number of different sizes.  It seems to handle both black and white and color to a degree my previous printer couldn't.  It's big and to set it up I found myself reorganizing my studio.  I think that's also to the good. Kay Dolezal

Week #28 Upgrading step 1

I took the plunge yesterday and bought a digital camera - a point and shoot with 12.1 megapixels.  The cell phone camera I've been using has 1.3 megapixels. It fits in my purse which was very important, since being able to photograph things at the time they caught my eye was very freeing.  At any rate, my haiga expresses my excitement about this step.  My next step is to buy a printer with more capabilities.  I have one in mind and will probably buy it very soon.  This is not a direction I would have predicted, but I'm going with it to see what happens.  Kay Dolezal

Week #27 A Different Tack

This, as you can see, is no haiku.  In the throes of making some decisions, I did decide to use this other form of poetry based on syllables for this week's piece.  It's called a Fib, from Fibonacci.  The form is that the syllables in a line must follow the Fibonacci sequence, that is, 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,etc.  Each number is a combination of the two preceding numbers.  The form is only about 4 years old and I love it because playing with the form is what got me into writing poetry.  You can find out more about it at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

I actually wrote the poem in 2009, but I was reworking it for a class, so it's been in my head.

Somehow being at the half-way point of the Time Project seems significant to me and is leading me to think/obsess about the direction to go from here.  I'm still not sure, but using a related form seemed right.  Kay Dolezal

Week #26 of Time Project

I'm afraid I continue scandalizing others in the Time Project by my cheap cell phone camera pictures and cheap printer.  However, at this point in time that is what I have to work with.  One of my goals in joining the Time Project was to make use of what I had on hand.  The result is a happy one for me, however, since I feel a freedom and joy in working.  It enables me to stop - as I was getting a late supper after a class - and take a few shots of this tree, which was magical to me.  Kay Dolezal

Week #25

We're almost at the half-way mark of the Time Projects year.  This issue of time is fascinating - and frightening.  It seems I just posted  last week's piece.  In writing the haiku this week I was a bit surprised that my third line was a question.  But I kept it because I'm still - at my advanced age - wondering about how one should live.  At any rate, one of the things I've learned from this experience is that what you write really doesn't have to be in stone.  You can tweak it as long as you want.  I guess if you publish something that becomes an issue, but it's one I don't have to worry about.  Kay Dolezal

Week #24 haiga

Here is the haiga for this week.  It reflects a scene which I believe will change day after tomorrow as the snow storm predicted is due then.  But this reflects one phase of winter which is easier to move around in but requires many layers to stay warm.  Because it's been so cold my walks have been limited to errands.  This is shot from my back yard. Kay Dolezal

Week #23 Time Project piece

For me this sky and haiku have to do with a present day quick trip into the past while walking to my car.  It's vaguely valentine-ish - a couple of weeks early.  I hope that people will know I'm referring to Ella Fitzgerald, my all-time favorite singer/artist. Kay Dolezal

Week #22

Each week seems to speed by faster than the one before.  This week I used an image I had from some point in my work - I'm not sure when.  The rick rack represents my mother and grand mother who both used it in their sewing.  As the haiku states I am going back like an archeologist into layers of objects and memories accumulated during a long lifetime.  I love seeing on television the archeologists bent over and using brushes to free objects from the earth.  There's something very devotional about that activity. Kay Dolezal

Week #21 of Time Project

This piece is not a haiku as I bent/broke my own rules and have spent my time this week developing a poster.  The events in Haiti have swept haiku elements from my mind.  I had also been thinking of posters in relation to the Violence Transformed 2010 show and these came together with an image I had drawn on fabric maybe fifteen years ago or more.  She is photoshopped along with a background of a beadwork piece I had done based on this same image in 2005.  So this is the third time I've worked with this image and I pray it will be a third time charm for Haiti.  Kay Dolezal

Piece for Week #20

This week I found myself feeling rather confined by the cold weather.  But with my trusty cell phone camera I did take some shots around the house.  And I layered an image taken previously.  Somehow I'm learning more about layering in Photoshop.  That seems fitting in that layers and time seem to have a relationship I find myself exploring in the Time Project - and also in my other work. 
At any rate this was inspired by a light of a gorgeous Saturday morning that greeted me when I woke up.  Kay Dolezal

Piece for Week #19

                   Had a wonderful walk last Sunday at the DeCordova Museum on a nice warm day.  Took some cell phone photos and two of them together here.  Kay Dolezal