December 16 2014

Have to make a correction to my saying in my last post that my Old Woman Reading was inspired by a Rembrandt.  It seems that that painting was by a contemporary and friend of his named Jan Lievens.  Rembrandt did also paint more than one Old Woman Reading, but I think the one Sister Wendy Beckett discussed is by Lievens.

November 29, 2014

To my surprise and delight this photograph of mine was one of three juror's choices in the Platinum Show at the Cambridge Art Association.

It was one of those times when something I was looking at suddenly called for photography and this time one of the shots worked to my satisfaction.  I have found that reflections and the background of my house capture my interest.  I call this one Selfie 01.

I've been having fun with the computer and photographs.  I had seen Sister Wendy Beckett on PBS talking about and showing a Rembrandt called "An Old Woman Reading" so I took another selfie in Photo Booth of my own version.

I learned from studying poetry that this is called ekphrasis from the Greek.  I was pleased that I got Sister Wendy in there too.  She's been a lovely surprise in the short TV pieces where she visits and interprets art in various museums.

I thank that's all for today.

Nov 2, 2014

It's been over a year since I posted anything, but I have a poster that came to me that needed a place to speak its piece.

This sentence may not be familiar to younger keyboarders but harks back to my high school days when I learned to type.  The revision just came to me and stuck around in my head till I found a way to set it down.  And today The Global Post reported that the UN released a report stating "the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said emissions of three key greenhouse gases were at their highest in more than 800,000 years."  That is a lot of time.

So there it is, I hope the poster might resonate with someone who might read this blog and be encouraged to act on its message or supported in what they are already doing.

August 28, 2013

It's been a couple of years since I last blogged.  But I've been busy and here are photos of the books I've been making. These were done in the spring and I'm still in the process of deciding how or whether to combine the poetry I write with the images I create.  I go back and forth.  But these approached what I was trying to do and were wonderful learning experiences.

Photos taken by Gail Handelmann

April 2011

This piece seemed to make itself.  I was working myself up to doing my taxes by sorting out the various paperwork items I'd received, when I happened to notice the different patterns on the inside of the window envelopes they came in.  They gave me the perfect diversion from the main task and one thing led to another. Then, I impulsively tried one of the filters in Photoshop Elements and it changed the color scheme to one I much preferred.  I don't understand how it changed the colors but they seemed to reflect early spring more than what I had before.  I'll show the Time Travelers at the next meeting what I had before and also  the envelopes.  Kay Dolezal

Broadside - March 2011

This is the latest version of this broadside, although I'm not entirely satisfied.  I have widened it, but that isn't so practical for anything but virtual posting at this point,  since it would require a 13" x 19" paper and lots and lots of ink to run off many copies.  Although I did test to see if the ink ran and it did not.  At any rate I feel I'll let it sit awhile and move on to April. 
After the intensity that preceded it the Time Project presentation at the Stonewall Institute was lovely evening.  I was bowled over by the warmth and receptivity of the audience and as always by the work the group is doing.  K. Dolezal

February 2011

The Snow Queen's Parlor           2011

This scene appeared in the window of my front door and I tried to capture it.  I found myself mesmerized by the image.  I worked most of the month with various layers and text but in the end I decided to stay with the original photo.  I call it the Snow Queen's Parlor, although I know a queen probably doesn't have a parlor.  I decided not to use the poem I wrote because it seemed the image spoke for itself.  That meant abandoning my plan to produce a broadside, but I have learned that it's best to follow the work when it is leading you.

I hope next month's piece will not deal with snow.  Kay Dolezal

Broadside for Time Project 2011- January

I decided to post this now because it fell into place this week and I thought people might enjoy seeing something to counterbalance the heaviness of the weather and the world news.  I had stumbled on a book of Chinese poets from the early dynasties.   The Lexington library had a display for the Chinese New Year. This poet is from the Tang dynasty.  At any rate you can guess why a poem about snow caught my attention.  I also love the tradition of writing a response to a poem.  So that's what I did and then I took some photos of the snow.  Kay Dolezal

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