Friday, March 27, 2009

Waiting for the Right Metaphor...

Waiting - Image c Lynda Lehmann

One of my recent posts featured a photo of a chair, which I took as a metaphor with several possibilities. My readers offered their ideas on this, and Margaret Ryall subsequently did a post called The Chair in Art, on the subject of chairs as metaphors, that I thought was very interesting.

I think the consensus on the subject of an empty chair, is that the idea of abandonment fits quite well, regardless of any secondary meanings we might attribute to it.


You can read about the psychology of archetypes at Wikipedia. Joseph Campbell talked a lot about archetypes in his books, and so did Rollo May, a humanist psychologist whose books "Love and Will" and "The Courage to Create," I read in the 60s.

For me, the above photo connotes a feeling of waiting more than one of abandonment. The long line of slatted wood chairs makes a nice abstract pattern. Are the chairs waiting for sitters/occupants? Or perhaps for something else?


In future posts I'll feature images of other man-made objects that seem to lend themselves to the idea of metaphor. Apparently, we have many archetypes imbued in our collective subconscious, which manifest in our thoughts, creations, and dreams.

"Waiting" won a Special Recognition Award at Period Gallery.

All images and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind, where you can choose from several sizes and paper types or buy my prints plain or matted and framed.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Sea Foam and Stones

Sand Furrows with Stones


Wet Rocks at Water's Edge


Washed Up


At Rest Within the Streaming Tide


Foam


Sea winds whipping

water to foam,
refresh my soul.

Bright pebbles, steadfast
through
time's turbulence,
teach patience.

Rugged beach, wild with
brine, bird and breeze,
renews me.

****

Images and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind, where you can choose from several sizes and paper types or buy my prints plain or matted and framed.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

An Image to Contemplate: "The Invitation"

The Invitation - Image c Lynda Lehmann


On a walk along Main St. in a town on suburban Long Island this week, my gaze was captured by this wrought-iron chair sitting sedately in front of an ivy-covered wall. I had such a profound sense of anticipation, looking at this, as if someone very important were about to approach and take a seat. If you were to use this image as a writing prompt, what would you come up with? What would "the invitation" be? And to whom?

It's truly amazing how an inanimate object can sometimes convey an attitude, or an unseen energy, or a quality of expectation. Do you feel this too, when you look at this photo?

I also loved the all-over texture of the ivy as a backdrop for the chair, and can see a metaphor for the personal versus the impersonal, or the subjective versus the objective. Maybe I can see the passage of time implied in the overgrowth of vines, while the chair seems to retain more of its original form, and be more stable. And then again, maybe not....

What do you see here?

Image and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind, where you can choose from several sizes and paper types or buy my prints plain or matted and framed.

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New "Creativity Portal" Feature: Daily Writer's Prompts!

Where is Your Muse? - Image c Lynda Lehmann


Creativity Portal is running a new feature called 365 Pictures, which consists of a daily writer's prompt accompanied by an image, all contributed by various artist collaborators.

Two of mine are coming up on April 28 and May 29. But why wait? If you're
a writer or want to become one, you can visit this daily feature at Creativity Portal for inspiration. Or sign up for their free newsletter.

Chris Dunmire puts a lot of energy and her own amazing creativity into publishing this site. If you want to develop your creative skills, there's bound to be something for you there. It's a great community with interesting articles, interviews, resources, and motivations for teachers, writers, artists, and anyone else concerned with fostering creativity!

Happy Creating!

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Monday, March 16, 2009

Reaching for the Solstice


We walked on a beach along Long Island Sound this past Sunday. The day was overcast, so the colors of the day stood out. I'll be posting "Beach Foundlings" from that day, man-made or altered objects found on the beach, and a variety of more natural beach images, in coming posts.

Today I'm sharing just this image of a hill facing over the shoreline and water. The woods were finally showing signs of color, emergent green and amber evident on slender veins of new growth. The air was soft and not too cold, and I was taken with this view of the fertile pre-spring arbor: ready to burst with life, replete with possibilities and energy of fresh growth and brushy splendor. So delicate, yet full of awesome power...

Life renews itself in Spring, and with the changing of the season, comes new hope.

My most fervent hope is for our survival on our magnificent green, blue, and amber planet.

Images and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind, where you can choose from several sizes and paper types or buy my prints plain or matted and framed.

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Sunday, March 15, 2009

More Photos from Scenic Bussana Vecchia

Three Arches

If Walls Could Speak

Church at Bussana Vecchia

What Lies Within

Here are a few more photos from Bussana Vecchia. I wish I had more to show you. Unfortunately I had to delete many images from my memory during my trip, to make room for more.

As you can see in the top photo, there were arches everywhere. And the weathered stone had a lot of stories to tell, as did the vines that inched their way along the ancient walls. It was interesting to see such old architecture retrofitted with pipes that carried plumbing and other modern amenities. Somehow they didn't detract very much from the overriding feeling of antiquity.

The church is still in terrible disrepair. I don't know how much of it is the original destruction from the 1880s earthquake, or more recent damage. Notice the tree growing from the top of the wall on the right, as nature makes her claim on all things that belong to another time.


Passageway

I can't remember whether this last photo was taken in BV or in another one of the towns we visited, but the feeling it conveys is the same. The mystery of antiquity and the drama of human history are implicit in every stone.

Here are links to Wikipedia and the main Bussana Vecchia website, so you can read more about the international artist's colony that BV is today. Be sure to check out Wolf's and Jana's studio, which is the oldest in BV.

I'll be showing some photos from a few other charming towns in Northern Italy, as well as some from Venice, in future posts.

All images and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind, where you can choose from several sizes and paper types or buy my prints plain or matted and framed.

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Monday, March 9, 2009

Signs of Life After Winter: Sand, Stones, Gulls, Shells, and Foam: Visual Notes from the Beach

Companions

The Preening Puddle

Timeless

Interior

Colony

Codependency

Bubbles, Sand, and Stone

Beauty Underfoot

I wanted to share these images from yesterday's beach walk with you. I hope you enjoy them. I certainly enjoyed all the teeming and emerging life forms that I saw on the beach, before it began to rain on us!

I am postponing the next Bussana Vecchia post to share these with you. And I have more of these beach images to come, including a wonderful performance of a preening ritual by the seagull seen above. But first, I have to find a file format converter to change my movie from MOV to MPG format, in order to edit it. Can you possibly recommend a video format converter? I appreciate any input on this, as I do love the video and want to post it. It's much better quality than my last one.
HAPPY ALMOST SPRING, EVERYONE!

All images and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind, where you can choose from several sizes and paper types or buy my prints plain or matted and framed.

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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Synchronicity in Enchanting Bussana Vecchia

Light to Shadow

Steeple in Afternoon Light

Ancient Halls

Time's Orphan

The Mystery Pervades

Passages

Interlude

From the Castle to the Sea

Time's Fortress

In my last post I told you that Bussana Vecchia is a Medieval town in northern Italy that was toppled by an earthquake in the 1880s and then abandoned. For years, feral cats were the only inhabitants. Now it's an international artist's colony, and I dream of one day going there again, to photograph and paint both the town and its surroundings.

I told you that I'd make my next post about what I think is a powerful coincidence relating to my visit there. But first, let me tell you about the visit.

I never intended at that point in my life, to go to Italy. But my sister begged me to go. From year to year, she expressed disappointment when I told her that we couldn't afford a trip to Europe with her and my brother-in-law.

In the spring of 2003, she wrote the first chapter of a novel, in which I landed on a plane in Milan and began a great Italian adventure, with a too-large helping of Gelato at the international airport! She read part of it to me on the phone.

It was obvious that she really wanted me to go. I had tired of hearing myself say "no." When she told me that all we would have to pay for was the airplane tickets, since they were going anyway, I could no longer say that we couldn't afford a trip to Europe.

Around the middle of our eight-day stay, my brother-in-law offered to take us to an international artist's colony. I envisioned a commercial, crowded setting that catered to throngs of tourists. But that preconceived notion of Bussana Vecchia, was not to be.

The next morning, after an hour's ride from the hotel where we were staying in the seacoast town of Allasio, we approached the ancient citadel. We approached a steep hill from its base, just outside a town whose name I can't remember. It might have been St. Remo. From the moment I saw the sign for "Bussana Vecchia," I know this was no ordinary place. A narrow road hugged the earth that spiraled upward. We circled round and round on tight curves that made us clench our teeth and ignore the view of tiled roofs dotting the hilly landscape, and the view of the Mediterranean to the south of us.

We got out of the car in front of a tiny café with a narrow strip for parking in front of it. Across the street, the land plunged into a sun-drenched valley. It's terraced landscape and tiled roofs glistened in the sun.

We walked the last bit of road in the early afternoon heat. Bussana Vecchia beckoned like a fairy tale. Immediately I felt the excitement of ancient secrets lurking on the walkways, the stone arches and corridors of this medieval village.

As I made my way through the cobblestone streets and alleyways, I stopped to talk to no one. My family walked ahead for the most part, because I couldn't stop looking at BV through the lens of my camera. This was the only way I could take this experience home with me. Or so I thought…

The summer heat was upon us, but my spirits were high. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, as I contemplated what I saw. The feeling of history and mystery were palpable. I had been whisked out of the present day to a quaint, medieval village with a tragic history and a more recent rebirth.

My husband, my sister, and her family were already getting hungry. Although I could have stayed there for weeks and not exhausted my passion for photographing the ancient architecture, they wanted to leave. Only an hour and a half after getting there! I was hungry too, but I didn't care.

I was zooming in on some bougainvillea cascading down the side of a stone wall, the outside wall of what was apparently a dwelling, when someone flung open the huge wood shutters, from inside. A smiling stranger addressed me. We exchanged pleasantries and talked about the charm of Bussana Vecchia. Noticing the woman's accent, I asked her where she was originally from. "Czechoslovakia," was her answer.

We chatted for a few minutes when she invited me in to see her studio. I had not told her I was an artist, nor that I was taking photos that might end up on one of my websites. Being however, an artist, of course I wanted to go in! I wanted to see the inside of the gorgeous stone dwelling and see what kind of art she did.

I yelled to my family, who were already halfway down the street, past the arch that you see in the top photo. "She invited us to come in and see her studio!"

"No, we're hot and we're hungry!" was the answer, almost in unison.

I looked up at the woman in the window and said, "You see, they will not wait for me to come in. But thank you for asking."

Whereupon the woman in the window waved me off and said, "Oh, you Americans, you're all alike. Always in a rush!" (She's pretty much right about that, but she didn't know that my brother-in-law and his family, who were with us, are Italian.)

As we headed down the hill from BV, I was aware of the remarkable pull that this experience had on me. Of all the towns we'd visited in the Ligurian region of northern Italy, Bussana Vecchia symbolized mystery, enchanting beauty, artistic freedom, and adventure.
****

Our stay in Italy was eight days, and our time in BV came to under two hours. We were back home in the U.S. for about a week when I was uploading some of my new Italy photos to my site at Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography . For me, the BV pictures were the most exciting, and I allowed myself the fantasy of a prolonged visit there, in the future.

When I logged onto my email there was a message that a new entry was waiting for me in my Guest Book at my site. I was astounded to see that the message was from Wolfgang, who was from Bussana Vecchia. He was telling me that he liked my photos and that we should link our pages! (You can see the original message near the bottom of my Guest Book page at lyndalehmann.com)

Of course I emailed Wolf and agreed to link! When I asked him how he had come upon my site in the vast ether of cyberspace, he said he had been searching for photos of BV on the net, using a site meter that told him my site was busy. So he signed my Guest Book and that part is history. Imagine the unlikelihood of someone from BV contacting me when I'd just come home from there, with visions of his town still dancing in my head!

I checked out Wolf's site, of course, and I saw that his wife's name was Januschka. I emailed him again and asked him if his wife Januschka, might be the woman from Czechoslovakia who had invited me in. You already know what his answer was….

I asked him to ask Jana if she remembered the America tourist who was shooting photos at the side of their building. He asked her later that day, and you can guess the answer to that, too! She even remembered what she had said to me!

It's a small world!

(As a courtesy and out of respect for their privacy, I emailed Wolfe and Januschka today to ask if they would mind if I tell that story on my blog, using their real names. Wolf told me they didn't mind at all.)


My next post will include a video of some of Wolf and Jana's art in their studio at BV, and some Bussana Vecchia links.

All images and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you want to, you can see more of my BV pix on my website at Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography . They're pretty far back at this point, probably around page 24.

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