Gerard Manley Hopkins

I read these lines by poet Gerard Manley Hopkins earlier this week:
For Christ plays in ten thousand places
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

It prompted me to go through some magazines I had and create the following collage in my journal

As I was doing it, I realized that I have a much easier time seeing Christ in these faces than in the faces of people who cut me off in traffic, who speak too loudly on cell phones in the grocery store, or who make messes that I have to clean up.  Ouch!

Poor Man's Garden Fountain (for the birds)

Recently I heard that birds really like water that is running or at least dripping.  While I would LOVE a real garden fountain, it's not something I have the time or money to research right now.  But I also heard about this clever idea:  freeze water in a container, and then hang the container above a bird bath so that as the ice melts, it will drip into the water at a steady pace.  I hung the gallon milk jug that was about half filled with solid ice at 9 this morning.  At 4:30 it was still dripping, and the birds seemed to be enjoying getting drinks from it.  (I had pounded about 5 or 6 holes with a hammer and nail into the bottom).  The only problem now is how to refill the jug to freeze more water -- there are holes in the bottom!

The tiny native plants that I put in earlier this season are growing like crazy.  Take a look at those cheery black-eyed susans!

Finally, this is a collage I created for the online class I'm taking.  It's hard to see here -- I need to photograph it in daylight.  But it's made with all found or scavenged items -- a raspberry container from the farmer's market (stained with the berry juice), some little twige and bark, bottle rocket sticks from the 4th, and a bottle cap and foil wrapper from different bottles.  Maybe I can post a better pic tomorrow.

More Birds!

I guess I musst have birds on the mind, because most of my projects lately have featured them.  I'm taking an online class on Experimental Art (see button at the right).  It's a lot of fun, and the projects are intended to help us open up to be more creative and playful in our art.  Above is a project where we were to play with tracing images.  Since I've been (unsuccessfully) trying to draw birds in my backyard journal, I thought it would be fun to trace some birds just to get to know the basic shapes.  Then I transferred the images onto some old road maps, cut them out and collaged them.

This second piece started out with me just playing in my sketch book -- looking through books with pictures of birds and trying to draw them.  Then I added some collaged images from magazines, colored in and collaged the birds, and added some acrylic paint.  I think it would be fun to cut these out and use them in another piece, but for now I just want to enjoy this page.