Gathering Seeds

It’s nearly fall.  This long summer of cool sunshine with bursts of rain-fed growth is coming to a close.  One can smell it in the cool mornings and see it in the drooping yellow of the morning glory leaves.  Have I done enough watering and fertilizing, deadheading and pruning, thinning and hoeing of my summer experiences in order to yield abundant inspiration for the coming winter of my artisitic production?  I think I have.

Just last week I was in the rocky mountains where I absorbed the changing shapes and colors of the sky.  I spied the watchful disinterest of a mother moose as she and her single offspring grazed among the yellowing poplars.  I saw the splashing of the trout at sunset as I stood silently among the river willow and the waving grasses.  I heard the call of the heron and the rasping of the Kingfisher as they flew above the marsh.  And today, with Dan, I walked along Lake Marion and saw how man has changed the landscape with his MacMansion Houses and clean-swept paths, and yet the Sandpipers still return and stop to visit on their migration south to warmer places.

It’s also in spring and summer that I have the most contact with students as they travel by plane and car, and sometimes foot, to take classes at my Center for Creative Arts in Jordan, Minnesota.  They share their stories, their struggles to create a vision that only they can see, their laughter and, once in awhile, their tears.  These things make their way into my heart and soul to become the seeds and fruit that, in winter, I will withdraw as colors, forms and texture to place into my art.

I can hardly wait to begin this more quiet time of fall and winter when I will take the time to look within and see what it is that spirit has to say through me and through my art.  I have a renewed sense that we as artists are hollow bones through which the world, and spirit, does its speaking. 

Welcome fall.  Welcome cold.  Welcome the windows and the doors that open and close and open again to reveal a new song.