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Raku torso, unnamed, hand made, slab built, with raw turqoise and lapis across the bodice and a shard and shell on her hip by Tammy Vitale.

Here is one of the pieces I got from the raku session this week.  I’m getting great copper!  But she hasn’t even given me a clue about her name yet.  Anyone have any suggestions? 

This morning I have sifted through all of the AEM participants listed on Kat’s website trying to find the person who posted the photos of the spider web – and I failed miserably – will you please identify yourself so I can connect to your posting?  Because your posting was what gave me my idea for my AEM today – In my own backyard.  That’s an ongoing theme for me (if I were new to this space, what would I see?)  We had fog this morning and it was lovely.  Unfortunately none of my spider web photos turned out at all (I think because I can only use my viewfind on my poor camera, and not the large screen which has died), but I got some great photos anyways.  It was a wonderful morning for reflections in the pond, although the fish wouldn’t cooperate so I didn’t get a reflection with a fish in it (I like those – they are so gold they really shine against the dark of the pond).    So here’s my contribution to AEM today, some taken in my front yard too!

The donkey (with the broken blue container and yellow moon) is from my family yard.  My mom bought the donkey and card for my dad when I was a sophmore in high school (64 ish).  Around the late 80s, someone stole the original donkey.  So Husband and kids and I found this donkey in Tennessee and brought it home with us.  It has had a hard life:  lost and ear and most of its tail.  We cemented it into the ground so it couldn’t be stolen again.  When we sold his house, Husband and I dug him up (no easy task), along with a bunch of the big old azalea that was almost as big as the house in the back by the basement exit.  That azalea had come from the first house we lived in, so the mother plant is older than me.  I have about 10 plants of it now growing in my yard.  And some lilies the man across the street gave me when I was 8 ( he gave me one – I had a garden full by the time the house sold). 

We have plenty of spiders and spider webs.  I’ll have to work on getting a good picture (I have a great picture that isn’t digital that I took of a yellow and black garden spider…I was writing my thesis on webs of connection and the Web of Indira another webs and this spider just plopped itself where I could take a picture – serendipity! I have decided to post some of that writing over at myspace today, Nov 25 – you’ll have to scroll if you aren’t reading this on Nov 25 – no trackback) when I’m finished here in case you’d like to read it).  One of the webs this morning was about 5 inches across – perfect – and in the center was this teeny tiny pinhead size spider.  I do wish I could have gotten that one to come out!  Not meant to be today.

thought for the day:  Organically inspired or constructed collages and assemblages reflect another human creation:  the garden, a part of nature that has been altered by the human hand and imagination.  You might model a piece after a walled medieval garden, an elaborate maze or a simple Zen rock garden…using images of botanical fragments, lattice screens, a ‘lost’ key, and a patinaed archway..Though we’re always trying to tame nature and impose order on it, once neglected things revert back to wildness and disorder.  Holly Harrison and Paula Grasdal, Collage for the Sould:  Expressing Hopes and Dreams Through Art