Lake Snow-be-Gone

It's hard for most of you to even imagine this kind of snow and ice, but when you live at an elevation above 5,000 feet I promise you it is all true!  The good news is, once the snow begins to melt it goes very rapidly.  Here is my version of time lapse photography:  This is the berm in my front yard that has many daffodil bulbs planted in it.  The first picture was taken on a Sunday afternoon walk, the second picture on a Wednesday afternoon walk.  Amazing, huh?  At least I think so...


Okay, I couldn't get these to stack the way I wanted them to.  The one to the right is Wed., the one below is Sunday.  Dramatic difference!











Please bear with my  lousy formatting.  The picture below is of Payette Lake from Legacy Beach on Wednesday, same day as the above picture.  See the yellow barrel located between the bare aspen tree branches?  Locals put in bets on when that barrel will roll to shore.  As soon as the lake breaks, there will be small children swimming in it.  I see it every year - where are the PARENTS of these children? Don't they check the lake temp before allowing these water-winged tykes to flounder into it?  Goodness.

Anyway, this blog is supposed to be about art, not ice.  But you can imagine that such an extreme climate has it's effect upon sensitive souls like me causing us to do all kinds of crazy things - like BLOG.

I'm very proud of the art piece entitled "Healing Elements" pictured below.  While "Desert Music" was my first effort in a non-square format, this piece had me going in multitudes of circles.  I spent one morning googling math solutions, taking notes, and drafting the initial shape.  I hadn't done this much geometry in quite some time and was pleased to find myself thoroughly enjoying the process and "getting" the math fairly easily once I got going and refreshed my memory. 

The detail shot at right is of the Wood Element, represented by a tree, as is traditional in Chinese art representations. The corresponding internal organ is the liver, which you can see here as a knothole in the tree trunk.  The Chinese character for "wood element" is to the lower right in a sheer silk organza overlay that I fused in place, machine satin stitched the circumference,  and then heavily quilted to bring the shape out.  Each of the five elemental Chinese characters are on this piece to the right of the representational medallion. From the top clockwise they are: Wood (liver), fire (heart), earth  (stomach), heavy metal (lungs), and water (kidneys). 

Another challenge in this piece was figuring out how to hang it flat upon a wall.  What I ended up doing is sewing a narrow sleeve along the spoke line of each medallion on the back of the quilt.  My husband had some narrow bamboo scraps from a carpentry project that he fashioned into narrow rods.  He drilled a hole at the top of each rod so that the piece may be hung with any of the elements in the top position.  He tapped a small upholstery tack into the base of the rod to keep the rod from slipping out once hung.

"Healing Elements" was created for a physician who, in addition to practicing traditional Western medicine, brings complimentary Chinese medicine into her practice as well.  This piece will hang in her office and I look forward to seeing it whenever I have an appointment with her!