After completing the Shaman Staff walking stick project, I was having a bit of trouble coming up with a new project. An intense project, such as that walking stick, seems to take some energy from me and I have to recharge my energy before taking on a new project. When that happens, I find it is best to just play for a bit until inspiration comes around again. The Garden Art ball project was essentially a play around project that helped me enjoy being creative while recharging before the next artistic endeavor.
Sometimes my dioramas are about stories that I want to tell. Other times, there are stories that want to be told. The story that wants to be told seems to come about due to synchronicity. I'll be waiting for inspiration and something catches my attention. It may be a thought or something I've seen or read, but it intrigues me enough to be kept in memory. Then some related idea or image will also come to my attention. In a short period of time, the image will appear again. It is almost as if an idea just keeps coming up until I feel that I should try to express something about it.
An example of what I am writing about would be my Folk Art Carousel project. Although I had not seen or thought about carousels in years, in rapid succession I saw a magazine article on building rocking horses. In no time flat, I unexpectedly came across an antique carousel in a museum. Things just kept coming up about carousels, rocking horses, or riding animals such as the old coin operated rides. After being completely out of mind for years, I could not help but see something about them. I am fascinated by the object or idea and begin to examine it closely. This close examination is where my art gets its beginning.
So now, I have started seeing the beginnings of my next Halloween piece. Yes, I am beginning my Halloween piece in March. If I start my project in September, it never gets finished by Halloween. Some of my assemblages take months to complete. It took me a while to start to have a vision about this diorama. I finally started to get an idea of a diorama that in some way portrayed divination, such a tarot cards or casting runes. Another idea was about ghosts. That idea was prompted by my having been gifted a the remainder of a roll of construction material used to cover pipes to keep dirt out of them. I thought that it might be something that could be stiffened to make ghosts. At this point, I had no idea of how this might fit into the plan, but the idea was floating around. (Pardon the pun.)
No sooner than that idea came, I had a synchronicity happen. I was looking at the computerized library catalog of my local library on a completely unrelated topic. Along with the type of book I was looking for, a book suggestion came up called Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories by M.R. James, an English writer (1862-1936). I checked out that book from the library and read some really great ghost stories set in the English countryside. They are not the slasher horror stories that make up today's horror movie genre, but stories that bring about an element of fear through unseen creatures and forces. Reading those ghost stories reminded me of a poem by James Whitcomb Riley called Little Orphant Annie that my mother read to my brother and I when we were children. My brother and I would laugh and shout out the refrain "An the Goblins will get you if you don't watch out". (My history of enjoying anything related to Halloween, ghosts, and creepy creatures has been a longtime obsession.) A link to the poem is here: http://www.poetry-archive.com/r/little_orphant_annie.html
Little Orphant Annie was a story of a child that had come to live with a family. She would entertain the family with stories of ghosts and goblins. There is much more to this poem than would meet the eye. There is a really great back story about this poem that reveals a part of American History that is rarely talked about. Over the course of creating this art piece, there will be some interesting historical facts brought up. (So stay tuned, here comes that history geek again.) Along with the assemblage, I'll be adding some interesting information that is falling off the radar of American consciousness.
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