August 14, 2013

August 14, 2013

  Today I am pondering the relationship between visual clarity and suggested images that can be taken into myself as something being closer to the truth that exists in the wordless places deep within my core existence. A mouthful to be sure, but as I am applying these thoughts to what at times emerges as a different direction of interior sight, that place where only a felt sense of what is seen by the eyes is expressed and may perhaps only be described as abstraction takes place. I am thinking of the century and a half of impressionist and abstract art and photography we have been exposed to in our lifetimes.

  

   Lately as I sit in front of the computer screen working on an image I find myself trying to express something more than just another finely crafted image. The tools for photographic imaging that are available are as vastly complex those available to any artist working in the many mediums of artistic endeavor, and I have moved out of a place where technique is overwhelming, it is becoming simply available to me. The learning process is endless and will always continue, and at this time taking in digital technique as applied to photography has become comfortable and most importantly, usable in trying to express what is emerging from my interior self. Let me say rather, emerging from the space where God's Spirit lives in the unknown but felt pockets of Light that are in all of us.

   What follows in this post are recent photographs taken over the last two weeks which express for me something of what I sensed was my insight into what was visible in that present moment of time before the camera shutter was released. Abstract thoughts are impossible to express with clarity. How can one use words to describe an impression, a moment of seeing with the heart, a felt sense of what the Spirit's Wind brings as it blows through in a single moment of insight.

   So, enough of words that are totally inadequate to describe what I am sensing as being a place of viewpoint that may be expressive in some way to you the viewer looking at  my attempts to taking abstract feelings into a visual medium.

    These thoughts are only mine and are in no way put forth as having any weight to speak of these things in a concrete way. Your patience with my meanderings is greatly appreciated.

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   "Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world."

                                                                            Rudolph Arndheim,  Visual Thinking

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Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park,  August 2013. 

   (Something of a memory of pictures taken as a child with a cheap camera that had a plastic lens. Tourists run to this vantage point which does offer a magnificent view.)

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    The inner self I believe mirrors the external five senses we use to know the world. The inner sense of hearing is one. Here is a tone poem by Jean Sibelius called The Swan Of Tuonela from Finlandia. Take a listen and allow the music to be heard with a different set of ears.

Click here:

https://app.box.com/s/em6e4wlnyb6el9n2stus

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Some Humor:

Peace and Serenity,

   Bill Lagerstrom

August 7, 2013

August 7, 2013

(Please Read: Google has reintroduced the thumbnails at the bottom of the photos after you double click on any image. All photographs are mine unless otherwise noted.)

   Below are photos taken this last Sunday at Acadia National Park during a late day visit somewhere around four PM. I will let them and the Akathist speak for themselves. The last photo is from the Farmsworth Museum in Rockland Maine taken in a hall staircase while I was waiting for Lee to come out of the gallery she was in. I believe it is a painting by N.C. Wyeth. Sunday was a good day for us.

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The Akathist Hymn: "Glory to God for All Things"

Kontakion 2

   O Lord, how lovely it is to be Your guest. Breeze full of scents; mountains reaching to the skies; waters like boundless mirrors, reflecting the sun's golden rays and the scudding clouds. All nature murmurs mysteriously, breathing the depth of tenderness. Birds and beasts of the forest bear the imprint of Your love. Blessed art You, mother earth, in Your fleeting loveliness, which wakens our yearning for happiness that will last forever, in the land where, amid beauty that grows not old, the cry rings out: Alleluia!

Ikos 2

   You have brought me into life as into an enchanted paradise. We have seen the sky like a chalice of deepest blue, where in the azure heights the birds are singing. We have listened to the soothing murmur of the forest and the melodious music of the streams. We have tasted fruit of fine flavor and the sweet-scented honey. We can live very well on Your earth. It is a pleasure to be Your guest.

Glory to You for the Feast Day of life
Glory to You for the perfume of lilies and roses
Glory to You for each different taste of berry and fruit
Glory to You for the sparkling silver of early morning dew
Glory to You for the joy of dawn's awakening
Glory to You for the new life each day brings
Glory to You, O God, from age to age 

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     (A poem from this years Retreat at Eastern Point, Gloucester Mass. on the ocean East of Boston)  

- On Retreat, May 16, 2013 –

 I am,

A fish, who breathes the air of God's Oceans

I am,

The entire Ocean and all who remember Creation there

I am,

A drop of water, a single drop

I am,

All the rain that is, all the rain that will be

I am,

A bird in flight

I am,

All the wind that supports all that flies in God's Air

I am,

The night's darkness

I am,

All the stars, the moon, the universe, galaxies galore

I am,

A single flower, a blade of grass reaching for the Sun

I am,

The Sun, the Wind, alive in Creation's Eternal Song

I am God's Gospel

The Book of Hope

The Living Water

I am,

The Air of the Spirit that I breathe –

God is in me

There is no more to be said,

no amen, no period

the prayer of lover and Love never stops

                                                     

                                              Bill Lagerstrom   

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Some humor about security news in Maine:

Until next week,

    Bill Lagerstrom

July 22, 2013

July 22, 2013

(Please Read: Google has reintroduced the thumbnails at the bottom of the photos after you double click on any image. All photographs are mine unless otherwise noted.)

    I occasionally come across a blurb by a reviewer which makes absolutely no sense on any level about the efforts of creative people, and is inherently babble which an online dictionary described as, "Babble is to talk on and on without a particular goal, to bubble at the mouth, but not in a pretty way. " Here is a review from the NY Times about a new album of music by a group called "Matt Ulery's Loom." 

    "Wake An Echo" due out on Tuesday could only be the product of a composer-improviser working in this era, with frictionless access to great chunks of classical postminimalism, atmospheric indie-rock, and harmonically astute post bop." 

    I leave this to any interpreter of alien languages to decipher. (See the cartoon at the end of this post for what may be needed to understand what was said in the above blurb.)

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   Lee and I went to the botanical gardens in Boothbay Maine last Saturday and the first four photos are from that day. It is something of a Maine venture by local people who bought 250 acres of land and built over fifteen years a wonderful landscape filled with a great variey of plants, flowers and trees. Worth a visit as the project turned out really well. 

Dreams of childhood still rise to the surface,

an idylic house and garden where peaceful summer days

were spent in the imagination of youth -

which has its own wonderful reality in memory. 

(The scene above is in the children's section of the gardens.)

The bud of an energing flower .......

..... becomes the flower offering pollen to the bee

in turn becoming the food to feed others.

Perhaps a metaphor for our own groth process 

as ongoing human concerns. 

A large urn sitting in a garden.

What contents are stored here?

Perhaps the ashes of trees that are no longer with us -

perhaps a living colony of ants 

making good use of what has been provided.

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Campobello trees waiting on daylight.

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   Here is a recording by Clarissa Pinkola Estes called "The Creative Fire." She is a Jungian analyst who has offered one of the best descriptions of the creative process I have heard. It is in nine segments which have to be accessed one at a time for about 50 minutes of listening. Worth the effort.

   Chick here and open the folder:

                  https://app.box.com/s/uct0s6g0mejhfjfiecht 

   If you want more of these talks they are available on Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Fire-Clarissa-Pinkola-Estes/dp/1591793874/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374408447&sr=8-1&keywords=the+creative+fire

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Some Humor:

Peace until next week,

    Bill Lagerstrom