Kat Eye Studio

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Growing a Garden

Today it’s back to England, continuing my stories of creative connection. The day after my Hebden Bridge workshop I was able to gather with friends again for a visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I had seen pictures of this place before, and it looked intriguing. How often do you see sculptures just randomly popping out of the bushes? Not very often. It’s a photographer’s dream, this kind of interesting juxtaposition.

On a rainy Sunday morning four of us met up in Hebden Bridge to drive out to the park: Me, Fiona, Hannah, and this time adding the lovely Helen Agarwal into the mix. Helen is another artist I met at the Do What You Love Retreat in 2011. She is a wonderful photographer with a lovely point of view on the world. I enjoy her dreamy style and her calm approach to life.

We were lucky enough to have a break in the weather as we arrived, so we wandered outside for a while. It was fun to see what caught our eye. There were all of these interesting sculptures, but I think we spent more time photographing the beautiful vines and interesting leaves.

Helen is another mobile photographer. Her dSLR had been broken for a while, so she was trying to figure out what to do about repairing or replacing it, using her camera phone in its place. It was fun to see how she worked with it! Another influence for me? Perhaps. Just seeing other photographers whose work I enjoy using different tools than my own is often enough to get me thinking.

The special exhibit at the park was Joan Miro. I haven’t always been a fan of his work, but seeing so much more of his paintings and sculptures, and reading about his life gave me a new perspective on him. I do love the bold colors and simple shapes he repeats in his work. We couldn’t take photographs of the inside exhibition, but I was able to photograph his outdoor sculptures. I always find it interesting to see an artist who works across many mediums, like painting and sculpture, because you can see their style come through regardless of medium.

He talked about how he works in this quote, posted on the wall:

I think of my studio as a vegetable garden. Here, there are artichokes. Over there, potatoes. The leaves have to be cut so the vegetables can grow. At a certain moment, you must prune. I work like a gardener or a wine grower. Everything takes time. My vocabulary of forms, for example, did not come to me all at once. It formulated itself almost in spite of me. Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water, as you do for lettuce. Things ripen in my mind. In addition, I always work on a great many things at once. And even in different areas: painting, etching, lithography, sculpture, ceramics.

Yes, things have to grow and ripen. Our ideas. Our art. Our connections and friendships as well. Perhaps my visit to England was a gardening trip, nurturing the connections I had planted while living in Italy. Coaxing them to grow a little further, to see how they might blossom in time.

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The Return-from-Vacation Conundrum

So, I’m back from vacation. Back to the normal routine. Here I sit on a Monday morning, debating the ways to approach this week, where I have a lot to do after two weeks away… Do I jump in with both feet, and just try to get as much done as possible? Or do I ease myself into it, focusing on the priority things and let the rest slide? How do you approach this situation?

My tendency is to jump in and work to get everything done, but that can stress me out. (Case in point – I couldn’t shut my brain off last night and didn’t get a good night’s sleep.) I think I’ll try the second option, since “easing” sounds so much nicer, but I’m not sure how I’ll do at that. I guess we’ll see as the week progresses.

Today’s second question: Where in the world is this photo from? Do you think it’s from Europe or the USA? Answer tomorrow!

Linking in to Creative Every Day and The Creative Exchange today.

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Dark Nights

September.
We turn our heads reluctantly from summer,
start to look toward fall.
Morning crispness, school books.
Endings and beginnings,
sadness and possibility.
Enjoy every last golden moment of this month.
Squeeze out the last drops of summer and
hang it on the line to dry –
our memory of sticky days and thunderstorms,
wind in the leaves and crickets chirping.
These will keep us warm and cozy in the
long dark nights to come.

This is just something I randomly wrote down this morning in my journal, after I wrote in the date. It seemed to fit with this picture from Bath, the row of chairs at night, cool drops of rain on them, empty of tourists – foretelling of the seasons to come.

I am finding black and white photos very interesting lately. Before I left on my trip, I participated in the Mortal Muses black and white challenge. It was interesting to look through my photos and join in with some of my favorites. I was even one of the featured photos last week, in Thursday’s post.

Participating in this challenge got me to looking at my black and white photos as a body of work, instead of each one individually. I love color, but I like the feeling that black and white can evoke. The simplicity of light and dark, lines and spaces. It got me to thinking about how I don’t really see an image as black and white when I record it in real time, but when I see the photo on the computer it just asks to be black and white. Like this one, when I saw it in yesterday’s editing, I knew that this was the way it needed to be.

And somehow, the words I wrote this morning, the challenge I participated in last month, the photo I took last week and edited yesterday all came together for this post. I love how that happens.

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The Zebra in Switzerland

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” – Diane Arbus

Perhaps you were thinking that upon my return from Switzerland, you would see grand vistas of the alps? Snow capped peaks and high alpine meadows? Yes, those are somewhere in my pile of files. But what I wanted to share first is the zebra bench. This is something that stuck in my head. I loved this bench, and the plants around it, that I found wandering in Unterseen and Interlaken. I had a great time photographing it, studying it from different angles and compositions while Patrick and Brandon waited for me. There is nothing like a scene like this to give me a wonderful creative burst, and I knew I would love at least one of the photos I took.

But almost as interesting, is the conversation I had afterward with Patrick. I mentioned something about loving the zebra bench, and he said, “What zebra bench?” He hadn’t even seen it. Wow. I spent 10 minutes photographing something that someone else didn’t even see. Now, I doubt that I’m the only person to have photographed this little scene, I’m sure there are many others who have done the same. But the idea that there are many more that didn’t see it at all, makes me realize, once again, that I have something to share with the world. I can show people what I see, from the Kat Eye View.

“The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE.” – Ernst Haas

So, so true.

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Inspirational Light

We’ve seen a lot of churches here in Italy. Some are giant, some are smaller. Almost always overwhelming, you can’t take it in from one angle or without craning your neck up. Most are dark inside. Beautiful stained glass windows catch your eye and it’s nice and cool on a hot summer day, but otherwise dim and uninspiring in my opinion. I need the light. Except, for this one day in a church in Verona, where the warm afternoon light was coming in and illuminating the pews. Beckoning the visitor to sit down in the light and ponder the nature of our existence. Or at least, capture the beautiful light and shadows it creates. That’s my personal kind of pondering.

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