Seems like lately I’ve just been bursting at the seams with new ideas, creativity and artwork!  It feels good to have things flow so easily. That’s not always the case with making art so I am making the best of it while I can!  I’ve got so many new projects going that I am excited about but I wanted to share this one with you while it’s fresh in my mind.  Tonight I sat down at the computer to do some photo editing for a recent photo shoot but first got sidetracked and created a few new photo/digital art pieces instead.  (That tends to happen when I should really be doing something else!)  

We traveled to southern Indiana yesterday to spend the day visiting my parents.  It is a place that is full of memories, and always seems to be so visually stimulating to visit.  They live on a lake in a house that they built, it stands where we once had a summer “cabin” that we would retreat to each weekend from spring to fall.  They bought the old cabin when I was only four years old, so I have many, many memories of my time down there as a child, teenager and as an adult.  Although things have changed, when I am there much still feels the same.  It seems like each time I visit I can’t help but pull out my camera and shoot images around their property.  I literally have folders full of images that I’m never quite sure what I’ll do with once I’ve taken them.  But this time it came to me that I am repeatedly shooting photos of my mother’s beautiful flowers in bloom and of the many rocks that they’ve collected and have placed around the outside of the house. 

The rocks particularly bring back memories of long walks “up the creek” to splash in the cold water on a hot summer’s day, chase minnows & crawdads as well as to rummage through the rocks along the path and in the creek.  My dad would carry a large bucket and often fill it with geodes of all sizes which he would tote back to the cabin to add to the others that he had already collected.  If you’ve never seen a geode they aren’t particularly excited to look at from the outside.  But the inside, well the insides can be quite spectacular.  And getting to the insides can be an adventure in itself!  Depending on the size and hardness of the rock sometimes you are able to give it a good smack with a hammer and it will crack open, displaying all sorts of beautiful formations of quartz in a variety of colors.  If the hammer didn’t work we would fling them onto the concrete step and hope that would do the trick.  I’m sure now days all kinds of safety gear would be required just to get to the inside! Although I remember bits & pieces of shattered rock flying through the air, I can’t recall any of us ever being injured.  At least not permanently!

After returning home from our visit with yet another batch of photos (including many of the beautiful geodes and flowers - again!), I decided that this time I needed to create something instead of leaving the images in a file, in a folder, tucked away on my computer.  In just a short time I had created four new pieces!  I can see expanding on these quite easily to add many more images to the collection.  For each piece I used between three and five different photos to create the new image.  I even have some them printed, waiting for mats & frames so that I can take them to an upcoming show.

Here they are:

“Mommas Flower, Papas Rocks”

“Mommas Flower, Papas Rocks, 2″

“Mommas Flower, Papas Rocks, 3″

“Mommas Flower, Papas Rocks, 4″

Thanks for reading my little blog, I’ll check in again soon!

xoxoxo,

Lynne