Anisette Studio

The red dot means this was sold. I loved finding this one. Notice there is a bird like part of the fish. Love to find things within things. I liked the geometric shapes. I am looking forward to creating more Shibui Found Image Art. Right now, am doing oil pastels and chalk pastel images as I am working to put together an exhibition. Four oil pastels done. Now to frame them! I flip back and forth from art to writing.

I am excited as I will put in a new window and then a door on my cottage. Get my lights put up, and a fan in bedroom.

I plan to pick up oil painting again as well. It’s been some time! My focus has been on developing Shibui. And I have some alabaster a serpentine to carve as sculptures. Perhaps I will do that in the summer.

Joyce Hifler today: “Amid the clamor and fuss of everyone going in every direction. I like to draw up my chair and dream of the quiet things.” Oh! I love this one, its accually the next page from yesterday! It continues:

There are a lot of beautiful sounds in this world. I love to hear the muted sounds of the gentle strings of the violin as well as the distinct sound of a Cadillac horn_ but pleasant and home like, I love the hear coffee perking on the stove”. (My grandparent, and my folk always perked coffee on the woodstove or the electric stove.) ____I love to hear children laughing, and I also love the call of the bobwhite very early in the morning or late evening. I love to hear singing in the morning or late evening. I love to hear singing in the kitchen and happy footsteps on the stairs. (So true for me. We took the kids out to supper last night and it was wonderful to hear them laugh, and their mother laugh too! It was easy to join in with my own laughter.)

“But there are some ugly sounds too. Sirens blowing, angry voices, a screaming peacock going to roost. (They are very loud!) I really don’t mind the harsh voice of Petie the peacock, his strut is so beautiful and his attitude likeable. When he fans out his fabulous array of feathers, all gilt tipped and in glorious shades of turquoise, he shimmies his soft bloomer-like feathers on his bottom_ an act that would put a dancer to shame. When I watch this remarkable bird strut and twirl I have no doubt of a Supreme being, for how could anything so exquisite be anything but divine creation.” I think such things about all I see before me when outside. It’s an amazing world out there, and very beautiful. As an artist I see beauty in many kinds of things. I see it in other people.

“But I always come back to my peaceful dreams, those things that quiet my spirit and appease a nature that gets awfully tired sometimes. ____Have you ever listened to the silent sounds, a canoe slipping through the water, a paintbrush against a canvas? Have you ever heard bare feet on the sandy beach listened to the flame on the hearth? Have you noticed the star sing, and have you heard the snow fall?” (I smile at the gentle sound of a canoe on water, my brush as I work a canvas, the noises from sculpting___ tap, tap, tap-tap____. Bare feet on hard sand or wooden floor. I can feel the coldness on my bare feet. I imagine the quiet as I watch snow, perhaps a crow cries out and cars slush by. The sound of nighttime with stars overhead. I can see that and hear it. It is calming and peaceful.)

“Have you listened to autumn leaves, all shade of chrysanthemums drift to the grass, and the early morning mist fall like vapor in the pine trees? Birds in flight? The softest breeze?” There is a bit more on page 101. But these thoughts convey what I wish to convey. That there is a peaceful place we can move into and shut out what can taint the day.

I have a published poem I can look up about this same kind of thing. I do not recall the exact age I was at, only I was young when I began listening to the world around me. I recall being very young and looking out windows, I fed my curiosity about what was outside. I like how it felt. I would go to my room and read or watch out the low window in the second room I had for my bedroom. I changed from the front of the house to the back side of the house. A big thirteen room two story house. I would lay on the floor and watch the tall grass be moved by the wind. I was not hard to imagine it moved on its own. That the wind was not a factor. I felt like if grass can laugh then it was laughing at me or with me! It was fairly tall before Uncle Georgie would cut it down with a scythe. The back yard was a field. There had been an orchard there, but only two apple trees stood. These were two Golden Delicious apple trees. Between then stood two beehives, sometimes three. White with their dark entrances. I knew if I went up close, I would see bees coming and going. I would not stand directly in front of the hives but off to the side. I could watch my father if they swarmed and went into the pear tree on the left of my view. On the right of my view there was a huge Pine tree I would climb in to read. Sometimes sitting on one of its long branches to go up and down white chewing on spruce gum. When in season I would take a handful of choke cherries with me. Spitting out seeds. Or sometimes it was the cultivated black berries or wild strawberries. Between the beehives and the house there would be a long garden spreading from left to right.

In the spring the garden area would flood. The depth of the water wood get as high as below the knees. Depending on the rain. There was an old sink that had a plug, so it would float, and with a stick we could move around. I liked to play by myself here. I would also play on the granite foundation blocks beside the house on its right side. Just where it used to be I am not sure. But it made a fantastic boat or reading rock for a young girl. A little way from it there were two very old Transparent Apple trees. And a Bartlett Pear. My mother had clothes lines from the porch to the Transparent Apples where both were connected. Then from the Transparent tree to the Macintosh. I could sit in the trees when I was able to climb up in.

At one point we had an old hammock Mom had hooked up in the Transparent Apple tree. It was a good-sized rectangle with a pinhole which turned it into a pinhole camera on the wall opposite the hole. The world outside seemed like an upside down black and white photo.

Best wishes! Pejj Nunes