illustration friday (immovable)

This week's IF topic did not immediately inspire me, and I had to chew on it for quite a while. Actually, that's been true of most of the IF topics since I joined in June. I guess that's what makes it a challenge.

anonymity

HOME STRETCH

My three-day road trip

Is nearly over

I leave the last motel

Just five more hours to go

The closer I come to home

I want to stretch it out

Delay my arrival

Stay suspended

Not here, not there

Just anonymous

Floating

Invisible.

First day was fast and furious

On the interstate monster highway

Second day I took

County roads

Weaving through midwest farm towns

Wondering at their smallness

Now on this third day

The final day

I'm an explorer

Venturing off the road

Over the train tracks

Into towns and neighborhoods

Leaving my car

To stroll through one-bench parks

To read a book

In the shade of a towering tree

Where no one knows me

Just an out-of-town license plate.

The five more hours

Have stretched into ten

As I slowed and savored

And stayed suspended

Anonymous

Floating

Invisible.

When I drive up to my house

It's evening

And I'm me again.

(another poem by Vicki Patschke)

sister hands

The first four kids in my family are girls who were born within a five year period. This summer, three of them gathered for a brief time at the home of the third sister. I am the eldest of the four, but it has been almost a decade now since I had the health and mobility to cross the ocean that keeps us apart.

I was nursing my isolation with a mental pout, when the second sister sent me a poem she'd written that drew me into a metaphorical sister hug and wiped the pout from my mind. The poem begins with the line "Three pairs of sister hands." But I, too, was there at that kitchen table-- in spirit anyway. And my hands were a fourth pair reaching out to theirs. The poem begged to be illustrated, so that's what I did.

SISTER HANDS

Three pairs of sister hands
Reach across
The kitchen table
For open display.
Curious
But tentative
Embarrassed
Yet satisfied
At our lines
Spots
Blemishes
Bumps, knobs and twists
The hilly blue veins
We compare the wrinkles
Of our well-worn lives
Five decades each.

My young niece
Thirteen
Watching us
Instinctively offers
To paint our nails.

(poem by Vicki Patschke)

illustration friday (atmosphere)

at-mos-phere: 1. the gaseous mass or envelope surrounding a celestial body, esp. that encompassing the earth, retained by the body's gravitational field. I call this the sky.

This etegami of fireflies in a jar is one I drew to commemorate my grandmother. See original post.

one more for the tea field art contest

Remember the Fantasies in the Tea Field Photo & Art Contest that I blogged about last week? I ended up doing just one more piece before sending them off yesterday. This one shows two large baskets such as the tea-pickers traditionally carry on their backs when they go out to the fields to pick tea leaves. The baskets are woven from strips of bamboo. And the shoulder straps are woven from leftover strips of often colorful fabric.

firefly squid

The previous post on "star-gazing" revived a memory from my youth that I felt compelled to express in etegami.

Many, many years ago, when I was home from college for summer break, two friends and I hitch-hiked to the Izu peninsula. After an exhausting day of travel and play, we spread our sleeping bags on the sandy beach and conked out. I can't remember if it was before conking out, or if it was when I woke up in middle of the night, but I noticed the tide was coming in and my sleeping bag was in danger of getting soaked. I dragged the bag away from the edge of the water, then looked back at the pitch black ocean and saw that it was glittering with lights. It looked as though someone had scattered truckloads of diamonds across the water. And those lights were twinkling like stars. I was utterly AWEstruck.

At first I thought it was a reflection of the stars in the sky. But then I realized something on, or near, the surface of the water was the source of the lights. I don't remember if I knew about hotaru ika (firefly squid) then, or if it was later that I figured it out, but that is exactly what explained this mysterious vision. It was one of the most beautiful, bewitching sights I have ever seen.

Hotaru ika are tiny. Whether they are boiled and served with miso sauce, or pressed and dried like jerky, each one makes just one mouthful. They are incredibly flavorful, though, and I have become addicted to them in the decades since that awesome sight. Please don't think badly of me that I can enjoy these amazing creatures both as art and as food.

The letters that accompany the image say "chindon'ya" and refer to the costumed, noisy groups of performers that used to weave through the streets advertising the opening of a new store or a special event (sort of like sandwich men in the west) when I was a child, but are extremely rare nowadays. I think the phrase came to mind because the shape and sparkle of the firefly squid reminded me of those flashy performers with their musical instruments, triangular headgear, and bamboo-framed umbrellas.

illustration friday (star gazing)

This is a very simple black & white etegami I made for Tanabata, the Japanese Star Festival, which is normally celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month each year. In Hokkaido, however, we celebrate it a month later-- in August. I used cross-sections of okra and sumi ink to stamp the star-shapes, and the way they're clustered is supposed to represent the Milky Way. But I've been thinking it would have been better suited to represent falling cherry blossoms, so I might try that next spring.