echo and interruption

bundle by Leslie Avon Miller

The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in.

                                                      ~ Mark Rudman

bundle and leaf

I look and look.
Looking's a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

 

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.

World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That's
a way of breathing.

cracked, a self portrait series by Leslie Avon Miller

Breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.

~ Denise Levertov ~

cracked, a self portrait series by Leslie Avon Miller

It’s been 5 months since I have painted. 

I could let that break my heart. 

I could. 

Instead, I see this as another 

beautiful crack and restoration in my life. 

A new chapter.

Leslie's studio on a Saturday morning.

After a time of letting go, I am looking around me again.

 I feel the flutters of excitement and anticipation. 

Part of my beloved stash of natural materials.

Natural materials and fibers have always captured my heart. 

I was born a gatherer. 

Boxes and boxes

This is not a step back to what was; basketry. 

This is a step into the new and unknown.

dried orchids, pine needles, sea shells, leaves and nuts, weathered clothes pins...

pottery beads, dried tea bags, found drift wood and more hosta leaves

I am weaving the past into the future and the now. 

Artist books, bundles, assemblage perhaps.

Paper and natural dyes. 

fiber bundle, found shell fragment, coffee stained paper and waxed linen on maple leaf

I can’t see around the corner, 

but my eyes are as wide

 as those of a young child 

on Christmas morning.