Editor’s Note:
I think this is the most extensive piece of outsider art in T or C. We saw the artist at work in his open air studio down by the river. But he looked busy, and I was too shy to say hello.
Just a few dozen on the road in the fields in Bernardo. But lovely to see them!
Photo by Isabel Winson-Sagan.
Photographs of pattern by Isabel Winson-Sagan
Here is our most recently completed project as creative collaborators Maternal Mitochondria. It is a series of photographs Isabel and I took of each other. Text is added to the images. The muse is Tiamat, ancient Near Eastern goddess of primordial creation, goddess of where fresh water meets salt.
We had a potential gallery space for these, but the pandemic put an end to that. Interestingly, the project then grew larger. It is a paper sculpture, based on a screen.
The photographs have been altered, scratched, and collaged.
The hanging knit pieces reference the net that a god threw to catch and entrap Tiamat.
turns out
you also
want something
Click to enlarge!
Photography by Isabel Winson-Sagan, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Happy Equinox! Miriam’s Well is back!
It–and I–are currently in residence at Agate Fossil Bed in Nebraska as part of the artists in the national parks program.
I’ll be blogging cool things I experienced along the way, the park, and some field trips too.
To welcome autumn, photographs from Isabel Winson-Sagan in New Mexico’s fall colors of purple and yellow.
Itoshima, Japan
Mark Di Suvero, Storm King, NY
huge sculpture
criss crossing beams
frame the hill
red metal
like a Shinto shrine
marking Fujiyama
sculptor
in his wheelchair
watches the crane
lift and bolt
his scaffolding
to the sky
Certain experiences are so productive creatively that they continue on. Gail Rieke has been to Japan numerous times, and I only once. But we both visited this year, and I had the good fortune to talk to her before and after our trips. I’m combining our work below–not from the same exact places but I think from a deep ethos.
if there is a kami of sadness
she worshipped too long
at that shrine
hung books from wires
that could never
be read
not just ephemeral paper
but pages of air
the foam of waves
marbled the bookends of sand
in suminagashi
every woman
the world over
is writing a book
of herself
made of flesh and
north wind
Wayside Shrine
tears—
I haven’t heard
the temple bell
in so long
or ever before
seen a Buddha’s shrine
on the Tokyo
business street
or deep in country
where the earthen
sides of the lanes
loom over my head
offered an orange
like the ones
on the small trees
despite the freezing weather
for a few yen
lit a stick
of incense
with my cold gloved hands
stars, worlds
this smoke
that goes nowhere
goes
everywhere
photographing
white winter grass, my own
hair in the wind…
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 