Poem becomes painting

I sit with tiny spruces and large ferns

on a carpet of lichen and moss

A Warbler startles

while the winter wren

Lays her song atop this soft morning

a fisherman’s tug grumbles from the fog

waves lap the rocks

Their flow broken by barrier rock islands

I sit with my ego

Imploring me to accomplish while

Good wolf says just learn

I sit with my waiting trust

Everything is right on time

Even the hard things

I wrote this about Haystack.  It was my first time at an artist residency, my first time in a workshop, my first time introducing myself as an artist.  I was taking a two-week lamp-making session with Scott McGlasson from Minneapolis. 

My first day was bumpy.  I was excited to be there, yet not sure how I fit in.  I was surrounded by talented people. Four of them were fourth-year art students, and there was a timber framer, a designer, and Louis, my bunkmate (another story).  Scott told us to begin designing and everyone got busy, except me.  I was stuck.  I sat at my desk and fielded all the doubts my mind could throw at me.  Why are you here?  Are you a fraud? Is this the moment you become the fool?  I even called home to my mentor, my wife.  She understood.  Just being able to vocalize my fears helped.  I went back into the studio and grabbed the angle grinder, the only tool I knew how to use. I dragged my piece of walnut outside and began carving.  I did this the rest of the day and the next. 

The campus had a short trail that wound through the woods and at times near the water, sublimely beautiful.  I walked every break. At times I would drop and meditate, or just sit.  I took a lot of photos, excited about the new fauna. These tiny spruces, looking like perfect trees were small and vulnerable. Yet they were fine.  “Trust yourself” became my motto.  Trust yourself.

It was the third night, lying in bed when they came. The ideas. 

One, “oh that’s good, I’ll try and make that,” then boom another, then boom and boom.  A quartet of lamp designs.

I needed to learn how to use the lathe.  At 7 am the next morning, I grabbed Scott, and had him set me up. He did. For the next four hours, I turned a walnut log from home into a form. A form I liked! And for the next eight days, a pattern, a flow was quickly established:

Work/breakfast/walk/work/lunch/walk/work/dinner/walk/work. I would finally retire around 8 pm.  I was in liminal space, on a mystic rock island creating and fabricating.  

These paintings pay homage to the forest there at Haystack.

They held me in my strife as the forest always does.