Finding Stillness

What do you do when one of your oldest and most treasured blogging friends announces that she will be holding a still life photography workshop for three magical days at her brand new studio in Rivers, Manitoba . . . and another of your oldest and dearest blogging friends invites you to come stay at her house just twenty minutes from the workshop . . . and those two sweet friends also happen to be among your favorite photographers in the entire world?

If you're me, you thank your lucky stars, and you book a flight to Manitoba.  

In my post last week I mentioned that I've been a thousand miles away both literally and figuratively.  Really, I've been two thousand miles away, but the miles cannot begin to measure what my time at Kim Klassen's The Studio meant to me.  

Finding Stillness was much more than a workshop.   

It was a time and a place where we had the freedom to set up a shot, and to keep coming back to it as the sun moved across the sky over the course of the day--no distractions, no responsibilities, no other task than to play with color and focus and shadows and light.

It was a space filled with well-worn tables and chipped-paint chairs and shelves of cups and bowls and books for us to use as we practiced making magic.  

Kim Klassen giving a demonstration on how she makes her magic

It was also the place where after years and years, I finally got to meet my two incredible friends for real . . . and to watch them work . . . and to soak up their brilliance.

Aeleen Sclater setting up a shot

Barb Brookbank, Diana Foster, Kim Klassen, and Shelley Rounds out for a morning walk on the trail

And it was, perhaps most importantly, three whole days that I got to spend with ten inspiring and talented photographers from the United States, Canada, and the UK.     

Carol Hart and Diana Foster

We talked shop--lighting, cameras, lenses, techniques and tips--but we also talked life.  And we laughed.  A lot. 

Ilse preparing a gorgeous salad while Xanthe Berkley, Barb Brookbank, and Barbara Skrobuton shoot

We also ate the most delicious and nourishing food, cooked by Kim's mom as well as by Aeleen, and by Aeleen's friend Ilse, an incredible chef who graciously let us photograph her preparing our gourmet lunch on the final day of the workshop.  It was a relief to be in a room full of people who not only didn't roll their eyes when I grabbed my camera to take endless shots of a gorgeous basket of peppers or a bowl of fresh salad tossed with line vinaigrette, they grabbed their cameras, too, and we all happily snapped away.

And then there was the stillness.  I found it each day in moments both expected and surprising.  We all shared an hour a day of silence, during which we were free to keep photographing or to process shots, read a book, write, take a nap--whatever our hearts desired.  I treasured those hours, as I'm naturally a pretty introverted person who loves to spend most of my time working in silence.  

But I discovered many times of quiet stillness throughout the day, even working side by side with other photographers.  It was easy to simply be.  Kim created such a light-filled and welcoming space that I think we all felt at home, whether we were gathered around Carol Hart giving a shop talk on using studio lighting or watching Xanthe Berkley make one of her incredible stop-motion animations or learning the secrets to gorgeous top-down shots from Barb Brookbank.  

The feeling of home extended beyond the four walls of Kim's studio to the town of Rivers itself, where we took walks, went out for supper, and popped into some of the local shops.  Everywhere we went in this small prairie town, people welcomed us, asked where we were from, and swapped stories.  I can't imagine a more perfect spot for a photography retreat.

Kim's sweet dog Ben was our muse and companion.

For me, the retreat extended beyond Rivers all the way to Aeleen's beautiful house on the prairie.  There, I got to meet her husband and one of her sons, hang out with her in the evenings, and run out the front door, into the fields each morning with her sweet pup Zoe.

Morning light in the room where I stayed at prairiegirl's place

Everything in prairiegirl Aeleen's world is arranged with love.  The shots above and below were taken in her house.  I didn't have to set them up, because this is just how she sees things, how she crafts beautiful vignettes at every turn.   

me and beautiful pg (Aeleen)

On my last day in Manitoba, I got to roam around early in the morning, taking shots full of color and texture at Aeleen's like the one above.  And her gardens!  And her studio!  I think I need to save them for another post.  There's too much to share.

As if staying with Aeleen were not treat enough, on my last night there, she took me to her neighbor Willi's Octoberfest, where we watched the full moon rise over the fields, and I got to see the biggest, most impressive bonfire of my entire life . . . not to mention fireworks and a fire lantern being launched.  Fire was definitely the theme of the evening!  And Abba.  Did I mention Abba?  There was much dancing to Abba.  Perhaps there wasn't much stillness that one night, but it was a time I won't soon forget.

Spoons and leaves at prairiegirl studio ~ love

Since returning to my own life back on the coast of Maine, I've been swamped with work, but I've also been finding that my week in Manitoba is very much present in my mind in heart.  The people I met there, and the time we spent simply sharing our love for taking photographs, have helped me to see why I turn to my camera so often, why I set up corners all over my house, always chasing the light, always seeking to discover a mood, a moment of stillness that once I've captured it, will always be mine . . . and maybe someone else's, too.  

Ben

I found myself using one hashtag again and again on my Instagram account while I was in Manitoba: #feelingblessed.  Thank you Kim, Aeleen, Xanthe, Carol, Diana, Barb, Brenda, Dorry, Shelley, and Barbara for three days full of more blessings than I can count.  

Inspirations: Springtime, a Dear Friend, and My Big Brother

I've been thinking often of my word for the year: inspire.  I'm feeling incredibly inspired lately, especially now that spring has arrived in full force here in Portland.  I have a huge writing project to finish, and for the first time, I can honestly say the end is in sight.  So, thank you soft spring air and blooming cherry trees, and cheerful muscari.  Somehow all this growth and renewal gets me to writing.

Photo by prairie girl studio

I also am feeling inspired by friends both far and near.  One friend in particular is on my mind today.  Her name is Aeleen, but perhaps some of you know her better as prairie girl.  She is back to blogging these days, and her gorgeous photos and words are more inspiring than ever.  You can visit her here. Also, Aeleen was the winner of my London Treasures Giveaway, so if you're curious about what goodies I gathered while on my trip, she and one of her sons have created a wonderful post about the package.  When you read it, you'll discover that Aeleen has been through a great deal in the past several weeks.  I'm holding her and her family in my heart as I write this.

The photo above is of one of the Murano glass eggs I included in the parcel.  I think she and Jesse have taken a pretty object and turned it into something spectacular.  That's what Aeleen does with everything she photographs.  She notices detail in a way that never ceases to amaze me.  She also has a heart of gold.  Truly.  Perhaps that is what inspires me most.

And finally, the photo above is of my big brother when he was a wee lad.  Mark celebrated his birthday this past week.  He's now just a few years decades older than he was in this photo.  I've never mentioned him here on the blog before, so I hope he doesn't mind.  Ever since I can remember, my brother has inspired me with his artistic talent, his quick wit, his insatiable curiosity, and his deeply caring soul.  When we were kids I loved to watch him draw ornate pictures of houses and flowers and fantasy race cars in his sketch book, and I would follow him pretty much anywhere he would let me.  I especially liked searching in the woods with him for treasure . . .  or hanging blankets in the attic to make a fortune teller's tent . . . or building elaborate sand castles encrusted with shells and sea glass at the beach.  No matter what we did, everything with my brother felt like an adventure.  I love this picture of Mark with our kitten Sharon in his arms, because it captures who he was then and who he still is now.  He has taken in countless injured, ailing, and homeless animals over the years, providing them with shelter and boundless love.  He has also offered incredible support to me whenever I've asked--and often when I haven't.  We've lived far apart for most of our adult lives, but no matter how many years pass, I can just close my eyes and he's in the bedroom next to mine, Led Zepplin or Janis Joplin cranked up to 10.  I can just knock on the wall if I need him, and I know he'll always knock back.   

Sustenance: An Exhibition by Michael and Christine Jones

Generations, by Michael Jones, 2011, oil and charcoal on canvas, 20"x20"

. . . We grow, 

we sustain, we wait for purple stars of Spring.

~Excerpt from "Rotondo Farm" by Christine Jones, 2011

In keeping with my word for the year, inspire, I thought I'd share the work of two people whose approach to art and life never ceases to inspire me.  I first met poet Christine Jones and her husband, painter Michael Jones, a couple of years ago when I began working with Christine on her poetry.  Since then, I've had the good fortune of meeting with Christine on a regular basis, and I've watched her poems grow and blossom into rich reflections on her many passions, including running, swimming, gardening, and writing, to name just a few.  Some of her recent work appears in The Offering, published by the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Michael is a professional painter and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell where he teaches Art Law and directs the Legal Studies Program.  The U.S. Olympic Committee commissioned him to create the Triathlon poster for the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Summer Olympic Games.  He painted the official portrait of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, and his paintings have been exhibited at museums throughout the world.

Rotondo Farm: Winter Farm Stand by Michael Jones, oil on canvas, 2011, 24"x48"

Over the past two years, Michael and Christine have shown collaborative exhibitions of her poetry and his oil paintings at the Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Tsongas Gallery in Concord, Massachusetts.  This month they have a new exhibition at the Whistler House Museum of Art in Lowell, Massachusetts.  

The exhibition, Sustenance, demonstrates a careful attentiveness to the everyday, especially as it pertains to the natural world.  As they write in their artists' statement: "Our paintings and poems reflect our joy of the discoveries and simple pleasures we find together every day.  A farm stand under snow reminds us, a hole-punch in the raven sky reminds us, and sprouts in a Dixie Cup remind us that in nature there is something to sustain each one of us."

The couple have two homes in Massachusetts, one on Cape Cod, and the other in the Merrimack Valley, thus their work is inspired by the waves and sand dunes of the Atlantic as well as the quiet peace of inland farms and Thoreau's Walden Pond.

Rotondo Farm: Fall Farm Stand by Michael Jones, oil on canvas, 2011, 24"x48"

For weeks

we waited for the seeds 

we planted

in Dixie Cups 

to become winged leaves . . .

~Excerpt from "The Garden Series I" by Christine Jones, 2011

While the show runs until February 24, I'm excited to say that there will be a reading and exhibition reception this coming Saturday, January 21, from 2-4 p.m.  Directions to the museum can be found here.  Christine will be sharing some of her poems, and it promises to be a wonderful event.  I for one can't wait!  For more information about the show and the artists, visit the Whistler House Museum's website.

I've worked with hundreds of writing students and poets over the years, and few have had the commitment to the process of revision--of re-seeing a work--as Christine does.  I want to share one more excerpt from a poem that she revised many times.  Her persistence and patience were met with a poem that the reader wants to return to again and again, discovering something new each time.  I'll end here with the poem's first few lines:

Time is not a bird.

It does not fly.

It is the branch when the bird alights

shaking the leaves to wake the wind.

It comes right in.

~Excerpt from "Time is Not a Bird" by Christine Jones, 2011

A Year and a Word II

By Marlowe Miller

Already it's January 11th, and I haven't told you my word for the year yet.  Last year's word was grace, and I loved that word, mostly because it helped me to look closely, to seek grace in each day.  And on those days when I went looking and didn't find it, I gradually realized that if I sat still long enough, grace would find me.  Part of the process was just breathing and being and noticing the small gifts each day brings.  The other parts were more challenging.  I focused on complaining less, offering thanks more, and letting others know how much I appreciate them.  It shouldn't be hard to do these things, and really it's not.  I think for me, it's just a matter of remembering to do them more.  And maybe it's also about feeling comfortable enough in my own skin to simply say what I think and feel.  One might think that after all these years of being a writer that wouldn't be such a tough thing for me to do.  Writing truth is one thing.  Speaking it is another.  I'm learning . . . piece by piece.

Over the last few weeks, as I considered what word I wanted to tuck into my pocket and carry with me for 2012, I realized that I wasn't going to just chuck out last year's word.  It's coming with me, too.  Perhaps in a few more years, my pockets will be bulging with all the words I'll collect.            

By Marlowe Miller

The word I'm adding to my stash this year is inspire.  I wanted a verb, and I needed one that connects to all aspects of my life.  I am inspired by many amazing makers and thinkers and doers of deeds, and I also hope to do some serious inspiring of my own this year.  

I can't think of a better way to kick off an inspiring year than to share with you the work of one of my dearest friends.  Her name is Marlowe Miller, and these gorgeous glass creations I'm featuring in this post are all hers.  She is one of the most creative people I know in so many ways--with textiles, paper, paint, you name it.  She's also a fellow magpie, and she turns the objects she discovers into exquisite jewelry, some of which I have featured here in past posts.

But today I wanted to show you her most recent creations, these gorgeous glass mosaic windows.  She uses salvaged windows to make them, and each piece she makes is completely one of a kind.  You can find more of her work at her blog, Orts and Fragments.  I love her use of color, and I find myself mesmerized by the blues in all three of the pieces here.  Most of all, I love the sense of movement in all of her pieces.  I feel the wind blowing, the stems shooting up from the earth, and each blossom opening.  

By Marlowe Miller

In the spirit of my word for 2012, I'll be sharing more work by people who inspire me in the coming months.  I have a feeling it's going to be a very good year.

The Journey Back to Quebec: Part II, How to Recover Four Years of Forgotten High-School French in Four Days

My last post ended with Monsieur Magpie and me hightailing it for the Canadian border, singing, "We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.  We been talkin' 'bout Jackman ever since the fire went out . . ." at the top of our lungs.  Once we'd made it over the border though, the singing stopped and the serious practice began.  One of the many painful truths we have accepted after twenty years together is that our combined knowledge of the French language puts us at about the level of a five-year-old native speaker.  This isn't such a good thing when one considers that between us we have studied eight years of high-school French.

Interestingly, too, we each have very different sets of skills.  Todd knows his verbs--how to conjugate, how to use tenses, how to string them together to show actions that happened yesterday or that might happen tomorrow.  I, on the other hand, have managed to maintain a large store of nouns and other vocabulary words in the old metal file drawers of my brain.  I can tell you that la bougie means the candle (or the spark plug), but I can't quickly tell you to blow la bougie out before it catches the curtains on fire.  Needless to say, after two decades of studying, teaching, and making a living as a writer, I know which tools are most important to have at one's disposal when communicating.  It's easy to look up a noun in a dictionary, but the ability to craft a sentence that makes sense is not so simple.  Todd is thus a much faster and more fluent French speaker than I am.  I, with my brain for minutiae and lists, fumble along, spouting nouns and colorful adjectives, and gesticulating wildly.  I do sprinkle in a verb or two from time to time, but my sentences lack any sophistication.

So, what to do about this problem?  

For us the answer was--and is--simple.  Dive right in and talk.  So talk we did.  We had conversations both long and short with locals everywhere we went, and we found that every single person we met was more than happy to talk with us.  Armed with a pocket dictionary and a book of common phrases, we spoke as much French as we possibly could.  We also asked countless questions about words, expressions, and turns of phrase.

I found that the more I spoke, the more I wanted to speak . . . and to listen.  Whether discussing medieval illuminations with the owner of one of the best pen shops I've ever visited, Quebec politics with a fantastic graphic artist, or great local neighborhoods with a man we met on the street, I loved listening and discovering new nuances of this beautiful language along the way.  By our fourth and last night there, we didn't need to resort to any English when we chatted with our waitress at Chez Victor (the best burger place ever, including veggie burgers).  It sounds silly to be excited about speaking very basic French at a restaurant, but the fact that she didn't automatically switch to English as soon as she heard our American accents was heartening for us.  Many folks will politely shift over to English if they know that French is hard for you, but we learned that if we asked them to use French with us, most people were happy to help us stumble along.  

As an American who loves talking with people visiting my country, it was a thrill to meet so many like-minded folks in Quebec.  It was also a thrill to think so hard every day that my head hurt.  Even when Todd and I were just talking to each other, we tried to speak in French as much as possible.  Now that we're back in the U.S. we're still at it, messing around with sentences and looking up words.  

I kick myself for being such a lousy student all those years ago in high school.  I couldn't be bothered to learn the language of my own heritage, my father's first language, and one that carries me back to some of the best memories of my childhood.  The motto of Quebec province, which can be found over the main entrance to the Parliament building and on every Quebec license plate, is something one can't help but feel, especially within the stone walls of Vieux Quebec.  Je me souviens.  The French may have lost to the English on les Plaines d'Abraham in 1759, but this is a deeply French place.  It endures.  Et quand je suis à Québec, je me souviens aussi.

The Journey Back to Quebec: Part I, Go on Up to Jackman

Bonjour, mes amis!  I'm sorry I have been away for so long--from my own blog and from yours, too. This is the longest blogging break I have ever taken.  It wasn't expected, but it was necessary. Summer swept me away this year with weekly visitors at our home in Portland, lots of work, and then, at last, a long-awaited journey to Quebec City avec Monsieur Magpie.

We are lucky here in Maine that Quebec is our neighbor to the Northwest.  This means we have a little taste of Europe just a short drive away.  Still, it had been many years since either Todd or I had been to Quebec City.  In fact, neither of us had been there since we were children.  We suspect that perhaps we both visited during the same summer back in the 1970's.  Maybe we passed each other on the same street, no?  A romantic thought, and one I choose to believe.

This year it just felt right to both of us that we make a pilgrimage there to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary, summer, childhood memories, and life in general.  My heritage on my father's side is French Canadian, and Quebec City is the place where my own parents spent their honeymoon 50 years ago this summer, so what better place to visit?  And what better time to do it?  

When I was a girl, my parents packed us kids into the back of the faux-wood-paneled station wagon, and we headed up to Canada during a heat wave.  Back in those days nobody in our part of the world had air conditioning in their cars, so it was a sticky, grumbling trip through logging towns and the low mountains of the Kennebec River watershed.  Moose country.  Lumber country.  The maple-sap and pine-scented world of my roots.

Then we hit Jackman, Maine, the last real town before the Canadian border, and even my eight-year-old self knew we were at the edge of anything familiar.  Border towns tend to be edgy in more ways than one, and Jackman didn't disappoint with its diners, roadhouses, and ramshackle motels.

And all these decades later, Jackman feels nearly the same.  I won't lie.  For me it possesses a slightly ominous air that was only enhanced on this trip by the fact that when I walked over to take photos of the abandoned train station, a young man pulled up next to the station and stared at me from his car.  He just sat there in the empty lot, watching me, one finger tapping the steering wheel.  I edged as far away from his car as I could as I made my way back to the convenience store where we'd parked, but he never took his eyes off me.  It wasn't until I met back up with Todd at our car that the creepy guy finally drove away.  This, coupled with the motel in Jackman that doubles as a place for all your taxidermy needs, lent our fifteen minutes there a distinct Hitchcockian flavor. 

Once we were on our way, though, our temporary case of the heebee-jeebees disappeared as we sang songs about Jackman to the tune of the Johnny Cash/June Carter Cash song "Jackson," dove back into practicing our French, and tossed around possible plans for our stay in Quebec.  Other than our B&B reservations, we had no firm itinerary, for Mr. Magpie and I are avid travelers, but not very good tourists.  What I mean is that we bristle at itineraries and pamphlets listing the requisite "attractions," preferring to stumble upon wonderful surprises as we go and to strike up conversations with locals and fellow travelers alike.  Quebec, we would discover, is one of the best places in North America to do just that.

Next Installment: Part II, How to Recover Four Years of Forgotten High-School French in Four Days