Silhouette

    Fasten your seatbelts: Art group Thursday night.  The leader of our meeting, having abstained from work on the theme, Silhouette, instead provides a seasonal picture – a pastel drawing of a rainspotted maple leaf drafted in gentle fall colors. We all ooh and ahh.

    Next: a photo of the oddest and most intriguing kapok-like clouds and silhouetted trees. Somehow the bumps in the sky associate with the rain drops in the previous work. Where is Bette Davis? Can it be going to be a bumpy night?

    A handsome pair of linoleum prints are trotted out: a composition of fall leaves done in black and white and in color. We like these, too, and are interested in the process.

   Another member of the group produces a seasonal, i.e. Hallowe’en, card made with an iris folding technique and  a silhouette theme. Accompanying these, my own little nitwit puzzle, from a tract left by someone at the Y, a dictionary page, and the mental looping of lyrics from A Fine Romance, the fine song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields which I like sung by Rosemary Clooney.

   One person provides the piece de resistance, a postage stamp quilt. A showpiece. It is derived from a photograph taken by someone she knows, a factory maintenance worker. The sunset sky is composed of  batik fabric: purple and orange and red and yellow, with an overstitched black tree silhouette. Although the finished product has an authentic Asian look and feel, it is not a tree in a Chinese or Japanese painting, it is a tree crown at the botanical gardens in Allentown.

   The one-inch squares make it measure about 23″ x 17″ plus double-mat and frame. She has sold it, too. We marvel at her gift for turning an idea or a picture into a fabric design and executing it, all in the past six weeks. She receives our highest honors. Here is an artist showing and sharing the power of making wise choices and in making something lovely, beautiful and desirable. It’s like a trip to bountiful that we all want a view to admire.

Macknife

Fooling around with another man’s knife indeed. What a post. Blue ribbon. Metal fire and earth elements. Good feng shui. Wise guy!

Real Simple

Real Simple by Allison Huyett

 

 

   Honey locust leaves all over the trail.  It’s real simple.

   A heron at the half-mile rapids. Rain again, prompting use of umbrella, a rare but necessary accessory for the fact. Just the facts, Ma’am. Ready for the sun to come out.

    This is my to-to list for the day because I really got to be about my business. Who else in the entire world makes a honey locust leaf to do list? No one. Who gets it done better than you? No one!

    Oh, you can get a honeydew melon. You can put “ honeydew” on the list. You can find and make a  Honey Do List. ”Honey, do this.” But this? Only I can do this, that and the other thing this way.

    Stick out your can, here comes the garbage man. Got that to do too! Git R Done.

  Gotta run!

Ron, Walk

Nuts on the Rise by Allison Huyett

 

 

   A rise in nuts. Tears from fears. Can the squirrels keep up? Can I get back on the horse? Woe is not me! Whoa, maybe.

   Ron reports he thinks there are more black walnuts on the ground this year than ever before. He says take care walking or running on the trail, not to turn an ankle. A non-walnut related injury (and the doctors) curtailed his running for now in favor of walking, the kinder, gentler exercise.

   The quasi-cruciform scarlet and pin oak leaves have dropped like fallen soldiers. Today is all water, path and relationships, with a hint of center: earth and fame. Intense and negative thoughts have given way, thanks to Ron’s company for two miles and a sharing of troubles of the last two weeks. Feel almost human again. One heron waits on fallen limb.

Faded Cloth

 

Faded Cloth by Allison Huyett

  Overcast day. What shall we have? Tall coffee and a smile. Pick of the litter: packet of on-the-go clean up cloth and a bit of bark in great shape. It’s October! Squirrel in the knot of tree nibbles on nut. Leaves a plenty. Heron roars like lion on Tully turn and swoops over the creek like stealth plane. Helicopters in air last night and now. What’s up? Overcast and castaway. Castaway all cares. Care for. Far and away the best.

Muckety Mud Pack!

  

Papyrus card: Beauty mask

 

 Traffic report counts four thousand visitors! This calls for a mud pack, a celebration, and September 30 is National Mud Pack Day.

Notorius Super Big Bol, Wrapper

  We are nothing if not our associations. Constructs and connections, web of thoughts. A prime heron establishes itself on a prominent rock upstream of the overpass. Commanding attention, commanding a view. The rock upon which it stands is split-level and big enough to be a small island. Someone has left behind a candy wrapper, to sustain my existence. It is a BIG BOL wrapper, something you don’t see every day. SUPER is encircled or surrounded by an oval line. Combines with a crushed hickory hull – six pieces – that has a football shape. BIG BOL, super bowl, Notorius B.I.G., the rapper, BIG GLO, BIG BLO, BIG BLOW, fellatio or a crush. Crush proof box, New! BIG OIL, big oil producers. Big lob or a big glob. Bigeloil and Bigelow and a great big globe. Super. Super. Very BIG. GO. Pass go, collect 200 dollars and go outside and play.

DURO 6 Arias, Constitution Day 2009 and the Paper Czar

Constitution Day by Allison Huyett

 

 

   We the editors of  The Heron Report present the preamble of the United States Constitution and some items donated by the Paper Czar.

   Our own day begins with a kind of preamble. We walk along the creek. We come to the studio and office and and convene with our in-house representatives, including the Paper Czar. We make arrangements.

   Breakfast is one of the sweet spots of the day. The bakery frequently employs paper bags. We like to read the printing: brand and size at the top, name and date stamp on the bottom. The stamp reveals who made the bag and when. A creators mark! Here is the work of Arias, from June 29, 2009. We wonder what Arias looks like.

    From our preamble along the creek, we report one big heron, airborne from a large sycamore. The big bird swoops large, wingspan big as the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Deer Crossing

Deer Crossing by Allison Huyett

 

    Posted in invisible ink Labor Day! Today, post haste! Take your time, there’s no time to waste, no time like the present!

   Why is this black truck slowing along Tulpehocken road heading east, parallel to my walking west along the towpath at 7:12 a.m?  The Tulpehocken creek separates us. A natural event joins us: two tawny lumps swim this way in the creek. When they strike land they accelerate, a large doe and fawn, taking flight into the brush.

   Herons above and below both the red covered bridge and the overpass, at points nearly equidistant to each other, one more along the upper stretch, near the locks, and one on the toppled tree on the way back. These are the herons to report, plus one kingfisher near the mill, also crossing the creek, in the air.

   The details of the subway project preoccupy me, visualizing, how will this work? and how can we make this happen?  The range of possibilities amazes me; the distillation of ideas, it’s like being a mermaid.

Grid Happy

   Working on design for the Girard avenue subway station in Philadelphia. Need:  foil, to make actual size panels and imagination.

   Departure from usual routine: walking at Blue Marsh, and largely along the trails made from rural roads through a process of maintenance atrophy. On one slope, the erosion of blacktop exposes slate layers.

   Deprived of herons. In stead: a wet, unleashed happy yellow lab whose name might be Biscuit if that is what the owner called out. A prime Queen Anne’s Lace flower the size of a dinner plate. Row of rolled straw bales in the morning sun the shadows making a kind of archway pattern. The hickory nuts are plentiful. A tan couple, he carrying a to go cup of coffee, quiet sort.

   On the drive home, behind a van with a red dog halfway out the passenger side window, catching the breeze.