July 13 documentation

 

Chickadee Ridge by Penny Pemberton

 Inspired by an art journalling day on July 7, 2012

Chickadee ridge, Mount Rose, with Carol Neel, Penny Pemberton & Candace Garlock. Feeding the Chickadees &  sketching.

“I hear you call

Your call comes to me

From a distant tree

Chickadee dee dee

I love the birds I hear & see

But my favorite is the Chickadee.”

Tich Nhat Hanh, Grand Shambala 

“When we see that the Earth is not just the environment, that the Earth is in us, at that moment you can have real communion with the Earth.  The Earth is a living, sentient being.  The Earth gave birth to us, and the Earth will receive us again.  Nothing is lost.  Nothing is born.  Nothing dies.  We don’t need to wait until after our body has disintegrated to go back to Mother Earth.  We are going back to Mother Earth at every moment.  The Earth is a Bodhisattva, a great and compassionate being.  A Bodhisattva is a being who has awakening, understanding and love .  A Bodhisattva doesn’t have to be human being. Touching the earth, you touch the nature of no birth and no death.”

We were touched by a Bodhisattva, a Chickadee.

“ I heard her song, and I replied

‘Will you come to me?’

She heard my song, and came to see

‘Who is calling me?’

Gently she perched on my hand,

 & accepted my sunflower seed.

Unafraid, nonjudgmental & free.

Today I was touched by a Bodhisattva,

A Chickadee”. 

Penny Pemberton

More on July 12

 

July 12th

 

Desert Life by Tina Drakulich

This piece was made by Auriel King and Tina Drakulich.  In thinking of Nevada, it is our fabric; our lives are woven in as we are both native Nevadans.  Our desert life is awe-inspiring.  The sunsets, the mountains, the wetlands, the playa; these comfort and inspire.  We make paper because the environmental impact is minimal, and perhaps positive. The medium is simple, versatile, and expressive.  Tina folds cranes of handmade paper as an outward expression of prayer. In this case, prayer is for Nevada Earth. Materials: wood, handmade rag paper, sharpies and mod podge.

This piece, “Area 51” is made by Auriel King and Luana Ritch (deceased, July 2, 2024).  Luana, a Nevadan, was awe-inspiring as an artist, friend and community member.  She was a creative, expressive, and inventive paper maker with vast experience in public health and military service. Auriel King is an imaginative young artist who loves Nevada treks, hikes and waters. It is with awe that these two artists formed this piece in a collaboration.  Materials: Abaca, beads, wire, sharpie, ribbon.

At the Lilley - NV Awe Gelli Printing

We had a lot of fun gelli printing on the discs for the first layer of NV Awe creations from the Lilley. Here are some images! Thank-you Fabio Cristallini, Stephanie Gibson, Daniel Dineda-Luna, Matthew Gaurilles, Candace Garlock, Brisa Guzman, Jose E. Medina, Salvador Parras, Joanna Drakos, Ashley Frost, Sidne Teske, Joselynn Figueloa, Jill Ashenbach, Lilia Todorova, Jim Graham, Joseph Graham, and Rossitza Todorova for coming and creating the first layer of these "Lilley" experience workshops.

Fabio Cristallini, Stephanie Gibson, Daniel Dineda-Luna, Matthew Gaurilles, Candace Garlock

Daniel Dineda-Luna

Matthew Gaurilles

Joselynn Figueloa

Stephanie Gibson

Lilia Todorova, Fabio Cristallini, Joseph Graham, Rossitza Todorova and baby Catherine

Joseph Graham and Rossitza Todorova work on a disc together.

Joanna Drakos

First Layers...waiting for next week's project.

Joseph Graham

Joyful Collaboration

Our disc is a joyful collaboration celebrating Nevada's incredible skies and endless vistas. Judi is a professional quilter. Carol is an intuitive artist and teacher.

A Gathering of South Reno Friends organized by Grace Nichols

Looking for Awe in Nature and being inspired by another's work

 

First Week in July!

 

NV Awe: Discovering a Stand of Aspen

 NV Awe: Discovering a Stand of Aspen

by Rebecca A. Eckland, MFA, MA, MA

June 24 , 2024

Aspen trees remind me that my home—

Nevada—has fostered a special love for what it lacks. As a high desert landscape, Nevada is a place where there are not many of them, where wind and sun have created an ecosystem of sagebrush and grasses; to exist as a tree in this place is to find the pauses between the high desert just as the rainstorms that are pauses between the sunny days, to be remarkable as an anomaly and not as the rule. 

Most visitors to the desert first notice cottonwood trees which are defiant soldiers staking claim to springs and watersheds, improbable and steadfast, a glimmering hint of hope as I run or ride my bike for miles through the high desert. In this way, trees are markers that there is water here, that there is life here, that a great many miracles are unfolding—the transitory reprieve of shade, birds nesting, that there are lifeforms that articulate the better aspects of the human spirit, this yearning to grow and to never stop growing, to spread and stretch and to embark on a never-ending journey of becoming.

Cousins of cottonwoods—members of the poplar family—aspens are not individual trees but instead massive organisms whose presence can spread for miles thanks to web-like lateral-growing roots called rhizomes beneath the earth’s surface. 

Perhaps this is why discovering a stand of aspen has always felt like coming home, their leaves flickering in the constant breeze as a friendly wave, a welcome. Surrounded by mothers, sisters, and aunts—a single organism of aspen can be a myriad number of trees. To walk through an aspen grove is to walk among the soul of a single living creature.  

Aspens have saved me when my state of mind— my heart itself— is something like a desert, vast and open and dry, when the loneliness seeps in, and it is impossible to believe that solitude can be a good thing.  I’ve felt that hours into a trail run— the impossibility of each step and the futility of wanting to arrive wherever I believe I am going. I have curled into a ball and cried beneath an aspen stand as flickering leaves all around me the reminder that even as shattered as life can make us feel, we can be made whole again. 

I had so much fun participating in NV AWE: Tiny Treasures.  I was the second collaborator of this piece (the first artist was Candace herself—it is the disk in the bottom left of the second image)—her shapes inspired me to try and create one of my favorite features of the Nevada landscape: a stand of aspen. But 4” is smaller than I thought it would be, and I haven’t squealed with sheer joy as much as I did as I figured out how to create tiny aspen trees.