Isolation. I think of the isolation just before a big transformation with this piece. I had caught one of those terrible summer flus, and was in bed for 2 weeks. I was out of work, and I was too ill to work on art, and feeling as though I was trapped in a life that offered me nothing but Goo. Then poof, I came out of it, and with a burst of new energy and inspiration, the journal started in earnest, and I also began a new quilt series with elephants and Ganesh.
The image is taken from a summer I spent in North Dakota. Wide open spaces, isolation, and storms galore! In honor of Ganesh, I decided to put something red in each piece of the journal. Somewhere I have a red dragon fly that will go into this piece. The summer I spent in No Dak I experience a swarm of dragon flies in between storms. They were flying in a spiral pattern that just went up up up. I stood in the center of the as though I was in the center of a lazy cyclone and just watched the for a hour. I have never seen that phenomenon again.
I love the colors that occur this time of year, and in the theme of harvest I wanted to include farmer's fields. I wasn't interested in a cornucopia image really, but I did include apples, as it's apple season at the Co-op, and I brought apples for the elephants. I also added extra reds with the sumac, another one of my favorites. This is also based on my father's harvest moon photo.
My gift/harvest for the month was the elephants. I must have took 200 pictures for study for my elephant quilts. I had no idea when I started that project the month before that I would have this kind of access to the real deal. Gotta love Ganesh!
