Another solstice card

I have a hard time picking favourites. One year I created an image of a broken down old tree and then three of us took a road trip to Maine and spent hours hand-tying little bits of paper to the branches of the tree (to represent poems). We had a great time and I remember lots of laughter, and maybe a little vomiting. One year I created 75 cards out of fabric. They were multi-layered with quilting and piping and felting. It was a big project but I loved the thought that every one was just a little different.

I think, on the whole, that this is my favourite. I created the background by printing on paper using a Gelli plate, then scanning and manipulating the image. The bowl is from a photo I took of a piece in my mother's collection. I then coloured it and added a little shadow. The flowers are the serendipitous part. I was inspired to put them there near the end of the design process. At that point I was working with what I thought was a final version of the poem. It turned out that in the interim my mother had revised the last line to make a reference to anemones - the same flower type I chose to use. Insert Twilight Zone sounds here. I added little dots of gold paint to the centre of each flower before they were mailed.


The card:

And the poem by Nancy Nielsen:


December's Bowl


I beg December to fill my bowl
beg, like a monk
in a village of closed doors.

Crumbs.
Nothing but crumbs
not the richness of May
the complexity of July.
No door opens to me.

No compassion:
icy path
up and down
up and down
shaking my bowl
a few crumbs of light rattling.

I remember June ‑
my bowl filled with light
sun swelling over the horizon
succulent words
rolling in the mouth
simple anemone,
rhodora, golden celandine
surprise of sky blue hyacinth ‑

In the open-handed generosity
of summer
I forget

December.

Gray, the bowl of December.
Gray and cold and empty.

Empty
still it says patience

Patience for the light will open 
its door, the light, the sun
filling my bowl
see how it fills to the brim
with anticipation of anemones.


Straight Bay
December 2011


Her website - Salt and Stone Poetry

The light returns

Every year for some time (maybe twenty years or more?) my mother writes a poem and sends it to her friends as a card on the occasion of the winter solstice. For the last few years I have been involved in the design and production of the card. This year I didn't have much time between getting the poem and the end of a sale at the company that prints the cards. After playing with an initial idea about light coming through cracks in ice, I put together this image. It turned out that Moo.com no longer allows enough lines of text on the inside of their cards so I had to have the cards printed as blanks and my mother tipped in the poem which was printed separately.

The card:

And here's the poem, by Nancy Nielsen

Looking/Seeing

If I tell you

that today I look at

   grey sky

   bare clattering branches

   a scribble of crows

that is true

And if I tell you

that today I see

   crows, two by two

   buds shining with promise

   an edge of light

that too is true

And if I tell you

that I believe the edge of light

that is truest of all

Straight Bay

December 2015



To read more poems by Nancy Nielsen check out her blog.