If my collection of art can be said to include a piece for Lammas, this would be it, which I named according to its first line, “The Fields are Full.” I wanted to bring to it the feeling of a waning summer. I don’t know that I even knew what Lammas was. I didn’t make my Wheel of the Year art for another few years.
The 1990s were richly creative for me, my children grown old enough to not need me every minute, and our family moving business shuttered, freeing my husband and me to return to our first loves, he to environmental engineering, and me to words and art. We had been married then fifteen years.
At a summer calligraphy conference in 1996 with artist Jocelyn Curry, I suddenly had an idea of how a favorite poem could look. I ran with her suggestion to make a stencil and spatter a design. Could there be anything more fun? To mix all the colors and make a right mess? I believe this was my first encounter with stencils and in the coming years I would often reach for my acetate and exacto knife to create stencils for use in my paintings and books. I cleaned them afterward and used some of them – moons and spirals and stars – again and again. This particular stencil was made just for this project so apparently I didn’t keep it. I had begun to free up my calligraphy from writing only on straight lines, and this poem wanted to dance. I likely brought home the design and made the finished art in my own studio a couple years later, on what was then my favorite paper, Niddegan.
The words of this poem were meaningful to me then, but now, nearly thirty years on, they are even sweeter. We have seen many harvests together, raised our family and been blessed with grandchildren.
This photo shows the original art, photographed in my “dryside” back yard. Eventually I made a greeting card of it, hoping it might be a nice one for couples to give to each other for anniversaries, or children to give to them. It’s had a good run. The card is available for sale in my Storefront here.