This work is from a 10 year walking meditation with Enlightenment, Healing, and Abundance as the focus. The fruit of over 7,500 miles walked, it is gathered from more than 4,000 entries.
Bridges
Haiku
When I began on this journey in 2002 I started by writing and publishing haiku; quiet water’s...Poems
Within the larger work occurred poems that did not fit the haiku form that I had began...
Blind Writing
Within the journey I began writing differently with a perspective emerging that seemed outside of my waking,...Visual Art
As an artist returning to poetry, it was natural for me to compose images with text included....Dynamic Books
Early on I began creating one-off books of the work featuring poems and paintings in ink. These...Video
Where we once learned Latin and Greek we now learn to read and write code. For those...
Animation
“Small things” Not all haiku are serious. This lighthearted piece always captures the imaginations of an audience. The endearing...Sculpture
Like the haiku scrolls, mobiles become dynamic books as the light and air of the room changes...
Photography
Although as a designer I have always created the signature image of a project, or composed pictures that...Installations
The body of work has many aspects, some of which are interactive and object oriented. Because much...
Between the Peaks
As a record of my awakening in a walking meditation, these poems are based on experience as a path to enlightenment. What developed from the stack of manuscripts and thousands of scraps of paper was a vast database. I categorized poems by ideas and subjects and sometimes included an explication. But there was more to the path than the poetry alone revealed. Visual art, ceramics, music, and video would find their way into the work over time. The waking path would revive an awareness in myself that I had long since forgotten, and change my life forever.
From the beginning, I was combining art and poetry as postcards to be mailed. This began as a haiku-a-day exchange with my sister, poet Michelle Tennison, Murmuration, but continued past the year of shared exploration. I worked primarily in media that could travel, such as graphite, watercolor, and colored pencil. But to make my daily deadline I sometimes included rubbings while traveling, or ink wash done with the morning’s coffee. The imagery of the postcards was full of possibilities, with even postage stamps altered to suit the spirit of a poem. As part of the experiential record, an image might be sampled from a text book I had referenced in the writing, or redrawn as time permitted.
The postal journey completed the circle of our shared experience.
I never imagined at the time that the work would be shared beyond ourselves. It was meant solely as an intimate exchange between my dear sister and myself. It was also a gift initiated by her that brought me back to writing after a twenty year hiatus. Ultimately, we were invited by haiga master Ion Codrescu to write complementary essays about our haiku year for Hermitage magazine in 2006, a haiku and haiga journal. Today some of the work appears in his definitive book on the subject of haiga, Imagine si text en Haiga.
As a professional designer, I had lost my ability to make my own art and walked away from a successful career to revive that spark of creativity. The haiku practice lifted me up from those hard days and offered me a way back to my personal truth, and back to art. I had no idea at the time what bounty was in store or how it would change my life.
On my daily walks I had began collecting objects like shells and leaves that I carried home and placed on a scanner. They were intended as a record, but they grew to become my favorite images, the most highly composed of the work.
As I was familiar with working with type and text as a designer I most enjoyed the handwritten pieces, celebrating the grace of words and the human touch. From those images I created mobiles in paper whose gentle transitions in the light and air of a space evoked the ephemeral spirit of the poems.
I enhanced accordion books with ink paintings and haiku inside, decorating their boxes with objects celebrating the cycles of life, such as seeds, galls, and mushrooms. After the year of exchanging our postcards I built Japanese folding box books for the cards to be kept in. I later created handmade books of haiga, and illuminated blanks as well.
As I was comfortable working with the computer I began creating visuals to be shown on the digital screen. This resulted in gallery installations of poems and objects, alternative photography, and video.
Today I create fine art cards and bookmarks, and beyond into works on stone. I create mixed media paintings I call Energy Drawings, and spontaneous ink and watercolor paintings.
With my niece’s help I expanded into ceramics, creating open forms such as illustrated bowls and platters. These are among my favorite pieces. The open form of the simple bowls, and their weathered patina I find to be an endearing complement to the poems.
In the Japanese tradition, I create illustrated scrolls of haiku on paper and fabric and adorn our trees with them in all seasons. Our apple trees are a celebration year round as living books.
I also work with sound and music, as in water recorded in sacred sites, or rain and rain barrels, and occasionally a hurricane! For the recordings and as offerings to the land, I learned the Japanese shakuhachi flute and composed the music for the albums. Two compact discs, Brush and Drum and The Season Suite feature spoken word haiku and music orchestrated with ambient sound and spare instrumentation. Samples can be heard on my SoundCloud channel, Snow on Water.
I think it is through video that the work is most effective. The video “Snow on Water” brings ten years of poetry and images together in a celebration of awakening. Featuring scanned images, haiku, and the shakuhachi flute, it is my most personal document. A body of work in video followed, focusing on haiku and other poetry from the meditation.
It is my personal delight to include simple animations in the body of work. “Small Things” is my animated offering featuring haiku and endearing characters of my life. “Dog Food” followed, and then “Laughing”, a romp of a game from my childhood. An exercise in order-from-chaos, I create an ink scribble on a piece of paper and then crop and convert it into art, or at least into some recognizable critter…
These and other videos can be viewed on my YouTube channel, Snow on Water.
The gentle, daily focus of haiku brings an opening into knowing. My awareness as well as my horizons expand. What is revealed are connections that I was not aware of before; mysteries open to me, kernels of truth that escaped me before become as if I have known along. I am given the chance to change, to make a difference, and to heal.
I engage with the world differently.
The school in Chattanooga, Tennessee where we taught was elevated to one of the top in the nation during our tenure. The once troubled industrial neighborhood where we chose to live has enjoyed a renaissance into a thriving Arts District, where now The Sculpture Fields at Montague Park we helped visualize and create is open to the public and thriving.
And today, in Vermont, sacred sites once forgotten are awake and peopled again, filled with hope and prayers for the future.
People say to me, “You’ve changed”.
I hope that this work reminds us all that beauty is our birthright. That everything we require to create beauty is right here at our reach and unfolding into perfect balance. May we recognize our responsibilities and seize on our opportunities to create the world of change around us.
May these gifts of Love and Light inspire us each to say, “You’ve changed”.
HDH Jan 1, 2014
Upcoming Exhibitions
Installations and Presentations
“The Gifts of the Magi: Frankincense, Myrrh, and Gold” Atelier Annex Gallery of Fine Art: featured 60 minute presentation as Aleskkya December 2023
“Finding Eden: Awakening to Sacred Landscape”: University of Central Missouri Great Gossamer Event and Exhibition: featured 120 minute presentation as Aleskkya June 2022
“Haiku as a Path to the Sacred”: Wild Graces Poetry Gathering: featured 90 minute presentation: September 2020
http://www.wildgraces.com/Haiku-Gathering.html
An American Craftsman Gallery:New York: May 2015
http://www.anamericancraftsman.com/about.html
The Wadsworth Atheneum:Hartford XL Center “American Fine Craft Show” April 2015
Vermont Institute of Contemporary Arts: “Hayden’s Dream” December 2014
The Deering Estate, Miami, Florida: “In Deep” April 2014
Atelier Annex: “Vermont Crafts Council Studio Tour” May 2014