Bliss

  Short and sweet.  The first letter - A - in an alphabet book for my Affair With Art group.  I'll show you the book I've created for this project in another post.  Perhaps as soon as tomorrow.  The book and the pages are from the J.O.Y. workshop I've been talking about, and fit this project perfectly.    But for now, here's a peek at page one.

I've always had a love-hate relationship with alphabet books.  Most of them are beautifully illustrated, but just how many do we really need?  I think it's the "A is for ....," and "B is for...," that I've had enough of.  But I really wanted to do this project, and to come up with a concept that would make it unique.  Preferably something personally significant, not just words that begin with certain letters as an excuse for an illustration.  

As I flipped through books and magazines for collage fodder, I let my mind wander to blend personal associations with the combinations of images I had cut out of context.  The ocean was part of my substrate.  It was already on the page, and I was prepared to completely cover it up and almost did.  Then I discovered the sleeping child.  

Suddenly I was on vacation with my mother by the sea.  We took quite a few of these in the years just after my father died.  The only necessity was relaxation.  We ate when we felt like it, went wherever we wanted, and slept like babies.  We'd throw open the glass doors to the patio and hoped there was enough of a breeze so that some of the salt spray would find it's way into our dreams as we slept.  

So often, things look better in hindsight.  It's easy to re-define some of the old memories as "heavenly" whilst looking back on life.    But this memory is golden.  One of those very few which could never be as glorious in memory as when it was lived.  Memories like these are the proof of bliss.

Comments

[trisha too]

Barbara, I'd say your abc book is off to a great start--very striking page, and you have a wonderful theme.

I'm working on an alphabetica, too, but am still hunting and gathering images . . . it's taking longer than I thought it would . . .

:)