The Turning, Part 2

Shortly before the summer vacation 2010, there was a major amount of turn-over at the DAZ, where we were planning to exhibit our work. We had been given oral confirmations that everything would work out, but with Friederike leaving for Freiburg, we weren’t sure if things would work out; in our eyes she seemed too instrumental to the success of the show.

But then came Christiane Pyka and Miriam Bender, who have shown great support, enthusiasm and patience for our endeavor. A great teacher, Jim Palik spent a great amount of time and effort helping us mount and frame our pictures. He and his wife were very gracious with their time. 

Tiffany, Jim and Jane prepare a pastel print for framing

After having initial difficulties in making a selection, I was finally able to do so by narrowing down my choice of images to those that have some sort of magical, fairy-tale aspect to them so that they go well with Tiffany’s illustrations.

Tiffany teaches several English classes at local schools and has been able to involve her pupils in the project. Her vision of creating an autumn installation to complement the pictures has been realized. 

The Turning, Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA_lIK07hZE

The Turning, Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4O-QP9NkPw

My children helped make some of the decorations, as did Tiffany's son Nicola. Their school classes will come visit the show this week and hear Tiffany's story.

And now, for those of you who cannot make it to Stuttgart this October or November, we would like to present to you the pictures at our exhibition.
I'll start with the first three and then in subsequent posts present the rest.
These mosaics or patchwork leaf pictures resulted from the thousands of leaf pictures I took during the fall of 2009. As the beautiful, long season progressed, I noticed the natural motifs changing from colorful trees and bushes full of leaves (as in the first picture) to single leaves hanging on the ends of bare branches.

Fall

fall’s warm color display

lines the way, captures eyes

with nature’s palette

Falling

one last leaf outlasts

November’s storm – those stubborn

frosty fingers!

Fallen

nestling communally–

a village of brotherly leaves –

then a great gust blows

I wrote haiku for most of the pictures in the exhibition and printed them all on a sheet of paper, with captions for Tiffany's pictures from her story on the back of the paper. Visitors are then asked to be active in searching for the picture that matches the poem or caption. Here I've done the work for you already.

For the German visitors (and for the part of me that likes composing in German), I wrote some haiku in German. For the three pictures above, the titles follow a linguistic progression of their own:

 herb

stacheliges Blatt!

genieße die Baumkrone

stolz und farbenfroh

herber

ihr langen Nächte –

naht und nagt an Stielen

mit eisigen Zähnen

herbst

gefallenes Blatt!

bald lassen kalte Winde

dir keine Ruhe