Beach Week

Summers growing up on Fairfield Beach were long and lazy. It is still that way if you let it be so! Although childhood was a bit more carefree, without worries of what to grill tonight, going home to water those tomatoes, and throw a job in there for a few hours, I truly love my time in the family cottage. Starting off the week we witnessed a "shelf cloud" (thanks Judy for that knowledge!) and a dazzling display of lightning on the horizon.

Storms over the water are so much more dramatic!

Walking the beach every morning you see the child that you once were. A future architect or designer in the making left their handywork for my enjoyment. A home floor plan laid out with such care and diligence. I remember the castles I built and flags made of sticks and seaweed. This is exactly what I mean when I say summers were carefree and a time for creativity to unleash itself. No rules, no clocks to watch. Just use your imagination for fun instead of television or computers!

Sights and sounds are still the same as when I was a child. Passing oyster boats, seats to sit awhile (with just a little sway that was remedied) and of course the ebb & flow of tides, sunrises and sunsets. 

The quintessential planted cinder block overflowing with marigolds and portulaca greets you at the back door. Wait, we are all in agreement that the back door is the one on the road side and the FRONT door overlooks the beach, correct! That is the only way to have it at the beach!

A collection is started, an idea is developing. Some forage in the woods, I gather on the beach. Nature in its most basic form takes on a different meaning when pulled from the natural habitat. The shape, the texture and the beauty of seaweed is made more apparent when spread out to dry.

As it dried it lost its color the shape was awesome....so the collection continued all week with pieces pressed and saved for a special project coming soon! Losing the boundaries, letting the beach enter in and relax you with not a care as to what others think of your new found passion....ahhhh, this is what a beach week means to me.

And then a birthday to celebrate family & life! What would it be without sparklers instead of candles! The traditions continue, the beach way of life is absorbed unconsciously by the next generation.

 

Morning has broken, like the first morning...what else can you think when you wake up to such  unscathed beauty?

 

 
Solitude, serenity and a bit of feng shui? Feng means wind and shui means water. In Chinese culture wind and water are associated with good health, thus good feng shui came to mean good fortune....hopefully Pappa D was on the right path by creating his own zen garden below in the sand!

And then there are always surprises left with each passing tide.

Leftovers from from a true clam bake the night before? I am jealous....wishing we could still dig cherrystones and quahogs from the sand bars and whip up some Rhode Island chowda, stuffed clams or clams casino from our harvest!

But the prize I found at the end of my beach week ...

...was truly inspiring. An almost perfect miniature horseshoe crab about 2 inches wide was washed ashore and lay on a tangled mess of seaweed, flotsam and jetsam. So fragile and brittle, I scooped it up and felt like a child again, practically running back to the cottage so that I could show off my last (at least for now) gift from the sea!

Enjoy the rest of the summer everyone!

Driftwood

Driftwood is a wonder of nature. In the abstract is can be just as wonderful. Looking closely at the swirls and eddies of wood grain that mimic the sea, I could not but help envisioning a series of "Ansel Adams like" images.  Deciding on the platform of either black & white or au naturale was a facebook question I posed. The outcome will be apparent by my images! 

Thank you all for your unbiased opinions! I love the fact that choices were made and you were not afraid to share. In the end it was up to me to make my own decision because the votes were just about even! These images will be matted in black with a beveled white edge to enhance the gray tones, then framed but not sure where they will end up!

The original driftwood was an entire tree at times. Not something I could take home!

I am really wishing I added a black border to these now just temporarily to make them pop off the screen!

Coming up with names for each image (which helps me identify the ones I want to post) was a fun little task in itself. Names like gnarly, cavernous, folded tree, holy cow, ax attack and last but not least, dolphin face...my "willing to go out on a limb" facebook experiment piece.

But to appreciate why I choose to try my hand at abstracting you must see the subjects in their world, on the beach where they rest. At the high tide mark they are rolled and pushed and covered in various amounts of sand with every passing tide.

Time for another walk to see how they fared during some recent stormy weather. They could be gone completely, moved or joined by a few friends!

Hunting & Gathering

Maybe this should read Gathering & Gardening. This past weekend I was able to enjoy a true Seaglass Sunday along with a Seaglass Saturday as well! The Friday rain was welcome for two reasons. We need rain first and foremost but the rain brought some wind...meaning tides were higher, bringing the gifts from the sea that I so adore possibly into my gathering hands!

With such high hopes for a huge haul of spectacular seaglass it was no wonder I was tricked momentarily by a scrap of blue paper....

Another distraction is my newest genre of collectibles....the "seabrick". Here you see a full size nicely sea worn brick along with a smaller nugget. They have been there on my beach all this time yet I have steadfastly avoided adding them to my pockets. I am admitting now that I in fact, have started a fishbowl collection of these cast off building blocks. Confessions are always difficult.

Distractions while searching for seaglass are not advisable! Stay focused!

And so I almost missed a true gem. A nugget of yellow seaglass! Granted, this may have possibly been made to line the bottom of a flower vase but it is a well worn by the sea piece of yellow glass...and quite the find by my standards!

All praise the yellow nugget. My weekend haul surrounding the prize....geez, what a big head this one little piece of seaglass must have! As tradition, the gathering is laid out on the kitchen counter for all to see. Bits of wampum, my new "seabricks" and one piece of sea pottery along with a nice (but not fantastic) collection of Lordship seaglass. 

Aside from non-edible gatherings, the weekend haul was a success on a different note! 3 different varieties of tomatoes are now ripening. The Cherokee Greens, the Early Girls and the Rambling Yellow Stripes are filling a bowl almost every day. A few more almost ready...stay tuned!

My Seaglass at a Farmer's Market!

A quick post to give a heads up and pass the word...I will be selling my seaglass jewelry at a small but well run farmer's market tomorrow! The Robert Treat Farm in Milford, CT holds a fantastic market on Wednesdays during the summer. Fresh, locally grown produce at great prices, fresh fish, a wood fired pizza oven and various vendors from local areas and just this Wednesday, me!

Check out the website here. 

Come visit and buy your dinner along with a memento of your summer on the shore. Gearing up I have made new earrings, new necklaces and printed out more business cards. Although we need more rain, I am hoping it holds off until later in the evening!

Sunprints, Sunflowers and enough Sun?

We all wish and wait for the summer, at least I do! Our weather has been tough to reckon with though lately. So, in the spirit of keeping my chin up when the days got hot I found a fun sun related project. Timed perfectly to coincide with the blossoming of my summer sunflowers as they turn their faces to the sun & I duck for cover...the sun is a powerful force to play with for sure.

Sunprint kits are so much fun...but there is a trial and error process! This pack came with 12 sheets and I wish I had 50. Once you do one and see the outcome, you want to make more and more.

The coated paper is exposed for a very short time - 1 to 5 minutes. It is up to you to find unique imprint materials. These are the obvious ones...flowers or dried flowers make great subject matter.

A piece of plexiglass comes with the kit and helps protect the subject matter from blowing away. I learned that lesson immediately when my first try fluttered away before a sunprint was possible! I was not keen on the shadow the plexiglass cast but compromised and worked with the shadows.

 Back to the sunflowers – these were all planted from seed per my daughter Claire's request. We waited and watched the seedlings survive rain, drought and infestations around them. They are strong! They are bold, they are refreshingly optimistic and we love them!

Sunprints again! After exposing the paper you immerse the print in water to stop the process. Let dry on paper towels and wait....the deep blue develops over the next 24 hours. You can see here I  tried lettering on the plexiglass. So many options and ideas....but running out of paper!

One dried, one wet print. See the dried dragonfly imprint? I didn't kill it, I swear. It was lodged in the grate on the front of a car, promise. I wouldn't kill anything for my sunprints.

Drying prints. They call them sunprints but I think they look like moon prints. Against a twilight blue background the shapes of flowers, dried herbs, old negatives and dragonflies seem ethereal. I will mount them all with a small white border against a black sky backdrop. 

One more sunflower...the profile of a beauty! They can take this much sun. I can't!