tree stories reception

I would like to invite all who can to attend the opening reception of "Tree Stories: Chapter Two" at the Blue Wing Gallery in Woodland on April 2, 2010, from 6 to 9 p.m. This is the second real-world showing of this project, four years to the month after the first showing.

Some of the "Chapter One" works will again be on exhibit with many new works (the last two are still on my studio table!) Please come celebrate with me if you can.

Above:"Endless Battle" 24"x18" mixed media on panel by Judith Monroe, poem by Magnus Holmgren

story told for #138: wild and cultivated

When she was little she used to draw trees. It was natural. The earth was a healing ground for finding her core of peace and inside this core the voice of God. Through the years her tree drawings would come and go, become modern and jagged branches or watercolored maps of the woods. It was natural. The imagery of the tree always drew her inward again and then outward to feel the simple joy of nature and the gifts of life so evident in the colors and textures of the many trees found in the forest, local parks, and the hills of California.

Trees, wild or cultivated, ancient or sweet seedlings in a row, spoke to her and, when she couldn’t laugh at home, the trees would help her find that personal sense of freedom again. Life is packed with challenges and pain along with indescribable joy and walking a path lined with trees or touching fingertips to bark or gazing at the amazing patterns in leaves was a way to find that joy again when it was lost in the hardships. Trees hold fast, stand tall, and offer protection from the burn of a hammering sun. Trees reach up and out while staying rooted like sentinels. They remind her of the strength to be found deep inside even when weakness wants to rule. They remind her of the need for balance in being strong but also receptive, keeping arms wide to the higher power like the tree welcomes the sky in order to survive.

When she grew old she would draw trees now and then between carrying a camera out for a daily walk of capturing images of another tree or field or wild flower dancing in the wind. She grew old with trees as her friend and forever thinks of trees as inspiration and a gift from God that keeps her sane when the world seems not. Trees forever reach until the end and so she goes on, reaching, lifting face and heart to heaven in surety that she is rooted deeply as a loved child loving the magic of God’s creation … even when the clouds darken and rain comes she can sense the Son rising in her heart to nurture her with everlasting life.

Susan Raines

This truly touches me - many blessings, Susan!

story told for #92: ghost

It was just as she said it would be: the reddish light glancing off the hill, filtering through the summer’s yellowing grass. I was close to where the blue oak should be. “Stop,” I said, for no other reason than to hear a sound other than the scrub jays shrill retorts, the barb-wire twanging from a breeze somewhere along the fence’s many-miled length. I knelt to sit momma’s ashes down in the grass. Instead of the soft thud, porcelain against earth, there was a resounding thunk. I swept away pebbled dirt and wisps of straw-grass, to find— momma’s tree, leveled by something stronger than the 50 years that had passed since she was last here. A deep cleft scarred the trunk where lightning had broken it like a promise. I pulled the faded picture from my back pocket; the tree momma spent much of her childhood around now only existed on its yellowing surface. In the evening light, the blue oak seemed to shimmer and ghost across the film: gone was the knot where it had grown around the barb wire fence, metal sticking out its trunk like a rotted tooth; gone were the limbs stretching like compass points over the horizon to anywhere except here; gone was momma’s name carved with a chunk of broken glass; gone was momma’s wish to climb it one last time. The meadow swayed arid and dusty in the heat as I picked up the jar, the orange of the sunset arcing across the porcelain. I started to pull the top off the vase, then put it back on, tucked the vase under my arm and walked back across the field to my car. Momma had come too far to find out she could never go home.

Indigo Moor

Many thanks, my friend! jm