I showed and offered for sale some small pieces along with a group of other fine art and craft workers. Last year this venue was not good to any of us and we guessed the government shut down had something to do with people holding onto their own funds. That was only a guess and since it was my first attempt at trying to sell this way, I decided to give it one more try. This year was also a little slow according to longer timers, but I did well enough to justify the time spent. We each stayed at the booths some of the time to facilitate sales and questions. I loved watching people look long at my pieces. I make work not for the money, not to be known, but to speak large and long in ways I expect to never really see here. This one piece I am inserting in this post I had not even yet taken a good photograph of before it got snagged. I marked a sale tag on it, and could have sold it 2 more times before the buyer came to take it home.

It strikes me that abstract work remains mysterious to most, though it has always been a language to me. In some of my pieces I included verse as an attempt to bridge that language. In fact the year long reading I have been doing though Emily Dickinson’s poems has given me lots to work up into imagery. This image alone likely would not have garnered so much attention, but with Emily’s thoughts below, we have a rich duet going on that is catching people right where they are. Here are her words:

Death is a Dialogue between the Spirit and the Dust.

“Dissolve” says Death — The Spirit “Sir I have another Trust” —

Death doubts it — Argues from the Ground —

The Spirit turns away

Just laying off for evidence

An Overcoat of Clay.

# 976, Johnson’s chronology, written 1864, artwork 2014