DancingOkra painting studio

NEW:

Drawings

Paintings

Representation

Vita

OkraTonic (blog)

LEGACY:

Earth and Sky

Looking Glass Thoughts

Works on Paper

Garden of Wonders

Land Slides

POETICS

Lacey Stinson

Click on image for larger view.

BIDDING CLOSED

This painting is being auctioned, starting at $500, through Louisiana Public Broadcasting's (LPB) Louisiana Art & Travel Auction

___EXHIBITION Calendar_____________

2008

  D.O.C.S. Gallery
  December 6 - December 31
  New Orleans, LA

  Livaudais Gallery
  October 2 - December 2
  Monroe, LA

  Lincoln Parish Museum
  October 1 - December 1
  Ruston, LA
         
  ArtMelt
  July 10
  Baton Rouge, LA (invitational)
  Hosted by Brunner Gallery

  Swanson Reed Gallery
  March 7
  Louisville, KY

___GALLERY Representation___

  Ann Connelly Fine Art
  Baton Rouge, LA
  (225) 927-7676

  d.o.c.s. Gallery
  New Orleans, LA
  (504) 524-3936

  Easley Fine Art
  Minden, LA
  (318) 377-1500

  Swanson Reed Gallery
  Louisville, KY
  (502) 452-2904

  Nancy Puetz
  Franklin, TN
  (615) 790-0400

Pockets

I turned the fan on and lay down against my pillow to smell the years that had drifted into my past. Scent of wood and boxes of Christmas things that would come out when the voices, raised in happy camaraderie, titted and tatted over who was coming and what was to be made for the dinners. A warm musty smell, an indoor garden smell of another year...not of one having passed but one fully alive in a mind filled with only a few, or a dozen or so at most. These were 'now' years, and 'here' years. They were my years.

This was family. Also among the times that were mine there were the places of independence, the spaces where I felt all of myself, after school, hiking behind the complex of apartments to the end of the pine needle-lined trail with Arthur C. Clark in my back pocket. How it amazed me then that back pockets of jeans were made just this size. The world, I imagined, should be just this way...everyone with a pocket, carrying a secret key that opened up a world far away, in space, or in time. A book. In everyone's pocket. This was the spice of life.

At the end of the trail was the clearing where we -- my other book pocketing friends and I -- had dragged discarded slices of carpet from apartment renovations above, at the top of the hill. These made our magic reading room; especially pleasant in Fall and Winter when the slow rain of deciduous leaves had left light passages and sound isles throughout the woods and trailed a clear sight over the ridge down toward the yet uncounted trees and such which marked stream channel runoffs that all led to the bigger creek half a mile away.

Afternoons were bliss. The high sound of the world in the tops of the remaining green pines made our journey of imagination all the more sublime. This was our time and our space.

It's gone now, replaced with more well-manicured apartment citadels, the wild of the clear rocky creek sectioned, purchased and patrolled by so many new back yard owners. But that is six hundred miles and thirty-four years away, yet I still smell the dirt ash, the tree resin, the old carpets. I still carry my book, but in an appliance bag now as I must write also. And I must draw.

How do things come to begin? What innocent and naive joys become an endless drive that refuses to back down and, like the color of one's skin, is carried with him everywhere, always, in a pocket made just large enough in the back of his patched and worn mind?

August, 2007

Abandoned Trailer Park near Sunset, 20" x 36"

the sacred
and the cherished uncovered,
once rare gems buried
beneath reason, discovered
in day's faded sun;
faint dear melody born of wind,
an enchanted summons
to the wonders of I,


simple like spring,
soft, like the tangent whisper of dew,
a voice grown older by the passing,
arriving and never leaving,
comes the gift of we,
the all of me.
 

Favoring the Planet, 65" x 55"  (Detail, approx. 18" x 24")

 

 

Brush tale and eye dance,
abstract spiritos ambiance.

A Rubi-Oxie philosopher in the recesses of the night,
engaging vertical toast anarchists one day at a time.

Clear story canvas

       laden in slow-motion meditation
       and flower hand bouquet:

    my me'tier.

Kiss, 43" x 58"  (Detail)