Subtitling Tangled Garden

Moved my triptych of nature poems, Tangled Garden, forward by 2 seconds and had to manually adjust 282 subtitles! Sigh - all in the name of art. (And even then, am finding a few small errors in the timing of the subtitles as I go through the track.)

The pic is from a low resolution .m4v (iPhone quality) that I am using to check the subtitles.

                              

Titling 'Tangled Garden'

As I finally draw near to completion with this 22 minute video project, I have to do the titles.

I took the original video May 9, 2011, and watched it over and over on the viewfinder of my video camera, wondering what I would do with it. It is very rhizomatous. In June I went to the park with my daughter twice to video some creative movement, yoga dance, whatever you want to call it, for this long videopoem. Out of that footage I did make two solstice videos last year, commemorating the sun's closeness ('Green Goddess' dance) and distance (Shadow Cave), and those videos have done very well (relatively speaking) I am happy to say. Tangled Garden might be live by the end of the week - how exciting that prospect is! Months and months of work finally coming to completion.

Ok. It's an 'art video' - not much happens, but..... that's alright. It has its own magic.

Anyway, it is a triptych of 3 long poems, which I did spend 3 days subtitling, so that should work out nicely.

So here are the titles - any suggestions are appreciated!

Tangled Garden 

a film by Brenda Clews

a triptych of nature poems

by Brenda Clews

-A Floral Opera (2011)

-In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979)

-Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006)

with the singer Catherine Corelli 

from her album, Seraphic Tears (2010).

_____
at the end:

TANGLED GARDEN

written, spoken, performed, videoed and edited
by ©Brenda Clews 2012

brendaclews.com

with special thanks to
Catherine Corelli

'Seraphic Tears':
http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/79547

Woman in Red and Blue (final painting)

Woman in Red and Blue, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, mixed media.


Posting again because I fiddled a bit with and cropped this portrait. The scanner, while enabling a high resolution/good colour image, misses texture. One day I'll get a decent camera to take these paintings - this one is scored with lines from toothpicks, dental tools, knitting needles, and different media - pens, inks, paints, rubbings and scratchings... I didn't like the initial sketch (self portrait drawn looking into a mirror) and was too impatient to work on it so I thought I'd see how the figure could emerge through washes of black paint, and then all the other media I used, inks, acrylics, oils, from fountain pen inks, dip pens, ball point pens and brushes and cloths. Often I spray fixatives between layers too, so there's a few of those. A figure does emerge, and there's a welter of emotion in that worked surface. I have a 30" x 40" Windsor and Newton canvas still unopened for a self portrait, and so am doing studies, not just for facial features (haven't hit home quite yet) but for painting techniques.

                              

Hans Silvester: Tribus del olmo

From Storyculture: Hans Silvester describes his mission, "what’s most important for me is saving, in some way, as much as possible of this truly living art, which is mobile, changing, subject to infinite variation, and whose constituent elements are simple and form a link between man and nature. It seems to me that our modern painting found the purpose of these elements, this simplicity, and used it as its foundation."

Learn more about Hans Silvester's time with the L'omo people at the Marlborough Gallery website.

HERE IS A SLIDE SHOW OF MORE THAN FIFTY OF SILVESTER'S IMAGES

Tribus del olmo

The Painted People of the Surma and Mursi Tribes in Southern Ethiopia - Photos by Hans Silvester.

These people, their rituals, what to us is face painting but to them a calling and embodiment of the spirits, are caught on camera in beautiful portrait shots. They are hesitant, you can see that, before the clicking black machine that the photographer holds. Yet they allow us to steal their images away to show in galleries and books, to post on the NET and spread around the world in ways they will never see or understand. Watching is a complex process of awe, wonderment, tenderness, voyeurism, and a wish to imitate. Yes, paint my face in white and ochre, pigments from ground rocks, shards, plants, and put garlands of flowers and vegetation around  my head and I'll dance shamanically calling and embodying whatever Modern spirits who are in the vicinity and happen to be attracted.

It would be a cacophony.

If it wasn't for copyright restrictions, I would put many of these images in my forthcoming 22 minute videopoem, Tangled Garden.