Bird Dreams

Bird Dreams 

by Clair Anna Rose

Materials: Pages from a Phyllis Whitney Book, plastic eggs, faux bird, garage sale find cage, fishing line and metal eye hooks.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what to say about this one. When I get into a creative space I usually have something in mind when I begin, but as soon as I get started other ideas bubble up. This was an idea that bubbled up as I was creating another piece that inspired me to begin. I think it was a snowy day (it often is, that snow bound state tends to lend itself to creativity--nowhere to go, nothing else to do, nowhere to be. If I can't see the street I keep to the house.)

I see the bird as the dreamer and the eggs her dreams. We put ourselves into cages when we keep our dreams just out of reach.

By Sea

By Sea

by Clair Anna Rose

The ships came from Long Beach, CA. The sextant, compass and telescope given to me on a spring afternoon when my facial expression could not hide the want for them. The mermaid is an angel figurine that i sculpted a mermaid's tail for.  Made on the same day as Bee's Gift. 

Bee's Gift

Bee's Gift

by Clair Anna Rose

"I have something for you," he said, or maybe he didn't say. I remember visually, but dialogue only seems to stick if it's poetic, and this was ordinary conversation.   

He said he had found old bee boxes and that they might make good shadow boxes.  In my mind I envisioned us wandering through the forest on the outskirts of town reaching our hands into the hives of sleeping bees and eating honey off the comb. 

In reality we pulled off to the side of the road as the golden light of a setting sun was cutting long shadows across the grass and pines.  Small bugs glowed against the sun, strands of stray hair illuminated.  There were piles of old boxes, I chose two.  But it was the trays of old, mottled, dried up combs that caught my eye.  

I dove my hands into the wasted combs that still held their shape, even though the honey was long gone.  

Years later, the combs still waiting for me to make something of them, I would paint them golden, and with bee's wax adhere them into place.  The bee's I found at a little place in Springdale, Utah.