Thanks so much to everyone who participated in Renga 2. It was quite an adventure...;-)
Please post your comments...the feelings and thoughts of the artists during the creative process would be a treat for all. Those who did not participate, please join in with any questions, comments, suggestions. The more, the merrier.
Hope you all enjoyed the journey. Thanks, again....Carol

~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

Carole MacRury -

The thumbnails look great. That's the best way to look at it, I think. You get to see all of them at once.
Wonderful job everyone. It’s so colorful! I know how fun these are to do, but what does it mean, now that it’s all finished. I’m going to try and find out. I’m going to read it like a book and job down thoughts as I go through the images. I might have questions on technique later, but for now I'm going to make sense out of the challenge as a whole and try to figure out why each of you did what you did. In the end, it won't matter if I'm way off base, because I will have enjoyed myself immensely. It's important for me, though to feel some connection to this
and not just see a series of colorful images, so here goes!! I found as I got into it, my comments warmed up and were lengthier. A sign to me of the success of this renku as to reader enjoyment and participation! Ha!

The seed image is a colorful abstract that reminds me of an eyeball.

1/cr Aha! Carol saw an eyeball too, and now I see a set of male and female
eyes and bare feet prancing all over a black-light night. Party time! The title
fits well.

2/db – Darrell’s taken it into the wee hours! The night is stretching on. Are the people
sagging too? The eyes and feet are lengthening along with the hour. Nice link.

3/gc - Gillena’s moved the whole party to the moon! Nice shift. And the title
fits well with how I see this one. The party continues, even on the moon.

4/js - Oh my, this looks like the hangover of all time. The smoky pink looks
slow. The image is very interesting and it reminds me of what my head would
look like if I partied to the moon.

5/kk – Bringing the light – oh, I loved the shift here to a totally new scene.
That burning candle a focal point for all those drifting little sparks
still lingering after such a night. The shape of it though…looks a tiny bit like
a bomb!. Do I see a fuse, or is that calm candle light? ;-)

6/lf – Aurora fantasy. Can anything compare to the grandeur of the aurora borealis?
I liked the juxtaposition of the tiny candle set against the green northern lights.
It looks as if the waves are rushing in to cleanse the beach of debris. Typical party clean-up.

7/lmp – Well, if there is anything to compete with the northern lights, I’d say a Faberge egg stands a good chance. (I saw them in the San Diego Museum – they are gorgeous)
I like the way Linda has pulled everything into this egg. That’s what eggs do…contain
things. But...things grow in eggs. What's brewing in Linda's? Onward...

8/ll – Louise has decided to literally lit the lid of the Faberge egg and let things out to bloom again. She must think everyone has recuperated enough already. I absolutely love this design, but at first, rather than seeing tiny flowers with tiny stems, I saw an insect. But that’s okay too…we have to go right back in time. Weren’t we all once slime
and crawled out of the cauldron to morph into what we are now? Definitely a blooming
no matter which way you choose to look at it.

9/man – Golden honey bunny lion! Mary Angela has decided to shift and shake up
the blooming by giving us a creature that is sweet as honey, with the heart of a lion,
and the face of a pussy cat! Okay, I can buy that. She retains the seed image in the eyes.
We never stray far from our roots do we gang? Very fitting and fresh shift.

10/mr – Oh blessed be. Michael has stopped time for a moment. The peace in this simple black and white yin/yang is much appreciated after all the frantic activity of the previous images. This is nearing the mid point of the renga, a very good time to put on the brakes, take stock, regroup Perfect shift Michael! J I like the sundial, the way it points both in
and out! Introspective.

11/rm – Ron takes Michael’s calm image a touch further with his tai chai symbol, is it?
Of course, our friendly fireman can’t resist heating it up. The lovely phoenix came to mind, but all in all I enjoyed this combination of fire and calm.

12/s I love soji’s – such a coolness after Ron’s fiery image. And back to Michael’s yin/yang, straight back to the seed image now floating in the sphere. I think of our
watery bodies, our watery planet when I see this globe. What are those pink pits?
I pondered those a little and good grief, I thought of belly buttons and the whole thing made me think of birth. Great title soji.

~~~~round 2~~~~~~

13/cr– Oh wow, Carol’s seeded the whole planet. Look at all those little squares,
and that floating figure, surely the grand directress of it all! The feminine,
and on the other side, the all seeing eye – bigger and brighter than ever before.
This was interesting and felt like a great link to soji’s. It certainly fit in with my imagination. Time and tide – reminding me we’re all grains of sand that will disappear with time.

14/db – midnight beacon – Well, as in the first one Darrel’s touch is slight
and the previous image remains with just a slight warping. When I looked at this one I
am reminded that yes, we might be grains of sand but no doubt we will go out
with a bang! This image reminds me of a balloon about to be punctured.
But, see it’s resilience! That beacon/needle enters but does not divide.

15/gc – Whatever it’s called, I want it. Happy hour, and Gillena’s image is
stirring up a delightful concoction! A special martini containing all the planet
has to offer. Very colorful gillena!

16/js – Jim has switched gears completely. Resistance is futile. Now why is that so appropriate with blocks! Even the Faberge egg, which is definitely not a blockhead
has been pulled in the vortex, the "all bar" leading the way, the rest following. Really
creative linking Jim. This image shows the entire renku/humanity progression
starting right from the beginning. Mind you this is my imagination speaking, you know!

17/kk I give you my heart. This is a complete shift and I love it. Behind the bars –
all that went before, succumbing to love. Or is the heart the prison? However which
way you look at it this one give me pause and contemplation! Love puts life
into all those grains of sand. Us!

18/lf - pink twilight. The image looks fragile…like thin ice, perhaps hoarfrost.
As if the heart is scratched out on a cold window and can easily be torn asunder.
Yet, it’s melting too…yes, and all those little flowers are coming out from the ice.
Okay, I’m taking great liberties here, but not my fault. I’m only responding to what I see.
Lovely image to follow Karina’s vibrant heart Lary. It reminds me of the twilight of our years too.

19/lmp – loving the spin- me too, this one takes me straight back to Gillena’s galactic martini! That shadowy feminine figure has now multiplied. There is a creation process going on here within the pink vortext that must come straight from the heart of the two previous images. It’s feminine and I love it! If we didn’t love the spin, we’d die out.
Great shift Linda.

20/ll –Oh my Louise, this is a strong statement. The conch shell, a perfect feminine symbol. The pull of the ocean and tides, all affected by the moon. And such a protective and tender claiming of that shell! And appropriately placed in the middle of the universe, or at least our universe. See those little revolving planets? Are they moons?
Moon mother. I love what I sense as the truly feminine in this image. Whimsey seeds –
seeds most certainly, but not whimsy – see how she wears time pieces on both wrists!


21/man – Wishing Well. Mary Angela has made a nice shift here by showing just
a tiny bit of the lip of the conch shell and linking it with a tube to a bubble where a host of little swimmers are threading their way through lush green ferns. I see the act of
creation in this image. Quite vividly actually, but I won’t go further into detail
right now, but this is well, a rather exciting image.


22/mr. Well, if I had any doubts about what I felt with Mary Angela’s, I don’t anymore.
Michael’s image culminates with an explosion with all the pulses and heat one would
expect. It reminds me of those image machine that measure body heat! Well, this
one is obviously over the top and I feels good to me and perfectly in line with what
I thought I saw in the previous image. Wow, I’m impressed with the linking!
And if I’m wrong, then I’m impressed with my own imagination.

23/nd – Well, it’s time we had a soothsayer appear on the scene. I love the magical
quality of this one. The way the face is veiled so that the soothsayer is both male and female, the earthy reality of the hand, the colorful potions being transferred between
one bowl and another. I see the yin/yang of previous images here, only with a more
exotic flavor. When I see this image I think of things being mixed, combined, and
even this image seems to carry forth on the sense of creation, only with a bit more mystery now. Only the soothsayer knows!

24/rm – I take that back, Ron knows! Enlightenment! What a perfect link to Norman’s ron. You’ve taken all the potions, mixtures, textures and put them into the enso..
a symbol of enlightenment. You’ve taken the soothsayer’s milk and turned it
into an enso. Kinda nice you put it in front the multimedia page meaning
maybe through the renku, we’re becoming enlightened…just a teeny bit, maybe!

25/s – final moment. And where else could this be but back to the source! A stunning and perfect finish to the seed image, to all the creation process I saw throughout the renku,
beginning with that first date, the late night partying, the candlelight, mankind moving
forward, the celebration of the female, the birth process, and finally death. I missed steps, but they all seemed to link great to me. Reminds me of a black hole, to which we are
probably all moving towards anyway. Great image, Soji.

And that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! (A favorite country song)

Thanks all, for the delightful read of your renku art.

Warmly,
Carole
~~~~~~~~~~

Laryalee Fraser -

Oh soji...
what a grand finale!
And to be a part of this --
to be one of these spinning planets --
is a glorious feeling!

Carol, you've done a tremendous
job....thank you! And Linda too...

It is indeed a strange combination of
delight at what we've accomplished
along with sadness that there are no
more surprises to "open"....Christmas
is over, sigh...

But we know there'll be more challenges
ahead, right?

Cheers all around....

art renga --
thoughts on a thread
weave in and out

:-)
Lary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ron moss -

Yes, well done all !!! fantastic journey, thanks for the comments on my piece, wanted to tie us all together and still leave an ending for our soji, and what a finale it was . . . i think the 'planets' are some of the previous images, good one :-)

yeeehaaaaa off into infinite . . . . . to be continued

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linda Papanicolaou -

Can't believe it's over.  We really did a good one this time, didn't
we?

Carol asked us to save our comments until the end and therefore there
wasn't much talk as the images were being posted.  And now that it's
complete, I hope everyone won't feel too overwhelmed to comment. 

I thought that all the images were wonderful, and since it's not clear
whether one could go back to change an image (other than clean it up a
tad, as I did mine), I thought I wouldn't comment on each image the way
we normally do in an exercise.  So in my comments I'll write about the
themes that developed in the ways we linked to each other's images .

1) The clock with a thousand faces: Clearly in voting for Carol's MOMA
clock as a seed image we all loved it, and that may be why it didn't
just kick off the renga but remained as a constant presence.  It
disappeared and reappeared reappearing as a tiny motif in most of the
subsequent images, and it also established a color palette of black,
reddish orange and luminous green that did more than anything else to
unify the whole series.

2) Space the final frontier:  This theme happened almost accidentally,
originating in Darrel's first image (2) as a manipulation of the clock
in the shape of a rocket--I had been going to say an old scifi movie
rocket, but it does look like the plane launched yesterday, doesn't it?
The '50s-style space flight theme was picked up by Gillena (3) with
men on the moon.  With Jim (3) the theme went deep space with what I
think is a Hubble photograph and Gillena's image turned into an alien
planet drifting toward it.  There are two variants on this theme that
derive respectively from Jim's (4) and Lary's (6).  One of these is
planets, orbits and stars, which remained throughout the renga and
picked up importance at the end (soji 12, Louise 20, Mary Angela 21,
soji 25).  The other is what I'd call 'Big Blue Marble' (remember the
public television show of that name).  It's less prominent but
absolutely necessary for grounding the renga because the images include
fair skies and clouds (Louise 7 and 20, Mary Angela 9, soji 12). 

3) The human and the universal:  That we managed to develop these two
themes is what gives the renga some breadth and depth.  The human
element is there because it was a small clock that seeded the renga,
and we began with Carol's image of a couple of people with their feet
sticking out from the covers (1).  Jim's nebula looks like a shoulder
and hairy head of dare I say it Sasquatch (Big Foot)...

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/sasquatch.html

...or Goya's Chronus (Time) devouring his children...

http://www.milica.com.au/greek_myths/creation/cron_p1.htm

...so image (4) belongs to the mythological/symbolical theme (more
about this shortly). The human scale of the renga was developed most
vividly in a pair of images that eliminated the head entirely and
focused on hands holding or doing something (Louise 20, Norman 23).
Somewhat separately, I'd list here those images that imply connection
with human hands, not only the clock but Karina's candle (4), my
Faberge handicraft (7), Ron's needlework yinyang (11), Gillena's Happy
Hour bar (15) and Ron's calligraphic enso (24).  

On the other hand we have images with are circles (soji 12, Carol 13,
Darrell 14),  yinyang  (Mike 10--this seems to be a detail from the
face of Mary Angela's cat, but it began a yinyang thread through its
title, then Ron 11,  soji 12 and on into Carol 13 etc) and spirals (Jim
16, Linda 19, Mary Angela 21, and soji 25).

Rather than group these as a separate thread, I'd call these images the
flip side of the human--ie the hands--thread, because they all include
universal symbols by which we humans try to formulate what we sense is
transcendant in the world we live in.  In a somewhat mediating position
we have a number of images that depict myths/fantasies/ceremonies:
Jim's star-myth Chronus (4), Lary's fantasy landscape (6),  Ron's
yinyang embroidery lifted over the fireworks (11), Jim's 'you will be
assimilated' Borg cube  (16), as well as a couple of valentines (Karina
17, Lary 18) that irresistably evoke Sacred Heart imagery...

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sts01001.htm

I could go on and on about subthemes and who used what imagery from
where in the linkages.  I know that there were questions about just
what was permissable for linking in graphic renga and Carol responded
that this is an anything-goes art form.  It seems to me that this
greater flexibility (as opposed to the strictures on backlinking in
linked poetry) may derive from some inherently non-linear way that we
process images as opposed to words.

In any case, as the renga got longer I began to find it too difficult
to cope with the slideshow and started using the thumbnails.  That was
a revelation because Carol's three-across layout of the thumbnail page
brought the images into a matrix so it offered a whole new way of
seeing connections--not just to the images that came before and after.
Open up a second browser window and load the url so you can see what
I'm talking about as you read this:
 
 * Renga thumbnails

On this list we often discuss the importance of not falling into
'telling' and we often try to use juxtaposition in pairing haiku with
haiga haiku to let our readers/viewers find meaning as it resonates
within their own experience.  Specifically in the instructions for the
renga exercise, Carol repeatedly emphasized that we should work
quickly, depending on free association to develop our contributions.
Looking at the renga in retrospect has given me a much fresher
understanding of the mental processes that come into play with this
kind of thinking.  I've realized that whatever each of us chose
consciously or unconsciously to put into our images is only part of
what links each image to the others.  The other --even more determining
part is what meaning the viewer constructs.

One good instance is the way images 11, 14 and 17 align vertically in
the thumbnails page.  The three work to create a strong vertical axis
in which Darrell's tunnel image seems to be sucking in the fire energy
from Ron's and turning into the radiant heart in Karina's images.  Ron
could not have forseen and I doubt that Darrell or Karina have intended
it, but there it is. 

Another instance concerns my Faberge egg (7), which in linear sequence
is anticipated by  the egg-like rocket form in Gillena's (3) and the
alien egg in Lary's fantasy landscape (6), which itself derives from
Karina's votive candle (5).  Thinking to bring the egg back to this
world, I considered Piero Della Francesca's Madonna and Child with
Saints...

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/p/piero/francesc/altar/mntefelt.html

..then remembered that in the Middle Ages they used to make reliquaries
out of ostrich eggs.  I settled on the Faberge egg but was still
thinking of egg symbolism. Not until I looked at the thumbnails did I
realize the form had come back in Norman's image of a soothsayer
pouring milk from one bowl to another (23), and that context changes
what I see in my own image.  As a viewer, I'm seeing something the
artist did not put there.

My final example of unintended consequences is the way the renga
concludes in the thumbnails, Over the last image is a stack of spiral
compositions (15, 19, 22, 25).   Mike's (22) which derives from Mary
Angela's (21--itself to the left and not part of the axial arrangement)
is sufficiently distorted in the manipulation that you might easily
read it another way viewing the image in another context, but in the 15
19 22 25 sequence it reads like a huge plasma explosion, after which
everything sucks into soji black hole.   A fitting and spectacular way
to end, with that little MOMA clock of Carol's becoming a cosmic
timepiece that ticks away our existence.

So we're going to have a vote on name the renga? A wonderful way of
concluding what we began with a vote.  Mike's and soji's suggestions
aptly express the time theme, but I'd also like to point out that Ron's
idea also goes to the heart of what we made this renga about.  It'll be
fun to see what other people suggest, and what we all settle on in the
end.

Linda
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karina Klesko-

yes you guys!! what a great ending...we found Norman on the way ...yay! and a great finale from both ron and soji ! I think this is the most fun project we have done!

love  karina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Darrell Byrd -

This was a fantastic effort by all participants in this Photo/Renga
Exercise. I have read through the entire sequence several times and
still come up with new and exciting images and layers with each
reading. It is truly amazing to piece together the images with the
links provided, sometimes clever, sometimes subtle and always
interesting and thought provoking. Stories were effectively
communicated without one written or spoken word utilized. The
completed work is a joy to behold. It was a pleasure to be part of
this experiment in a new, untried and ground breaking medium for
Renga Art. In my humble opinion, it was a resounding success. Good
job, everyone. BRAVO....

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mary Angela Nangini -

 I have to let go. I keep finding one more idea and one more insight!!!! Here is my Reading Art Renga 2:

Seed Image by Carol Raisfield

The clock as the seed image set the Time journey in motion in this Renga exercise with 13 Artists. Time is a precious theme. It inspires and provokes. The artists here, caught up in the vortex of creation in two rounds, have given us awesome images. Soji’s final image truly sums it up. As one of them, it has been a whirlwind experience. Time is treated in Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8, and rendered with music at this website:

http://acharlie.tripod.com/serenity.html


1/cr Oh, what a night!

In this first image, Carol begins the trajectory of time: male and female he created them (Genesis I:27); time is extended to a time of co-creation. Because of the big feet-little feet scenario, and having studied the other image, the parent-child and a time of enchantment is also possible: touring the museum of life; passing on the wisdom; seeking enlightenment from the exhibits of this world; looking for that new moment of learning –the time for the living of a lifetime.


2/db the wee hours

Darryl extends Carol’s image into a new kind of time: when reality takes on the shapes of illusion because what seems good would be better if one has more of it…! Wisdom strikes! The Aha! of understanding makes itself known? When the eyes blur, or disillusionment sets in and we ask the song’s question “Is that all there is?”


3/gc Even on the Moon

Gillena takes us to the Moon knapsacking The Eye of Time. History is made by the living. Together, we learn and    discern.
At first I hadn’t noticed. After looking at the other images closely, I notice that Gillena has introduced a clear, gelatinous, plasmatic egg shape that foreshadows, multiplies and perhaps seeds new image ideas.


4/js Slow-time-in-the-Cone

Gestation in the pear-shaped –conical womb takes time. This cone imitation shows up best in an ultrasound. The first four images –including the clock, a Prelude to an eruption in the fourth. Conveyed with the cool colours with a hint of the hot to come, are a perfect lead into the flaring forth of creation: the boiling cauldron of the Universe, the overflowing of love; and for the Judeo-christian tradition, Jim summarizes its history in his image, the Christ whose thorns are transformed into jewels: the Resurrection crowning his Passion and Death. The interaction behind this event is a strong Christian symbolism here: his death for the life of the world.


5/kk Bringing the Light

Karina’s symbolic image is powerful here: the egg-womb in all its glory holding the light. Bringing the Light also intones the continuity of new life. I am going to render it in haiku lines:

cosmic light in a candle internal animation of individual life
stardust in our flesh and eternal soul      dance of the cosmos within us


6/lf  aurorafantasy

Laryalee imports the egg-womb from Karina’s image #5, perhaps seeded, inspired ‘subliminally’ from Gillena’s image #3: carrier of new life. Then the magical transformation occurs: Lary adds the five basic elements for the maintenance of life: earth, water, sky, wood, fire and metal, which is found in the earth. And how appropriate that later on, they are found to interact with the principle of Yin Yang in Michael’s image #10.


7/lmp fabulousfaberge

Linda’s Fabulous Faberge: the holder of treasures, opens! The womb explodes with new life! The progression of meaning is phenomenal: from Karina’s kindling candle –soul of life, the respect from within is juxtaposed with Lary’s external ambiance –our togetherness, and the transitional –aurorafantasy –the blend of the real world beauty and the power-play of the fertile mind, to Linda’s perception of the preciousness of life, regaled with opulence.



8/ll a time to bloom

With an open Fabulous Faberge, Linda opens the bounty of creativity in ‘a time to bloom’. The Eye of Time remains in the cyclical seasons of life.



9/man Golden Honey-Bunny-Lion


With a time to bloom, and a time to die chimed in my head when I received Linda’s image. My cat Wisky-Lion had died the day before and my pet name for him was my Golden Honey Bunny Lion. Linda’s sea and sky formed the perfect backdrop to place my memory; a loss forever loved. The symbolic Eye of Time was retained and captured - in the eyes! I am amazed at this discovery, myself.



10/mr yinyangsundial http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CHPHIL/YINYANG.HTM

Michael’s words begged for a dictionary. “Definition: in Chinese philosophy, the two cosmic forces of creative energy, yin being feminine/negative and yang being masculine/positive, from which everything originates and depends on the interaction of the opposite and complementary principles (dictionary.com).

The sundial timer in our next image, identifies life in cycles: birth –a time to bloom brings death –Golden Honey-Bunny Lion –the two previous images. With the principle of Yin Yang, all of existence is regulated in time. Michael gives us the sundial timer that never ends measuring the constancy of change.


11/ rm tai-chi-rising  http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/tao-chi.html

Ron’s tai-chi-rising is envisioned as a Phoenix rising out of the flames of death. The dramatic image flares forth a poignant message: Even amidst the flux of changing cycles, the forces of good shall prevail even though it seems impossible, sounds contradictory and is oxymoronic:

The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.
.Tao Te Ching (76)


12/s indefinitedefinet

Soji centralizes the Eye of Time in the Yin-Yang symbol. The circle and cyclical concept is repeated circles within the circle. As time passes from the temporal forces of good and evil, Soji conceptualizes the infinite and forever quality of time, symbolized by the two dazzling white circles- an infinity of hope! An eternity of good, sparkles through both the Yin and the Yang!

13/cr time& tide

Carol’s ‘time and tide’ continues the journey of our ephemeral existence marked by tides: sun and moon , the give and take of our everyday life. The fish image of the oceans and seas of tides, juxtaposed with the activities of the human on the land and time are strongly interlocked.


14/db Midnight Beacon

Darryl’s Midnight Beacon brings back the warning, the reminder, the ‘beacon” of enlightenment picked up later on by Ron in image # 24, is a necessity of life to discern: the light at the end of the tunnel… what there is to look forward to…the dream…the vision…what we strive for, to make life meaningful. Again, this is an echo of Karina’s light in image # 5.


15/gc Happy Hour

Gillena’s happy hour breaks the momentum of the seriousness of life. Her image calls out: take a break…lighten up..this is too intense…laugh a little. This image is a symbolic redemption of Darryl’s image #2, of The Wee Hours and is reinterpreted with humour! We know that lack of humour is one of the first signs of illness, so with comic relief, Gillena takes life, puts in a glass and playfully restores balance and perspective.

16/js resistance-is-futile-you-will…

Jim’s “resistance-is-futile-you-will..” continues Gillena’s thread: put it in a glass and sip it…savour it… allow life to become part of you! You are what you eat… drink… see… hear… imagine… You become the genetics of inheritance and all that links us to our humanity: the NEW Re-Combinant DNA strand Jim? What a marvelous image on human potential!


17/kk I give you my heart

The precious center of it all! Karina’s heart. The place of rest, the place we call home, the place of love: the action. The most powerful, the most all-absorbing human activity in time. The circular radiating beams of colourful light is representative of the variegated aspects of human emotions, feelings and love.


18/lf pink-twilight

Lary seems to enhance this enduring and diamond-hard crystal quality of love and enters into its flower-like fragile and vulnerable aspect. Symbolized by ice and light, the beams of radiant, and still circular love are now pure, limpid and genuine.


19/lmp loving-the-spin

Linda’s image lets go, give way to celebration and takes the risk: life is to be lived. The generic human borrowed from image # 13, multiplies and punctuates our universal sameness and oneness.


20/ll “Whimsey Seeds”

Louise emphasizes the temporal aspect of our treasures in her image: Whether it is what we can hold dear and close or what is of nature and too remote and distant, the seeds of whim play at the hands of caprice, arbitrariness and unpredictability. Science calls this “stochastic” or chance. What is introduced here is the transitory nature of life and our state of dependency and out of our control.


21/man wishingwell

Louise’s whimsical slant, formed the “wishing-well” image for me: wishing for what we can’t have, don’t have and would like to have. I envisioned a pool of water reflecting the immensity of the unattainable, just beyond our reach. But Louise’s world within a world, the unfathomable planetary magnitude in our grasp; the reflection of the impossible as possible formed with the palm tree in the water. A seed is thrown into water, expands into the ripple effect and travels on... Even as chance, impracticality…interrupts, invades, crushes the spirit and overworks plans, another reality sets in…dream on! Do dream! Take the time to dream and pass it on…!


22/mr seeing-it-a-new-way

Mike’s explosive seeing it a new way complements the dream…keep dreaming…dreams are the stuff of life!


23/nd Soothsayers Milk

Norman’s fresh eyes enters the image sequence. He tolls the bell with a new version of “Beware the Ides of March”: complacency, being lukewarm, detachment, non-committal stances; flim-flam existence….become the opium of the people!


24/rm Enso

Ron’s Enso seems to answer the dilemma: Enlightenment comes knowing what’s in one bowl and what it becomes going into another!


25/s finalmoment

Soji gifts us with finalmoment: The last image. Recapitulating the time sojourn: We are part of the Universe: our ideas, imagination, creativity…along with the planets...our cosmos, even as we complete and come to end of small art Renga exercise. Desiderata-like he gathers us into a unity:

                                          With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
                                                       it is still a beautiful world.
                                                   Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

                                          http://www.fleurdelis.com/desiderata.htm

Soji centralizes the light and enlightenment attracting the dancing orbits of our creations. A totally powerful journey!

Mary Angela Nangini

~~~~~~~~~~~

Gillena Cox -

When I first saw the seed image, I thought it was some
impression of an eye, it was only when we were asked to vote that
I realised it was a clock, but  it was still my first choice, I think the
colours appealed to me first then the circles. within the square,
something like, life itself giving .... yet constraining.
Well carol stepped out in total freedom bare feet and discs which
I think every one agreed symbolised music; while Darrell tried
to constrain us within a Cinderella syndrome, by putting visible
numbers on the clock, i felt I just wouldn't be daunted and took the
music to the moon, complete with the bright happy colours,
tagging the seed clock to the astronaut's back pack, we were
now conscious of time but not slaves to it. Jim introduced a
spacy mood colourwise and there we had our first shift, though
keeping time as his theme. Another shift followed where the
theme shifted to light and enlightment in the candle's flame
coming out of the spacey gloomy with Karina's  image with
another colour shift - a spring time colour focus.  Lary's aurora
fantasy carried the springtime focus into another realm this time
into a dreamscape, a serene peaceful scene; where every reality
starts; with a dream; a dream of enlightment.  The theme
continued in Linda's faberge egg another germination image;
and here the egg was opened ; and the link continued with a
blossoming and a return to earth with an intense  azure sky
captained by louise. Mary's golden honey lion both linked and
shifted back to the seed image and the theme of time and
forward shifted to a link into  creation and on the sixth day.
Another radical  shift came with Michael's sun dial - yin and yang:
night and day a color shift remaining in previous creation theme
and linking back to the time sequence of the seed image. I saw
in Ron's tai chi rising a sun image and a progression from
mike's, further continuing the theme of time and opposites was
Soji image. Carol skifully shifted again linking back to the first
three images of fun and recreation; and darrell again like in the
first sequence continued in the theme; here his whole image
becoming the disc. And so my next image "happy hour". Jim did
a really interesting collaboration here and  this was my favourite
of the up to this point but remained my favorite piece. I saw all of
the themes offered before and now a degree of uncertainty with a
roll of the dice.  What  else is coming up in this renga? have we
spent our creative energies or will the renga continue? And what
a surprising twist for karina was all heart. I suppose love really
conquers all any way it did for this renga;  taking us into the
twilight was Lary and continuing the love  and the fun was Linda
and Louise linking back to the discs. Then there was the wishing
well : hands of a clock, hands in time trying to cast a fortune
towards the future.
Yellow for many is associated  with hope and here there is a lot
of it to support the wish of the previous image: that was Mike
seeing it his way. Then there were the hands of the soothsayer
conjuring, entertaining the wishing and the hoping and the
uncertainty of the dice cast at image #16 . All of this progress into
another enlightment the circle of essence and being and time
itself from whence we started to pause at and conquer a universe
of creativity, our creativity but certainly not the final frontier for
WHC multimedia. Here's to many more happy exercises. My
choice of title is "Time and Time Again"

gillena.-_-

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