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| Life Along the Rivers, #1 Catherine Al-Meten Meyers |
Refreshed from a night's sleep, lingering edginess from dreams that reflect a growing anxiety about a world out of control, I turn to find a way to keep this sense of peace with me as the day ahead looms. This is the time of the year when I participate in the local annual artists' studios tour, and today is the second and final day. The studio I'm sharing with another artist, is lovely. Located right on the riverfront high up over the river, we have fresh salty air breezes keeping us cool and refreshed all day. We have a commanding view of the beautiful Meglar Bridge that connects across the mouth of the river from Oregon to Washington, or vice versa depending where you live. On Friday morning, I cleared out the room that had been stuffed with old camp chairs, boxes and bags of leftover stuff, and various and sundry junk, and my fellow artist and I set about making it our own.
Our art hangs on the walls, the room is full of fresh air and light, and we each have set up work station. She is working on a wood carving of narwhales, and I am designing cards and organizing photography, in between running to the window to hang out and take shots of passing boats and ships passing nearby on the river. From before opening time, people began arriving at our studio yesterday, many friends and neighbors. Some of the conversations with those who visited our studio were so interesting. Learned that the oldest and largest houseboat upriver on the John Day, was the home of one woman's parents. She told me the story of how the larger 3-story white houseboat would sail downriver during fishing season and anchor off Tongue Point for the season. Probably around the time of WWII, that stopped, as Tongue Point became an important port for military ships.
Another woman, a recently retired nurse and I talked about the sounds of the river, and she shared with me the special magic that she found of the changing sounds that you could find while walking from one side of the Sacred Mountain, Tongue Point, as you walked from one side to the other. She sparked my curiosity even more to explore this ancient sacred site.
One man and his wife recognized a river I had shot one near where they live. They couldn't figure out where I'd been to get the shot. I knew where it was exactly, and we both decided we had to go back there to see if the river had changed course in some way or not. Rivers are all about change, and are constantly changing. You never see the same river twice, and over the course of your own lifetime, it may be damned up or a dam may be removed, changing the entire river almost beyond recognition from one day to the next. Much of my photography is an attempt to chronicle in some of the changes of one large river system here in the Pacific Northwest.
That photographic chronicle coincides with the research and exploration of the layers of cultures who have lived along the streams and rivers that feed into the Columbia River, N'chia wana (the Great River). At different stages of my life, I've been working on this project, and am nearing a point where I'm bringing it all together. Another artist who is in the same building is the local Artist-in-Residence, a woman named Andi. Her work is so stunning, and her depictions of the river and life along the river are so inspiring to me.
The artist I'm sharing space with, Katie George, paints, draws, and etches the animal life in and around the riparian system. Her work is exquisite. Her one large watercolor depicting the mouth of the river is something I would love to get. Being surrounded by all this beautiful artwork is so inspiring, and having many of my pieces of photography hanging together on the walls also reminds me of the layers of life that I have lived already. They inspire more living, more capturing of beauty and curiosities, more ideas to finish, begin, and imagine into being.
Talking to the other artists, I'm reminded of the other lives we live. Andy's beautiful son, about 8-9 sits peacefully nearby her, engaged in a creative and imaginative life of his own as his mother paints and creates, and works out pieces of how her installation is coming together. Katie and I have had some conversations about how to fit everything into your schedule that you want to do, how to keep on something that requires focus and attention, when life requires something else of you. Layering training, preparing, earning, interest, time, and commitments over one another. And as we chat about needing to get back to something or let go of something else, I'm reminded that, what needs or wants to arrive at completion, will. In time. When it and you are ready.
And so as I write and reveal my inner me to my outer, I remember how important it is to me as a writer, to use my writing to find release from all the demands that I might feel I'm unable to do quite as well as I'd like to, or from the need to feel I'm not wasting time doing something that's difficult and challenging, or how I might not want to run away from the challenge as it just might open a door of insight, a window of perception, that could be the key to discovering even more beauty in the layers of life I'm living and creating. What would your layers of life be? How do your dreams overlap with your frustrations? What has been on the shelf gathering dust or yellowing with age, that needs to find the light of day so you can etch away, or dab a drop or two of paint on it, or sketch out a design for a plan yet to be reveals? Drop into your wish jar, and pull out a small step to take today, and see what is brought to life.
