Winter Wonderland

Michigan, my Michigan, a.k.a. "Winter Wonderland" on slush-covered license plates, is the memory of Christmas my heart won't forget. Some white, some green, some grey, all cold. Those Christmases, now confined to the museum of my memory, live immortal as the hodgepodge of clashing cultures they were. But, for that, they no less instilled the universal festive sentiment of: "Everybody here? Mangia, let's eat!"

Christmas Eve was Noche Buena. Christmas morning was fried matzoh then Mass (Confusing? Don't). Christmas afternoon/evening, more Judeo-Christian free-for-all: communion wafers around the dinner table, followed by challah and turkey. Then Buche de Noel. "Never mind, just mangia!" The number of nationalities present when the extended family gathered was enough to warrant a UN chaperone.

Today, that tradition continues two thousand miles from my Michigan and though the scenery may be more English countryside and less Winter Wonderland, the sentiment is still the same . . . "Eat your bloody sprouts."

Feliz Navidad.

look the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold and fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

(extract from little tree by e.e. cummings)

Ett Hem

I knew the minute I saw this, it would have to be something from Carl Larsson. Christmas for me is Sweden. And Sweden is Carl Larsson. Growing up in Sweden, when Christmas was always white, and the tomte would be sneaking around leaving no trace in the snow, checking up on boys and girls to see who had been good and who had been naughty. Candles would be lit in every window and men would be on rooftops shoveling off the snow. We would ski to school and skate on the flooded football pitch at the end of the day before going home for spiced gingerbread and hot chocolate.

Somewhere in our house in Sweden, I don't remember where exactly, was this Larsson print of the little girl on the 'spark' - the sort of sleigh thing you sometimes see the Same using in Lapland - a chair on blades basically. We had hours of fun on ours (usually pretending it was a horse), as well as using it for trips to the shop or as a buggy when my little legs were too tired to walk in the snow. And whenever I see this picture now I can smell the crisp freshly fallen snow on Christmas morning in our garden in Sweden and I can hear the metal of the blades on the spark cutting into the perfect surface. I can feel the swish of it under my arms and legs as my sister and I lay on our backs making snow angels, swallowing the gigantic snowflakes that fell onto our tongues.

In Sweden Christmas is a family time, a time for the children and a time for eating. I also remember it as a time for getting out into nature and a time to dance around the neighbour's Christmas trees (could take a long time if you lived on a long street!). But at the end of the day, the family returns and settles around the candles and the warmth of the home. And it is perhaps this that is the essence of what the Christmas spirit is for me. That miracle of somehow managing to get the whole family together in the same place, yet not with the pressure of having to 'do' anything in particular. I think this final Larsson picture sums up what I mean - they are all in the same room. They are all, more or less, sat at the same table. But they are engaged in their own pursuits, there is no pressure to take part in the card game. There is no pressure on them to perform or do anything to show their commitment to the family unit. Their very presence is enough to say 'I care'.

Carl Larsson may have produced some of the most wonderfully evocative portrayals of Swedish life, but he was also unwittingly the catalyst behind IKEA. In 1899 he published 'Ett Hem' - a home. He was a bit of a Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen of his day - an interior designer and artist, with a mission to show the world his perfect family home, but instead of going on Living TV to do it, he published a delightful collection of prints depicting his family life in 'Ett Hem'. The Swedish populace took him to heart, a nation styled its homes Larsson-style and this model of Swedish interior design became ingrained on the global psyche as utterly and typically 'Sweden'. It was but a short step to IKEA...

The house is now a museum and IKEA a legend. Perhaps a longer legacy than our Lawrence might manage..!

So as the nation settles down around it's IKEA flat-packs this Christmas, plugs in the triangular advent candle lights they all bought from IKEA (originated in Sweden also!), I hope it doesn't turn out to be a time of squabbles and family rows - the result of unrealistic expectations about how amazing Christmas is meant to be - but a time to just sit and reflect that we care enough simply to be there. And I'm not religious, but isn't that what the three kings and all the rest of it was about? They cared enough to be there to celebrate the birth of that little baby.

If you liked those Carl Larsson prints, check out more HERE... and have yourself a very merry Christmas!

TASK - The Spirit of Christmas

The Spirit of Christmas..? by Flora Dora

What does the spirit of Christmas mean to you? Post anything from an image to a gallery, from a sentence to a novel.

Be hopeful, charitable, invoke Scrooge, revel in or bemoan the excess of it all, it matters not as long as you - express yourself.

I know nothing about this picture (sorry!) but it illustrates one of the many images that inspires me. Rainbows. Rain. The sun shining through dark clouds, illuminating the earth in discrete patches via magical rays of light. I find them uplifting and beautiful, and they always stop me in my tracks.

I almost chose the night sky (brightly studded jewels on a velvet background!) but finding a suitable image was more troublesome.... ;-)

Spiralling

Inspired by the feather and stones image, I started to look at patterns within nature, repeating patterns: circles, circles within circles, spheres, spirals, radials, waves, veins and branches. In the garden alone I found them in snails, pea tendrils, the acer japonicum, in the earth, in water and light and of course in me. The very limitlessness of the search left me in awe and led me to my quote of the day:

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." (Oscar Wilde)

Cloudy vision...

Having set this task, I have subsequently been struggling with what piece of 'visionary art' I can put up myself!!! There are certainly hundreds of paintings that have stopped me in my tracks, taken my breath away, or dragged me into them and away to far off places and possibilities.

But then I thought of something much simpler - and it isn't even really a piece of art, but a photo. A simple photo of a feather on a beach.

White feathers are seen by some as messages from angels, to let us know that they are there. This feather has clearly more to do with seagulls than angels, but it says something about the greater whole to me. I look at this feather, dropped by a seagull after a fight with a bag of chips on the prom no doubt, and it looks like it could just be a message from beyond. The rounded pebbles, randomly placed by the sea all around it, unquestioningly a strong reminder that nature is all around, and then this perfect white feather plonked on top and you just can't miss it.

And looking down at that feather it just doesn't look like a natural occurrence in nature. It looks like somebody has 'put it' there - like somebody has carefully placed and framed this picture to make it say something other than its component parts add up to. And yet this isn't an artist inviting us to take a step into the unknown beyond, but perhaps the unknown beyond inviting us to consider it is a possibility...

It certainly wasn't me who composed the picture. I just pointed the camera at it and clicked. Was it a disgruntled seagull? Or could it have been an angel...?

Visionary art...

Ok peeps. Let's kick off. This week's task takes us back to basics. Let's think about what inspires us creatively. What images help us to link the mundane everyday to the power within that inspires us and helps us tap into the creative driving force? Is there an image you can look at that just makes you think - of course!

I came across this link on Visionary Art. Its aim is to summarise the changing way in which artists have depicted the inspirational link to 'all that is' through the ages. From the Baby Jesus, via Rossetti's colourful, almost astral depictions, right up to Dali and altered states of consciousness, the article explores some of the ways in which art has depicted what is going on in the material world, but through a lens coloured by a perception of what might lie 'beyond'.

Pick a piece of art that does this for you. Post it on the blog and share your thoughts...