What is an Epistolarium?

Was asked by Theresa at The Letter Project to consider the epistolarium. Monday morning I ranted: Try reading it with one breath.

1

Episolarium Rant

A room with a view

solarium, aquarium, agrarian

Place where ideas grow

weave, weft, hook

Paper words

between people

More practical than missiles

or pistols

Plural, equal, altered

born, hatched, spawned

missives.

Epistolarium ovarian

women words

organic shapes

Victorian? Matissian?

hothouse determination

Uprising of letters

an anti-Lariam, epistolarium

a community

of eco egos

Epicenter of postal prodding

to the edges of knowing and beyond

This morning the epistolarium woke me up. 

2

Epistolarium of my mind

Waking me

shaking me

sheet-shimmying me

Levitating liberating

translating my days

Hemisphere within

letters hanging

words colliding

form-finding

sound-binding

Winking smiling

Spinning its trance

A monotype  made on a mirror (Akua Kolor and Akua Intaglio).

Drawing at Nayland Farm

 Daily pastel drawing.  I'm getting my eye in, noticing the colours more - intune with nature, not even minding that the day is getting shorter.

word and image ping pong

Nayland Farm from the back 04/10/2012

My Punctuation

The glissading hull to our Somes Sound buoy,

man-boy gaff hooking the bow to the picturesque scene.

Apple-bobbing down the aisles of the orchard,

Lifting perfect windfalls from their beds of grass.

Fingers of arthritic trees sparkling in squares around fields.

Granite till underfoot . How loud thawing is.

A red tulip’s imperfect navigation as it rises

through the middle of wooden tangles, surprising the taupe of life.

Rebecca Moss Guyver

27 September, 2012

Have been doing what I do with kids, visual and word ping pong.  Reading, drawing, painting, writing and again.

Now that they're all gone: let's begin

NOW THAT THEY’RE  ALL GONE: LETS BEGIN

Before shaking, cajoling,

wrestling the key

in the studio lock,

get the gesso

and paint a wide streak

down the laundry pile.

Use that erasure brush

so the heaving basket

disappears.

Don’t notice the dishes;

forgo the broom;

avoid eye contact

with the flowers that droop

their pollen in tears

on the kitchen table.

Pause before stepping

into this other room.

Try! Unlearn the duty

you’ve spelt in your sleep.

Unhook its badge!

Delicately rest its body

in a velvet box

hidden in a sock.

Rebecca Guyver

25 September, 2012

blind drawing

I've lost my glasses so mornings are blurry.  I have been making anew habit of doing 'blind drawings' in the hour or so when I wake up.  They are B & W, using permanent archival ink pens on cartridge paper.  Later I scan and print them and have been working backinto them with colour.  I'm crazy about clear gesso at the moment for its transparency and because it creates such muted colour.

I\ve been doing two every morning and selecting on to use as my mailart. This was the second from the first day and it must have had something splashed on it.  It had a snow like quality so I worked back into it.

With Peter Lloyd-Jones in mind I looked at the kitchen table for inspiration.

I have done a few others but in this one I decided to add something that wasn't really in the view and to use some heightened, perhaps not so naturalistic colour to the image.  Then I nudged the colour a bit more in photoshop.

Trying to tame new ink

So inspiring to visit six stunning gardens yesterday.  Today it rained so was indoors more than usual and found time to think about some of the motifs from the day.  The sunhat was a recurring theme.

These new Akua Kolor inks just aren't behaving the way they did in England, so I am having to work back into prints.

These are postcard size but perhaps I can take some of the ideas and scale them up or translate them into a different material.