"Say Not Of Beauty" (for she is a child)

"In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile."

~ Elinor Wylie

I just have a few weeks left to complete the work for my mixed media fabric book... the prof is a
a six foot table loaded up with projects along with the kits that I have stuffed into large zip lock baggies, that I will use to react the art for the week that I will be in the F&W studio shooting the step outs...


I have a list of projects that I must complete, and as I was working on one a few days ago and I needed a word...


I adore old books and have many... I am exceptionally happy when I find small and demure ones falling apart with micro text so I do not feel so bad when I rip out pages or cut out the perfect word.


I keep a small stack of books on my desk on my right hand side that I am always reaching for. I had just added to the mix The Oxford Book Of American Verse (1950) a few days ago and had not really given it a good look. but just as I reached for it I really hit a wall, and needed to some how dissolve and let the creative process flow from within and just create for the sake of play as my inner child has been suppressed working on projects from a list.

As I thumbed through this small thick book that fit so nicely in the palms of my hands, I became lost in the beauty of poets and found myself transfixed by a woman words.
Immediately I knew that I had to some how take what she had written well over a 100 years ago and turn a part of her into a part of me.

So with paper mixed with paints, pencil, pen combined with thread and cloth I started a journey that began many years even before my grandmother was born. Inspiration is all around us just waiting to spark and ignite passion and sometimes it is the spark that we are not even looking for that can change us the most.

(please note that all the photos that I have shared is not the piece in its entirety nor is it yet competed as it is still in its infancy)

Beauty by Elinor Wylie

Say not of beauty she is good,
Or aught but beautiful,
Or sleek to doves' wings of the wood
Her wild wings of a gull.

Call her not wicked; that word's touch
Consumes her like a curse;
But love her not too much, too much,
For that is even worse.

O, she is neither good nor bad,
But innocent and wild!
Enshrine her and she dies, who had
The hard heart of a child.