Art Travel

Pamela Goode Mosaics, Set 2

/ Pam Goode / 7 Comments

Artwork Top to Bottom and Left to Right:

The Wishing Tree: SOLD, 8″ x 8″, Glass, Millefiori on Wedi Board.
Colorado Dawn: AVAILABLE, 7″H and 13″ W, Mexican Smalti, Mexican Smalti Tortillas, Chopped and Divoted.
Mirrored Wall: NOT AVAILABLE, 33″H x 15″W, Hand-Cut Mirror and Colored Mirror; Outdoor Installation for Ciel Gallery (now demolished).
Wasteland: SOLD, 18″ x 18″; Agate, Mirror, Stained Glass, Unglazed Porcelain, Aquarium Gravel, Pewter; This mosaic began with a dream. Because the image is so void-like, I included lines from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland and The Hollow Men using small pewter beads that crash into the deep. The mirror-backed “void” reflects the viewer. From the center, spirals of poetry and blank human faces form a rough heart shape, balancing the sense of desolation with a touch of hope. From the central abyss, the tesserae become less defined and increasingly chaotic, until in some spots there are no tesserae at all, but only a gouged space remaining.
He Said, She Said: NOT AVAILABLE; 12″ x 7″ Drawing on Paper (created for a future project that didn’t happen).
Sunbather: NFS, 10″H x 10″W by 5″ Deep; Crystal, Beads, Agate, Glass, Shell, Copper on Stone.
Wild Hearts: SOLD, Unglazed Porcelain, Clay, Beads.
Sunflower Table: SOLD, 46″ rectangular mosaic partially shown, Glass.
The Boy with a Moon and Star: SOLD, Glass on Wedi Board.
Late Bloomer: AVAILABLE, 10″H x 36″L x 18″W; Selected by and displayed at the Society of American Mosaics 2010; Glass, Metal, Mineral, Shell, Beads, Carborundum, Wire, Hand-Carved Styrofoam base by me; Through art, I hope to capture and momentarily magnify archetypal awakenings that resonate with the human spirit. I’m drawn to create with mixed materials because I want, above all, to create as full an image as I can manage. Late Bloomer pulls from the miscellanea of life — sometimes messy, sometimes arbitrary, always fascinating, always more cluttered than we had imagined. The pruning and fitting together of disparate materials becomes a way to order my own thoughts, emotions, and priorities, allowing the finished piece to serve as a kind of talisman.

In the Jungle

/ Pam Goode / 8 Comments

The weather here is capricious, dancing from warm to cool to humid to breezy on a whim. Showers are so light they almost pass detection — they simply whisper by and are gone in a breath, and it’s something like watching a play while seated onstage — you feel everything from the joy to the spit.

The changing weather reminds me I’m on top of a mountain both physically and emotionally — not Everest, to be sure, but high enough to be face to face with changing currents not only of air and nature, but also the currents of thought and emotion within me. Nothing is static here.

Up at 5:45, I’ve already missed the sunrise. I walk to breakfast early to do some writing, and all nine of us are already there, ready to take on the day. We scarf down eggs cooked with tomato, beans and rice, half-dollar-sized cornmeal cakes, rustic bread, buffalo cheese (fabulous), buffalo yogurt, and carambola (starfruit) jam.

As soon as I finish, I miss the tastes.

By 9:00 we’re gathered for our tour of the organic farm, and before we hit the path, our guide Ishmael has already shown us a tree full of toucans (yesterday a flock of parakeets flew overhead); jackfruit, which can weight up to 75 pounds and often hangs bulbously and pimpled in an unseemly flop between forks in the tree; and the fruit of the Lipstick Tree, a beautifully freakish hairy and crimson pod used to color lips, cheddar cheese, fingers (oops) and cheetos.

Just beyond, Ishmael moves beneath a large bush, reaches both hands overhead to grasp an oblong yellow fruit, and begins twisting it on the stem until it snaps. About a foot long, this is cacao — the mother of chocolate. Smashed once against a trunk, the pod opens to reveal a white slime which we’re encouraged to taste, and it is deliciously sweet/tart with the faintest hint of bitter chocolate.

Later, Ishmael hands us the halves of several nerf-ball-sized green orbs with fleshy spikes, with a thicker white goo-ish interior. This is anonas, or custard apple, also known as ice cream fruit, and the most sublime mouthful I’ve ever tasted. I eat more than my share — scooping out the custard with my fingers and licking it up eagerly.

We pass drying racks for the cacao beans, used for chocolate smoothies onsite, hives for sting-less bees, an organic kitchen garden for the open air dining hall, papaya trees, the seed-starting greenhouse, the compost house where waste is buried in horns to add calcium to the soil, and a tasting table for ginger and turmeric, the two primary crops. The turmeric root is more orange than the spice — a WAKE-UP orange — and those who nibble it for a sample spend the rest of the day with orange teeth. Turmeric, which fights inflammation, is also as an antiseptic, and has antioxidant, antiviral, and anti-tumor properties, as well as being used as a dye for the saffron-colored robes of Buddhist monks. It would be a lovely landscape plant in any garden.

After a perfectly-cooked lunch of coconut-crusted white fish, we’re off on the rainforest path through a secondary-growth stand. The path is mossy and moist, with miniature fairy plants cascading across the forest floor and skinny sun-seekers so tall I can’t see their tops. In between, greens tangle across and upon and below each other, taking root in the most inane of places. Philodendrons and ferns and mosses and every type of epiphyte line the trunks from here to there, and when I look up, I can watch a single drop of moisture fall from the canopy high above me right down to my toes.

It’s like walking through a wonderland, except that nothing here exists for show. Every plant or insect has a purpose, and it’s a big one, symbiotic and natural. Wish it were so easy for humans.

Creating a Life: Inspiration from Orvieto

/ Pam Goode / 12 Comments

Pamela GoodeThere are those who ask me why I love to travel. In a few words: the exploration, the reversion to a simple and spare life, the crisp solitude of being alone in a new culture and unfamiliar language. Quite simply, stripped of my accustomed ways of being, I open my eyes and see. I remember who I am (and who I am not) and redefine the ways I want to experience my finite number of years. Travel sets me free to choose anew and gives me focus.

Below are a few things I’ve learned about myself during a cultural immersion week in Orvieto, Italy, and a handful of images to remind me when I’m tempted to give in to big city ways and forget.

I Want to Live a Life

I want to live a life on the edge — a life between consciousness and culture, between solitude and community, with easy access to the gifts of both.

Adventures in Italy

I want to live a life where city walls both shield and embrace, but also beckon me past my accustomed boundaries.

I want to live a life engulfed in scents and tastes and textures, with visual surprise around every corner, be it a new village or a just-unfurling jasmine bud.

I want to live a life where the strong and stalwart and majestic serve as constants for the fragile, a land where the porosity and lightness of stone do nothing to diminish its fortitude.

I want to live a life where both the dead and the living are honored, and joyously — a life where Etruscan tombs from 400 BC sit beneath the waving of wild cherries, and a waiter from lunch three days ago will wave you down in the lane for a smile.

A life where it’s okay to say hello to anyone you pass, to acknowledge life wherever it exists, including your own.

I want to live a life on many levels, from the surety and abundant offerings of ground and field to the communal path, the surprise and joy of rooftop gardens, the soaring art on soaring cathedrals to cotton ball skies and Jupiter shining above the lane after dinner in Charlie’s gardens.

I want to live a life where children in gingham smocks gather magnolia leaf bouquets and squeal with delight, where song is a part of every day’s curriculum, where physical safety is a given.

I want to live a life as many-layered as this cypress, this town, these rooftops.

I want to live a life with as much community as these vibrant streets and as much peace as these convent gardens.

I want to live a life as broad as this vista, completely unbounded by my psyche and conventions, my habits and my fears. I want a life with such clarity and vision that all of my options are recognizable.

I want to live a life where unexpected joy exists stunningly, and sometimes consists only of a gathering of simple greenery. Where the breezes dance, where the air is cool and clear and food holds the tastes of sunshine, rain, and origin.

People ask me why I travel. I travel to pull myself out of daily habits and rituals that keep me from growth. I travel to empty and refill my soul, to recapture moments that makes my heart beat faster.

So Go. See. Assimilate. Love It Up and let it make you better. And do whatever it takes to sear those images and awakenings onto your heart for the days ahead. Take photos. If there’s one thing I’ve learned taking 57 million photos of life, it’s this: turn around. From every position, there are at least two views, and they will constantly surprise you.

P.S. I’m very blessed to be traveling for six weeks in Italy and Ireland. Endless thanks to Adventures in Italy for giving me the fabulous opportunity to teach, to the loving and adventurous  group that accompanied me to Italy, to Olive Stack Gallery in Listowel Ireland for gifting me an entire month to explore and create, to the inimitable and wondrous Olive herself, and to Laura McRae Hitchcock, best residency partner on the planet. You can read more about my Irish adventures for the month of June at https://exciraanddelira.wordpress.com. Love to All!