For our February challenge The Pieces of 8 were to create either a work of art based on a song or poem...or even a song or poem based on a work of art. How one meets the challenge is an individual choice. Here's how some of our members responded.
Carol's response to the challenge.
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| "A Call From Mother" by Carol Schiff 16x20" Oil on Canvas
Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call
Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall You've seen it all, you've seen it all Watched the men who rode you switch from sails to steam And in your belly you hold the treasures few have ever seen Most of them dream, most of them dream
Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder I'm an over-forty victim of fate Arriving too late, arriving too late I've done a bit of smuggling, I've run my share of grass I made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away so fast Never meant to last, never meant to last
And I have been drunk now for over two weeks
I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks But I got stop wishing, got to go fishing, down to rock bottom again Just a few friends, just a few friends |
Carmen's response to the challenge.
"Moon Over Miami"
Moon over Miami,
Shine on my love and me,
So we can stroll beside the roll
of the rolling sea.
Carmen Beecher
www.carmenbeecher.etsy.com
www.carmenbeecher.com
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Kathy's response to the challenge.
On the left above is one of 13 similar prints I found. On the right is my marker effort on top of another of the same print after about 45 minutes. I wasn't sure if the circle towards the top left was intended to be the sun or a flower. But the music was playing and my markers were dancing away to it. It sort of looks like both. (I highly recommend something fast like markers for Mozart's music! If watercolor would have worked, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep up.) Below is the finished combination - "Me and My Mom on Mozart." (Click on any image to enlarge it.)
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Donna's response to the challenge.
I have an old poster in my bedroom of Madame Butterfly. She has survived many moves and style changes because I love this opera so much. I see her every morning. Her back is to me and she is gazing out thinking of all she gave up but knowing in her heart that Pinkerton loves her and will return, sigh. I am so used to her I didn't realize how powerfully the aria "un bel di vedremo" affects me and anyone else who has heard it until I saw a Gauguin painting which reminded me of my poster and that aria. This young girl is sitting looking into the distance, alone amid a group of women. I can't help but wonder if her heart is breaking waiting for her American sailor to return.
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| Siesta after Gauguin Donnavinesart.etsy.com donnavinesart.blogspot.com **********
Fay's response to the challenge.
 Sunflowers 1877 Vincent Van Gogh Metropolitan Museum of Art
For this challenge, I have reverted to my most insistent creative instinct. I have reversed the February challenge and written a poem based on a painting.
Who can blame the sunflower?
Its energy, its inspiration,
its color, its form.
The way it reflects cultures.
Inspires painters, photographers.
Monet, Gaugin, O’Keefe. More.
In Sunflowers, 1877,
Van Gogh captured essence
with only two blooms.
Made beautiful the simple,
the imperfect, the spent.
Revealed the past is
always present in the future.
An image comes back.
Simply. High in the
my friends, my husband, me,
each in turn, set one foot on either side
of a low stone which still separates
A field of Swiss cows,
their brass bells, their low bleating,
broadcast their heavy pleasure.
An endless field of sunflowers,
each head turning (gira sole)
to follow the sun.
How could we blame that field, that lullaby,
that feeling of a world at peace?
How could we blame that moment in time
for what was to follow?
Just another beautiful September day.
That is, until it wasn’t.
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