Occasional dispatches from an artist and writer about making things, noticing things, and following strange threads through art, story, landscape, and the creative life. Sometimes I'll leave you an image to carry away.
🕯️ Haunted Lantern #3 - The Things That Wait
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Hi there Reader, Today I'm taking you up into the woods. There are no paths there that the deer haven't made. Instead there are ridges and rock formations, an abandoned house, traces of a forgotten road, and eventually, a swamp. I've spent over 15 years wandering and photographing these woods - occasionally being lucky enough to find a morel mushroom or two for dinner. The woods themselves feel full of history and stories, waiting to be discovered. One fall afternoon in 2013 I found a rickety old handmade ladder. Years ago it was likely used for hunting. But now, it obviously was going to lead nowhere - not anymore anyway. And that, in and of itself, felt like a story. And so I went back, wearing a vintage nightgown (like you do), and propped the ladder up against a tree for a short series of self portraits. Then I did absolutely nothing with the image. For four years. And then, one day, the story arrived. It wasn't a story of a ladder going nowhere. It was a question of "what now?" when the path appeared to end. So now I offer this to you: Haunted Lanterns are occasional dispatches from my Wayward Cottage — notes on making things, noticing things, and following strange threads through art, story, landscape, and the creative life. Subscribers sometimes receive a little something to carry away. If you’d like the next Lantern delivered to you, you can join me here.
Happy wandering, Jen |
Jen Kiaba
Occasional dispatches from an artist and writer about making things, noticing things, and following strange threads through art, story, landscape, and the creative life. Sometimes I'll leave you an image to carry away.
Hi there Reader, There are some nights where sleep is a threshold that refuses to be crossed. You might find yourself drifting ever closer to the edge of that liminal space where waking thoughts dissipate into the strangeness of dreams - and then suddenly you jolt back towards wakefulness. You can circle back again, perhaps looking for another way to cross into the land of twilight. Some nights you may find yourself there. On others, you may find yourself haunting those darkest hours, eyelids...
Hi there Reader, Back before the Wayward Cottage, in the days of the wayside carriage house, there were many a night where I found that I could not sleep. Perhaps it was the wind that whistled through a door in the bedroom that opened, inexplicably, out onto the roof. Maybe it was the moonlight that would peek in through that door. Either way, there were plenty of sleepless nights. And so I donned an vintage nightgown, wandered downstairs, and take eerie self portraits. Like one does,...
Hi there Reader, Come take a walk with me today, a ways down the road from the Wayward Cottage.There’s an old abandoned property there, slowly being reclaimed by the woods. Years ago, when the place was still inhabited, an artist installed a piano beneath towering trees. Above it hung a chandelier of illuminated glass orbs. Inside the piano he placed a speaker, and for a single day it seemed as though the piano itself were playing a haunting sonata. And then everyone left. The doors were...