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 #5 - The Things That Haunt Us
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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 shut, and the piano remained beneath the trees. I have passed it countless times over the years. Each season the elements claim a little more of the piano, a little more of the chandelier. And every time I pass, I am compelled to photograph it. To capture its essence, which is never static, but ever haunting. I’ve photographed it by itself. With my daughter. With models. Eventually, when I began selling some of my vintage clothing, one of those photographs became my shop banner—my way of communicating something about the stories even our clothes carry through the world. I think we all have things like this. Places, objects, fragments of stories that catch somewhere in us. We may not know why. We may pass them a hundred times and still turn our heads on the hundred-and-first. Things that haunt us, not because they frighten us, but because they refuse to become familiar ​ ​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.
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