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
|
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.
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, Welcome, come inside the Wayward Cottage today. Well, as it once was fifteen years ago. We had to enter through the basement, go up the basement stairs, and break through a wall that once was a door when we first arrived. But luckily, the front door is usable now. Her bark is worse than her bite. Promise. Come, let’s meander upstairs. I want to show you something. It’s a beautiful clawfoot tub, mostly hidden behind faux brick paneling. I’m not sure why it was tucked away like...
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...