On the Shore

As she sits on the shore in her beloved fold up chair and faded towel, she is at ease.  She feels contentment throughout her being that she had not felt since last year sitting in this near exact spot.  It was a morning just like today, the sun feels fresh, the breeze is soft and the pelicans look as if they are enjoying the solitude just as much.  She found her mind drifting, but not staying in one thought too long.  She couldn’t risk being engulfed in her memories and not allowing her body to fully maximize the divine intervention she has become a part of on this perfectly harmonious shore. 

The shore inspires many and I am no different.  I find the horizon to be enchanting and my imagination to run wild with what is beyond that delicate line of blues.  I comb the beach for small treasures washed up that morning in high tide.  I like to think of the delicacies I find as beauties put there from the Great One, only for me to find and love.  Swimming in the ocean is one of life’s pure pleasures.  The waves are swift, sometimes warm and always refreshing.  I have found myself lost in the wave’s repetitive motion and free in the big blue.  Other times I enjoy the excitement of the next wave coming and satisfaction of sometimes winning the fold and eventual crash of one and having to dive into others, knowing I can’t win them all.  Of course this is where I could interject parallels of how fighting and dodging waves swimming in the ocean can be so much like life, but I will leave your mind to pull those similarities together.  Above all, the shore has so much to offer and you only need to bring your mind free of expectations to enjoy it.

My work can only benefit from my occasional trips to the different shores I visit throughout each year.  My collections range from shells of North Carolina’s creeks, rivers and the Atlantic to worn brick bits and unique shells from the Chesapeake Bay.  I may not always work out each idea, but the creativity is there.  I would like to share with you some of my collections and other ideas I am working on.

I used the netting bag my children's toys came in to collect my treasures this past summer.  The word "sea" written in steel wire, laying on hand dyed fabric.  Still trying to work this into a collage....

The center shell looks like toes

Fossil-like shells.  Something draws me to these porous fragments, I adore a find such as these!

Brick bits and a split clam.  Some brick bits have swirls of lighter shades you can see and the deep browns of the clam shells are beautiful.  Now, some of my recent artwork...

Artist Artifacts is a triptych I created with burlap, hand dyed fabric, glass and ceramic fragments, various beads, wire, wooden branches, cornstarch dough artifacts, a porous shell and a beautifully contoured shell

Closeup of the contoured shell, in the upper right

A word collage I created spelling "love" framed in a black shadow box.  The "o" is a shell with a pearl atop.  Other materials I used were wood, job tears beads, glass beads, white shell beads, wire, ribbon and hand dyed fabric

Organic Chain is a necklace where the large shell is strung as if it were a bead itself.  Strung with the large shell are also Egyptian clay beads, glass, horn and wood beads and handmade steel wire beads.



A bracelet created with small oyster shell beads, bayong wood bead, other wood and glass beads, as well as a steel wire bead basket around shell beads and two pearls.

The love of the ocean resonants with us all, now if only we could capture, not just the ocean's treasures but the beauty we see in our own masterpiece.  Well, what an artist holiday that would be...

hannah