Artist Statement for place writing book
Cypress Ellen
English
1/7/11
There are several focal points on my encircled page, including some of the selected writing. First, on the inside is my hand as well as some of my hair. This is a good way for me to (excluding mirrors) that’s all I can see of myself. Another reason it represents me well is that I love to draw, write, and work with my hands in general.
The tree with the branch leaning into it represents my place. It doesn’t look exactly how it does in real life, but this is how I wanted to represent it. I think is better in black and white as my place is kind of a childhood memory place, not somewhere as three dimensional as it was to me before.
On the backside of my encircled page is an abstract drawing of grass, flowers, and the base of the branch that leans into the cedar tree. This part of my encircled page represents, among its more obvious meanings, spring and childhood. This part of my encircled page also has a small section of my place writing on it. It reads,
“After winter comes
Spring. Cheerful, bouncy, pretty.
Childhood was the spring”
I chose to put this of my writing here because I wanted to represent my ideas about childhood and spring a bit more than in the abstract way I already had.
For the inside of my encircled page the writing I chose wasn’t necessarily specific to the picture, but that was because both my picture and my place writing were meant to represent mostly everything about my place. The only specifics on the writing I chose were; that they be referring to the past of my place. (I didn’t represent the present my place in the picture.)
As media, I used watercolor pencils, sharpie, pen and ink, watercolor crayons, and a prismacolor colored pencil. (Also paper, mechanical pencil, ruler.)
Cypress Ellen
English
1/7/11
There are several focal points on my encircled page, including some of the selected writing. First, on the inside is my hand as well as some of my hair. This is a good way for me to (excluding mirrors) that’s all I can see of myself. Another reason it represents me well is that I love to draw, write, and work with my hands in general.
The tree with the branch leaning into it represents my place. It doesn’t look exactly how it does in real life, but this is how I wanted to represent it. I think is better in black and white as my place is kind of a childhood memory place, not somewhere as three dimensional as it was to me before.
On the backside of my encircled page is an abstract drawing of grass, flowers, and the base of the branch that leans into the cedar tree. This part of my encircled page represents, among its more obvious meanings, spring and childhood. This part of my encircled page also has a small section of my place writing on it. It reads,
“After winter comes
Spring. Cheerful, bouncy, pretty.
Childhood was the spring”
I chose to put this of my writing here because I wanted to represent my ideas about childhood and spring a bit more than in the abstract way I already had.
For the inside of my encircled page the writing I chose wasn’t necessarily specific to the picture, but that was because both my picture and my place writing were meant to represent mostly everything about my place. The only specifics on the writing I chose were; that they be referring to the past of my place. (I didn’t represent the present my place in the picture.)
As media, I used watercolor pencils, sharpie, pen and ink, watercolor crayons, and a prismacolor colored pencil. (Also paper, mechanical pencil, ruler.)
Is Thoreau Relevant?
Cypress Ellen
12/3/10
Henry David Thoreau is probably best known for Walden and the revolutionary transcendentalist ideas he included in it. He lived from 1817 to 1862, graduated from Harvard college and worked, or thought rather, a lot with Emerson. He lived a revolutionary life and wrote a book about it. Today we still know that book and study it. But are his ideas, now about 150 years old, still relevant to us today in 2010?
As with every author, I must admit that some of his ideas are relevant and despite their age, still apply to us. Thoreau believes in connecting ones self to nature; simplifying instead of focusing on what we can’t understand; and living life to the fullest. How can anyone argue with that? The only thing that makes his ideas irrelevant to today is that they have lost some of their revolutionary qualities. These ideas aren’t quite as novel as they were in the 1800’s. Nonetheless, these basic and yet easily forgotten ideas do still apply to us.
One of Thoreau’s best qualities as a writer is his ability to paint nature into a beautiful picture using only his words. Sometimes its overdone, but when done right it gives you a real connection to what he saw, and to nature in general. In the Pond in Winter he says, “I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass,” he goes on, “There a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky,” he finishes with, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” (Thoreau page 204-205) His words are played out so smoothly I can really see the heaven under my feet, I can connect my own being to that little picture. This, I assume, is exactly what he was aiming to do. Undoubtedly nature is, in each leaf and grain of soil, as complex and genuinely beautiful as we are.
Thoreau seems very opinionated about simplicity, he implies that it is necessity and that the more we complicate our lives with machinery and conforming society the less spiritually adept we become. In Where I Lived, and What I Lived for “…let your affairs be as one or two, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million, count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.” (Thoreau page 203) It is incredibly easy for our humanity to get caught up in big numbers without realizing what were counting is a relatively small matter, we could probably benefit from a bit of simplification and common sense. Our lives our bound to be complicated, we live in 2010 and almost all of us get our work done on the computer, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to simplify or resort to mans best friend; logic.
To live his life to the fullest, Thoreau went to the woods. Living ones life deeply and spiritually seems to be another one of Thoreau’s major topics. Also in Where ILived, and What I Lived for Thoreau explains the importance living deeply had to him. “…to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau page 203) How often is it that you feel you’re repeating the same day over and over and over pointlessly? I know I feel it. Things like that are bound to happen but its important that we don’t let them control us. To live deeply we have to understand what we are living for. I think its very important for all of to understand what this means one day.
Thoreau’s ideas changed many peoples ideas and were a revolution in philosophy and spiritualism. Today his ideas are more well known and thus less unheard of. They may have less of an impact than before but their value has not changed. This is why even today, even after so many things have changed, Thoreau’s ideas can still be seen as relevant to us.
Works Cited
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Adventures in American literature. ED. Francis Hodgins and Kenneth Silverman. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, !980. 203-209
Cypress Ellen
12/3/10
Henry David Thoreau is probably best known for Walden and the revolutionary transcendentalist ideas he included in it. He lived from 1817 to 1862, graduated from Harvard college and worked, or thought rather, a lot with Emerson. He lived a revolutionary life and wrote a book about it. Today we still know that book and study it. But are his ideas, now about 150 years old, still relevant to us today in 2010?
As with every author, I must admit that some of his ideas are relevant and despite their age, still apply to us. Thoreau believes in connecting ones self to nature; simplifying instead of focusing on what we can’t understand; and living life to the fullest. How can anyone argue with that? The only thing that makes his ideas irrelevant to today is that they have lost some of their revolutionary qualities. These ideas aren’t quite as novel as they were in the 1800’s. Nonetheless, these basic and yet easily forgotten ideas do still apply to us.
One of Thoreau’s best qualities as a writer is his ability to paint nature into a beautiful picture using only his words. Sometimes its overdone, but when done right it gives you a real connection to what he saw, and to nature in general. In the Pond in Winter he says, “I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass,” he goes on, “There a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky,” he finishes with, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” (Thoreau page 204-205) His words are played out so smoothly I can really see the heaven under my feet, I can connect my own being to that little picture. This, I assume, is exactly what he was aiming to do. Undoubtedly nature is, in each leaf and grain of soil, as complex and genuinely beautiful as we are.
Thoreau seems very opinionated about simplicity, he implies that it is necessity and that the more we complicate our lives with machinery and conforming society the less spiritually adept we become. In Where I Lived, and What I Lived for “…let your affairs be as one or two, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million, count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.” (Thoreau page 203) It is incredibly easy for our humanity to get caught up in big numbers without realizing what were counting is a relatively small matter, we could probably benefit from a bit of simplification and common sense. Our lives our bound to be complicated, we live in 2010 and almost all of us get our work done on the computer, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to simplify or resort to mans best friend; logic.
To live his life to the fullest, Thoreau went to the woods. Living ones life deeply and spiritually seems to be another one of Thoreau’s major topics. Also in Where ILived, and What I Lived for Thoreau explains the importance living deeply had to him. “…to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau page 203) How often is it that you feel you’re repeating the same day over and over and over pointlessly? I know I feel it. Things like that are bound to happen but its important that we don’t let them control us. To live deeply we have to understand what we are living for. I think its very important for all of to understand what this means one day.
Thoreau’s ideas changed many peoples ideas and were a revolution in philosophy and spiritualism. Today his ideas are more well known and thus less unheard of. They may have less of an impact than before but their value has not changed. This is why even today, even after so many things have changed, Thoreau’s ideas can still be seen as relevant to us.
Works Cited
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Adventures in American literature. ED. Francis Hodgins and Kenneth Silverman. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, !980. 203-209
English/American studies
Walden response
Cypress Ellen
11/22/10
A stick that against
a cedar tree leans, makes a
pirate ship to sail
When we came to this yellow house, my sister and I soon found the pirate ship. It was a log, sanded away by time to a thinner frame than its original, wedged into a split (as in separated into two) cedar tree. The log was our deck and the tree, our masts. Being girls, we usually enjoyed such piratical activities as jewel collecting (crystals found in the drive way and crushed with a rock) or cooking the ship meals. (Usually a burrito-like confection made with a leaf.) That was not to say that we couldn’t get a little wild at times, however.
Barefoot because the
summer time allows, and the
green leaves are a sea
The pirate ship mast was some of the most fun because you could climb up it a little ways. Someone (I don’t remember who) once climbed up much further than we ever had on the mast and we were both very impressed. My sister and I could never get quite that high, sadly.
Whoever was on the mast was usually captain, a coveted position, but probably sought after only because the captain got to be on the mast. We didn’t seek the title captain, merely the captain’s material position. I can’t really remember why the mast was so coveted, but I think I can make a guess. Have you ever walked to a certain spot or picked up a random object without even thinking? I would be surprised if you hadn’t. It's intuition, something we use a lot, especially in childhood. How else could we know that under our beds in the dark was a monster? Or that right now was the perfect time to dump all our building blocks on the floor? It's just something we know, here is the best place.
Look out upon my
World. Smile because it’s all yours
Green, gray, brown and love
At this point the small ship is not used by young pirates or any at all. Nor is the surrounding hill which used to be called Pirate Hill. Now some trees have fallen from the hill, and one of them broke our car as well as part of the house. It's not even close to the same place it was, even if it doesn’t look all that different. While the pirate ship was our play place, every season was like spring. But now it is more like fall when I look at it. When we forget about it, it will be winter, and the snow will cover it entirely. Through out childhood we all go through various play places and inevitably forget all of them. But this was our last place, or my last place really; my younger sister may still have more.
Realizing that, I guess I’m not a little kid anymore.
The small wooden boat
Still stands, forgotten now. But
Trees are falling near
Spring is ending.
After winter comes
Spring. Joyful, bouncy, pretty
Childhood was the spring.
And so, summer begins.
In the joyful sun
It’s easy to forget what was
Loving every moment
Walden response
Cypress Ellen
11/22/10
A stick that against
a cedar tree leans, makes a
pirate ship to sail
When we came to this yellow house, my sister and I soon found the pirate ship. It was a log, sanded away by time to a thinner frame than its original, wedged into a split (as in separated into two) cedar tree. The log was our deck and the tree, our masts. Being girls, we usually enjoyed such piratical activities as jewel collecting (crystals found in the drive way and crushed with a rock) or cooking the ship meals. (Usually a burrito-like confection made with a leaf.) That was not to say that we couldn’t get a little wild at times, however.
Barefoot because the
summer time allows, and the
green leaves are a sea
The pirate ship mast was some of the most fun because you could climb up it a little ways. Someone (I don’t remember who) once climbed up much further than we ever had on the mast and we were both very impressed. My sister and I could never get quite that high, sadly.
Whoever was on the mast was usually captain, a coveted position, but probably sought after only because the captain got to be on the mast. We didn’t seek the title captain, merely the captain’s material position. I can’t really remember why the mast was so coveted, but I think I can make a guess. Have you ever walked to a certain spot or picked up a random object without even thinking? I would be surprised if you hadn’t. It's intuition, something we use a lot, especially in childhood. How else could we know that under our beds in the dark was a monster? Or that right now was the perfect time to dump all our building blocks on the floor? It's just something we know, here is the best place.
Look out upon my
World. Smile because it’s all yours
Green, gray, brown and love
At this point the small ship is not used by young pirates or any at all. Nor is the surrounding hill which used to be called Pirate Hill. Now some trees have fallen from the hill, and one of them broke our car as well as part of the house. It's not even close to the same place it was, even if it doesn’t look all that different. While the pirate ship was our play place, every season was like spring. But now it is more like fall when I look at it. When we forget about it, it will be winter, and the snow will cover it entirely. Through out childhood we all go through various play places and inevitably forget all of them. But this was our last place, or my last place really; my younger sister may still have more.
Realizing that, I guess I’m not a little kid anymore.
The small wooden boat
Still stands, forgotten now. But
Trees are falling near
Spring is ending.
After winter comes
Spring. Joyful, bouncy, pretty
Childhood was the spring.
And so, summer begins.
In the joyful sun
It’s easy to forget what was
Loving every moment