What's new?

The last week has been very productive for me. I now have 13 works completed for my Reading a Garden Series that is off to Ottawa next week. Yesterday I took them all to my photographer friend's studio to have them photographed - just in case some of them sell. How's that for tentative positive thinking?

It was very interesting seeing them all lined up as a physical manifestation of my two weeks movement and being in Birr Castle Demense last summer. In the combined work I saw emotions, sensory responses, social and historical commentary, symbolism, botanical information, and ecological and philosophical issues represented. I did not have a master plan as I began this work; one work lead to another and all these responses started to fall out. I am feeling good that I have captured the depth of this garden. It is frustrating for me not to be in a position to upload some of the pictures of the new work . I promise a thorough posting of all of them when I get back to my home computer at the end of August.

Today I am sitting to write commentary about each of the pieces for my reflection journal . I usually take time out from creating to reflect on what I have learned from creating the work, what I might have done new in terms of process, what questions I might have, new ideas from old work and how I am feeling about where I am in my practice.

After the reflection, I need to title each of them. I've decided on one word titles that will give the viewer a basic idea of where I was going with the piece or why I bothered to focus on it. I find titling difficult. I did consider just numbering them as Birr Castle Demense #1 , #2 etc. and discussed it with several artists and non-artists, and there was a general consensus that such an approach is annoying/frustrating . I would love to hear some commentary on your feelings and methods for creating titles (or not) for your work.