Commit Acts of Art Every Day: A Week of Haiku

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."  Albert Einstein 

After posting my small book of eight haiku ten days ago, I set my mind to conjure up a few more. I have stayed with the three line structure of 5-7-5 morae [sound units], which are commonly misinterpreted as "syllables" in English. How well I remember an English teacher in high school drumming that pattern into our grey matter. Modern English speaking haikuists [I made that up] go in for 10 to 14 sound units in three lines to capture the brevity of the traditional Japanese haiku. Writers/artists can do whatever they want these days.

Is Spring awaking

or just a hint of fragrance

lingering at dawn?

Winter: a bleak time

made bearable by firelight

and Grandma's old quilt.

Circles are magic

creatures of degrees: like squares

or two triangles.

For years, I have been intrigued, and some what enamored, with the curious phenomenon known as the collective noun. Where such curiosities as a garrison of gophers, a twangle of harps, or a court of kangaroos originated gives pause for thought. Years ago, I wrote an article about a Utah educational librarian conference and titled it, "A Shush of Librarians." Hence, the next four haiku feature collective nouns, the fourth being inspired by the Congress of the US of A.

A murder of crows

in bare, black trees commanding

the dusk to depart.

On a wet fence rail

a tittering of magpies

discusses the rain.

A charm of fairies

sings in my garden

at appointed hours.

A pratfall of clowns

is not an invitation

to sanely converse.

Book Arts Mania: A Little Book of Haiku

"Writing is a form of creative expression that is just as important as any other art form." Mary Turner Thomson

In honor of the annual International Haiku Poetry Day, 17 April, which I missed yesterday, I am sharing a little book I made in the early 2000s. It is titled Eight Haiku. My idea was to write two haiku for each of the seasons, but when I bound the book (using Asian stab binding), one of the pages with a fall inspired haiku was left out and later lost. So, the reader must create a haiku of their own.

Commit Acts of Art: Two Plus One

"Collage is the twentieth century's greatest innovation."  Robert Motherwell

I finished two pages in a collage sketchbook and one chunk-o-cardboard postcard last night.

This is the postcard. I usually use decorated packing tape on the printed surface of the cardboard, but as I have previously sent a chunk-o-cardboard postcard to this trade partner on Swap-bot, I tried something different for the current trade.

These are the two new pages from the 2026 sketchbook. 

Commit Acts of Art Every day: Postcards

 "Not every act of art creates something special, but it does create something. It is the act of art that is important, not the result." Michael L. Goodman

I participated in a "stickerbomb" postcard trade this week on Swap-bot. The challenge was to cover the address sides of any three postcards and send them to your assigned trade partners. As fun as Swap-bot.com has been, I am afraid the site is in danger of  disappearing from the internet like MailArt365. It is almost impossible now to log on to the site and navigate to the various swaps without getting a error messages. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Commit Acts of Art: Bits and Pieces

 "One principle of collage is, you have to kill one thing to make another. It's a small-scale model of revolutionary behavior." Lucy Sante, collage artist, author, and critic.

 It is the "killing" of one thing, tearing or cutting an image, that is sometimes the difficult part of collage for me; especially if it is a piece of ephemera I have had for years or that belonged to someone no longer here. Then there is getting just the right piece glued down where it has to be - not tearing too much or leaving too much. And, what do you cover up with another scrap here, with a circle there, with a cut out "ransom-note word" here or another there. Behind it all: what am I trying to say, if anything.

Anyway, I have been working on 24 small collages for a few days while also making post cards for swapping. While rummaging for papers, I found some that I made almost twenty years ago. They are slick magazine pages that were treated with Citra-Sol causing the inks to run. After the wet pages were pressed together, interesting patterns emerged when the pages were pulled apart. I will use some of these in the collages I am working on.

Commit Acts of Art: Collage Again

 "Circles, like the soul, are never ending and turn round and round without a stop." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have only been able to create bits and pieces of many unfinished collages this month. Here are two finished works on facing pages in my collage workbook, and two collage postcards made for Swap-Bot trades.

Door  5 1/2 " X 8 1/4 "

Moon Text  5 1/2 " X 8 1/4 "

I love the circle, the oval, and flowing free-form shapes. I use those shapes, especially the circle, in almost everything I create.

These postcards measure 5" X 7". I have my fingers crossed that they will survive the postal machinery and arrive unscathed.

Commit Acts of Art: Growing Collages

 "I work like a gardener ... Things come slowly ... Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. I must graft. I must water ... Ripening goes on in my mind. So I am always working on a great many things at the same time." Joan Miró

These are two collage experiments I grew yesterday afternoon and this morning. They are in my small collage journal and are 5½" X 8¼".