Thomas Wolfe may have been right, You Can't Go Home Again, but if you make a collage it might feel as though you have. We can travel through art in ways that may not be open to us in any other medium.
When I saw @shaka's template photo in the LMAC Collage Contest this week, I knew immediately what I would do. I would go home. That is, I would revisit the peach orchard of my childhood. This was my grandfather's orchard and it was perhaps a quarter of a mile from my home.
@shaka's picture
From the orchard my siblings and I could look out at the valley below and see in the distance the largest city in our area, Newburgh. We couldn't actually see Newburgh, but at dusk the lights from that aging metropolis would twinkle on the horizon.
View of Newburgh From Across the Hudson River
Credit:Newburgh_and_Snake_Hill_panorama_from_across_Hudson_River_in_Beacon,_NY.jpg: Daniel Case. derivative work: Daniel Case. Used under CC 3.0 License
When I look at Google Maps now and ask for directions from my home of long ago to Newburgh, I am told there are only 5.9 miles between the two points. That is impossible for me to process. We were light years away in experience and lifestyle.
A Picture of Me with Two of My Siblings, and Our Dog
Credit: My oldest brother took this picture and gave it to me.
We lived so far from Newburgh that no yardstick could measure. We had almost no awareness of people outside our home, unless we went to school. It was just us, rambling around the field and the forest behind the house. If we heard the wheels of a car on the gravel in our driveway, we would be in a panic. No one ever came.
But the peach orchard allowed us a romantic vision of the distant city. It might as well have been New York City, or Paris. A place to imagine. That's all.
Here is another picture of me in a different season. Notice I'm always posing with at least one animal.
My Younger Sister and I With Our Cat and Dog
Credit: Taken by my oldest brother and given to me.
It might be hard for readers to reconcile the rough pictures from my childhood with the idyllic collage I created. The way things look are not necessarily the way they are experienced.
It's a cliche to say we had little in the way of material goods. We may not have had those, but we did have the whole of our world as a playground. Fields, brooks, trees, swamps. There never was a limiting presence, someone to tell us, "Don't go there. This, or that is not allowed." The way the collage looks is the way I felt about the countryside that was my home.
My first version of the collage was not animated. I put the stream in because the brook by our house was one of my favorite places, and it was a constant presence. I could hear it flowing when I went to sleep in my second floor bedroom. This was especially true when the stream swelled in springtime and rushed down to the Hudson River.
I thank my colleagues and friends from LMAC for the images they contributed to LIL, the LMAC Image Gallery. What would the picture be without that wonderful dog and dog house from @muelli? Or, without that personality-rich cat, from @redheadpei. Not to speak of @amilcar's expressive child, who holds the picture together. Finally, I needed the luscious blueberries/strawberries contributed by @tormenta, to decorate the ground shrubs.
I thank also my Pixabay sources: peaches from vizetelly, man picking fruit from Kuelfm, and the ladder from Clipart
There were, of course, missteps, but once I had the stream in place (I painted that with a GIMP Hatch Pen brush), my idea became more clear. I turned the boy into a girl, heightened the color on the dog house, added some rocks I had contributed to LIL, whitened the dog's teeth so they would stand out, put berries and fruit on the shrubs and trees.
Here are a few steps on my way toward completion of the collage:
When I had the picture together, I thought it would be fun to animate the animals, the fruit picker's arm, and the peach tree. I did that by using layers on GIMP.
Although LMAC does sponsor a collage contest, the community is more than that. I do not compete, and yet look at the effort I put into this collage. LMAC is about exploring a creative side of ourselves. Tomorrow Round #148 of the LMAC contest begins. Check it out and join the fun.
Today the community is voting on the finalists for the week. Join us. Everyone on Hive can vote for their favorites here. And anyone can borrow from or contribute to the LMAC Gallery. Here are the rules.
Thank you for reading my blog. I wish everyone a peaceful week.
