I was off work sick today - very bad cold in my chest. At one point I had to go out to the pharmacy to get more supplies to keep my cold under control and I walked through the Byward Market in Ottawa. The farmers' market was a mass of beautiful autumn colours!
Everywhere I looked, there were stacks of produce coloured orange, russet, brown - perfect for the first day of Autumn.
This table full of gourds was amazing!
It wasn't very warm out (only about 17 degrees Celsius) but there were lots of people milling about. I bet most of them were just like me - enjoying the wonderful sights and colours of the market.
Isn't this display of peppers wonderful? Almost makes up for the fact that summer is over.
It seems like ages since I spent time in my studio. The summer always presents a lot of distractions - like gardening and mowing grass and just lounging on the porch. But two weekends ago, I managed to get back in the studio again, and it was so much fun.
I had taken a photograph earlier this summer when out walking through a park, and there were such wonderful colours in the landscape I really wanted to try painting it. I started with a super rough sketch, just plotting the position of things and having fun with the underpainting.
A week later, I worked on it again, softening some things and sharpening others. Again, it was a lot of fun. It still needs a lot of work but I think I will keep going. Life would be so boring without colour, wouldn't it?
On the last Saturday of August, the intrepid members of FEH (Fran-Evlyn-Holly) set off into the Park to create another "found materials" installation. This was the 3rd installation we have set up. The first one was an assemblage of various things we found on site - I blogged about it earlier this summer. The second involved making a woven sculpture using branches, grasses and vines. For the third one, we decided to do something quite different.
Our intention was to make garlands using vines and other plants. We found a great spot for this, then Holly and Fran and I began collecting things we could use. We kept finding more and more interesting plants and got excited whenever we saw something that we thought would look great in our creations.
We collected rushes and goldenrod and asters and a beautiful flower which I think is called Joe Pye Weed.
Fran began assembling her garland using this rock as a table.
We approached the making of our garlands in different ways. Holly made a wreath. It was fun to see the variations in the way we created our works.
I used a really long thick piece of vine and wound many plants and rushes around it. Holly helped me hang it between some branches on a couple of trees near the path.
Fran attached her garland to one end of mine and looped it to another tree branch. We continued to add more plants and wove more flowers into them.
The finished garlands were fabulous. I had to have my picture taken, standing behind my creation. I think we were channelling our inner Druids this day!
Holly decided she wanted to float her wreath on the water. There was a pond near the path and that's where she launched it. It looked so beautiful among the water plants. What a terrific day - we were very pleased with our creations.
