Susan Lenz is a fiber artist who creates imaginative and novel works, especially those in which she upcycles found objects over problematic vintage quilts into fashionable and fun mandalas. This latest piece is not a mandala but, to me, it echoes the landfall of Hurricane Milton that spun off several tornadoes while crossing Florida last week. In it, she has used a portion of a hand-stitched, stained quilt -- topped with a piece of blue netting to define the tornado area. Then, found objects (surplus doodads that can't be used in a mandala) were added by hand-stitching each one down on to the fabric base. Ultimately, she's been so successful in conveying the sense of motion and fury (as well as a suggested 'eye') through the piece. Bravo, Susan! Found Object Tornado II You can find out more about the artist and her work at http://www.susanlenz.com/default.shtml#
I'm reading Mary Oliver's 'A Poetry Handbook'. As part of doing so, marginalia (making notes in the margin) is a practice by some readers that I'm finding very helpful. There are many new-to-me words that definitions on the same page are very useful to have (e.g. prosody, enjambment). Then there is her chapter about metrical lines that is a whole new world to me, although master poets and/or writers may view it as common knowledge. Using marginalia is also providing me the opportunity to make related observations based on my experience as a former musician. In music, a learner is taught that there is a specific number of beats in each measure based on a time signature. That is what I find resonating for me as I read about the metrical line of prose that Ms. Oliver writes about. She presents a very nice legend of metrical lines in poetry (five-foot, four-foot, three-foot, etc.), their names (pentameter, tetrameter, trimeter, respectively and etc.), and how ea