This is Cloud Garden Leafipede, the first of the Spiritus Naturalis series to embody a landscape floating in midair.
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Cloud Garden Leafipede is 42"L x 26"H
Shannon Belthor's creative landscape
This is Cloud Garden Leafipede, the first of the Spiritus Naturalis series to embody a landscape floating in midair.
Cloud Garden Leafipede is 42"L x 26"H
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A backlit 4' x 4' sheet of paper drying |
I'd begun mentioning to folks that I was looking for some Madrona branches when a buddy said he'd seen some in a place accessible only by boat. He also had a boat with a small motor and a dinghy to tow behind. We ventured out to the nearest landing, where the motor promptly failed. Fortunately, he'd brought oars, and I got to feel with every row on the 3-mile round trip how much I wanted this exquisite stockpile.
The new work also needed a fresh supply of paper: almost tissue-paper thin, with lots of chromatic variation within each piece. I've been gathering visual impressions of nature since I was a kid.
Materials, tools, and a happy place to work...my idea of heaven on earth.
(There's a page dedicated to this series, with close-up images and some studio-nerdy thoughts on the process.)
Surf Sylph stands offshore, its legs in cool water, ushering the forces of water and wind meeting land.
With a crustacean feel in form and color, it reminds me of unusual,
colorful tide pool creatures.
It's ideally a table-top piece at about 30" tall.
Tailwind Sprite seems blown from behind, keen on moving in a forward direction. Its base is cooler-toned with greens, blues and purples. Warm red and yellow tendrils revel in being blown onward. This piece stands about 56" tall.
Having just gotten some peat moss for the garden, it wasn't a big leap to see this creature at home in a peat bog, given its stouter stance and earthy colors. Its main tendril seems lasso-like in form, but intelligent, curious, erotic and perhaps fatal to prey.
Sometimes it seems very still, yet ready to leap into action. At others, like it's in motion already.
Bog Sylph is 45" tall.
At roughly 6' tall, Marsh Sylph has a heron-like feel. I readily imagine it wading out in the marshlands, at home with the grasses and reeds.
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Bog Sylph and Tailwind Sprite |
I've been called on to design and create lovely spaces for others over the years. It's been a joy to devote these skills and creative drive to making one for myself.
I spend a lot of time in the studio, so a space that celebrates light and
curvature suits my well-being where I'm busiest, and in many ways, at my best.
Between the building of the base, erecting the yurt kit, making the windows and frames, insulating, etc, it was an intensive effort. Naturally, I was itching to get back to working in the studio, rather than on it, but such a wonderful investment in the process!
Amid the whirl of the world, a fine nest for this monkish soul to make and
Be.
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A load of Madrona branches for the new work. |
My quiet lifestyle has changed very little with the onset of the pandemic. Yet the quality of the solitude has shifted: it’s less familiar, more populous now that so many others are living more quietly as well. The vast company in quietude amid social upheaval sweeps through and recedes like tides. I count among the great many things for which I am deeply grateful, a practiced sense of what is mine and what is zeitgeist roiling about.
Struggle and uprising, pain and empowerment, fear and hope are in the air.
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The first screen. |
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Winter view of the new home next door. |