November Full Moon #5

Is “stumped” a new word for uninspired?

 

Or is stumped the way you feel when you think you can “will” inspiration?  Is it stubborn determination that you can MAKE yourself come up with a good idea?  I don’t know.  But I was not taken with any really magical idea or inspiration for this month’s Little Altars spot – for the entire month!

However, I am pretty happy with my result!  I’ve been surrounded by fallen leaves.  I especially like the fallen leaves of the red maples.  At an office building I frequent, there are literally dozens of these trees surrounding the building. Every year I get suckered in by the their colors and take multiple photographs of the leaves.  Whether there are just a few on the ground, or sheets of them, they thrill me!  I also live with two maple trees at my house: a Norway maple and a silver maple.  Leaves, leaves, leaves.

I’ve also been surrounding myself, a little bit, with copper.

Put all that together, and, in the end, I was equally inspired by some leaves that my husband sawed out of copper during a beginning jewelry class we took in the mid-1990’s.  We never finished the class (it was an evening class – yikes – and that didn’t work for us.)  But in  the intervening years, I’m the one who got into copper, and chasing and repousse, etc. Since I’ve so enjoyed David’s leaves on the mantle for all these years, I figured Lynn might appreciate one as well.

This leaf has been patterned with a dried leaf in the rolling mill, sawed, chased, formed by hand, and heat treated.  It’s not sealed, so the colors will change over time.  So that it can be cleaned in the future, if desired (ours never are), it’s removable. Not meant to be worn; the edges are sharp!  It’s a simple inspiration, but I think that sometimes those are the best.

 Nancy