Walking Through: Meditations on the Ordinary

2005 Exhibition at Ironton Studios & Gallery, Denver, CO

Walking Through: Meditations on the Ordinary is a collaboration between an artist (Judy Anderson) and a poet (Ginny Hoyle) who share an interest in the symbiotic power of images and words.

The installation joins images and text created over a five-year period, creating a meditative space filled with inter-woven prints, mixed-media paintings, monotype prints, artist books, haiku and longer poems. The exhibit is anchored by a handcrafted book of images and poems, its pages spilling out to form a single 36-foot wing that floats in the center of the gallery, surrounded by words, images and objects that celebrate the power of language, the solace of the natural world, and the opportunity to live consciously.

Walking Through: Meditations on the Ordinary

Alone and not alone, I stepped into the woods and left myself behind,

a mussy-haired child peering into the shadows,

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Q

Walking Through: Meditations on the Ordinary

Alone and not alone, I stepped into the woods and left myself behind,
a mussy-haired child peering into the shadows,
startled by the snap of the smallest branch.
I started walking and I kept walking through day and night,
through seasons of bright and somber color.
As my eyes adjusted to the softening dark,
I came to see there was little to fear.
I set about making a home and furnished it with every comfort:
willow twigs, shells, the rattle of locust pods.
Lately I have taken shards of words, planted them under bared roots:
souvenirs of the light within a time of darkness.
When the moon looms over the tips of the winter trees,
I will take up my stick and follow her through the last questions
to the end of the forest’s outstretched fingers,
where a mousy-haired child I have seen in dreams waits in the clearing.