[Jones Pat]

Ann is right, I loved this drill, hope to see more of them with more poet and artist participation. My process is not nearly as skilled in the medium as Sharon's. I don't even know how to blend, do layers. After reading the prompt and Ann's poem, I copied both photos, put them both side by side, reduced them to the same color value, embossed them...trying to enhance, highlight the "royal gold" in Ann's poem, maintain what I thought looked like a "tong" in the chair backs, then I cut and pasted it all into a new document trying to connect as many lines in them as I could to make it flow. I added the eyes just because I always add eyes if given the opportunity and "coochy coo" gave me it to me...little did I know we were talking potato eyes. : ) Fun! I was way off on interpreting the tongs and royal golds but my mama taught me to say, "I had a good time". : ) And I did. Let's do it again soon. I so miss responding to poems and prompts with SCR and 14 by 14 no longer with us.

Thanks!
Pat

[Sharon Passmore]

Pat - I love that your piece was inspired by Ann's poem as well as the photos. You "welded" them together in a way. I think this playing back and forth is half the fun. If this is your work without having skills in the medium (pshaw) then I can't wait to see what you do with skills. I admire the fact that you used only the two source photos, whereas I depended on a additional image.

On a technical note - I used to hate layers. They can be confusing. Now I love them. I will make a post in the Art forum explaining why.

Ann - will you explain the Riddle of the Seven Stones? I hope I am not the only dense one who doesn't get it. Also, why is there not a sixth?

[Ann Drysdale]

Of course, Sharon. You are not in the least dense - this is an old English riddle form based on the spelling of the answer. It's like letter-Sudoku.

The answer is the "voice", telling you that its first (or second etc.) letter appears in the first word, but doesn't appear in the second.

So, its first letter is in the word "beech" but not in the word "pine". Actually, it's B, though it could have been C or H. The next one is L...

You have to sort out all the letters that it might be and fiddle around with them till the answer bites you in the bum. The words themselves are part of the message the riddle tries to convey.

Beech is a hardwood tree native to this area. When the place was prosperous with coal and iron and steel, pine was introduced and grown to provide pit-props. Coal is the natural fossil fuel, mine the transient man-made means of exploiting it. Seam is where nature put the coal, wheel is the machine for raising it. Iron is what they drew from the soil, steel is what they made of it. Nant is the old Welsh word for the stream that was always there, river the English word for it when it was co-opted into the industrial process. Always and forever, which give the sixth (last) letter - well, they just reflect the thinking of the English poet who now lives here - in BLAINA.

That's the answer and is what is carved on top of the seventh stone. It was my attempt to offer respect for what the people feel they have lost and to suggest that, in the great scheme of things, the Industrial Revolution was just an interlude. Something to think of while you walk along the banks of the Ebbw Fach.

Here's another glimpse of Blaina, and some of the other Valley towns, written by local poet Idris Davies during the Depression and set to music by Pete Seeger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP5gIDrNlrY