Lynda
McKinney Lambert is a retired fine arts and humanities professor from Geneva
College, Beaver Falls, PA. She
resides in a small village in western Pennsylvania with her husband, Bob, 6 cats
and 2 dogs (all rescues). Even though our 5
children are grown and gone, the house is still full with all the little furry
friends we care for.
Lynda is the author of Concerti: Psalms for
the Pilgrimage, published by Kota Press. She writes articles on the
humanities, contemporary poetry and
inspirational human interest stories. Her teaching career took her to
Europe each summer where she taught drawing and writing to college
students. She also taught a course in Puerto Rico every spring semester. . Lynda
lost her vision in 2007 due to Ischemic Optic Neuropathy. Many of her stories
give an inner view of her personal life experiences since that life-altering
event.
Lynda loves
to write, knit. and travel. Lynda holds earned degrees in fine arts (BFA and
MFA) and English literature (MA).
Girl
on a Bench Sees Visions of Butterflies
It
was a warm day near the end of
August, when I encountered the little chestnut haired girl as she sat on a bench
outside in the sunshine. She quietly watched me. Her deep green eyes remind me
of the colors I’ve observed when I am in a canoe floating along on the surface
of a local river. When you look beneath the surface of the water,
you’ll see what I mean. I call this mysterious color, “bottom-of-the-creek
green.” The young child sits alone on a rustic wooden bench looking straight
ahead. From this solitary spot she peers out over her world, and into the
future, where I stand watching her today.
Her dress is a familiar blue and white cotton plaid
with a wide crispy white linen collar that lies over her slender shoulders. The dress looks fresh, starched, ironed.
She is pristine, like a vintage porcelain doll.
“Someone takes very good care of this little
girl; somebody fusses over her and cares about how she looks. She is
loved,” I thought.
She patiently waits in her back yard for the arrival
of her cousins. The cousins will come to celebrate her 8th
birthday. It is 1950.
I paused, and moved slowly as I walked a bit closer to
her. I took just a couple of steps
forward;, she watched me carefully as she smiled.
“You look
so happy,” I whispered under my breath. Soon, I realized
she is sitting under the old deeply textured branches of a Black Walnut tree.
“That tree is the centerpiece of her back yard,” I
recalled.
Besides the tree, the little girl is surrounded by a
field of late summer wild flowers in full bloom. I could see the delicate Queen
Anne’s Lace and gentle butterflies mingling among those ivory
lace-like blossoms. The scene I observed is motionless because this picture is
frozen in a moment of time by a Brownie Box Camera. The photographer for this
special day is her Mother.
The vintage photo of the little girl is faded into
shades of gray. Once it was a sharp focused photo in glossy black and white. The
child and her world feel like a dream as I continued t look. The photo was
laminated long ago to the back of a small round glass pocket mirror. Her proud
Mother once carried the mirror in her handbag. In her old age, her Mother
gave the mirror to the little girl who was now a grandmother. Even
though the mirror was cracked in half at some time in the past, it was
still a beautiful photograph in near-perfect condition.
I am an artist and I chose this particular photograph
for the central image of the art work that was named, “Girl on a Bench Sees
Visions of Butterflies.”It hangs here on the art gallery wall today as I walk
towards the art work.
“Girl on a Bench Sees Butterflies,” is quite a small
work which represents a personal and private memory. The work measures approximately 12
inches, square. A viewer must come close to it in order to see this child
sitting in her back-yard garden of summer dreams and childhood
delights.
The images on this fiber art piece are hand-worked,
over top of the 1940s vintage fabric; the picture was created from a black
and white fabric with sharp, crisp white flowers and butterflies dancing across
the surface. All this activity is on a solid black
background.
There is a surprise burst of brilliant color on the
black and white scene though. Over the entire surface, the artist added
brilliant red leaves and roses that are carved from actual coral gemstones. I
feel like bouquets of red coral roses are waiting to be gathered, as I look at
this picture. The reality is different from that feeling because the red roses
will bloom here on this picture indefinitely. Regardless of the passing seasons,
this pictorial world is suspended forever outside of
time.
The old fashioned roses seem to circle around the
picture, intertwining with the photo of the girl on the bench. The circular
mirror image is also surrounded by layers of delicate, glistening Japanese seed
beads. The glass beads are so small! They capture the light from all directions.
This scattering of light from multiple sources makes the little girl in the
photo seem to shimmer in her round space at the center of the picture. Visitors
stop to look at the little girl in her iconic world and they say, “It seems like
we have entered into a dream world or an intimate, private
vision.”
Throughout the picture on the gallery wall, is a
myriad of other flower shapes made from Mother-of-Pearl, and natural gemstones.
In this small space we can see visions of earth and sky as we enter into this
moment of time when the little girl sat patiently waiting for her birthday party
to begin.
I am the blind artist who patiently worked out the
details of this picture. The creation of this piece was just like the process I
learned to use after I lost my sight nearly 9 years ago. The creative work is
done layer upon layer. This is how we all learn to live our life no matter our
circumstances.
I created my self-portrait in honor of the little girl
in the photo, who is me. I remembered a moment using my hands,
needles and threads, to bring the viewer into the world I lived in
as a child.
My slender steel needles become my
paint brushes. Multi-faceted beads, found-objects and natural gemstones are my
“paints.” Even though my physical
eyes have changed my view of the world around me, my hands are quite capable to
create unique new views from my inner vision. I am still the girl on a bench who
sees butterflies.
~Lynda McKinney Lambert
