Tag: Owls

Somerville Open Studios & Wild Rabbit Magic

Jen2 Comments

This weekend, May 2 & 3, 12-6 pm, is Somerville Open Studios, the biggest arts event in our quaint and scenic town. Naturally, I’m behind my time in letting you all know about it, but such is me.

I’ll be turning my front porch into a mini exhibition celebrating the spring season, its moods, symbols, weather, and magic, featuring our wild city rabbits among others.

Click here for details and directions. I’m in the East Somerville side of town.

Weather Note: The forecast is for “chance” of rain this weekend. Please subscribe to this website or follow me on Bluesky to receive updates in case I get rained out on Saturday or Sunday.

You can also see my collage-assemblage, “Pink Yarrow,” at Somerville Museum, and a new collage-painting, “April,” at the Brickbottom Gallery, both indoors.

Enjoy a sneak peak at some new works in progress, which I hope to bring out for SOS.

On the magic of rabbits.

Rabbit, bring me luck.
Rabbit, bring me many.
Rabbit, bring me happiness,
But for my foe, not any.

That little ditty is my pitch for wild rabbits as a role model for our times, because they symbolize the four powers we all need right now. Good luck to get through the storms. Abundance to meet our needs, one way or another. Joy in love and pleasure. Resilience to take the blows and never back down because, dammit, these are our streets.

I think, for most people, spring is a cutesy-pootsy season of flowers and baby animals, but I see it differently.

To me, spring is a time when the new forcibly replaces the old, dead, and rotten. Spring brings out the big passions and changes everything, ready or not. It’s births and beginnings. It’s melting and mess. It’s bright colors and clean green shoots pushing through the mud. It’s migrating birds, emerging bees, and for me, it’s the rabbits.

The old rabbits of winter, scarred, skinny, and strong. The new rabbits like delicate treasures nested in our flower beds.

Rabbits making the first of many babies. Rabbits dodging a thousand dangers. Rabbits robbing our gardens, lounging in the sun, grooming their tiny little faces with their tiny little paws (omg). Rabbits waging war all over town to claim and defend their territories, be they lush parks or weedy train yards.

If I have my way, it’ll be all lush parks and gardens, because where the rabbits thrive, so can we.

-Jen

Note: This post contains 407 words, which according to western numerology, reduces to 11 and then to 2. In tarot, 11 is the number of Justice in some systems and Strength in others, and 2 is the number of The High Priestess. Justice, Strength, and Wisdom.

An Alchemy of Dragons, Ch. 6, is up for reading

Jen


Previously, in An Alchemy of Dragons, Erran Fox was forced to realize that the Divines of the Grand Temple had been right, and he must do at last what he should have done at first.

It’s time to hire a bard.

As he said to Sister Kathil and Brother Godre in Ch. 5, bards follow money, money flows through cities, and the nearest city to Chesny is Lorondrias.

Lorondrias, the City of Emerald Spires, capitol of the Duchy of Lorond, commanded the Bay of Jewels from a promontory above the Reed Lands, the vast delta where the Pontyd River flowed into the ocean, and trade flowed across Bodhael and the Sea of Llyr.

Read the full chapter, illustrated, here.


I had fun with the illustrations for Ch. 6. As we travel farther abroad with Erran, we are getting to see more of the world of Aeldreth and its magic. We even get our first glimpse of Erran himself.

The view of Lorondrias in the Chapter initial is inspired by the woodcut engravings of the Nuremberg Chronicle, an illustrated encyclopedia published in 1493, establishing the general style of this part of the story’s world.

Erran’s clothes and the building ornament around the owls hint at the style of magic as well. Protection is less a matter of armor to deflect blows and bars to keep out intruders, and more about eye circles, colors, and complicated patterns to control the energies. So expect things to continue fancy as we progress.

And let me know in comments or on the Community page if you recognize the species of owls hanging out at the Golden Owl theater.

-Jen