What Images inspire you?

 Every week when I drive to go to my oncologists, I pass these cooling towers.  I have to figure out where to go  to get a better picture, as obviously I will not take a photo while speeding down I75 on the way to my appointment and having my daughter shoot it for me was less than what I want.  I love the shape.  I want to do something with them.  I think it is partly because I have been following Elizabeth Barton's work (please visit and take a good look at her landscape gallery and you'll see what I mean) and partly because I have always been drawn to industrial buildings...ok...buildings in general.

The next thing which I have been thinking of is a question that Lynn Krawczyk posed on her blog in January.  "What images do you love?", she asked.  For her, she takes inspiration from birds on a wire. 
Not only in screen prints that she has done from her images, but she has incorporated them in other ways as well.  For me, it is nature and architecture, particularly industrial and agricultural with decaying architecture right up there.  I also love details.

These grain elevators in Pleasant Hill just make me want to whip out my fabrics and roar into it.....it is a series waiting to be made and I have everything gathered...I just have to clean out my sewing room, reserve 1 hour a day for me in the mad rush to get things ready for graduation and commence.  The stumbling block at present is the sewing room....and my fatigue....and my eyesight which is failing because of the type of chemo I'm on (don't worry...it's supposed to come back within three months after I finish).

 Barns have always been home to me.  Growing up on a farm as a much younger child than my siblings meant that I amused myself well.  My amusement was often climbing in the mows, playing with the sheep and watching the golden light filter through the cracks.  I shiver when I look at the heights I used to scale alone....up into the topmost mow. 

I admit, it makes me cringe to see all these wonderful wooden barns falling to wrack and ruin.  When it costs as much to re-roof or paint a structure as it does to tear it down, many of them go down.  Especially since the move now is to larger farms and agribusiness rather than the smaller 80- 360 acre plots with house, barns and other outbuildings.  

Churches, nestled at crossroads in the middle of the country are also falling in.  This one is near New Lebanon and I was hesitant to pull off closer to get a shot.  Even so, there is something majestic in the trees with the shuttered windows.

This shot, however, is one of my favorites.  Its the grain bins at a very wealthy and well kept farm not far from my house.  No, I didn't use any filters for this shot, they just gleamed against the early morning light while on the way to a cross country meet in West Milton.
I can't wait to do something with this.  I love the light and the skies that you can find in this part of the world.  I knew I missed it when I lived in Connecticut, but I didn't realize how much until I moved back.  The light and the skyscapes are breath taking....even if most people do consider it a fly-over state. ;)