Sunday, September 9, 2012

September

kin·dred  
n.
1. A group of related persons, as a clan or tribe.
2. (used with a pl. verb) A person's relatives; kinfolk.
adj.
1. Of the same ancestry or family
2. Having a similar or related origin, nature, or character


Science, and religion both, will tell us that if you go back far enough, we are all related.
I don’t think we need anyone to tell us that. Kindred spirit friendships, extended family, and community, weave threads into the fabric of our lives as real, strong, and eternal as the DNA daisy-chain that leads to each of us.

I come from a small, close family. Beyond that critical fortune, I’ve long had a sense, that we are always gradually gathering with our broader “tribe”, one soul at a time, as we travel through life. Our sense of belonging unfolds as we learn from, and about, the family we are born into, the family we marry into, the children we take under wing, the friends we choose, people we live or work beside, even long departed authors and artists who we meet through the legacies of their work.
I find the whole thing beautifully complex and mysterious, and all joy and pain included, I am honored and grateful for my part.

My family history is like many others. It is more questions than answers, like a puzzle missing lots of pieces. Earlier than is usual, my siblings and I became keepers of the flame, care-taking the family photos and letters. Over the past twenty years, I occasionally visit the boxes in my care. It’s a little like checking the rear view mirror while driving down the road you’re on. Each time I look, I gain a new and deeper sense of where and who I am in the scheme of things, and that each of us is like a vessel, carrying all that came before us.

This series of images is both homage and inquiry; a conversation with souls, each as unique as the individual stars the sky, - and it is a discovery of how, like constellations, we are all connected.
Each time I endeavor to journey into a new body of work, I am reminded of the vast rewards of creative process. It has so much to teach us, when we agree to participate.
May the torch that is passed to each of us ignite in our beings a blazing awareness of our greatest inheritance- whole-hearted presence.

-Amy Melious, September 2012


ALSO....

One more week
A show of scenics, at Fernwood Cafe on Salt Spring
  • Summer Hours:
  • Open 7 days a week. 10:00am on Saturdays. 9:00am - 5:00pm all other days.
  • 325 Fernwood Road
  • Salt Spring Island, BC, V8K 1C3