The day I got this image I was feeling Disillusioned, frustrated and a little desperate. Looking at the photo I immediately felt lonely and sad. It took me a few days to accept it as my assignment, because I knew it would force me to face some pain I’d been trying to conceal with optimism. My first thoughts were loneliness, abandonment and fatigue. Lyrically, I just thought: “Help me!” The tallness of the trees gave me a sensation of being trapped in a deep hole or lost in a well, alive, passionate, but forgotten. I imagined this young girl, the sad result of some kind of accident or misfortune, able to see the world outside, screaming for it with all her will to live, but not being heard by anyone. I avoided the image for a few weeks, but it just haunted me. The song came out in one sitting. Once I got started, I felt relieved to have a safe place to address painful feelings. This song, about raw vulnerability, just flowed out. It’s the saddest song I’ve ever written! But, I felt so relieved when it was finished. It was as though I’d hit rock bottom and there was nothing to fear, nowhere to go but up. It felt like the song produced an honest moment that somehow made me trust my instincts again.

Interpretation of Kori’s Song: I was in my studio, feeling quite harmonious, ready to start the day when I received this song for interpretation. At first I wanted to keep it at arms length as the words are quite sad. It took me a few days to slow down to really let the strength of the song speak to me. The gentle melody running between the words of sadness drew me in. It spoke to the core of me in a gentle but strong way. Strangely I found it quite reassuring, since it is so honest it feels cleansing. Feelings like these take place in me from time to time…along with streams of tears, but all of these emotions I know part of being human. Dark, warm colors came to me first and a pair of hands reaching up toward some flowers. When I picked up my paintbrush I knew I was going to paint a solitary figure wandering through a landscape. The character I have painted lives within me. She empathizes with the song’s pain but knows darkness and light wander hand in hand and that walking through these moments in life is a part of the journey of becoming whole and truly beautiful. She knows wounds in the heart can be turned into beautiful flowers. She walks slowly through the landscape with feet a little turned inwards, but her red shoes help her to stand her ground. She knows unexplainable emotions, she keeps secrets, she cries, and occasionally she winks at me as if to say “Kristin come with me, I know where to go. I know where the treasures are’…its personal.” She is also quite secretive even to me, but I like it that way…if I knew her inside out she would disappear. This painting comforts me.

Interpretation of Kori’s Song: I was in my studio, feeling quite harmonious, ready to start the day when I received this song for interpretation. At first I wanted to keep it at arms length as the words are quite sad. It took me a few days to slow down to really let the strength of the song speak to me. The gentle melody running between the words of sadness drew me in. It spoke to the core of me in a gentle but strong way. Strangely I found it quite reassuring, since it is so honest it feels cleansing. Feelings like these take place in me from time to time…along with streams of tears, but all of these emotions I know part of being human. Dark, warm colors came to me first and a pair of hands reaching up toward some flowers. When I picked up my paintbrush I knew I was going to paint a solitary figure wandering through a landscape. The character I have painted lives within me. She empathizes with the song’s pain but knows darkness and light wander hand in hand and that walking through these moments in life is a part of the journey of becoming whole and truly beautiful. She knows wounds in the heart can be turned into beautiful flowers. She walks slowly through the landscape with feet a little turned inwards, but her red shoes help her to stand her ground. She knows unexplainable emotions, she keeps secrets, she cries, and occasionally she winks at me as if to say “Kristin come with me, I know where to go. I know where the treasures are’…its personal.” She is also quite secretive even to me, but I like it that way…if I knew her inside out she would disappear. This painting comforts me.

To me, the painting is very poignant, mystical and mid-nighty. It felt a little bit sad and reminiscent of another time. This woman is thinking and remembering. She is not doing… not walking… not even present. It is almost as though she is up in the clouds, and thinking about something complex and past. My tea started with an emotion and some words…“Midnight” and “harmony.” I used to spend summers up in Maine where I enjoyed foraging for earthy treasures I could use to create beautiful flavors with. This painting brought up metaphors of foraging for things that can only be found in the back yard of your mind, memories you have the ability to harvest yourself. This character is certainly foraging her own life and is in a place of discovery. I felt an evening tea, rich herbals, many textures, fig and layered ingredients percolating in me. I played with notes of black berry leaves and ginger but nothing astringent or overtly strong or caffeinated. I picked up on some of the reds and used rose petals and after about 30-40 trials I was content with what I had created, imagining a person could drink this and want to wander into their past as this woman is, looking into complex memories and imagining the possibility of a sweet hopefulness and harmony over the horizon.

About The Tea: I felt evening tea, rich herbals, many textures, fig and layered ingredients. I played notes of black berry leaves and ginger but nothing astringent or overtly strong or caffeinated.. I picked up on some of the reds and used rose petals.

“Haunting” was the first word that came to mind when I saw this painting and indeed this character did haunt me. . Iwondered why she was so serious and where she was going in this strange, otherworldly scene. The pathway indicated she was heading somewhere. I liked the sheerness of her dress with flowers, (almost Oscar de La Renta) which evoked fragrance and femininity. The touch of red was significant and I felt that color jumped out and had to be portrayed in the scent. The shades of the delicate pink and blue surreal “plants” also sent messages of delicacy but did not really ground the painting. The strange color of the sky with very faint stars is depicted with grounding woody notes in the scent. However, the overall transparency, delicateness is persistent and catchy. You have to ‘fly’ to get where she is.Maybe when she smells the fragrance she will wake up? The overall feeling of dreaminess and mystery seemed like it could easily be a fragrance a drift away. The first part of the scent that came to me was the sheer floralcy. It had to be a big, light, sheer floral that was grounded. It had to be feminine, tenacious and haunting. The first things you smell in “Moondream” are the green leafy violet notes with some of the woody notes showing through like the sky. Secondly you should be smelling the heart of the fragrance, which is made up of an airy floral bouquet of a Peony, Iris, Boronia and Jasmin. This fragrance is very tenacious, haunting and lingering as the painting depicts to me. The soft sandalwood, woody, ambery notes will cling to you and your clothing for some time. Based on the sheerness of the dress, the fragrance demanded a light floral bouquet of violet, peony and boronia (the persistent little red flower). I saw White Iris from the dress which goes great with Violet. I added mimosa and jasmin to give it some pinkness, sweetness and to round out the green of the violet. The fragrance needed to be grounded it with sandalwood, amber and sheer musk, which also represent the sky.

Description of Olfactory:

A Tenacious scent that lures the senses through a mystic garden. Violet leaves sway under the darkness of a spicy Cardamom cloud billowing high into the night sky. Delicate Boronias bloom in excitement as enchanted Jasmines float into a floral bed of sensual Peonies and Iris petals, filling the midnight air with a sense of beauty and allure. The entrancing essence intensifies with an arousing touch of Amber caressing the bark of a Sandalwood tree. Whilst a haunting sheet of Musk clings tightly to the skin and lingers, deeply into a dream…

My first reaction was to the rhythmic repetition of the dancers bodies and choreography, one flowing into the next, into the next. Like ripples on water, repeating patterns, getting larger and fading away. The dance, to me, was all about bodies engaging with each other in space, rhythmically reflecting and resonating together, reminiscent of leaves in wind or birds taking flight. I tried to ignore any specifics about the dancers. I watched it as through a foggy lens. My first instinct was to latch onto the repetitious motion, which starts as one, becomes many, and fades silently, much like a bell rings and fades. I ended up with the elements of body, circular motion and resonance. I decided that an object requiring personal engagement from the viewer would translate the physical essence of the dance best. Bells immediately came to mind, as they exist in different states through time as do the dancers. Like ripples, they resonate through space and time. They also seemed a perfect metaphor for human experience, their ring is the perfect embodiment of a beautiful, powerful yet finite existence. My goal was to create an experience more than an object, something that would be as fluid and enchanting as the dance that inspired it.

The flavor that popped out to me was passion fruit. There was lemon and camomile and vanilla and it brought to mind waking up in the morning where you’re floating in that sort of dream world. The tea evokes the feeling of summer for me, of perfect peace. When Gogo and I first brewed the tea, we decided not to talk about our reactions but rather, to go to sleep with the intention of walk on the beach together in the morning. At 7:30am we went to the shore. My morning walk is where I find clarity and inner peace and reconnect with the world around me. We looked at the morning glories sprawling down the dunes. To me they look like dancers stretching their arms against the sand. Holding up a morning glory leaf to the sun we saw an amazing network of veins that interconnected and repeated. We thought it was the perfect representation of the tea. We wanted to create a candleholder to represent the soft pink effect of morning light on these flowers which close at the end of each afternoon and wake up again the next morning with the soft light.