My first thought was “Tangled.” This beautiful, messy natural place is tangled and complicated. There’s a lot going on and it’s not at all peaceful. Looking at the tangled branches and how the light’s getting through I realized that life within those branches must feel pretty trapped. The photo became a metaphor for life’s journey. How it can be hard and painful and messy but there’s beauty and light and hope that comes through despite it. The photo became about reaching a certain part of your life where you’ve had a dream and realizing it’s time for that dream to die but knowing that a new dream will come in to replace it. That’s where the “caged bird” metaphor came from. Where there is loss there is a next path and from that tangled darkness you can choose how you want to see and you can choose to turn into something beautiful just by reframing it in your mind.

I was personally moved by the music itself and the bittersweet feelings conveyed through the lyrics. For me, it is a song about liberation. It spoke to me of the strings that attach us to the world and how we allow ourselves to be bound by them, yet we know if we can give them up we can experience true freedom. Perhaps it is about the hell of being caught between desires and the longing to lose those desires. The song inspired hope and I set about working with colors and forms that flowed and felt as free as possible. I titled the piece Heart Fly to represent the inner soar experienced when we glimpse moments of truth and synchronicity, such as what I felt while hearing the music and translating it into the painting. Although I started out using oil, pastel and charcoal on wood In the end, the work was made with oil bar, pastels and conte crayon on paper in a process of blending and blurring as it progressed.

Jacob’s interpretation of the song: The song felt messy and tangled. In my head I saw a girl trapped in a room with light pouring in. She could see out but never travel into the world because her wings had been clipped. The shadows haunt and taunt her until a new way of thinking about her circumstances enters her mind and a new light is shed on her situation. With this new way of seeing, she feels freedom of hope and is distracted from her trapped-ness until she can see her purpose again. Jill’s dance represents the bird and I am the hope that enters her mind, helping her to find freedom within her confinement.

Over and over, I was drawn into the center of the painting, the white portion and the tiny geometric diamond formed by the brushstrokes. The sacred geometry of it reminded me of a gardenia. For me, this white, meditative middle was a visual oasis in the sea of mad color and texture. The flower’s beauty juxtaposed the overlaying chaos. I could journey out into the sea of color knowing I could retreat back to this calm center for a visual break, and upon focusing there, my tension would be eased. For the core of the composition, I chose the rare and precious 100% natural Gardenia Fragrans from Colombia. Once I focused on the gardenia in the painting, the fragrance was clear. I decided to incorporate the other colors in the piece as the synthetic components surrounding the white flower.

About The Fragrance: Most everyone has smelled a real gardenia flower, it is a fragrance that perfume makers have been trying to recreate since the beginnings of perfume making. The concentrated essence of the flower itself however (being practically unattainable) has not been experienced by many, and so there is no way to possess that fragrance and carry it with you: no way to “bottle it”, like rose or jasmine. Genuine gardenia essence is almost impossible to find, and wildly expensive when it can be sourced. All mass-market perfumes that list gardenia among the notes are synthetic recreations. For the core of the composition, I chose the rare and precious 100% natural Gardenia Fragrans from Colombia.

In the dance I remember grace and movement: a strong center and liquid grace. I felt that without the music I was able to work more freely. The dance itself elicited a sense of calm. The silkscreened image on the Ferris wheel is birds in flight (the female dancer). The structure holding the wheel is printed with an image of a forest (represents the strength of the male dancer). Making the wheel so that it would move was important to me but difficult to execute. Finishing the piece off with the addition of the figure, the lady in a red dress, entailed going to a model train store and finding just the right figure. That was a lot of fun.

I remember that the perfume felt like a lie. It had this sweetness on the outside but was musky on the inside. I felt like I wanted to be enveloped in the sensuality of it but that the sweetness shut me out. The fragrance elicited a sensation of tearing, of sadness and longing. The story that evolved from was that of this housewife, Sarah who sits in a park remembering an experience she had when she was 10, meeting with a social worker. She’d had an inappropriate encounter with a male teacher and was brought in to discuss it. At the time she’d said nothing. She’d had too much guilt and shame around the encounter. But in retrospect, the truth was that she still longed to be with the teacher. In her mental recreation, Sarah is imagining what a stronger version of her 10 year old self would’ve said and done in the social worker’s office. This is where this character named Yvonne comes in. In the recollection, Yvonne is 10 year old Sarah’s protector and defense against her shame. My translation of the perfume is really about the confusion a young person goes through being interested in sex and their sexuality but not knowing the difference between physical and sexual maturity.