I walked the fern trail to reach this place, taking more photographs for the note cards I've begun making. I've been working on matting and framing my photographs and recently had an exhibit in a small venue, but the sellers were the blank note cards with photos mounted on them. Truly affordable art, because any one of those images would do well in their 4 x 6 inch size also matted and framed.
The small city I live in has paintings and photos and collages and sculpture displayed in many of the small stores and in every public building, particularly the state office buildings (Montpelier is the capitol of Vermont). The central Vermont area also hosts a number of theatre groups and many, many professional and highly talented amateur musicians. One can spend every weekend attending performance after performance, limited only by one's time and money. It's a wonderful feeling to see that civic and cultural support for the arts.
Art and artistry seem to be blooming these days. Poets and poetry readings and writers are making news. It feels as if the increasing awareness of art is trying to balance the increasing awareness of the awfulness of the inhumane actions around the globe. We are madly dancing to create visions of truth and beauty and hope and peace amid the iniquities and injustices of wars and armed conflicts and outright massacres.
Artists and poets have always focused lens of discernment upon humanity's inhumanity. It revolves and revolves century by century, but we have not secured a resolution of peaceableness with our art. Not for the whole world.
Still, we keep dancing.