Necklace washed away

Since I leave most of my found necklaces in place, I've always wanted to stretch the idea a bit further by photographing a piece being carried away by the tide. I tried it once before and learned the lesson to never look away because I did indeed turn my head - just once - to talk to my husband and missed the shot I had been kneeling in the sand waiting over half and hour for.

This sequence found me standing in the cold ocean water, fearing the fading daylight, fighting off mosquitoes. (A very wet spring has made for a bad bug situation in Maine this year.)

Here I actually condensed the number of photos from a total of 51 to just 16. (It just occurred to me though that a flip book with all of them would be interesting.)

The waiting and watching the tide was meditative and the whole experience a good lesson in 

letting go.

Jewelry on site

I am finding that restriction is often a component, in some way, to my creativity.  I'm a complicated human being though so you might catch me at the right (or wrong) moment also whining about restrictions, inevitably in regard to money as it is the vehicle for making so many other things happen.

This piece started out with all brick but then I found several stones, including the focal one, that were just right so I changed gears. 

I relied upon my "stash" collected throughout the week and built this necklace on the ledge that holds the cottage.

The in situ pieces in this series of work act as an exercise in making peace with this concept - restriction in materials, time, even daylight in some cases. When working on these at the beach, high tide becomes my focus as each one brings with it a new set of "supplies".

I make most of my pieces life size - this would have been lovely to wear if it had been real...and not quite so stinky. 

The beach that comes along with the cottage is a dream and most mornings I was down there before anyone was up.