Watercolors by Bruce Erdmann

Photography by Karen Erdman

Words & Pictures

Karen Erdmann's Words - "I love words.  I love it when they pour out of me like a fresh spring, when they bubble and then build and quickly spill over my fingers, filling the pristine white of the page.  My muse and my fingers come along-side each other and begin the work that will become poetry or prose or story or card. I love that. I love it when they call to me in whispers. In unformed thoughts that tickle the edge of my creativity, blowing on my eyelashes so gently that I need not close my eyes in defense.  The whispers build to words and if I listen long enough they will string together like a carefully formed web of beauty. 

Like a journey through the forest, the story does not come quickly and does not come all at once and it calls to me to appreciate the beauty of the moment's message.  I love it when the words demand hard work.  When words, joined together, crash into each other like two rams seeking dominance.  Neither wants to yield and perhaps neither stands perfectly in the sentence.  It takes hard work and so I work. I work with the words or with the sentence structure or with another intriguing form like a cinquain.  I love the hard work for at the completion there is that predictable ahh...  I just love words." 

Photography - Amidst the ferns and trees, there is a photograph waiting to happen. Karen captures the natural world as seen through the eyes of someone who lives close to the earth. The thicket of trees, the frozen bamboo, the snaggle of moss and fern, all have a story to tell in the images Karen captures. See the world through Karen's camera, gracing cards, calendars and other imaginery pieces. Go there now.

Essay on a MayHill Life
In the woods below the barn, it is quite dark, so when I go down to the barn at night to tuck in my sheep, I take a walking stick and flashlight. Bruce asked me to take a photo of the woods at night as he had a watercolor in mind. I toyed with the process. If I used a flash, there was an unnatural brightness but without the flash. At first glance, the photo was too dark. Now, first glance is often enough to stop me but when I lightened those very dark photos, I found that the trees had a subtle but present glow. Here is a bit of artistic license and a little poem from MayHill Farms.

The Whisper When all the sheep lay down to bed, when chickens nestle in the straw, the sun long set, the night now come perhaps you hear me call. If daylight sings and evening sighs then the dark, dark woods will whisper. My trees turn golden in the night my trees turn golden in your light