Jenny Mendes

Put my head in the ground and from it will grow a tree, a fruit who will remind you of me. Samoan myth of Thun

START CLOSE IN Start close in don't take  the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don't want to take. Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet, your own way to begin the conversation. Start with your own question, give up on other people’s questions, don’t let them smother something simple. To hear another’s voice, follow your own voice, wait until that voice becomes an intimate private ear that can really listen to another. Start right now take a small step you can call your own don’t follow someone else’s heroics, be humble and focused, start close in, don’t mistake that other for your own. Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take. … START CLOSE IN in River Flow New & Selected Poems Many Rivers Press © David Whyte …. This piece was in...

Come join me this Spring at Penland School!  CLAY SPRING CONCENTRATION MARCH 8 – MAY 1, 2020 Jenny Mendes Parts Unknown https://penland.org/ clay-spring-concentration/ The launching point for this workshop will be an exploration of surfaces and a deep mining of personal content. Working primarily with low-fire clay, we’ll push the boundaries of the material through explorations of form and narrative. Experimentation with slips, underglazes, terra sigilatta, and different firings will lead students to develop unique bodies of work. Using Penland’s landscape as genius loci, visiting sculptor Hester Pilz will collaborate with students for two weeks as we discover how the spirit of the landscape can inform our work. All levels.

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass by Mary Oliver 1. Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass? Will the owl bite off its own wings? Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing? Will the rivers run upstream? Behold, I say–behold the reliability and the finery and the teachings of this gritty earth gift. 2. Eat bread and understand comfort. Drink water, and understand delight. Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds who are drinking the sweetness, who are thrillingly gluttonous. For one thing leads to another. Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot. Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in. And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a star both intimate and ultimate, and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful. And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper: oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two beautiful bodie...

for the artist at the start of day ~o’donohue May morning be astir with the harvest of night; Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question, Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse That cut right through the surface to a source. May this be a morning of innocent beginning, When the gift within you slips clear Of the sticky web of the personal With its hurt and its hauntings, And fixed fortress corners, A Morning when you become a pure vessel For what wants to ascend from silence, May your imagination know The grace of perfect danger, To reach beyond imitation, And the wheel of repetition, Deep into the call of all The unfinished and unsolved Until the veil of the unknown yields And something original begins To stir toward your senses And grow stronger in your heart In order to come to birth In a clean line of form, That claims from time A rhythm not yet heard, That calls space to A different shape. May it be its own force field And dwell uniquely Between the he...