750 – A photo project initiated by Nancy Wong

June Perkins response to Nancy’s project

I decided to renew the Be Illumined Blog during the Bicentenary of the Bab, to share interesting projects Baha’i Creatives around the world, as well as in Brisbane are doing to celebrate this year.

A recent project I heard about and am now taking part in, is a collaborative photo project with Nancy Wong.  This project is a creative transformative response to the execution of the Bab, which happened back in 1850 in Tabriz, Iran.

Nancy has invited photographers from around the world to take photos to be part of a collage art piece that will be on display at the art exhibit of the 2019 Art In Response to Violence (ARV) conference at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, Illinois, USA. This year will be the ARV’s 10th anniversary and the conference will take place October 17-18, 2019.

Each participating photographer is sending her several portraits of people holding a lit candle. No faces will be shown, just the person’s hand(s).

She wrote to us all, “It will also be an opportunity for all of us to celebrate the Bicentennial of the Birth of the Bab (October 29, 2019) by using this project as a talking piece, during the production of the images, as well as when we exhibit the final artwork. As of today, I am thinking of calling this art piece, “750 Shots”. (750 bullets; 750 photos.)

This number is reportedly the number of  rifles that were aimed at the Bab. And, as shared before, the candles are in memory of the time when the Bab was incarcerated in the city of Maku; he was not given a lamp during the long nights in prison.”

I will be interviewing Nancy to share more about the progress of the collaborative art piece on future blogs.

The collaborative aspect of Nancy’s project was so inspiring and moving, that it encouraged me to think of something like this in my own local community. I have an idea (quite different theme but with the same capacity for participation from others) brewing and will share it soon! And I am pleased to have found some collaborators for it!

Article by June Perkins

Upcoming Publications!

Magic Fish Dreaming

Dear Friends, Fans, Fellow Writers and poets,

Listed above are titles of works  accepted to two wonderful new anthologies for children aged 6-12 years.

Both are due for release in October 2019.

Amongst these selections are two poems, a meditation and two short stories.

My first comissioned short story for a magazine will be out in September too, but more details on that when it’s released!

Last year Share Your Story accepted my first ever published short story for children to It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas and I had a short story for middle grade short listed by Scribbles.  What a wonderful encouragement, and it turns out a sign of things to come, those two breakthroughs were.  Thank you to Michelle Worthington, of Share Your Story, and Jen Storer of Scribbles for all the work you do mentoring other writers.

I am delighted to have been…

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Ancient Modern

Reflecting on ancient and modern legacies and wondering what they will be?

Ripple Poetry

(I)

In the seventies

old souls with young faces

went looking for revolutions’ places

found heroes called Bob Dylan

looked in music for something

more than melody

danced with metaphors deep

and blue.

Now young souls with old faces

say, ‘Who on earth was he?’

and one wonders is there any

such thing as

legacy

to the old and young set in stone

are they open to change?

When will young faces have

young souls

and old souls have old faces

Or is it all a dreamer’s mask?

And a distraction to the true task

as we all face the fading of our bones.

To live the poet’s life

let the words

find the souls they belong to

doesn’t matter old or young

look beyond the face

listen to wisdom from every voice

keep alive the questioning of youth

and in the silence after sing

the open door.

(c June…

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