Seaspray 17: Ocean photography and Haiku Poetry, (2019) Poetry by Dannika Patterson and photography by Kian Bates. (Morningstar Books, Capalaba) ISBN 9780648577805, 38 pages, landscape, RRP $30.00
Looking for something to dive into this weekend, to just take your mind off the current state of the world, and imagine, transform and connect with nature, then Seaspray 17 may be just your thing. First, I want to share a little about its two creators, Dannika Patterson and Kian Bates.
Dannika Patterson
Dannika Patterson, the poet is an author, copywriter and marketing consultant, who in the last few years has published five books for children with two of these celebrating a love of nature, outdoor play, and imagination, Jacaranda Magic (2018) and Scribbly Gum Secrets (2020).
In 2019, she collaborated to create a coffee table, photography and Haiku poetry book, Seaspray 17: Ocean photography with Haiku Poetry, with
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!
The above PDF is a catalogue of works from the Gold Coast and Brisbane Exhibitions.
We are still listing all performers as well as artists and will replace this catalogue with a revised one in the post when we have a full list of all those lovely musicians that assisted at our launches.
A price list for art works will be available at some point.
This project was not done for profit, and we were delighted to share the art but if we can cover our production costs for paint, canvas, printing photographs on canvas through sales that would be fantastic and make projects like this more sustainable. Emails for all artists are provided in the catalogue.
June plans to produce her books and have them for sale at some point and you can request to be on her mailing list to be informed of…
Dannika Patterson
