Stone Pharaoh.5

This rendition is shorter than all the others, and I like it. Click the "Stone Pharaoh" label below to see the earlier editions. 

Stone Pharaoh

And, the stone pharaoh broke free of the ancient mountain that held him prisoner for so long.
He was bigger than life.
Much bigger.
Yet, far, far overhead,
the giant date palms rose higher still.
Spinning . . .
Their fronds rising to the sun, while the colors of the twentieth century glittered on the banks of the Nile . . .
Small. Quiet. Alive.
Feeding the reigning date palms
in the ancient land of the stone pharaoh.

Return of the Stone Pharaoh.4

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I find it interesting that the steps in front of the pharaoh can morph . . . first into water . . . and now into matzoh. They started as torn paper which started as textured paper. While I'm talking about morphing, notice how a corner of a page can morph into a pyramid . . . and then into a broken piece of matzoh. Is it magic? An illusion? A change of context? A shifting from three dimensions to two? What is the difference between magic and a change of context?

More pharaoh images can be found here.

Return of the Stone Pharaoh.3

More Pharaoh images can be found here and a poem here.

Return of the Stone Pharaoh.2

For a closer look, click on the image. Check out the Stone Pharaoh series and the Stone Pharaoh poem.

Return of the Stone Pharaoh.1

Stone Pharaoh

And, the stone pharaoh broke free of the ancient mountain that held him prisoner for so long.
Like a golem.
He was bigger than life.
Much bigger than life.
Yet, far, far overhead,
the giant date palms rose higher still.
Like dervishes they spun.
Their fronds rising to the sun, while the colors of the twentieth century glittered at the banks of the Nile . . .
Small. Quiet. Alive.
Feeding the reigning date palms
in the ancient land of the stone pharaoh.

It seems I never stop tweaking this piece that that I first wrote in Dec 1995. This is one of the many images inspired by this poem. More can be found here.

Stone Pharaoh Experiment

Yet another edition of the Stone Pharaoh edited on IrfanView. Earlier images are here and here; poem is here. This is probably the calmest of the pharoah images. I do like this much better than the earliest post -- those giant leaves took more away from the composition than they added. I think this one looks like we are viewing the pharaohs between two columns.

Perhaps I should rename this the Pharaoh of Broken Matzo! It's really torn paper, but this morning, before I've eaten breakfast, while I daydream of matzo brei, the torn paper looks like matzo to me! Better yet, maybe I should call it Matzo Brei Pharaoh!

This evening will be the last night of Passover. I've been busy with quilting projects. Maybe I can post some of that this coming week along with other projects that did not get posted while I was doing the Adar project.

Opalescent Pharaoh

I continue to play with the phararoh images. I discovered something tonight -- cut and paste! LOL! I've been playing with IrfanView for several months now. These pharaoh images were frustrating because some of the components were in the "wrong" place compositionwise. So tonight I tried cutting and pasting different parts of the images. I even copied portions from another image. This is so primary that I'm sure someone is having a good chuckle right along with me! Maybe some day I'll get PhotoShop and learn how to use it! Meanwhile, I'm having fun! Remember, if you want to see the details, just click on the image.

Stone Pharaoh Collage Revisited

Second Post of the Day
This morning, I created at least 30 new images from the Stone Pharaoh collage and the Sedar Fantasy. This afternoon, I took the Stone Pharaoh collage and removed the large paper leaves and their real stems. I found their stark color and form distracting against the more organic shapes and colors. Next I took away some of the plant-matter components that seemed misplaced.

I took this stripped-down version of the collage and started to play with it on IrfanView: recropped the image so that it seems we are viewing the two lefthand pharaohs between columns or the trunks of date palms. However, that may be less apparent now that I've made some color changes.

After removing the plant matter, the section below the two lefthand pharaohs is more noticeable. For me that's good because I like ambiguous images and that section looks like at least three things: water, stairs, and cracked stone. While playing on IrfanView, I accidentally figured out how to do something new (new to me) that gives me much more control over the image changes . . . and voila!

Stone Pharoah

Stone Pharaoh

And, the stone pharaoh broke free
of the ancient mountain
that held him prisoner for so long.

The stone pharaoh broke free, like a golem.
He was bigger than life – much bigger than life.

Yet, far, far overhead,
the giant date palms rose higher still
as they spun like dervishes,
so fast their fronds rose to the sun
while the colors of the twentieth century
glittered at the banks of the Nile . . .
small . . . quiet . . . and alive,
feeding life into the reigning date palms
in the ancient land of the stone pharaoh.

Each year at Passover, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the Exodus story and its allegories. Thus, my focus today is Egypt, the narrow place. What better time to share a poem about a pharaoh? I wrote the poem in Dec 1995. It was inspired by a very vivid, Technicolor dream. The palms were the height of skyscrapers.

The image is an edited photo of a collage I made to go with the poem. The collage was always disappointing but today I edited it on IrfanView and cropped it severely and I like it much more. The collage was made with paste papers, foil, photocopies, and plant matter.

For more pharoah images, visit my Passover set on Flickr.

Visit this link to see how I reworked the pharaoh image a day later.

If you're wondering what a golem is, this link brings you to Wikipedia -- they had far more to say about golems than I ever knew.