Poem Project – entry #1 Boats

Last summer, my youngest sister suggested that each of the women in the family create an art piece based on a similar sketch.  After a few weeks of email conversation, it was decided that instead of recreating a single sketch in our various art forms, we would create art work with “boats” as a central theme,  after all, we are a nautical family.   The work was to be completed by midnight on Christmas Eve.  All entries would be accepted and deemed magnificent by our jury – ourselves of course!

My daughter, Brittany, actually finished her entry first because she helped one of her students create a small wooden boat which she photographed last August. My mother finished a quilted wall hanging using pictures of almost every boat she and my dad have owned along with the poem “Sea Fever” written in the corner.  My sister in Minneapolis put together a stained glass entry of row boats pulled up to a dock and my other sister used a picture by Rie Munoz as inspiration for an inlaid wood picture.  My brother’s wife composed some props and took a quick photo before it all collapsed!

I designed my entry around the poem “Where Go the Boats,” by Robert Louis Stevenson.  His collection of childhood verses was a favorite of our family when we were growing up.   Living here in the northwest, it is easy to imagine a child’s toy boat drifting down a river to the Puget Sound and on to the Pacific Ocean.   I have a brother-in-law with property along the Nooksack River and each spring we gather there to watch the canoes compete in the Ski to Sea race.  My fabric picture is reminiscent of the view we see on the river’s edge.

Here are the entries: model boat, quilt, stained glass, inlaid wood, photo.

Where Go the Boats?
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand.
It flows along for ever,
With trees on either hand.

Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating–
Where will all come home?

On goes the river
And out past the mill,
Away down the valley,
Away down the hill.

Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.