Posted on by Aletha Kuschan · 2 Comments

music from a little shell

I have been listening to music I hear coming from inside a small shell.  It seems to sing me advice concerning the painting of my koi fish.  Its music comes from a great distance, whispering from far inside its small architecture, and it winds round chamber upon chamber to reach the outer air of the world.  Yet the delight it produces is commensurate with something much louder and grander.  It’s really quite an amazing little shell.

[Top of the post: drawing of a lonely shell, by Aletha Kuschan, ballpoint pen]

Posted on by Aletha Kuschan

Sea Shell on its side

Here’s the favorite shell on its side.  These shells wafted up upon some beach of the imagination, have traveled half way across the world, are still whispering the wave music of their interior chambers.

[Top of the post:  Sea Shell by Aletha Kuschan, pencil]

Posted on by Aletha Kuschan · 2 Comments

Sea Shell

Summer thoughts lead one to the oceanside.  I’m far inland, and yet I still have ocean thoughts.  I’ve taken a long walk this morning along the sandy paths of the neighborhood that once were ancient ocean floor.

This shell wafts in on ocean currents that began when I was in high school.  I had a friend named Walt Wooton, and I visited his house once during summer vacation. Walter was a writer.  In his family’s cool basement we talked.  I happened to express my admiration for a beautiful sea shell on display.

Some days later, Walter arrived unexpectedly at my house.  He had a gift for me.  It was the same sea shell.  In every era of my artistic life I have turned to this shell to explore ideas.  Its forms are as great and as varied as a continent’s.  I will never discover all its passages and shadows, its paths and heights.  But I return to it again and again to make my journey.

[Top of the post:  Sea Shell by Aletha Kuschan]