Common Ground Review's art editor, Lorna Ritz, had a grant to paint sand dunes in Cape Cod while she stayed in a shack without power or hot water. We thought the ocean might be a great cover for the Spring/Summer issue. (This June we are busily catching up on a year's backlog, selecting poems for the issue, debating, contacting people...and our contest judge, Iain Haley Pollock, is doing his part, too!)
For now, here is the possible cover, and some excerpts from Lorna's diary about her time on the dunes:
1 May. It was pure joy to set my easel up on the
cliff again. My entire color pallet changed from lush Western MA. I had to mix
the colors together to very specifically find what color this place is. The
ocean constantly moves and changes.
2 May By now I have lost track of days… Yesterday I
got lost in the dunes again. What should have taken me 1 + hrs. to return
to my shack turned out to be many more hours. I again got disoriented and lost
my sightlines as I descended deep into the crevices of the dunes; when I
climbed back up in sand, my sightlines were gone, so, I walked the wrong way.
...
Jesse said , ‘Me and my wife never get lost. “ He added, 'you should have map
quested the dunes." (Impossible, in this case: I even had a National Park
Service map which is of no help when disoriented). A P'Town artist told me that
people get lost all the time, many having to sleep outside in the night, in the
cold, because they can’t find their way out. It was my instinct that got me
‘found’ each time.
2 May Today was my happiest day (not getting lost)!
Last night before I went to sleep, I lay flat under the mysterious sky full of
brilliant stars, listening to ocean waves. The combination has put me in a good
mood for a lifetime. I did another ocean drawing, paying attention only to the
waves coming up onto the dunes. !!!!
