The Lunatic Fringe

Sometimes life is your art. Sometimes art is your life. But always we are, by our human nature artists. The structure we give our lives is as vital a life form as the structure we give the many ways we create.
The Lunatic Fringe is where we recognize and celebrate the wonderful art explored just in our humanity. We believe in all art. We believe it to all be "fringy" from the odd corners of our souls and our worlds.
We welcome guest blogs from all kinds of artists from fiber artists, quilters, formal arts, odd doodlers and sculpters, and those artists who sculpt in the way their lives are built. It's part of our human nature. Are you one of the Lunatic Fringe?

Thursday, October 20, 2011

April H. Center: A Brilliant Painter with Words


Holding up the World by Ellen Anne Eddy
April Center is a word painter in the Indiana Dunes area. Her images flow out of the page and grab you tightly. Sometimes they are warm and caressing. Sometimes they reach out in ways that are ferocious. But whatever they do, they always touch you somewhere deeply.


What Matters Now
Copyright 2011
By April Center


The trees know. The seasons require attention of different matters.
In spring they stretch their arms reaching for the light and the warmth,
With an awakening that follows throughout the millennium.
The sap slowly flows it’s lifeblood through their veins long before tiny sprouts appear
Like tiny fingers, whispering, reaching to grasp the hope and pursuit of sunlight,
Finding succor for the summer
Ever beckoning, wooing, breathing, soothing.
No need for wondering what matters now in the halcyon days of spring.


The trees know what matters in the glorious summer.
The trees are in full prayer and reverie – their chorus is heard easily
Above the canopy bestowing silent solace
Their arms with a million fans swaying, sometimes gently laughing, softly sighing
Sometimes boldly shouting, clapping and cheering
To the heartbeat of the wind – dancing,
Ever dancing with a grace beyond compare
The trees know what matters now in the ripe days of summer.


The trees know what matters in the fullness of time
In the slow fall from grace
No longer hindered, the trees and their kin shrug off their summer shroud
To be found scattered and strewn on the ground preparing a bed.
They sigh with a satisfied sleepiness after the dance.
A kaleidoscope of color shivers from their frames,
The painted beauty now leaves no trace,
What is left is the enduring body and face.
In the twilight of autumn the trees know what matters in the universe.


The trees know what matter most at this time. No longer concealed
Is their courage standing in place, always there but rarely seen while encased
In their garments of lace.
Not languishing, not laggardly, they brace
For the sharp, serrated winds that gust with the squalls of winter,
Withering all but the trees, for the trees know what matters in a world of much waste.
You'll find more writing of April's at Prudy's View.

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