L'Atelier de la vie is the projects site for Adrienne Kernan La Vallee. Included are digital projects and experiments as well as work in conventional mediums.

Site Design © Adrienne Kernan La Vallee

The Henry link will lead you to my collaboration with Henry Melville Fuller for the New Hampshire Institute of Art's Embellishment project, 2000.

etc. includes a few little experiments.

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a celebration of... 
a few poems
gray wolf press bibiography

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"The Dear Jane Project includes my visual and written reflections on  "Finding A Long Gray Hair" and other poems by the late Jane Kenyon. A web project and two mixed media digital images were created in conjunction with the NH Women's Caucus for Art invitational exhibition, "Finding a Long GrayHair" which was held at St. Paul's School, Concord, NH, April 6-May 5, 2000. The images include Phoebe's  World and Kate's Departure which also were exhibited at Plymouth State College (NH) during the Fall and will be shown at Rivier College in Nashua, NH  in 2001. The original project included three little animations (1999) and a lengthier one that was too large a file for reasonable viewing. Try TheOld Grey (gray) Mare and All That Remains.  My statement provides more insight to my interpretation of the project.   The Jane Kenyon links, left,  provide the opportunity to explore interesting sites including Gray Wolf Publishing.

"A gray shape, an owl, passed overhead" (Prognosis) -- a magnificent  epiphany-- I know you!  The Circle of Grass left by your eighty year-old elder also is mine.  December winds took down Grandpa's fifty year-old spruce.  IT WAS MY TREE, the remains cut, chipped and hauled with 1999 efficiency.  I didn't bear witness, I'm not as strong as you.

Like you, I have experienced the touch of timothy with the lower case 't' ( In the Grove: The Poet at Ten).  My grandmother also knew "That the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost" (Staying at Grandma's), but she never spoke to me of dying.  I can but imagine her departure "the men struggle (ing) with the casket just clearing the pews" (The Pond at Dusk).  I was kept safe from such real things.

It is February, dear Jane, and I am planning the work to be done in my perennial gardens.  You did that each year and, had we been friends, there would have been notes to compare, plants to trade, and searches made for the hardy Party Girl for me, Sidalcea rosea 
for you.  My Mount Hood daffodils and Thalia would have been most pleasing to my sister "garden snob."

The mid-winter planning for summer blooms helps to cast off the blue devils.  Your poetry speaks of your depressions; so much depression.  I take an occasional dip but thankfully my head remains above water.  You nearly drowned.  Otherwise, the poem and the book, are memento mori.   Perhaps it is best to be alert to these inevitable things.

My current focus in the studio is on Finding a Long Gray Hair, a slender and telling work.  I won't illustrate it, Jane.  I will interpret your words and play upon the meanings.  Sometimes I will move away from Finding a Long Gray Hair and even away from you.  After all, this work is mine.  Thank you for allowing your layers of meaning into my layers of visual images.  Your work is real.  I sobbed aloud as I read The Sick Wife. The Pear, that's me, now, and I don't like that!  But there is nothing I can do about the onward march of time.  My work is fiction with a touch of reality found between the layers.  I like to leave a little room for laughter and I will add a few little twists to your words because I like to be safe from the too real things.

So, dear Jane, you are on my mind.  I'll continue to think of you when this project is complete.  When May arrives and I am digging, raking, and planting, I'll envision you along Rt. 4.  A smile will cross my lips when I use my "gray-brown wooden clothes pins" and again when I scratch the frosty autumn soil to plant the Mount Hoods.  I'll always remember your words for at any time it can be Otherwise.

 I didn’t know Jane Kenyon but I felt a bond the moment I read Finding A Long Gray Hair.   Within two of  Jane’s books, Otherwise and A Hundred White Daffodils,   I found Jane the poet, the gardener, the wife; and I felt her depression and the connection to family and friends that helped to keep her whole.  Everything she wrote was about Finding A Long Gray Hair.  I began to write to her and visually respond to our shared feelings. 

 For me Jane Kenyon’s Finding A Long Gray Hair is about the interconnectiveness of our lives and the lives of those who are now gone.  Kenyon’s poem is reflected literally in Dear Jane  through the use of hair and metaphorically bears witness through layers of visual and written meaning.  Within Dear Jane is the strong influence of my ever-present ancestors, “my life added to theirs” (Finding A Long Gray Hair).  I am the keeper of my grandmother’s grey hair. The strands were clipped the day she died in March 1962.  I listen to Aunt Mary’s piano rendition, Valses nobles et sentimentales, her studies with Cortot continue to delight my sensibilities long after her death (1987).  My great grandmother Kate was born a hundred years before I came into the world yet her strength of character remains and provides me with comfort during trying times.  Their likenesses appear in my work; their lives are reflected in mine.  These connections are important to me.

 Jane Kenyon was connected to her family and to the little everyday events that shape everyone’s lives.  She loved gardening and working on her art...her poetry.  I share her love of gardening and I share the need for aesthetic expression.  Jane used words,  I use  traditional as well as new painting, printmaking and drawing media.  I have been playing with computer imaging for more than twelve years and after purchasing my third version of Adobe PhotoShop (5.5),  I want to WORK with it.  I include elements of my traditional work within the digital images and the web pages.  This is a very intriguing approach for me as I enjoy manipulating an image I created in a traditional technique to fit another need.  I feel a new excitement everytime I approach the computer and my studio.

Other "Dear Jane" images include two little animated gifs. The Old Grey Mare and Remains.

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Henry Melville Fuller, Adrienne Kernan La Vallee 2000

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Our Paradise Lost,  an installation created with poet Rodger Martin in 1997, was exhibited in the Chapel Art Center, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH. The project was supported in part by a grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. For the project web site which includes narrative, poetry, music and additional images, please follow the Our Paradise Lost link.

Other links related to the subjects found within our project are Museo del Templo Mayor and Mesoweb.

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Photo credits: Elsa Voelcker