Today's mise en abyme image is by the Japanese artist Miwa Komatsu who is presenting her work in an exhibition Pray and Live at Sapporo Arts Park Museum of Art from July 5th to August 31st, as I discovered on a visit there yesterday
It may not be exactly mise en abyme, but for me it does somehow capture the feeling I get from a mise en abyme image. A curious swirl and whoop! An extraordinary depth and surface. Simple delight and utter confusion all swept together to create a mirror image of a dog — or perhaps two dogs! (A bit like the feeling I get with our golden retriever Wilson. See picture below.)
Seeing Miwa’s image has made me wonder how to write a poem in a parallel verbal style. This week's challenge!
You can see more of Miwa's work here: https://miwa-komatsu.jp/en/
And an interview here: https://www.xibtmagazine.com/2021/08/connecting-mythology-with-environment-interview-with-miwa-komatsu/
Here’s Wilson, taking it easy…
By the way…
If you like historical detective fiction, I’m sure you’ll enjoy The Reward of Delay, currently being serialised on Substack at: https://lichfieldmysteries.substack.com/publish/home.
Huguenot refugees are building successful businesses in the English Midlands as the industrial revolution and Enlightenment ideas gather momentum. Yet, at the same time, England is still in low spirits, subdued and depressed after defeat in the American War of Independence and with a purportedly mad king on the throne.
It’s May 1789 and in France revolution is imminent. French spies have discovered that someone is shipping armaments to Huguenots in northern France. One, a ruthless and sadistic former Black Musketeer named Gondrin, follows the trail of the shipments via ship and barge to the English city of Lichfield.
When respected local lawyer Thomas Newton is found dead in the city’s ancient cathedral, theologian turned thief-taker Samuel Kinsman is challenged by his pregnant wife Susannah to investigate and earn more to support his family. Assisted by his researcher Frank Barber, a manumitted slave and Dr Johnson’s former manservant, and by his stolid watchman Dudley Netherford, Kinsman must find his way through a tangled web of vested interest, family history and local rivalry to discover the culprit.
