Nest Egg

Summer in the Stelling household means CLEANING, SORTING and GETTING RID.

Going through old toys and clothes, chucking out everything you once loved to make room for more junk.

Today our plan of attack was to trim back the Ivy bush that's taken over the fence and is running wild into next door's garden. It's an old bush so it's really strong and firmly rooted INTO the wood.

But whilst we tackled the monsterbush, we found an abandoned nest. It hasn't been used for a few years, but I know that blackbirds (whose family this nest probably belongs to) do love to revisit old homes and come back year after year, so I carefully took photos before putting it back in what remains of the bush for them to use again next season.

I just find it incredible that a tiny BIRD made THIS! So clever and beautiful. My attempt is so awful in comparison. Birds are intelligent and creative animals. Poe was intrigued by Charles Dickens' pet Raven, but did he already have a fondness for birds and crows? Was it something about them as a species or just as a symbol?

The issue I'm having is that nothing I DRAW can show what I am FINDING, picking up, collecting around this topic. I'm DISCOVERING and learning but I'm not drawing. I'm looking and then making. Looking and researching further. Reading, then going out exploring.

I seem to work in a different way to most illustrators but that doesn't mean that I'm not an illustrator.

This may sound like a GCSE Media Studies analysis (jokes on me), but the nest ITSELF could be a metaphor for Poe. He too was untamed, wild and fragile.