Recently I attended Patrice Vecchione’s Monterey book launch for Step into Nature, a personal journal of solitary walks in and their influence on her art (as a collage artist and painter) and on her poetry. Step into Nature invites the reader to join her on a quiet and unassuming spiritual journey, a discovery of the symbiosis we share with plants and animals as thinking, feeling creatures. Her book soothes the imagination and brings a Zen-like equilibrium to the reader.
The book launch was jointly sponsored by the Carmel Art Association and Pilgrim’s Way Bookstore and Secret Garden. Vecchione read excerpts dealing with a world of surprising relationships: with a rat, a fox, a puma, an owl, a hive of bees. Her reading exuded her enjoyment and connection with the sheer beauty of mother earth. As Patrice states on her website blog: “I think of collage as a visual poem. Poetry distills experience into language. Often disparate ideas and emotions coalesce. Collage unites images from varied sources to tell a new story….—we retain a ribbon of memory from that day and another from years before. There in that mix are the stories of our lives.”
I look forward to co-authoring an article with Patrice over the summer on the symbol of the rat in Buddhism and evoking empathy.