summertime
summertime
Amanda Tinker, Amy Levine, Barbara Dombach, Beate Sass, Bonnie Baker, Chris Warner-Carey, Clare Palmer, Edson Scudder, Frances Bukovsky, Haylee Anne, Jeffrey DeChristofaro, Jen Lothrigel, Jessica Maleski, John Ryan Brubaker, Julia Nagai, Kaye Savage, Laura Rudkin-Miniot, Lesley Price, Paul Wanta, Pedro Ledesma, Rick Rheingans, Robert Houghton, Sarah Shea-Roberto, Sue Stigleman, Susan Patrice, Sustan Preston, Tracy Watts
As part of our exploration of the theme of Time we asked one another: does time feel different in summer? How does summer time influence your practice? What is capturing your creative attention this summer? What doorway of time is showing up most for you this summer? (Deep time? Inhabited time? Time-out-of-time?) This gallery is made from the words and images of community responses to these questions, curated by Kate Kennington Steer.
when earth yields its hold on dormant life reluctantly …
bedraggled plants shyly emerge, gorge on sunlight …
we pull weeds
an un-rushed time …
to listen to the birds sing
and take in all the colours
Edson Scudder
foliage wrapping us
in their scents, seeds,
and shivelight
…the intensity of light and heat, humidity that lingers
at the edges of my body …
a certain richness fills
the air that I had missed
Edson Scudder
Jessica Maleski
when it's hard to deny
the call
of putting my skin
in cool salty water
as a respite
from the beating sun
a threshold …
when the veil between worlds
is thin
Jessica Maleski
Sue Stigleman
Sue Stigleman
intersecting timelines …
every moment is a part
of many pasts
and many futures
Edon Scudder
born on this day
I am drawn
to the colours of fire
‘solstitial praisetime’ is an ekphrastic short film made by Kate Kennington Steer combining words and images from the summertime gallery’s contributors to meld them into a new visual piece.
solstitial praisetime begins in darkness
a wait for the slow release of dormancy -
a dis-abled body shy of the call to rise
to be perceived once more
to wrap uncertainty in shivelight
become engorged by it watch
it swell into growth
that bursts free as unrushed
bathing as worship beneath
companion of the rich moment the movement
from morningbirds to nightfireflies.
such longed-for intensity swirls intersections
of before and now, every moment
containing the possibility of thin
as humidity limns and lingers
edges every body and being
a threshold threads between the veils,
pinholes views into, between every moment part
of past and future - fleeting evocations of slowed attention
of elongated connection of the required plunge into
coolness as respite from being seen by burning heat
the heart of Childhood resurrected
and dispelled in the same beat
as concentrated colours seep power
into every collage of breath
being birthed as fire
Kate Kennington Steer
(August 2026)
