Spring Alliance Contest!

Greetings, luminous Allies! It is my pleasure to announce the Spring Alliance Contest!

Because I, your founder, have a deep and abiding love for the seasons, this group now hosts seasonal contests, and as the Winter Contest is now over, it is time for Spring. I know I was a bit late in posting this one (sorry!), but considering how freaky the seasons are acting this year (at least around here!), we're still getting frost! So I'm still definitely in a spring mood and looking forward to all of your springy art!

The contest starts right now, and ends July 15th. At that time, the Summer Contest will begin.

The rules of the contest are simple: create a work of art, centered loosely around the theme of Spring, based on another work of art (literature based on visual artwork or visual artwork based on literature, in keeping with the theme of the group). The theme is very open to interpretation. I have provided some examples in the feature (though as always, you are allowed to use any spring-related deviation you choose). There are many spring-related themes from which you can choose: flowers, animals, warmer weather, spring rain, bees, bunnies, eggs, birds, the rebirth of light and warmth to the earth. Springtime holidays are also acceptable: St. Patrick's Day (past, I know, but still spring!), The Vernal Equinox, Easter (or Ostara) naturally, Beltaine (May Day), Earth Day, etc. I'm sure you'll think of something!

This does NOT have to be a new piece! HOWEVER, what I really don't want you to do is find an old spring poem or painting and then search for a corresponding artwork that you think kinda sorta goes along with it. That's cheating, my dears. This contest and this group is all about being inspired by different types of artwork! Also, it's unlikely to help you win. 

  How well the deviation ties into the inspiring piece.

PRIZES:

1st: 100 + feature by LadyofGaerdon and Lit-Visual-Alliance

2nd: 75 + feature by LadyofGaerdon and Lit-Visual-Alliance

3rd: 50 + feature by LadyofGaerdon and Lit-Visual-Alliance

Entries are unlimited! Go wild!

Please submit entries to the Spring Contest folder. 

To help you guys get into the spirit and start those creative juices flowing, here is a feature from our brand new Spring Inspiration favorites folders: Please note that the inspiring deviation does not have to be one of these! It's just to give you an idea. More Spring Inspiration can be found in our Favorites Folders and you are free to suggest Spring-themed pieces as well.

SpringtimeIt is winter on my breastbone,
Across my nose,
Down my arms,
Snowbanks of pale skin
At my shoulders, elbows, knees.
But a sudden spring emerges on my hipbone,
A rioting vibrant mass
Of blue-black-purple-green.
Brought on not by the warming of the weather,
Or a gentle rain,
But by a forceful collision with a table.
This bloom will wither soon,
Just like the real daffodils and irises.
The colors will fade,
And my skin will return to the tundra.  aphroditeclambering lips tumble over each other like
little deer stumbling into the headlights, where
blushing cupid's bows snap shut at the slightest
whisper of a touch; as summer's broken blossom
whistles into moss, suicidal and free-falling at a
twist of the wind, dripping through honeyed-hands and
trickling down wrists. words nuzzle breath, the air
staved of acoustics that choreograph faces closer; watching as
quivering eyes thrust new-born hope, where
restless hearts knock beneath a web of ribs,
screaming silently as bodies are poured into the
stitches of aphrodite's venomo(us) fly-trap.  Clair de LuneSometimes I imagine
That when Debussy penned this movement,
He hesitated with the title.
"Clair de Lune"…moonlight.
Perhaps he didn't have the courage
To add an "E" to the end of her name,
Immortalizing her in music.
The gentle chords pouring
From his piano describing
The peace with which she slept.
"Claire of the Moon."
She was the embodiment of dreams.
Indeed, with her hair spread out
In messy ringlets across the pillow,
The pale, spring-time glow
Of the moon hanging heavy
In the April sky
Gently casting its cool light
Through the half-open window,
Onto her faintly blushing cheek.
She looked ethereal,
Like a flower that opens for moonlight alone.
Imbued in this music is the tenderness
With which he desired
To move a stray curl from where it lay
Draped across her brow.
As the movement sweetly closes,
She gently wakes, smiling,
As I gently wake from the scene I created.
This exists in my imagination only,
The romantic in me dreaming
With the fictional Claire.  RosesYou love too much, I am told by a man with a briar heart, thorny sinews and collapsed ventricles bearing down on him, hardly beating in his tight chest. He looks at me with flat, slate eyes, chipping and eroding. His hands are dark with cigarette burns and rough with calluses; I feel them on my shoulders as he looks down at me, face collapsing in at his eyes like a dead man's.
For the first time, I realize he is dead. His briar heart dried up when winter killed his rose; my father, he is all thorns.
He squeezes my shoulders, too tight. You look like your mother, you know, he whispers, eyes shifting to the garden, to the yellow rose I planted for her. It is a rambler, sending shoots to the sky that sink back down. We never gave it a trellis. I loved her too much. And there are tears in his eyes, wet, heavy things that slip down his cheeks and on to the grass below us.
I don't know what to say, so I think of the rose, of her. I think that I'd like to send this   BloomIt's normal, you know.
Bruises flower under skin like lilies in a garden
Tears find their place just like water in the soil
They seep into the black
Nurture seedlings
And hurt grows so green and natural.
Pearl skin is supposed to go purple
It's as right as the rain.
So don't worry, don't fret
I'm art, you know, cross-stitching on the wall
An ivory piano key
Just as I should be
Because battered things are beautiful.
Feathers torn from silk pillows
And stick figures on balance beams
Aren't as loved, nor as adored,
Nor as beautiful as me.  cypress lady.Lost in a fog, a stranger walks.
Dressed in shadows,
she creeps.
Alone, she whispers
nondescript words in a language
no-one hears,
for no-one cares to listen.
In the shade
of an ageing cypress tree,
she lies beneath the boughs.
In the soft, soft grass,
she sighs as she dozes.
The sun hides behind a cloud,
and the quiet shadows grow cold.
As she opens her eyes, she shivers,
her grassy bedding turning to ice
as she is lost to the pleasantries
of dreams.
She looks out,
and from the realms of her shadows
can see a faint light
past the leafy threshold.
Standing, she walks
slowly to the edge,
staring out.
She stretches her hand out,
testing the lighter air.
Gasps. Flinches, snatches it back
into the darkness.
Despite the hidden sun, the air is warm.
(Yet why do I not burn?)
She is in wonder.
Although she yearns
to illuminate herself,
she hesitates to step beyond the shade.
Not once
has she stood in the full bright beams
of the sun,
not once.
Fear –
What will happen  PersephoneI fed her
pomegranate kisses
and she cried
at every frozen sunrise
for 180 days.
With cracks in my heart
and souls
caught in my hair
I counted 180 more.   Grating RaspsIt courses and winds like air through veins,
Falls languidly through space, red as wax, drips
From barren branches full with leaves,
From sighs and outstretched fingertips.
It howls in silver song from the moon-top
Grips like ice and as ice does, lets go.
Stars and hollowness gently fall,
As it's all that nothingness will ever know.
It shudders and shatters in scarlet decay,
Breaks like waves of unblemished sound,
Until scattering, piece by crystalline piece
To the dusty, earth caked, green-strewn ground.
It leaves forms laying in beds of growth,
Traces rivers through rock before treading back.
It resonates through choking and grasps hungrily at light,
Extinguishing black for greater, water soaked black.
        And it comes as easily as it goes,
        Goes as though it never came. :thumb308054888:  InstructionsWear dreamsong like a gown
wear rainscent like a cloak
no shoes, your bare feet know the way
in and out the twisted place
tell them you don't know your name
yet don't dare to actually forget
listen to the honey light fiddle
but forbid your feet to dance
for the music is enchanting
and your feet won't stop
when you want to leave
sing a homesong, follow your feet
through dark forest, over fragile bridge
unknown paths, an open door
you will never find back.  strawberriesdrops of rain explode
into colors on your outstretched hands,
blossoming as roses
like bright ripe strawberries.
and when you roam enchanted gardens,
nothing is ever as it seems…
one moment a blade of grass
and the next one of many feathers
on the wing of a bird
about to take flight.
no matter how you try
gravity is wiser,
and you are bound to come down from the clouds.
millions of heartbeats like yours
all search for the same thing
and will find each other someday.  Elegy Of A Lost SeasonI am the fall.
Broken in June, buried in August -
haunting September from the boughs of hazel,
where not even the rain could reach me.
How my limbs ached to feel its soothing caress;
but my limbs felt nothing, and I felt nothing.
And the season moved on, without me.
Once, long ago, I was spring,
delicate and pure; fragile as willow seedlings,
believing themselves strong, as they stretch toward the sun -
before the wind breaks their stalks, and they fall
defeated, drained, limp upon the ground;
crushed and forgotten as tears.
But no, I was summer -
when I looked into your eyes for the first time
and forgot to curse the sun.
Tiny beads running down my neck;
hateful, so hateful - ignored, as you ensnared my senses.
You were summer, too
cradled in the branches of oak,
bright enough to burn my eyes and scorch my skin,
but never close enough to touch.
Until in your arms, I became summer,
and the sun could not outshine us.
But now I am winter -
numb and cold, faded, stripped and desolate;
a s  :thumb203486410:  CamelliasThe carcasses
of pink camellia blossoms
litter the sidewalk,
a school of tropical fish
escaped from their captors' net
and gasping
for air.
I wait for them to rise
into the sky,
a flock of bright angels,
fins turned toward the clouds.
They will bloom again tomorrow,
this I know.  Atlanticyou were the ghost
who made the apple fall.
.
and no,
it's not you,
sometimes the seeds
turn into trees
or flowers, strange
incarnations of
the strangest force,
and, at other times,
the wind lifts them away
so they never
touch the ground.
there's nothing left but course.
.
of course you are, but i must know;
do you go door to door,
knocking on the stars?
reality: just
an architect's answer
to a philosopher's question.
.
over the atlantic you sing
like the end who just learned
he was a beginning.
over the atlantic you sing:
"god is an ocean,
and you can only pray
by kneeling on the ground."  Apple BlossomYour blush is fading;
windswept, you shudder gently
fragrant petal tears  One Day I Shall Lay Down And Dieone day i shall lay down and die
and so for now here is my kiss, my golden-ness,
my forehead pressed against yours
like two strange animals lost on a plain of
red sand. one day i shall lay down and die so
now here, let these birds pick me apart,
show you it all, the torn underwear
and the girl gazing at the soft glow
on trees, the ferocious lion-love
weeping under the kitchen table. one day
i shall lay down and die
so for now i feast on beaches, your breath,
the flutter of my dress sore against my skin
someday i will find that peace,
plant a spring-flower deep in my heart, land one last cool kiss
on the bow of your mouth and slip away, i know that one day
i will lay down and die but for now
feel your fingers spread across my heart,
feel my roar in the night :thumb202708923:  Only as Old"Frail bones predict what fragile minds can't detect,"
He trailed off slowly, "And my bones are achin'."
The air around me hung low and depressed,
Sticking to the back of my throat like a stormy syrup
I'd tried to swallow down.
I peered out the kitchen window
And caught an inklet of patched-over-grey sky;
I wondered what was in store for the day.
Impartial to the gloom outside, we stepped out onto the back porch;
Grandpa wobbled out with his cane in hand and we waited.
In the hushed stillness the trees traded birds—
Robins, swallows, whippoorwills, and cardinals.
If you squinted hard enough at the sullen shrubbery,
You could spot the caterpillar creeping to the underside of the leaf.
That's when I looked at Grandpa,
And saw through his eyes nature receding
At his prescience of a storm.
"Grandpa, how do you always know?"
He chuckled and simply said: "The world tells me."
It was left at that, but years later I have found
That the world is only as old as the person to whom you speak. 

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Now go and get creating!  

The Team:

P.S. Re-upping our Super-group subscription pretty much killed my collection.... So any prize donations you guys can offer would be deeply appreciated.