rootcrop54's photostream  

I’m all about cats. (And, from what I’ve seen, there are quite a few of us on flickr!)

When I was a child and couldn’t sleep, my mother told me to think of something that made me happy. Always, it was kittens. While other people were dreaming about flying, my recurring (pleasant) dreams were about kittens.

And while my paintings in graduate school were not about cats, they did creep into some of the portraits I was painting. The natural progression was oil portraits of cats, then a life-sized (plus) beaded cat mummy, clay boxes with cats mimicking Egyptian miniature cat sculptures, t-shirts with actual cat photos, a photo essay about a cat, to needle-felted cats.

Flickr has fulfilled many needs for me. And continues to. My partner and I spent five years on a “book” (photo essay) about a special cat named Thomas. While we poured heart and soul into it, we gave up getting it published after nine refusals. Flickr became my venue for sharing our project with anyone who is interested. I began by slowly posting the photos and text as a sequel of sorts, but when Thomas became gravely ill and passed away, I posted them more earnestly as a way of honoring him. And I finished on the one-year anniversary of his death. The support of flickr friends as I was adding the black-and-white photos (scans from 35mm pics) was amazing. The world became a much smaller place as kind-hearted cat (and art) lovers coaxed me on…

The very day I first heard about needle felting, flickr provided immediate examples of people working in the medium. And talk about a wealth of inspiration! I am routinely humbled by the quality of images of cats that I see in my contacts’ photostreams. Flickr can’t be beat as a visual resource: if I need to study what a cat grooming her kitten looks like, I can find it (and probably several examples) by searching Flickr.

I am strangely proud of my “favorites” pool, because I feel like I have collected priceless gems. Slow to learn digital, I know that many photos in my photostream could be better. The main ways I use my photostream are to share my photographs (which might only illustrate a cat behavior or activity), and to share my needlefelted cats. They take many, many hours, but my reward (besides the intrinsic ones) is posting a new cat on Flickr. I try to photograph them in interesting ways, and I am interested in the clues that do or do not give away their true scale.

Many thanks to those who visit my photostream, and who comment. I have met great people on flickr!

I think my pictures are family friendly, if a little eccentric at times.