Creating a Waking Dream: Springtime in Hades

Springtime Solarized in Hades
CC Jean Stimmell: May 18.2018

Two years ago, I had a dream of recoiling from a roiling, blood-red river which felt to me like the River Styz. Two nights ago I had a very different underworld dream scenario: I found myself standing on the edge of (or was I standing in) an absolutely still and silent expanse of silvery translucent water criss-crossed by the dark shadows of standing-dead trees.

So this is what Hades is like, I thought. The dream felt important. The feeling tone was somber but, at the same time, somehow uplifting. 

During the dream or as the dream was ending and I was floating back up toward everyday consciousness, it suddenly dawned on me that I knew exactly where this dreamscape was: A beaver pond wetland near my home! I vowed to go there that very day (which was yesterday) and photograph my dream.

And so it came to be… as the above image attests.

This morning, after I edited my wetland photographs and then – stylized and solarized the one that most resonated with that of my dream image – I glanced at an incoming email from an art site I subscribe to. My eye gravitated to the artist-of-the-day: Angela Bacon-Kidwell, her photographs and, even more so, her mission statement:

“My work is a journey and surrender with known and unexplained emotions. Using contradictory symbols that are personal and multilayered, an image can simultaneously represent what I am questioning and what I have answered…These fleeting associations replay themselves in my dreams. The random moments combine to form sleep stories that are rich narratives, ripe with symbolism…In essence, I attempt to create a waking dream.”^⁠1

Is that synchronicity or what?