“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” – Edgar Allan Poe
Dream Making Stuff – Making Dreams into Art
In the movie, The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sam Spade (played by Humphrey Bogart) refers to “the stuff that dreams are made of.” as he gazes at sculpture of a bird the “Maltese Falcon” from the movie title. Spade was paraphrasing a much older expression which can be traced back to – who else – William Shakespeare. In Act IV of The Tempest, Prospero says “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history.
Fine art photographer Edward M. Fielding has a series of artwork called “Visual Poetry” which also seems to be made from dreams and in some cases nightmares. This series of highly manipulated photography layers images upon images to create dreams-capes in which several images build upon each other to create the overall fantasy imagery.
“Let Sleeping Bears Lie” is part of an ongoing series called “Visual Poetry” by Edward M. Fielding which consists of heavily layered and manipulated black and white photography with dream or nightmare like qualities.
Dreams are windows into worlds beyond the ordinary. Some people have dreams that give them guidance about the smallest details of their daily life along with profound spiritual insights. Others experience unconditional and transforming love in their dreams.
What’s scarier? A world with magic or one without?
Pursuit of the American Dream, a nest to feather. A car in the garage. A chicken in every pot.
A beating heart ripped out and offered to you. Dream or nightmare?
A woman’s naked body appear in the smoke from a pipe – what have you been smoking?
A train ride away to another world. What would happen if you got on the wrong train and ended up somewhere totally new and different. What if you woke and found yourself in the body of someone else?
What’s over that wall? What’s through that door? Perhaps an enchanting secret garden to explore or perhaps a Bengal Tiger waiting to pounce. Curiosity can lead to discovery of both good and evil. It killed the cat Mothers warn but it also lead to some of mankind’s greatest accomplishments.
Death stares out in this untitled piece from the Visual Poetry series of dream like images by Edward M. Fielding.
“Words Take Flight” off the vintage typewriter and into the sky in this dream inspired piece by Edward M. Fielding from the Visual Poetry series.
Kansas, a powerful, dream-like surreal image by fine art photographer Edward M. Fielding, with ties to the Wizard of Oz. Toto, perhaps we are still in Kanasas after all.
Roots, a multi-layered, dream inspired artwork by Edward M. Fielding, recalls humans ties to nature.
Buckminster Fuller’s concept of “Space Ship Earth” realized in a surrealist landscape of floating hexagon structures. Geodesic domes become lighter than air and float above the landscape in this dream induced artwork by Edward M. Fielding.
A zebra enters an old round barn in New Hampshire in this surrealism composite black and white layered dream-like imagery of a photograph by Edward M. Fielding.
A surreal landscape of old abandoned brick buildings and a threatening sky. Crown Point, NY – fine art photography by Edward M. Fielding – www.edwardfielding.com
Surrealism – 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images. The Surrealist artists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighting it down with taboos.Dream art is any form of art directly based on material from dreams, or which employs dream-like imagery.
Visual Poetry – Literary theorists have identified visual poetry as a development of concrete poetry but with the characteristics of intermedia in which non-representational language and visual elements predominate.