Outside and In, Inside and Out / April 17, 2026

 April 17, 2026

Outside and In, Inside and Out

i caress the pearl
placeholder i wear—endless
rain and clouds be damned,
i know luminous lunar
magnificence will return

—dotty seiter

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No Need to Knock—Come In, Come In!
3 x 4″; acrylic, ink, pencil, and collage on paper
Make Yourself at Home series
2026

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Notes about art and poem:
• “i caress” is a tanka about the coexistence of outer and inner life.
• As I worked on No Need, I had an inner dialogue going on that went something like this: “I thought I wanted to do a house series, but now I don’t think I do,” while outwardly my hands had a conversation taking place with some other part of my brain that directed the construction of several new houses.

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1. 

   carol lee

   April 17, 2026 at 4:29 am

   Edit

   Would love to visit ! Don’t know which house to choose. Guess there is something right about the saying that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing ! Guess you have lots of square, triangles and other geometric collage pieces: they all make houses .

   Love the short tanka. Could have lots of interpretations, literal and subjective. The weather always changes, and a pearl is everlasting!

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   1. 

      Dotty Seiter

      April 17, 2026 at 5:53 am

      Edit

      Carol, I want to thank you again for drawing my attention to that MOOC poetry class last June. Although I had mixed feelings about various aspects of the class at times, I was committed to doing the coursework thoughtfully and I have tapped into learnings ever since. I’m grateful!

      It is fun to imagine the interiors of these houses—I like the roof of the one in the bottom right corner, and I’d like to see the layout of the tall skinny one bottom left : )

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      1. 

         carol lee

         April 17, 2026 at 7:56 am

         Edit

         I wasn’t the best student, think I got bogged down on the conceit poem. I may go and do it again.

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         1. 

            Dotty Seiter

            April 17, 2026 at 9:09 am

            Edit

            Keep me posted if you do the Coursera class again. Even though it presented what to me were challenging abstractions, it also imparted a bunch of concrete information that I’ve carried forward and valued and put into practice.

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2. 

   Joyful Puttering

   April 17, 2026 at 7:27 am

   Edit

   Love this little poem. The joy…and the light will always return.

   I’m finding it kind of delightful that your head might have been done with the house series…but your heart and hands were not. What a wonderful and wonky little neighborhood you’ve created.

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   1. 

      Dotty Seiter

      April 17, 2026 at 9:13 am

      Edit

      Joy and light do persist, even when temporarily out of sight!

      Thank you for celebrating the wonky little neighborhood that my heart and hands (endless rain and clouds be damned!) knew enough to create, despite my obscuring thoughts.

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3. 

   lolajovan

   April 18, 2026 at 2:04 pm

   Edit

   luminous lunar magnificance AND the hands doing other than what the mind is contemplating! What kind of outrageous magic is THIS? Love love LOVE this series. Not surprised the hands want to keep building homes… xo

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   1. 

      Dotty Seiter

      April 18, 2026 at 2:39 pm

      Edit

      I do miss seeing the moon when skies are cloud-covered but am grateful to know, as with SO many things in life, there is much that the eye cannot see but which nonetheless is extant!

      And, oh, indeed, what kind of outrageous magic when the hands are doing other than what the mind is contemplating hahaha!

      Thank you for the affirmation of this series. My wish going in is that I’d bump into something the way I bumped into my color swatches last summer and just kept going and going with such engagement each and every time. BUT that is not the way this series has played out, and I am grateful for the adventure just as it is!

      xoxo

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4. 

   Sheila Marie Delgado

   April 22, 2026 at 9:24 pm

   Edit

   Thank you for this joyful post, Dotty. Your explanation had me smiling.

   xoxo

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5. 

   Dotty Seiter

   April 23, 2026 at 6:36 am

   Edit

   Happy any time I can spread joy, Sheila. Thanks!

Directing My Attention / April 13, 2026

 April 13, 2026

Directing My Attention

firestorm and mayhem
in politics, but this too:
birdsong before dawn.

—dotty seiter

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A Nice Ordinary House, He Promised
4 x 4.25″; acryilic, ink, watercolor pencil, and collage on paper
Make Yourself at Home series
2026

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Notes about poem and art:
• “firestorm” began as a firestorm of high-speed inrushing winds of verbiage that fueled flames relentlessly until haiku firefighters came to the rescue and brought everything under control with directed attention.
• A Nice Ordinary isn’t at all what I had in mind when I headed to my studio, but a collection of old paintings and other paper scraps caught my eye, and my hands ran with what my eye spied. When I developed my Let’s Face It Together series, I experimented a bit and landed on bringing to life ‘found faces’ in old neurographic doodles. Similarly, after playing with several pieces in my Make Yourself at Home series, I seem in this piece to have landed on building houses on ‘found real estate,’ again in old work. To wit, several years ago while on vacation in the mountains of West Virginia, I tried my hand at loose scribbled and painted designs in a grid format. I didn’t fall in love with the results, but now that I’ve cut the grid into its parts I’ve directed my attention in a new way, and I see those parts in a new light, developing quite an affection for this first updated piece of the grid.

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