Martha Nance is a physician in Minnesota whose iPhone, bored watching her work all day, likes to go outside to photograph the play of light on the burbling fountain outside her office.  It then pesters her in the evenings to fiddle with the photographs it has taken, to uncover the colors and textures and ideas hidden in the infinite number of images it obtains.  She refers to the series of photos as “Waterwords”.  Several pieces from this series have been published in print and on-line journals such as The Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Burningwood LIterary Journal, DeLuge Journal, The Dewdrop, and Raw Art Review. 

I am guided by the light and movement in my photographs, and also by my mood and events around me.  My husband has commented more than once that the resulting images are often dark, or angry, or forceful.  Perhaps there is some psychology-of-me behind that, or more optimistically, maybe it is “just” an artistic leaning.  But 2020, clearly, was a year of discontent and uncertainty–but at the same time, strong Americanism.  Whichever “side” of whichever issue you found yourself on (COVID restrictions, George Floyd, global warming, Trump, vaccines, high school sports on-or-off, or a hundred other locally important but neglected-by-everyone-else issues), you have to have felt that everything was a little (or a lot) off–the colors of the flag weren’t quite red, white and blue, and the stripes weren’t exactly straight.  Didn’t it make you angry?  This particular piece was created as my town of Minneapolis burned in May 2020.