Amy ⚡️Jiskra
@ollyollyospreyfree
Recovering Journalist | Earth Advocate | Aspiring Beuysian Thinker | Camera Wielder | Tar Heel State Infiltrator Chraňte plamen +
Greetings from Germany - Mail Art from Horst Tress that I received yesterday. ‘Art is communication.’ 🩵
A dragonfly’s odyssey through the cosmos… (Or my attempt to capture this guy in flight, which was tricky, against the backdrop of algae-filled pools of where a creek used to flow.) Alamance Co, NC 7.8.2026
No image but rather a video of the Death Valley Girls' drummer because there was no way a phone camera was going to capture her movement. Nothing but a blur. She's incredible.
Man Man in Durham NC 7.7.26. I’ve only been waiting for this show since 2008ish. Thanks for stopping in NC, Honus Honus.
Fly fishing - a male Osprey lifts off from the waters of Jordan Lake Dam after plucking a small fish with his talons. 🪶
4-leaf clover popped up near the tree we planted on Joseph Beuys’ birthday 2 months ago. The young Japanese Maple is doing well despite drought conditions. Photo 2: Beuys in Kassel, Germany w/ the basalt stones that later accompanied each tree of his ‘7000 Oaks’ in 1982. Taken by Dieter Schwerdtle
On the eve of the 250th year as a nation, I’m reading ‘Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for the Western Man.’ The US doesn’t grasp true freedom & self-determination as we nosedive into the unbalanced grounds of capitalism. We put too much faith into a broken system. Kéž spatříme světlo. ++
Juvenile Bald Eagle, Moncure, NC 2024 Habitat loss, illegal hunting & insecticide poisoning almost took them out but after their addition to the Endangered Species list in 1978, their populations bounced back. May they never be endangered again…but we need to take steps to ensure that.
Joseph Beuys in America - 1974 He had hope for us. He saw the US as a victim of its own aggressive materialist and capitalist ways. He noted the societal, racial, and ecological problems we grappled with then…he saw a young country still trying to find its way. Look at us now 💔
44 years ago today, Joseph Beuys transformed a replica of Ivan the Terrible’s crown into what he deemed a peace symbol, recasting it as a hare & sun sphere. ‘Friedenshase’ (Hare of Peace), 6/30/1982, Kassel, Germany ‘The future we want must be invented, otherwise we get one we don’t want.’ JHB ++
I went outside to see the strawberry moon rise but it was too hazy. So I spent some time with the Eastern Cottontails instead.
‘Green leaves are transformed into calyx and petals. Thus, relative to the leaves and the stem, the bloom is a revolution, although it has grown in organic transmutation.’ Joseph Beuys +++
‘The blossom does not come about abruptly, but rather is the result of organic growth, constructed in such a way that the embryonic petals are encapsulated in the green leaves and derive from them…’ Joseph Beuys ++
‘For me the rose is a very simple and clear example and image of this evolutionary process toward the revolutionary aim, for a rose is a revolution relative to its origin…’ Joseph Beuys +
Adrift… Taken in Gibsonville, NC. I was waiting for owls I could hear but not see so I shot for the moon instead.
Joseph Beuys: ‘I'm a rabbit. I run through a furrow, and if they want to get me, I have another furrow in my head without thinking too much.’ André Müller: ‘And finally, bury yourself in the ground. Then nobody can find you anymore.’ JB: ‘I have long since melted into the earth anyway.’ 1980 ++
Snapshots from Bombay Beach in California in 2023. This is a defunct resort that shuttered in the 1980s. Now it’s a sprawling artscape lining the polluted waters of the Salton Sea.
6/22/1967 - Joseph Beuys with Johannes Stüttgen announcing the founding of the German Student Party in front of Düsseldorf Academy. This was in response to the deadly police shooting of Benno Ohnesorg in Berlin weeks before at an anti-authoritarian protest during the Iran Shah’s state visit. ++
‘The Rubáiyát of a Bachelor’ illustrated by Harold Speakman, published in 1915
Joseph Beuys with his son Wenzel in 1967, who later planted the remaining 7,000 Oaks after his father’s passing in 1986. Photo by Liselotte Strelow
Just some Least Tern Acrobatics. What’s really happening: I got to observe bird courtship from a beach blind. I think he won her over. Good job, bro. Outer Banks, NC 2024
‘Honey is flowing in all directions.’ Joseph Beuys ++ For the love of bees.
We have one of his sculptures here in our small University art museum. It’s how I was introduced to his work.