Ice Abstract: Peaceful Green World

An abstract journey through ice and time.

Please enjoy this ice abstract, made of ice, colored beads, and light.

I have been making lots of photos of ice lately, featuring a string of colored beads beneath pieces of ice, with a white headlamp under the ice and beads to illuminate it all. Well, this time, I had the bright idea of freezing the beads IN the cat's water bowl on the front porch.

So I put the cat's stainless steel water bowl out before midnight, and the beads floated to the top. What I ended up with in the morning was mostly slush. I would not categorize this initial experiment as a success, but I would definitely be curious to see the results again, after a colder overnight low.

Fortunately, my square chunk of ice from the birds' frozen water bowl in the yard worked out much better than the cat bowl with the semi-frozen colorful beads! My husband brought it in, and I took photos over the course of several hours, as it melted.

This was a strange photo shoot, ever changing. There was water inside the ice, with bubbles, and it didn't want to come out. It was like shooting Bubbleville. Bubbles here, bubbles there. 

Then, I poured the interior water out slowly, and it made a weird noise, like a cry or a scream. THAT was very odd. A first ever. The ice actually SPOKE to me; or rather, it screamed. I was not sure this was a good omen!

The initial bubbles gave way to more complex patterns. At least a few reminded me of the work of Wassily Kandinsky or Paul Klee. Then I dumped ALL of the water out that was inside it, and there were tiny ice crystals inside, which I piled on TOP of the beads for the final few sparkly photos, which I liked far more than I ever expected. Ice lovers may enjoy a group of 10 photos from this set on Instagram, by the way. 

The shot above is one of my favorites. It looked like pretty bubbles sailing around in a peaceful green world, very zen, very blissful. Here is a song for that: John Mellencamp, with Peaceful World (music begins about a minute into the video). And I've come back to add this one, for my screaming ice! Here is Midnight Oil, with Scream in Blue, from the 1992 album of the same name.