Art Music Design Barossa

Art Music Design is kicking off the launch of our new website with digital residencies by five very individual artists. These artists have custom created content for the Art Music Design website and social media channels. In our final residency we introduce Natalie Williams: composer, academic and educator.

Natalie Williams is a Barossa-born composer, academic and arts manager. Natalie attended Tanunda Lutheran School and Faith Lutheran College. She now works in academic performing arts leadership in the United States. Teaching positions include the Australian National University, University of Georgia and Indiana University. Her music has been commissioned and performed by orchestras and ensembles across the globe.

Read more about previous Digital Residents She Is, Dan Thorpe, Melvin Fechner & Sam Cowley.

WHAT LIFE, THE ARTIST…?

A CREATIVE ESSAY FOR THE CONTEMPORARY CREATOR

The Ethereal Sublime

Do we serve, or are we served… by the Ethereal Sublime?

As we wander through the stillness of this mirror of a life.

Do we crave, or are we craved… by the yearning of the soul?

As we paddle through the oceans of an art’s eternal sea.

Do we float, or merely drowning, in the deepness of the skill?

As we grapple and surrender and engulf our strangled faith.

Do we race, or we relinquish, endless quests to mark our worlds,

With colour’s signals, song’s intonation and body’s love.

Do we aspire, or seek surrender to the cruelty of creation?

As we juxtapose, and jettison, and jeopardize élan vital.

Do we think on art’s Utopia, as we walk in its enigma,

Or do we wish its wings would bear us, with sanguine love?

 The Creative Sublime

A vessel, a puppet, a conduit, a muse

We transform, we become, we dance among the platitudes.

Are we leaders, or do we follow?

Are we masters, or are we servants?

Are we hopeful, or do we despair? 

… as we create, and wait, and subjugate our souls to the

wisps

shadows

a fragment

the forgotten,

the recollected;

the deeply wrenching sanity

of

emotions and memory and delusions and dreams and happenings

ALL!

at the intersection 

of a life,

where emotion and memory and yearning and feeling and soul and its master

conjoin.

And.

Admix.

The Journey, Sublime

Art

Journey

Travelling

Across a world

And through a landscape

With companion voices

 We dance together as one

 The tapestry of circumstance

A meeting, a handshake, i-de-as

Take flight as the artist and teacher and

student and learning and vision and be-lief

lock hands and then hearts and then minds and then flashpoint

and

past becomes present and future is tempered

when spirit in costume with poetry

sidles in movement and circles the

musical dances in situ

as colour and memory

learn to be vibrant here

crossing the bridges

painting the lines

circling earth

living 

truth.

The Expressive Sublime

any bunch of notes

any stroke of paint

any gesture of mood

any dance of joy

any homily.

the chorus sung

the sculpture laden

the silhouette shadowed 

the waltz intoned

the story spoken.

reviving one

inspiring many

entrancing fewer

delighting spirits

transforming all.