April 2nd 2021 /  by Kaylee Warner

The wind races up the valley and cuts through my flesh.
She wraps her hands around my bones and shakes my skeleton 
My knees clatter together and my skull bounces to and fro on my spine.
Sending me back into the confines of the house, shivering.
She bellows through the chimes that she is here but when I don’t react,
She throws the chairs off the front porch.




Inspiration: 12/30/18 /  by Kaylee Warner

This moment changed my life. Still is one of my favorite memories… to feel infinitely unified with tens of thousands of people. What a blessing. Thank you, Phish

Can’t wait for the next magickal moment….

So this is the new year? /  by Kaylee Warner

Time- it is the ultimate marker and healer, it knows no bounds but carries them all.
I think most about it and understand it the least. 
What is a year? Did this past one drag on or vanish faster than any other? 

To me, it is both, as I had the most change in my life and also did the least. Time is relative to space and my spacetime travels decreased dramatically from the backyard to inside and back out again. A trip to the woods and the grocery store. I put my nose to the flesh of the earth and dug my nails into PA soils. Why is it that in a time where I felt deeply uprooted I also felt more grounded than in a long time? How strange this life really is. The mass uncertainty delivered me clarity. The past year has been tragic and painful in so many ways, I can’t say emphasize that enough. Global trauma, cultural and societal and racial trauma, personal trauma, the trauma and grief of loss. Insurmountable loss from the loss of thousands upon thousands of lives. Loss of a taken for granted daily life of instant gratification and consumerism and overall suffering inflicted by deeply seated hate and a pure evil stream of energy. There is/was a dark dark cloud covering this planet.

That being said, there has been an opportunity to reflect and adapt that I am truly grateful for despite the weight of the previous sentences. I find peace in living a simple life: Eating local food and supporting farmers in my community and shopping local as often as possible, getting to know those people. Cooking meals with Ross and trying new recipes. Pairing drinks with food. Listening to full albums and finding the best deep cuts. Going for really long walks and learning French Creek State Park. Watching a 400 year old Oak Tree grow its leaves in. Having bonfires and chopping wood. Painting and experimenting with media. Having more time to develop Alluvian and publish a new issue. Floating down the Schuylkill and the Brandywine. Growing sunflowers that grew higher than the front porch. Spending time with my family. Laughing. Moving to the mountains. Starting a service year and working with new people, finding a purpose in education. These are just a few.

 With all that being said, I have an ache in my heart. While I have a love for solitude, at my core I am an extrovert. More than anything, I miss being in a sea of dancing people and getting funky at a show. I miss going to new places and meeting new people. I miss talking to people and hearing their stories. I miss wild spontaneity. I miss HRB and all the people who congregated there. I long for going into NYC for Phish’s new years run. I miss so many people from my life that I haven’t seen because of the circumstances of the pandemic. My heart is with yours. 

I feel like an island a lot these days. But I know the tectonic plates and the workings of the universe never stop turning, and while we are apart right now, eventually, we will collide again, and for that I’m grateful and excited. I can’t wait to go down a long row of people and hug every one of you. Human connection is a powerful medicinal force. I look forward to this planet starting to heal. I feel inspired to keep combating hate with blazing positivity, love and laughter, in a non-corny way. In the meantime, I’ll be in my basement, The Blue Rose, painting or wandering in the woods, watching the sun and the moon traveling their paths, wondering, where all the time goes. 

Where will we be in another year? What will transpire?

Seasons Blessings <3 KEW

Twenty Two /  by Kaylee Warner

It was empty–
jars, shopping malls, promises 
hearts, souls, wine glasses and 
dinner bowls. All searching to be 
full again, each for their own reason—

to hold, to occupy, to deceive, to hate,
to be barely alive, to enhance and to
nourish again– were some of them.

but they all had they same longing—
to be full, to be whole. it was all in relation
to another thing and then the next. jams, skirts, 
people, relationships, red wine and chicken parm.

Sixteen /  by Kaylee Warner

A bolt of lightning came from the sky and split the tree, severing me from my mother.
Sitting at the barstools, opposite ends of the table, me in the middle,
both celebrating their 50th birthday.
There were horses out front that I had never noticed before.

A cataclysmic eruption of reality shattered every window in the house.
The beer flowed down their gullets and blood dripped from their temples
but they smiled all the while.
I helped try to fit the shards back in their frames.

Eight /  by Kaylee Warner

It had something to do with alchemy
lemon juice, blood and cardamom

sunlight breaking through clouds
gusts of wind that mark the oncoming of a front

endlessness of ritual and the ritual of endlessness

it had something to do with survival
the release of tears and the foot feeling the ground again

it had something to do with the black cat
escaping into the night to crawl through portals

who did jesus die for? 

Experimentation with color and texture @ Reading Public Library /  by Kaylee Warner

I visited the art hour at the Reading Public Library - we discussed color theory and texture. This project’s goal was to play and experiment — process-driven rather than product driven. How can you create a feeling without touching it? What colors are complimentary? Harmonious? kids and parents used watercolor and water color paper along with salt, rubbing alcohol, lemon juice, soap, oil pastels, sponges, eye droppers, straws, glue, scrub brushes, rice, traditional paint brushes to create texture and color. So many materials that make up the mundane parts of life can be used in creative ways.

she plunged her head into a bucket — /  by Kaylee Warner

ice cold permeated her brain, sending a blast down the spine that resulted in a jolting of the head, neck snapping back, black hair tossing water across the room. Water ran down the sides of her face and dripped steadily from her chin to her hands that still gripped the bucket. Her eyes glazed over staring out into the room but really into a nothingness.
It felt good. Shock was the only thing she was used to these days. So she welcomed it, called to it — actively sought it out. It was crazy, manic energy, but it was survival.

stasis /  by Kaylee Warner

what happens when we tune into the underlying currents?
the drumbeats of the forest, gravity of the rushing river, the electric pulse of a heart.

listen in, it’s speaking, calling, whispering a love message of the cosmos.

I began these paintings at the end of Nov 2018 and am just finishing them up here in Sept of 2019.

Those who know my painting style know I work quickly and spontaneously. I view my creative process as something that is outside of me, my body is just a vessel to pass through energy from somewhere else in my being, or perhaps somewhere outside of it, into an expression of color and movement. How do we end up in the places we do?

With this being said, the following series of paintings takes a slightly different approach. While I only work on each piece for a short period of time (either collectively by pouring paint across canvases or individually with finer brush work), the overall collective duration of time has been much longer. large periods of time –– weeks, months –– often pass before I revisit.

This wasn’t intentional but it is how it happened. At first I held it against myself that I would let them sit, but with reflection, I realize that it gave time for the paint, the movement of mark, to metaphorically sink into the canvas, to rest, to regain. I could create more complex layers of color and space because they had time to either sink back or pull forward, subconsciously in my mind. Each new time I came to these canvases, my color palette would change, sometimes drastically. Even my methods changed over time, I started off with charcoal, then pouring extremely watered down paint with all the canvases pushed together, rearranging the canvases, pouring paint, using a brush, pouring thicker paint, etc. until in the end where I only used a brush.

I found myself at times really turned off by these and other times excited. Some took longer then others. The ones I felt the most confused by now make the most sense. These paintings are a reflection of the constant pursuit of reaching stasis –– on a bodily, societally, planetary level –– balance requires movement; equilibrium is fleeting.

The following gallery is a collection of work in progress/work in process, not all sessions were captured. A sped up videos follow, edited by Rebecca Dearden (https://www.rebeccadeardenphoto.com/). Featuring sweet Esmerelda.

water chimes /  by Kaylee Warner

The sun is setting in a pinky sky and the moon rises in full; 
the lake is finally frozen - almost anyway.
The center, still restless with furry,
as the whipping winds cut the surface,
sending center to the outside,
the outside sinking beneath - circulating.

At the edges where solid meets liquid,
where wave meets ice,
breaking and mixing occurs.

And from this stir arises a musical song,
of ice bouncing in the water,
a harmonized tune of the
changing states and seasons of nature.