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Night Flight of the Imaginary Bird

By Teresa Jordan on January 19, 2021 in Birds

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All Marie ever wanted in life was to work outside with horses and cattle and dogs. As a girl, she worked alongside her father and brother; when she married, she and her husband John Bell bought a neighboring ranch. Teresa wrote about Marie in both Cowgirls and Riding the White Horse Home. One of her stories–about women who rode through the country when she was a girl, breaking horses for pay–intrigued the novelist Molly Gloss, and served as the inspiration for her wonderful book, The Hearts of Horses.

The signature stamp Teresa uses on her prints is a Japanese hanko, or chop. For Westerners, a hanko is often designed with kanji – idiographic symbols – that represent the sounds of the syllables in the person’s last name. Because many words sound the same, the particular characters chosen have significance. When Teresa and her husband, Hal Cannon, visited Japan many years ago, they had the gift of staying with Kimono artists who generously selected kanji for “Jordan.” The top kanji translates as “clarity” or “purification,” and the bottom one represents “dawn” or “morning.” These kanji turned out to be auspicious, for more than a decade later Teresa began a daily painting practice with the hope of starting each day anew. Now she uses this beautiful hanko on her prints.