Er staat niet wat er staat, the Dutch poet, Martinus Nijhoff’s said. Could one translate literally, The words written on paper, is not its meaning? Or Nothing is what it seems to be’.

And, what about include too: the tools you use is not the artwork?

What you sense or feel or get exited about is caused by metaphorically speaking, that something ethereally elusive as in the phrase “what lies between the sentences.”

A strange looking fruit, later identified as the Grenadilla passiflora caught my eye on a mountain walk. In my studio I sliced it halfway through and pried open the two sides to reveal its most perfectly arranged seeds inside. Science gave way to wonder when I woke up one day to a room full of parachuted black pips drifting in the air around me.

An unexpected email, arrived in my inbox and when it came again and again I succumb to the prompt to respond. It came from a - then still unknown to me - art institution, the PhMuseum in Bologna. An open invitation for submission to a mobile photo competition. The magic grew during processing and a title arrived: Seeding the Sky.

More magic happened when the director, Giuseppe Oliverio’s follow-up message arrived that my seed was selected as one of the winners for an arts festival in Bologna and was to be published in specially limited edition book of 750 copies only, titled, in the sun on the moon. My award included my own URL, my own “virtual gallery space” so to speak in the museum.

Here is the special URL that I was awarded for my Seeding the Sky in

https://phmuseum.com/u/bettiecoetzeelambrecht

Once in my room, scroll down, and enter the rest of the museum.

Included too, find my latest reworking into composites the grenadilla passiflora married to the ocean in Seeds and Seas.

Explore them in the darkroom of your mind and heart.