Explore with wide eyes
This world has much to offer
the open hearted
All those who know not
Of the treasures their hands hold
Are fools holding rocks
chaos inspired
We are artists celebrating and honoring the vibrance of nature.
We invite bewilderment.
To exist with the wild and changing moment, and dialogue with nature while wondering at its mystery. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then let’s be the “I” and receive the beauty:
There is a calling. A tightness between me and the universe, inviting me to notice how beautiful and alive my world is. This tugging feels like the refrain of a profound truth: that what is freely available is heartbreakingly, agonizingly beautiful, ready to behold.
I didn’t make this petal, this twig, this seed. Instead, my role is to have the wisdom to recognize it. The human element is what co-creates beauty. The eye of the beholder. Beauty exists, in part, through the receiving. So I let it impact me.
Now when walking the forests, I attune to the kinds of fallen trees and rotten logs which sprout wild mushrooms after a summer rain; their fruiting bodies abruptly spring into view, like a serendipitous punchline, an inside joke between Nature and I. Their freshness gathered, I celebrate both the gift of seeing and the pain of losing. The lily that fades, the shriveled fruit, the faded rose. Feel the ebb and flow of seasonality, time, and the preciousness of the moment; celebrate and let go.
Place-based art
lessons from the cottage
What does it mean to create place-based art?
To me, it means: may I learn to love a place the way that those who call it home love it. May I love it as if it were my home. Part of the process is learning about the place and feeling connected, to have it become home. This is how the art emerges.
This art is an invitation to love the mundane. The world around us can so easily become mundane, but suddenly, when placed lovingly on paper and photographed, an overlooked dandelion can be glorified and made holy. The curse lifted of not being able to see the tree in the forest.
Stringing together elements, something worthless, mere weeds, through care and attention transforms into a necklace, an image of beauty, value, and admiration. This art exists in the alchemy between Nature and the human eye. It is the “I”, after all, that projects the image of the necklace onto this strand of weeds, which, in a moment, a gust of air will scatter and again be forgotten.
So I celebrate the entirety of this dialogue available between myself and Nature. I celebrate and I invite you to have your own relationship. Because you never know what shapes and meanings will emerge if you allow your perspective to flip, invert, explore the seams and periphery of reality. Your view matters, and I want to draw you into this dance.
