day 4500

It’s done. This morning I gave a talk at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to 200 amazing guests. Wow, the energy in that room. I felt so heard and supported. I also felt so lucky and proud to have a Twin Cities community that would cause a traffic jam over a square mile just in order to attend a beloved art museum event. I felt like shouting, “Skol!” and putting the Minnesota Vikings to shame for a day! In preparation for the talk I calculated how many consecutive images I had made since I started STILL on January 1, 2012. The answer arrived like a sign of something: 4500 images. Even. I figure there’s karma in there somewhere. I was able to tell the audience that I would be going home after the talk to make my 4500th image, and that I already knew what my subject would be, because when I had gone out on the deck at 8 AM this morning to listen to the morning birdsong, I noticed that the deck was littered with hundreds of the small curved red stems of maple blossoms as a result of yesterday’s winds. Et voila! Day 4500. Done. See you tomorrow.

stems from maple tree flowers in april

Art in Bloom

I know, because you tell me, that many of you start your morning by making a coffee or tea and opening up STILL blog. My morning routine is exactly the same. I really like knowing there is loose community of us all doing the the same synchronized steps every morning :-)  But today, I will not be joining you. I will at the Minneapolis Institute of Art preparing to a give talk about my new book to 200 guests. I am the main speaker at the museum’s annual Art in Bloom celebration. Many museums across the country participate in Art in Bloom. In Minneapolis it is wildly popular in part because it usually coincides with are first truly spring-like days after our long winter. Send good vibes! I will stepping onto stage about the time you take your first sip.

assorted dried flower petals

vincas and violets

On Saturday morning I will be giving a one hour lecture on my new book (STILL: The Art of Noticing) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. A few days after that, on May 1, I will be hosting my Pub Day Book Launch party at a local Garden shop and farm-to-table restaurant.  In other words, I am feeling a little under the gun and scattered. All I had time for today was a handful of periwinkles (vincas) and violets from my yard. The two purples place nice together, I think. Oh, how I miss having enough time to arrange them into a composition worthy of their beauty. Soon….soon.

periwinkles (vincas and violets) and violets (Viola)

day 4498

I finished the first draft of my 3-part lecture series for the 92nd Street Y coming up in early May, so I had an hour of play-time as my reward. Today was day 4498 of STILL. And I still love doing it!

various stems

reliably unreliable forsythia and her bait-and-switch cousins

There are certain flowering trees and shrubs that foil me every spring. From a distance they are gorgeous. They beg to be photographed. Every year, I snip a branch, or two branches, or a bouquet of branches, and arrange them in front of my camera. And every year, they are a bust up close. Redbud, red maple, lilacs, apple blossoms, forsythia. In each case, the profusion is where the delight lies. The individual flowers are unremarkable or unphotogenic, or they are spaced so far apart on individual branches that they look downright spare. And so I take my one photo every year, and toss the branches back in the woods. Hey, forsythia. Thanks for nothing.

forsythia