beauty is everywhere

it’s been a strange year for me. lots of turmoil, drama, health scares, and even death—but none of it has happened to me. it has happened to many (most?) of the people right around me though–my peeps. i’ve been in full-on caretaker mode since january. it’s not my natural default mode (lol). here’s what i have learned: caretaking in a crisis is meaningful work but very tiring, you can get by on adrenaline for longer than you think, but eventually you will fatigue to point of brain fog, and brain fog is not a good state for doing creative work.

in this morning’s brain fog, i went to my local drive-thru starbucks. beside the drive-thru line was a hydrangea shrub with perfectly dried flower heads, and i accepted the universe’s offer of one easy STILL blog subject. one thing that is easy to do is to snip a head of dried blossoms. another easy thing is to make a simple grid. and there you have it.

hydrangea florets in winter

intuiting Joan Mitchell

for two weeks i have been reading Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter by patricia albers. i am enjoying it, but it is a hard book to read. Joan self-medicated severe depression with a lifetime of heavy drinking. and like many alcoholics, Joan often got aggressive and mean when drunk eventually pushing everyone she loved away. on the other hand, she was by all accounts brilliant and enormously generous. she was also an eidetic synesthete, like vladimir nabokov–which means she had a kind of photogenic memory that sometimes confused the past with the present, and that she perceived letters, words, people, and music as colors. she was also unfailingly dedicated to her art, and painted almost daily for four decades, claiming that painting is the only thing that gave her equilibrium. not surprisingly, van gogh (who similarly wrestled with mental health) was her favorite painter.  while i read, i often looked up photos of the work being described. hence, for two weeks i have been taking in images of Joan Mitchell’s work. so today, while playing with spent petals from a thanksgiving bouquet, i intuitively made an homage to Joan Mitchell–the petals of the mums and daisies reminding me of the stabbing brushwork in much of  Joan’s work.  after i completed my assemblage, i googled Mitchell’s artwork to see how i did. take a look at East Ninth Street (Joan Mitchell, 1956) and see what you think of my homage to Joan Mitchell. STILL style.

fallen flower petals and leaves

reaching into winter

the grasping of this branch and the craggy shar-pei like skin feel so alive to me, and yet so alien. i spent my usual 30 minutes on google and wiki trying to identify the tree, and came up completely stumped. so perhaps it really is an alien invader masquerading as a tree quietly observing us from behind its perfect disguise.

unidentified (perhaps ash) winter branch

it may be december, but it feels like november

while the temperature remains mild here in the north, it feels as though we are getting an extended autumn. today i pulled a blank journal off the shelf, and when i opened it up out fell these four castaways.  during late summer and all throughout fall, i feverishly tuck leaves into books, journals, and plant presses. like putting money in the bank or acorns in a woodpile, i am squirreling away material for winter compositions. this gift from several weeks ago needed no composing, it fell out just like this and i thought it was perfect. i was just the monkey who pushed the shutter on the camera.

pressed autumn leaves

out of town guests at thanksgiving

one of our thanksgiving guests brought a beautiful bouquet to our house as a hostess gift. i recognized all the usual suspects in the bouquet except this one.  a little wiki research tells me that this is an australian native called grevillea, or more commonly as spider flower. like many native australian plants, this also grows quite well in southern california. i am guessing this little guy was pretty surprised to find himself at thanksgiving in shoreview, minnesota with a bunch of taciturn scandinavians. he looks ready to party.

grevillea (spider flower)