i do love a good collage

this collage of paper birch bark reminds me of one of my favorite textural subjects…peeling billboards, telephone poles, and newsstands. really, anywhere where people layer flyers, playbills, and announcements on top of one another over the years, and then they start to peel back and weather revealing hidden layers, text, and colors. i am not the only one who loves this, i know, because many artists over the years have made various attempts at both capturing and/or recreating this very effect. i am just one more voice, among many, trying to capture the allure of layered ephemera and hidden history. but my tool of choice is not paper, nor paint, but instead birch bark. naturally.

paper birch bark (Betula papyrifera)

two-toned

i spent the day making christmas cookies with my 25 year old daughter who is visiting from california. and when i finally looked up, the sun was low in the sky, so i quickly grabbed this little weaving i made the other day with winter tallgrass leaves, and snapped a photo. because, more important than what i make, it is that i do make a photo a day. i can not break the chain. it’s the only STILL rule i have never broken*.

winter weaving with dried leaves

*by the way, if there is an occasional hiccup here on the blog, it is usually because of human-error (i have entered the wrong date for uploading, e.g.), and i often correct it by midday. on occasion however, my site might go down because the website hosting server i use is down, or, in the case of my last site crash, because my wordpress software was out of date. in any case, rest assured, i am not going anywhere, and if there is a daily hiccup…know that i am working on it, and will be back online as soon as possible.

under and umbel forest

why do trees not branch like umbels, i wonder. it would be lovely. i de-seeded my wild parsnip stems from the other day, and made myself an imaginary umbel forest. but now that i think about it, they look like umbrellas (more umbels!), and we all know what happens to beach umbrellas in the wind. so, as always, nature knows best. after having a twelve-ton oak tree fall on my roof this summer, i am suddenly grateful that trees don’t branch like umbels.

wild parsnip winter stems

relationships can be complicated

every time i see multiple tendrils twining around each other, i think they look like metaphors for human relationships. often you have a stronger, older, vine supporting a younger vine. sometimes you see two vines whose spirals are so intertwined that they look like one single vine. in this case, we have two vines of equal strength, who seemed to have met each other in mid-life, and each is trying to figure out a way to be in relationship without losing their own identity, and the result is complicated and messy. but still beautiful.

grape vine tendrils

over-under-over-under

this simple weaving is made from the dried leaves of two tall grass plants. i was attracted to the color combination. and after playing with the leaves long enough to make this weaving, i am even more smitten with these colors. olive green and tan…who knew? throw in an oxblood red something-something, and it may well be my new favorite palette.

winter leaf weaving