self portrait

an inadvertent portrait of my own mind. basically rigorous and orderly. leaning toward quiet playfulness. not everything in exactly the right place. pretty much holding it together. but reaching for something intangible at the edges.

patchwork of yellow and green elderberry leaves

the gales of november came early

today the winds arrived from the northeast and made whitecaps on the lake and took down most of the fall leaves. i had been piecing this assemblage together on my desk for the better part of a week, adding bits and pieces as i found them. i like how it turned out, and hope you do too, but what i like most is that i was back at my desk, playing with an assemblage, photographing it with plenty of daylight left. in short, normal life had resumed. it’s good to be back.

bits and pieces of autumn

why no sheds?

i have found almost every part of most of the common birds and mammals that live in my region, from bones to fur to feathers to scales to skulls. but despite sometimes daily visits from whitetail deer in our woods and our yard, including quite a few good sized bucks, i have never found a shed antler. i have heard that mice and other rodents will gnaw them, but it’s hard to believe that such small creatures can make entire thick-beamed 10 point buck antlers just disappear. i am not a deer hunter, but i do dream of trophies hiding in the woods.

elk antlers

done

thank your for bearing with me these last few weeks. i feel as if my images have lacked some freshness and animation. i’ve spent the last two weeks in the middle of a major home rehab and the last two days involved in a photo shoot at my house for better homes and gardens. it has been a wonderful and completely draining experience. we made some magic over the last two days that i hope will be borne out in the final story next fall. it couldn’t have gone any better, but i am dying to return to my real life, and to making art. thank you for being patient with me and for being a part of this journey.

squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium)

languedoc, france

litter

so there’s leaf litter and there’s trash litter, and there is the litter you hoist onto your shoulders to carry a soldier off the battlefield, and there is a litter of animals, and there is cat litter. they can’t possibly all be related, can they? well in fact, yes. they all come from the latin word for bed. so you have the stretcher on the battlefield that is a kind of bed. you have the litter of straw in an animal stall that is also a kind of bed. you have a bunch of animals born in that litter and they are called a litter or a “bedful” of newborns. you spread litter material in a box for your cat and it looks a little like a bed. and eventually this idea of spreading things around on the ground morphs into litter in the sense both of leaf litter and trash. here is a litter of rose petals for your enjoyment. and now, it is bedtime. i will retire to my litter.

blah

dried roses