random

during a recent visit to philadelphia, i spent an awestruck hour or so in a cy twombly exhibit, but then i wandered into the gallery next door, where there were a roomful of ellsworth kelly collages and paintings, several of which made use of radomizing elements, and i was equally smitten. one piece, for instance, was a scattering of black and white squares that, i swear, looked just like the shimmering light reflecting off of a river. it was titled seine, and he had pulled numbers from a box to determine which squares should be black and which white. today’s still blog photo is not an ellsworth kelly, but i do like the effect of an occasional randomizing gesture, like bumping a carefully arranged pattern, or, in this case, letting crumbled grape leaves fall as they wished. apparently they wished to be beautiful and slightly melancholy.

red grape vine leaves (vitis riparia)

craftsmanship

after two weeks of having craftsmen in my house, i’m starting to see everything differently. my switchplates are a mess, for example. my floor is uneven, and the base molding doesn’t quite sit tight against it, i’ve learned. my cabinet inset is not plumb or square. the corner bead on my fireplace is popped. and on and on. so now i’m looking at this woodpecker’s  asymmetrical and haphazard work on this birch bark and thinking, “pretty shoddy, my friend. you need to tighten things up a bit. are you trying to make a round hole or a square hole? make up your mind and do it right.”

birch bark

sucker lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

skeletonize

i just discovered that what the japanese beetles did when they feasted on this leaf was to “skeletonize” it. one more entry in my personal “scientists are more poetic than poets” dictionary.

beetle eaten wild grape leaf

turtle lake, shoreview, minnesota

rainy october day

this was a rainy october day, and i’m not sure any words could describe  a rainy october day more effectively than this picture of slick, wet, autumn oak leaves.

white oak leaves in october

turtle lake, shoreview, minnesota

safety first

i first imagined i would take this photo of just the main stem and the penitent curve of the head of rye. it would be a visual statement, a pleasant shape, and a prettily graphic composition. but then i came across this version of the photo, and decided that the second stem made the whole thing look like a safety pin, and suddenly there was a little story, or a little playfulness to the image that hadn’t been there in the other shots. i am also insisting on talking about playfulness, and art, and aesthetics because i can’t do a single thing about what a horrible day this was in so many other ways, so i can either feel helpless and sick to my stomach, or i can try to do one thing well that i know how to do. or, maybe more accurately, i can try to do one of those things, despite the other.

wild canada rye

rice creek trail, shoreview, minnesota