Angles

These very old (and real) horseshoes were hanging on the fence at the farm this weekend. And because they threw an interesting shadow they became  a subject for this blog!

Ecological burning

We spent part of the weekend in Wiscoinsin at our friends who are restoring a large old farm to natural vegetation. Every year they work to clear out more of the non-native plants and burn the fields and woods to encourage new growth of the native vegetation. They have been rewarded with remnant populations of  plants returning and bird populations increasing. This photo of a burnt tree had a lot of character. Do you see the back of a sitting dog with his head turned?

New work

I have been working on a new series about the Plants of Concern in Illinois. The series is made up of 4 sets of Tibetan prayer flag inspired art cloth. Each set has 21 flags. This set included old and new joss and chinese almanac papers and includes the 108 named plants on the list.

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I love the car wash

I took my car through the car wash - at last- to clean off the winter grime. I love the car wash - sitting in the car while the mountain of water and the swishing things envelope the car. And with the camera handy I tried to capture the water sluicing down over the front window. I like the abstractedness of the way this photo came out.

Two days later

A couple of days after the snow and chair photos I took this photo of the same chair pattern as a shadow on the ground. What a difference a couple of days can make!

Snow patterns

I took these photos a couple of days ago and just got them downloaded. It's a good thing I took them when I did because the snow has now melted. This is snow settled into the ironwork on the back of a chair. I am going to work with the photos in Adobe Photoshop and make some silkscreens as I think it will make for an interesting textural pattern if I can get it to break up in various ways.

Let there be light

I have this prism made of a large circle of glass with small round raised circles on the surface that sits on a table near my bedroom  window. A sliver of morning light came all the way through the house from the front window - through the dining room, the kitchen, the doorway of the bedroom and stuck the prism at just the right angle to throw a shadow of it on the blind behind it. This can only happen a couple of times a year when the sun is at the right position in the sky. I think it is so cool.