My work is included this month in the National Juried Printmaking and Photography Exhibition at Artspace Gallery. The show was curated by Richard Waller, Executive Director, University of Richmond Museums, Richmond, Virginia. Out of 567 images submitted 56 were selected. The physical show will be up from March 26 to April 18, 2010 and a gallery of the work can be seen online at the Artspace Picasa Gallery.
This morning I went to a cafe (my favorite, Fresh Flours) to inhale newsprint and caffeine and find the happiness image of the day. This man’s lovely cup-shaped ears were irresistible. On the other side of my table a gentleman looked up from his laptop and asked what I was doing and why I was photographing the back of a chair. When I told him that I was going out each day to look for an image of transcendent happiness he immediately logged onto Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project website and showed me that somebody else has been busy on this subject for quite some time. Where have I been all of my life? If you haven’t visited, do, she is quite wonderful, and her account of her year studying the theories of happiness has generated huge response and warmth worldwide.
I jokingly call my garden The First Draft of Eden. It is a constant source of happiness, joy and fretting: when will that magnolia stop dropping its leaves? I thought it was supposed to be evergreen, not highstrung and moody. What did I do wrong this time–too much water? too little? not enough singing arias while I weed? When the bad news everywhere gets the better of me I dive into the dirt.
This section will expand soon with more images, photos, and perhaps even recipes if I can harvest more than six legumes. This was a bad year for peas: plant three times and go buy some at the store. However, the climbing yellow zucchini, the deathless Nantes carrots, the tomatoes, baby pak choi, strawberries, cilantro and miniature cucumbers amaze me. This is the “fifteen foot diet” when you only commute that far to find lunch.
Here is the heron, who rules the pond. I haven’t decided yet if I should paint him, or if that might cause him to never come again. His visitations are of a mythic order. Each year I buy nine ten-cent goldfish, and each year he eats all but one. The last fish hides under the lilies. To see drawings and paintings inspired by the garden go here or here.
