The chrysanthemum season has come to a close. I decided to forgo the last of the season bouquet in favor of whipping up a chrysanthemum wreath in the last bits of sun before the oncoming rain. The mums are a long lived cut flower but their life fashioned into a crown brief but glorious!
Crowned – Queen Mum!
Of course the reason I began growing chrysanthemums in the first place is so I could put them in a matching teacup! I found several that I loved, one was a Limoges cup and saucer from 1895 with fabulous gold orbs bordered in black, the other (c. 1900) a handpainted Bavarian cup and saucer signed by Helen (HKaub) Grossart. Even if I didn’t have the exact mums on hand I thought I should shoot what I had so I would have something to work with. I also couldn’t resist shooting with some of the miniature pitchers, reminiscent of Fiestaware.
What a tangle of mums I have growing in my pots – quite literally, I had to be very delicate as I separated the spider mums from each other in order to shoot each flower on it’s own to really appreciate it’s individual form. Here are some of my favorites…
I was entranced by the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Society’s transplant display last spring. So many exciting varieties that looked like fringed tassels, sea anemones, pompoms and spiders! I was excited about growing them up on my sunny porch (away from the deer) in pots that I would feed with recycled kitchen water due to the drought). I even became an official member!I was entranced by the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Society’s transplant display last spring. So many exciting varieties that looked like fringed tassels, sea anemones, pompoms and spiders! I was excited about growing them up on my sunny porch (away from the deer) in pots that I would feed with recycled kitchen water due to the drought). I even became an official member!I was entranced by the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Society’s transplant display last spring. So many exciting varieties that looked like fringed tassels, sea anemones, pompoms and spiders! I was excited about growing them up on my sunny porch (away from the deer) in pots that I would feed with recycled kitchen water due to the drought). I even became an official member!
Well, I did not attend any meetings, and only casually scanned my newsletter. I did meticulously handwash all the leaves during an aphid infestation (which never reoccured!) I did not religiously pinch them back and when they grew leggy and unruly I only propped them up with a few stakes and some ribbon. The results were hardly professional but very rewarding to me.
I kind of love the shaggy tumble of these mums grown way to close together in the over bright sun and spotty rain, but the reason I grew them in the first place was shoot them for my Birds & Teacups series.
More on that next post!
This is the first year I’ve tried growing Buddha’s Hands and its just now starting to turn a lovely shade of yellow.
If you’re not familiar with this fruit, it’s a citrus that perfectly echos the mudras of the Buddha.
Mudras are spiritual gestures in Hinduism and Buddhism that convey or direct specific meaning and energy.
The closed position, namaskaramudra imitates prayer.
The open hand, or varadamudra symbolizes charity and fulfillment of wishes.
The Buddha’s Hands symbolize good fortune, longevity and happiness. So fragrant, they have been used to perfume rooms or clothing. I like to keep one in my kitchen, I also think they are great in a cocktail!
The thirty year old camellia tree in my neighbor’s front yard may be the only thing blooming this time of year. It’s quite a show stopper and is attracting a lot of birds – even in the rain!
I had to go over with my camera and see if I could get lucky – I did get a few shots of some birds but what I found myself enjoying even more was the damp fragrance of the flowers and the sound of wings (bees and hummers) buzzing in my ears.
Wet day at the studio with my Yume camellia….
In my life’s garden my wealth has been of the shadows and lights that are never gathered and stored. Tagore
So beautiful and true. The moments that touch us the deepest or shatter us to the core are not the fabric of selfies and blogs. Even wedding photographs and announcements of births and deaths that attempt to evoke our happiness and sadness can only hint at the vast truth of it all.
I know that our photographs, our paintings, our words are only little things. A small attempt to gather and store and share something around the edges of meaning.
And so that’s just what this is, my little moment in a story-book garden with a book of poetry.
My fancies are fireflies, – specks of living light twinkling in the dark. -Tagore
My camellia Yume (which means dream in Japanese) just came into bloom. How lovely to have a flower that just gets going when the temperature dips! The pink camellia symbolizes longing in both Victorian and Japanese cultures, seems right to me!
Black Friday will now be known to me as Bioluminescent Friday!
Making a point not to shop, I went out hiking with family and friends. I didn’t even have my proper camera with me but I did have my little iPhone 4 and I just could’t resist taking pictures every now and then, like these shots of the sun setting over a hillside of ferns. I could barely see what I was doing with the sun in my eyes and the tiny screen. I wasn’t sure they’d even be in focus.
When I uploaded the photos to my computer I could see this funny glowing bit of green showing up in my shots. It wasn’t a lens flare from the sun and we don’t have fireflies out this way (that I’m aware of, even if we did it was too cold). The green wasn’t only appearing in one place, so it meant it was either moving or there were several of these things.
I enlarged some details and posted the shots of Facebook, wondering if anyone knew what this could be, and right away novelist Ami McKay recognized it from her childhood as being foxfire, the bioluminescence created by certain fungus. I had no idea there even was such a thing! It’s also called fairy fire!
Looking it up online, the ghost fungus, seen below, apparently grows here and it looks like it could be the one my pictures!
I’m looking forward to getting back out into the woods and tracking it down. What an amazing world this is, full of unseen wonder all around us!
Stop Over, Kate Nartker‘s solo exhibition is on at the Jack Fischer Gallery. Running until December 5, the show is made up of dreamy digitally printed voile, woven imagery of home movies stills and video. For me it all seems to speak of the fragility of memory – loved it!
No Magenta Hydrangeas
Digitally printed voile
Almost There
Digitally printed voile
Wrinkles and puckers were part of the presentation in certain pieces, creating a moire effect with the layers of printed voile.
Woven panels.
Gallerist Jack Fischer gave artist Lorraine Lawson and I had a great personal tour of the Stop Over exhibit.
Weaving video.
In Kate Nartker’s hand woven textile the cross threads mimic the movement of the waves.
This woven textile panel takes you back into a past that feels nostalgic, vaguely familiar and hard to capture.
(detail)
In front of Kate Nartker’s woven textile panel.
For those of you who have been following my Birds & Teacups series, you must know my process by now:
antique teacup ✔
matching bouquet ✔
combine above and wait for a bird (or two) to fly in and pose while I shoot with dramatic lighting ✘
combine above and shoot with dramatic lighting ✔
take pictures of local birds ✔
add birds (in a naturalistic way) into the still life using photoshop ✔
paint the heck out it ✔ ✔ ✔
But yesterday was something new…a scrub jay was busy caching acorns about my yard and I thought it would be a great opportunity to get a shot of the bird with the actual teacup I had planned on pairing it with. Usually I try to scale the bird to the teacup with the measurements listed on birding sites but this was going to give me a real life comparison, if only I could get them in the same shot! I filled the teacup with birdseed and acorns and retreated to my studio stoop with my telephoto lens on my camera. I had only a few minutes to wait before there was some interest…
…of course the jay wasn’t the only one who likes a tea party !
Today I tried to save a dragonfly from a wasp in what turned out to be a mortal encounter. After shooing the wasp away, I picked it up from under the foxglove and took it to my studio. The dragonfly did not recover like I hoped it might.
There were a few other arrivals to my studio today too. I had won a few little religious books with a forget-me-not motif in an auction and they seemed to be a fitting backdrop for the dragonfly.
That’s “Gold Dust” …. I love the combination of this very structured insect with these antique floral books embossed in gold. It takes me back a century, at least. Tomorrow I’ll post the dragonfly, foxglove and demitasse photos that come next.
I just want to preface this post by letting you know that my gorgeous model has been safely released into the woods far away and no one was in danger of being bitten or hurt during this process.
Having said that, I can now go on about how thrilling and captivating it was to shoot this elegant, deadly spider with my delicate antique china and petals from my favorite rose. The scent was intoxicating, the beauty engulfing and there’s nothing quite like the creepy crawl of a spider to keep you on your toes!
I love the wild and dangerous darkness of the spider along with all of her creative, powerful and cunning associations contrasted with the domestic refinement of delicate petals and porcelain – I could drink it in for days!
Oh my, look who’s come for tea!
My Bachelor’s Buttons have just come into bloom – and I’m too impatient to wait for a whole bouquet – so I snipped the ones that were available and popped them into this vintage Japanese teacup, pulling a dress from my closet to use as a backdrop.
Bachelor’s buttons are also known as cornflowers but the Victorian meanings for each are very different. Bachelor’s Buttons indicate single blessedness and celibacy while the cornflower suggests refinement and delicacy. I wonder which symbolism to explore?
I do know that I’d like to pair this teacup with the Scrub Jay which is that same lovely shade of blue- nothing refined or delicate about this bird though they are tough raucus and smart!
Here are a few shots of the jay I took near my house.
Check out that sashay on this bird as it stakes out it’s feeding grounds!
And that rakish profile!
Brewing up some mushroom magic in the studio!
It started with that gorgeous barn owl, “Owlivia” from the Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center. I knew I wanted to include her in my birds & teacups series so I took lots of pictures when I had the chance. Then I had to scout out a perfect teacup. I thought should be a in a woodland theme, maybe ferns or branches but when I saw the mushroom teacup by Aynsley of England (circa 1939 -) I knew I had found the perfect whimsical compliment to the owl. At first I arranged pink oyster mushrooms in the cup and while I love the color, I wanted to see what a stronger form would look like. In the end, I prefer the king oyster mushrooms which will help to make a more interesting composition.
Mushrooms turn out to be pretty fragile to work with ….I ‘d better eat them up quickly!
Saved a California Alligator Lizard from a hungry crow yesterday only to subject it to a photo shoot before releasing it back into the wilds of Silicon Valley.
So much fun my son and I decided to do it again with one of the many Blue Bellies (aka Northern Fence Lizard) that patrol our gardens.
What’s with the circuit boards? I have them lying around my studio ready to be incorporated into some assemblage work and thought they would make an interesting contrast (wild vs ordered).
Each week that passes brings on a glorious new wave of blooms – this week it’s the dogwood that’s caught my eye. I’m amazed by the variety in my very own neighborhood (sadly the white one I planted next to my studio isn’t blooming this year as it’s still struggling to get enough sun).
Of course I do have a vintage teacup that had been begging for little dogwood bouquet, it’s tri-footed base is too wonky for tea anyway!
“Am I indifferent to thee?”, the dogwood symbolizes durability and endurance in the Victorian lexicon of flowers, because of it’s strong wood, said in Christian lore to be the wood used in the crucifixion with it’s bracts showing the nail holes at their tips and the crown of thorns at their center. How did it get that name? Some say it was because it’s bark was used to rid dogs of the mange. Others say it evolved from “dagwood” as daggers were made from this strong material. A lot of heavy symbolism to contrast against this delicate cup and bloom – I wonder which bird seems suitable to add to the mix?
Monumental Fiber : Threads Mapping Man, Cities and the Cosmos is the brainchild of Dotti Cichon which features the work of three artists, Eszter Bornemisza (Hungary), Anitta Toivio (Finland) and Dotti Cichon herself (USA). This exhibition incorporates photography, installation, painting and mixed media fiber art to convey altered perceptions of our environments and each other. It’s running at the Vargas Gallery at Mission College from February 18 – March 28. I had the pleasure of catching the opening reception last night.
Monumental Fiber : Threads Mapping Man, Cities and the Cosmos – Vargas Gallery
Mission College’s Gillmor Center, in which the Vargas Gallery is situated, is quite a spectacle at night!
I love Cichon’s work! She travels extensively taking architecturally inspired photographs which she then manipulates into kaleidoscopic patterns – printed in this exhibition on silk banners. To me, these pieces transform the familiar into something that seems to reveal the spiritual core of its source material.
Eszter Bornemeisza, from Budapest, Hungary, works with bits of ephemera to construct labyrinth-like layered maps as a launching point for exploring personal and community narratives. It’s easy to get drawn in to the tactile details, threads and netting, maps and cryptic equations of nuclear physics.
Detail from Bornemisza’s layered panels, Mission College Instructor and Sculptor, Lynne Todaro and Dotti Cichon, Vargas Gallery
Finnish painter, Anitta Toivio paints people not as she sees them but as she senses them, through the energy they emit the memories they hold onto, their auras. Emotional Portraits are spiritual portraits on silk.
The Landscape in Us, a collaboration by Cichon and Toivo are photographs, a Finnish forrest printed on fabric and a video projection of a California seascape video on an overlay of organza, melding two landscapes representative to each of these artists.
As you can tell I’m a fan of Cichon’s work, sporting one of her silk scarves, the wearable version of one of the panels in front of which we are standing. Mine is based on graffiti from Florence!