Something of the Marvelous

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

-- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Parts of Animals, bk. 1, ch. 5

Funny how you set out to take a photograph of one thing, then something else catches your eye and takes you in a whole other direction. This podlike, mummified ... thing ... was part of a box of potpourri. (Could it possibly be a slice of orange?) As I headed out to the deck, it was literally underfoot, aglow in the light streaming through the sliding glass doors. Outside, I held it up to the muted sunlight, played with the way it cast a shadow, then realized what a terrific composition it formed against the bold wood grain of the picnic table.

Click on image to enlarge.

The Face of the World

Yesterday, this milkweed plant captured the austere beauty of late November. I love the shape of the pods as they dry and twist, having released most of their silk-haired seeds. The forms grow simpler, the colors muted. The eye exalts in the stark new patterns that reveal themselves at the end of fall.

Ralph Waldo Emerson comments on this in Nature:

All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is Art.

The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all, -- that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, -- the totality of nature; which the Italians expressed by defining beauty, "il piu nell' uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nest Book

My friend, Shiela Hale, artist and thinker extraordinaire, just won first prize at the Contemporary Confrontations exhibition at Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York. Her piece, "Nest Book I," invites the fascinated viewer into its nest of altered text. I love the way Shiela's mind gathers and reshapes elements from nature and language into something stunning and meaningful. Quoted in The Record-Review, Shiela says "Nature and culture are frequently presented as opposing forces. I am questioning that adversarial relationship and suggesting the possibility of a mutually enhancing alternative."

The exhibit runs through February 22, 2009. Over 800 artists entered the competition. 126 were chosen. Nan Rosenthal, former senior consultant for modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was the juror. Congratulations, Shiela!

For more information on Shiela and her work, click here: Shiela Hale.

The photo was taken last week at the museum. Looking through the lens made me admire the assemblage even more.

"Nature Does Not Stand Still"

“Nature does not stand still.”
Claude Monet

True. Everything is opening, closing, blossoming, withering … being carried away in a beak or jaw. The wind twists the petals of sunstruck flowers, weaves and unweaves the grass in watery patterns. Creamy cumulus clouds comb themselves into mare’s tail wisps. The human eye darts here and there, hungrily taking in all the movement, marveling at the constant, rippling change.

As I walk on my road, I sample the variety of August perfumes shifting on the warm and humid breeze. Cut grass, sunlight on damp earth -- even, on occasion, the faint skunky scent of fox at the top of the hill. Every night before I give up for the day, I stand in front of the screen doors and sniff. I take a deep breath of night air, inhaling the loose and floating molecules of the world. I imagine the nocturnal creatures digging, soaring and scurrying. (Maybe later, reading in bed, I’ll hear them moving through the woods, cracking twigs and rustling leaves.) Sometimes I step outside one more time, to see if the moon is up, to check on the constellations silently inching across the darkness. My last downstairs act is to slide the glass doors shut. I like the finality of that rolling noise, followed by the emphatic click of the latch. I can still taste the swirling night.

The photographs were taken this afternoon at Silamar Farm in Millerton, NY. Click on images to enlarge.