Tuesday, October 13, 2009

squash

I've been thinking, over the past week or so, about what to submit for this year's Art from the Heart show. (Because I always do things to deadline and not a day before...

...which isn't a choice, necessarily, but it is how I operate.)

The first year, I did three HUGE macro photos of mushrooms. They were the best that I could do, my camera, the forest.

But they didn't sell and I couldn't afford, the second year, to spend as much money on printing/framing.

So I changed my focus a bit and did what felt like a triptych. The images were scans that juxtaposed household objects with some natural counterpoint.

Pink ribbons and Manitoba Maple seeds.

A tiny ceramic crucible, face down, and half a stinkhorn egg.

And they sold, which doesn't mean anything except that I had proof that one person liked the images.

This year, I was a bit torn. I had a few scans I really liked, but nothing that felt balanced as a trio. I had a handful of good macro pics but I didn't want my images, as a group, to (only) shout: REALLY BIG MUSHROOMS.

Because not everyone grooves on mushrooms the way I do. (The silly fools...)

So I found three images, scans AND photos, that seemed to be on speaking terms. And I made M process them when he should have been renouncing anything work-like, because I'm like that.

And now I just have to get them mounted. Hopefully I'll have time to get them mounted in time for art drop-off day, but if not, I can always get M to do it again.

While I fret.

(Poor M!)

* * *

Oh! I almost forgot. This was one of the scans that didn't make it into the final three.

But I liked it enough to post it here, so...here's its provenance:

The squash is from the Roland Pumpkin Festival, which I attended every year with my dear friend Tessa when I was fancy-free. Now I go every year with M and Aa and always hope to spend some time rubbing shoulders with Tessa and her various initials.

The cufflinks are from M's infamous grandfather. That I never met. That I think I would have liked, most of the time, and thought was deranged the rest of the time. Which is only a feeling, based on meeting his sons and co-mingling genes with his grandson, but...

M's mum passed these to me, knowing my enjoyment of heavy frippery, with a lump in her throat.

And the ladybug carapace I found on my bedroom floor, the beetle having hidden somewhere on my person or on M as it tried to find somewhere warm for the winter.

2 comments:

Brenda Schmidt said...

Lovely!

You don't strike me as the fretting type.

Ariel Gordon said...

Not usually, no. But at 11 pm last year the night before they were due, when M got adhesive on the images and we were having difficulty getting it off, I was very DEFINITELY fretting.