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.