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<\/a>Day 1: Testing different surfaces and sizes\n<\/div>\n\nI decided to keep a journal<\/a> during the residency. Here is the first entry.\n<\/p>\n \nDec. 8<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n \nI arrived during the week of the first winter frost, driving north through a soft afternoon sunset. Layers of blue, peach, white and gray, distant flocks of birds making black specks in the sky. My first inspiration. The next morning, ice remained half-crystallized in puddles along the creek trail, but the fallen leaves were dry and crisp. I am on a mission. I focus on the ground, wandering off the paved trail, into the woodland paths leading down to the creek. I am always drawn to water. Here though, I am captured by the mud, by the layers of leaves and moss, serrated edges, skeletons of veins, variation and repetition, seeds, stones and grasses.\n<\/p>\n \nI pick up leaves. I pick up perfect leaves, misshapen leaves, an assortment of sizes and colors. I walk slowly. There is so much to see, and no reason to hurry. I am delighted to discover seeds: wispy cottony white; spiky brown clusters with the surprise of new green growth just emerging from inside; red berries a bright shock against pearly gray branches; white berries like dewdrops in a thicket of tan stalks. I find downy duck feathers. This is enough for the day.\n<\/p>\n \nLater it snows. The world is beautifully silent. I am still looking at leaves on the ground. Autumn reds and golds are buried under a transparent white cloud. I am here at a turning point, between seasons.\n<\/p>\n \nI sorted my leaves and pressed them flat to dry. I worked on my winter afternoon sky. I have been thinking about why I find such beauty and joy in nature. The endless change, every moment perfection, a million tiny impulses adding up to fallen leaves curling together, duck feathers with dots and stripes, pine cones with a hundred spiraling shingles. Why am I so attracted by this natural order?\n<\/p>\n \nWorking on another project, I recently discovered that the grapefruit was known early in its history as the Forbidden Fruit, named by a reverend searching for the origin of the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. The scientific study of nature was seen as a way to grow closer to understanding God. Closer to finding meaning in the physicality of our world.\n<\/p>\n \nWhy is it like this?\n<\/p>\n \nBecause this is the best way it has found to survive. To thrive.\n<\/p>\n \nFantastically intricate, unique structures stand as evidence of optimal forms for specific conditions. Studying the form points back to the conditions that made it grow.\n<\/p>\n \nIs my delight in the imperfect a way of honoring the ways that we grow?\n<\/p>\n<\/a>
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