WHAT HAPPENED?

What happened was that we packed our bags into a little red car

that we rented from a place called enterprise

and the little red car went south, south past Portland and

down to the sea. Pretty enterprising.

We paused in Newport, but it wasn’t really Newport, it was down a rutted road where

elk browsed unphased by our open mouths and clicking shutters.

The rutted road was back behind everything,

by a slough wet with rain.

After a few days we traveled on, gathering sights and sounds and smells and

the air of places we’d never seen: Cape Perpetua,

Yaquina Head,

Humbug Mountain.

Gold Beach, Beverley Beach, Hiouichi. Stout Grove and

Prairie Creek (now we are in California).

Arcata. Eureka, Ferndale.

Ferndale, the slow, friendly, easy little town we came to love.

Then Willow Creek, Hawkins Bar, and Burnt Ranch as we headed east into the mountains.

Yes, it’s a litany, and there’s more:

Weaverville, Helena. Horse Mountain, Red Crest.

Myers Flat, Briceland, Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove, the place of crashing surf, black sand,

and triumphant hikers emerging from lost days on the Lost Coast.

When it was time to head north again there was Bald Hills, Patrick Creek, and Cave Junction.

We’re back in Oregon now: Corvalis, Portland. Then Washington, a blur of highway,

and home. Home to fat inboxes, piles of snail mail, and thousands of pictures

to take us back

and carry us

onward.

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The photos (and there will be more!):

  1. The muddy, pot-holed, hairpin-turned, steep and long road to our airbnb on a slough outside Newport, Oregon. A road that held wonders, once you could relax your grip on the steering wheel.
  2. A forest of Port Orford cedar trees on Hunter Creek Road outside Gold beach, Oregon, where fellow blogger Gunta of Movin’ On lives.
  3. This tiny tree frog makes a big noise, but not when he’s in hand; at our Ferndale, California aribnb.
  4. Lovely, spring-blooming Bleeding hearts (Dicentra formosa) along a quiet back road outside Newport, OR.
  5. Looking up into the Redwood trees at Redwood National Forest, California.
  6. The tide’s coming in at Shelter Cove, on California’s Lost Coast. One road in, one road out, and be ready for 45 minutes of winding, steep, rough road.
  7. A local combing the beach, for what, I don’t know. Beverley Beach, Oregon.
  8. At Myers Beach in southern Oregon, a sea stack and the distant headlands are reflected in the shimmering water of low tide.
  9. The black sand at Shelter Cove is mostly smooth black pebbles streaked with white.
  10. A sea squall rushes towards land at Cape Perpetua, Oregon. It got very cold, very fast that morning.
  11. A hiker rests and takes in the view at Shelter Cove. It’s the end of a three-day backpacking trip up California’s Lost Coast for this admirable man.
  12. Shelter Cove residents erected this sign to warn tourists like us about the dangers of their beach. We were careful!
  13. An old, rusted cleat on a pier in Newport, Oregon, with the town’s iconic 1930’s bridge in the background.
  14. California sea lions try to get shut-eye on platforms built just for them on the Newport waterfront. Tourists can stroll out onto a short pier and watch all day.
  15. One of Ferndale’s many pristine Victorian buildings.
  16. Our little red rental car at Myers Beach, on the southern coast of Oregon.
  17. Alder trees and ferns line a section of the road to our Newport airbnb.
  18. The uncommon Brook wakerobin, a diminutive trillium relative, found in southwestern Oregon and northwestern California.
  19. Redwood trees dwarf the cars on the Avenue of the Giants, in northern California.

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REPEAT, and repeat…

Patterns. There’s something very reassuring about them. Whether a consistently repeating sequence of shapes, a loose gathering of similar elements or something in between, a pattern gets our attention. Patterns resonate deeply, maybe because their structure echoes the repeating sequences our brains depend on to configure perceptions and memories.

From well before birth we’re bathed in the regularity of our mother’s heartbeat, priming the pump for countless patterns we will perceive during our lives. As random as the world seems at times, patterns are woven throughout our experience, and like other beings on this planet, we depend on our ability to recognize them. Where would we be without pattern recognition, without rhythm and music and mathematical sequences, without that knack for making sense out of repetition?

Today, I’m interested in visual patterns, and there are thousands of them in my files. Here’s a smattering.

 

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The Photos:

  1. The skylight at the Museum of Northwest Art, a small museum in a small northwestern town a little over an hour north of Seattle. The formerly commercial space was re-purposed by a local architecture firm in the 90’s, and features cedar and hemlock paneling, a spiral staircase, and the skylight, which allows extra light into the gallery space.
  2. There’s something satisfying about window blinds – is it just the pattern? I don’t think so, I think it has to do with our relationship to windows themselves. For this photo I used an in-camera effect to heighten the contrast.
  3. At Seattle’s Japanese Garden the landscapers take pains to do things the Japanese way, lashing bamboo for fences in the traditional style. This one was done recently; it needs time to weather and blend with the landscape.
  4. Seattle’s King Street Station clock tower reminds us that patterns aren’t only found in repeating motifs like the columns on the facade, but are also recognizable gestalts, like the clock. Built in the early 1900’s, this was once the main train station for Seattle but, like train travel, the building has gone through changes over the years. A renovation was completed in 2013 – I should go insde and take a look.
  5. Deception Pass Bridge, which connects Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands, is about an hour and a half north of Seattle. Built high above the turbulent waters of Deception Pass in the 1930’s, the bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s about 180 feet above the water, and trails allow you to walk directly underneath, where this photo was taken.
  6. Patterns in carpets are an old tradition. This is a wool kilim-style rug from somewhere in the Middle east. Originally, most of the patterns woven into these rugs had particular meanings but now, I suspect the primary meaning is, “I hope the tourists like this one.”
  7. Seen in a Seattle alley, a pattern of bricks contrasts with random markings on a wall.
  8. The sandstone’s pattern evolved from millions of years of shifting sand dunes, at Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.
  9. This perfectly posed (poised, too!) lizard lives at a delightful roadside zoo. His wonderful skin is all pattern, in both texture and coloration. The Reptile Zoo is found along U.S. Rt. 2, as you head up into the Cascade Mountains from Seattle.
  10. Veins of fallen leaves and the mushrooms’ striate caps repeat their patterns with slight variations, giving us important clues. What would we do without these tools? How would we know what we were looking at if there were no repeating patterns?
  11. Cascade Oregon-grape (Mahonia nervosa) displays a rhythmic repetition reminiscent of Bach’s music, maybe a Cello Suite. Here’s an article about experiencing repetition in music.
  12. Picking up shells on the beach elicits a pattern if one kind of shell is favored. This little collection is from the U.S. east coast. I placed them (in a pattern!) on a page in a blank book, and photographed it: an instant book of shells. Often called jingle shells, or mermaids’ toenails, these shells can be found from Canada to Brazil, or so I read. In fact, there are many different species of jingle shells and apparently they’re found in Europe, China and New Zealand, but not on America’s west coast. Next week I’ll be on the coast of Oregon; maybe I’ll find other goodies there.
  13. Frank Gehry’s architectural riff on a smashed Stratocaster guitar takes your breath away the first time you see it. Seattle’s renamed Museum of Pop Culture (it used to be called the Experience Music Project) contains oodles of memorabilia about native son Jimi Hendrix. The free-form sheet metal style Gehry favors builds on repeating shapes, though they aren’t as obvious as the rectangles we’re used to. On a sunny day, the undulating, shiny curved walls reflect off each other, multiplying color and shape in a photographer’s dream.
  14. Skunk cabbage is in bloom now in many wet spots across the U.S. The eastern and western species are different, but they share an unpleasant odor and basic form. I think the spadix (the central spike carrying the tiny flowers) may be arranged in a Fibonacci Sequence, like pine cones, but I’m not sure.
  15. At a botanical garden, netting is used to protect plants from hungry rabbits and deer. When it rains, what a pretty sight!

 

 

Invitation

Last year color curled up tight, rolled itself into a ball and hid like a bear in winter. Emerging tentatively

now it spritzes the air with a stippling of pale mint green on charcoal gray branches,

blushes the twigs of dogwood blood red, or gold,

washes the magnolia tree’s petals faintly, with rose and cream

and softens the horizon with a thousand filmy greens

as the swollen buds of birch, alder and maple rejoice.

Color paints the tips of tiny moss leaves gold, and in the wetlands

shines see-through light on brave grass sprouts,

fixes a silky shimmer on the fur of willow catkins,

lights the sky with a delicate shade of lavender blue,

and invites reverie. Color returns, indifferent to all our small sufferings

ignorant of our diseases and wars, just the season’s dependable procession

for now.

 

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The photos:

  1. Magnolia flower; Rhododendron Species Garden, Federal Way, Washington.
  2. Magnolia petals on the ground; Bellevue Botanical Garden, Bellevue, Washington.
  3. Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis) buds and foliage; Bellevue Botanical Garden.
  4. Moss spore capsules; Bellevue Botanical Garden.
  5. Moss-covered rocks border a stream at the Seattle Japanese Garden, Seattle, Washington.
  6. A yellow variety of Red twig dogwood ( Cornus sericea); Juanita Bay Park, Kirkland, Washington.
  7. Native shrubs and trees in early April on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, Duvall, Washington.
  8. More trees and shrubs, including willows, on the trail in Duvall.
  9. New leaves of Red huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium); O.O. Denny Park, Kirkland.
  10. Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), another Pacific northwest native; Juanita Bay Park.
  11. Flowering tree and cloud reflections in a stream at Bellevue Botanical Garden.
  12. Forget-me-nots (Myosotis arvensis) at Rhododendron Species Garden.
  13. A pair of Douglas fir cones nestled in moss at Rhododendron Species Garden.
  14. The woods are greening at home too. The moss glows like neon on the branches, but the Big Leaf maple (the gray-barked, spreading-limbed tree) hasn’t unfurled its leaves yet; Kirkland.
  15. Red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) and Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis) intermingle at Juanita Bay Park.
  16. An old willow begins to leaf out, and bright green Licorice fern adorns its branches at Juanita Bay Park.
  17. An insect pauses on a Magnolia bud at Seattle Japanese Garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CURVES

Here’s an idea to consider: there may be a recurring motif in your photography and/or your artwork that you haven’t discovered. Maybe a particular shape, line, gesture, tone or quality shows up, again and again. Maybe it’s even echoed in your body, in the way you move.  I’ve noticed that I return to a certain shape over and over again. It’s a curve, a curl, a rounding of line. Almost a circle but not quite, it’s more like an open sweep. Here it is, in photographs I made of grasses in the water and bursting fireweed seed pods.

 

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Word derivation tells us the word curve arose in late Middle English, from Latin curvare ‘to bend,’ and curvus ‘bent.’  Bending has interesting associations: bending the will, supplicating, the bend in the road….but a curve is a little different. Still, I can see the association between bending and curving clearly here:

 

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Here are the curves I’m drawn to again, this time in water. I think curves express water’s essence; formless on its own, water finds curves when other forces or elements act on it.

 

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This recurring curve lives inside my body and mind (which of course aren’t separate, though we insist on separating them). I picture it beginning tentatively, then building: a swoop, a swirl of the arm, maybe a twirl of the body….then I see a spiral floating expansively in the air. The curving gesture may be small and compact, perhaps repeating like arcs made by knitting needles, or the tight twists of a vine, sprung upon it’s own stem.

 

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On a straight path you’ll find me deviating in small, curved side shoots, ever mindful of what is appearing on the periphery. Another way the curve inhabits me.

 

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The curves in a twining house plant I had caught my eye, so I painted the leaf and stem, then photographed the plant and drawing curving together. A pine cone’s perfection of curved stem and spiraling sphere – such elegant curves – prompted me to make an ink drawing years ago, when I studied botanical drawing. Especially if I draw, the curve keeps appearing, rolling up to the surface of consciousness through the interstices of my neurons, neurons that curve in a tangled, unknowable dance.

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The curve I gravitate towards is something I see in the built environment, too. Of course, I’m not the only one responding with joy to curves, as you can see in the Richard Serra sculpture below.

 

 

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The curve has been with me for a long time, and it comes and goes, or maybe my awareness is what ebbs and flows.

 

 

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There’s something comforting about the idea of a motif recurring in my work, something to hang one’s hat on and organize around, perhaps. Not a bad thing is these complicated times.

 

Notes on the photos:

The first is of grasses and reeds in the Sammamish River, not far from home, January 2016.

The fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) seed pods were photographed in a local park in August, 2016.

The Checkered lily (Fritillaria meleagris) was photographed at the Center for Urban Horticulture, April, 2014.

The swirling water photograph was taken at a fountain in Bremerton, Washington, in 2012.

The wave photo was taken at Youngs Creek, outside of Sultan, Washington, September, 2014, at f22, 1/3 second.

The vining stem of a Manroot plant (Marah fabaceus) was photographed in Duvall, Washington, May 2014.

The curving path is at Wright Park in Tacoma, Washington. Photographed last November.

The watercolor and ink drawing were made in the 1990’s.

The curved roof is at the Chinese Scholar’s Garden at the Staten Island Botanical Garden, New York City, photographed in 2011.

The Richard Serra sculpture is at LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It’s made of weathering steel and is titled “Band.”  It’s huge (12 feet high), and some consider it to be Serra’s magnum opus. In an interesting review, writer Guy Zimmerman said, “Standing in the Eastern gallery with Band you have the feeling that there is no valid reason to be anywhere else.”  I concur. My take on the sculpture can be seen here.  Photographed in 2016.

The curly, dried grass was photographed at Umtanum Creek, near Ellensberg, Washington, June, 2014.

The carp were photographed last year at Wright Conservatory, Tacoma, Washington.

The beached log was photographed at beautiful Rialto Beach, Washington, on a misty October afternoon in 2013. More photographs from that day are here.