The Last Day of July

Two Vases with Thermostat, 2017, Archival Digital Print

The end of July and ironically, the thermostat takes on more meaning given that it was 51 degrees this morning.  I don’t want to think about summer’s end this soon.  It has been too good, too full of new experiences, discoveries in the studio and in books.

With the last year’s darkening political landscape, each good moment here on the Homestead seems a gift, full of wonder and treasured as never before.

Late July Fog

The Studio in the Fog, 2017, Archival Digital Print

The pleasure of walking to the studio early and surprising the nesting birds in their early morning duties. I startled the Turkeys tending their brood across the road in the Pines.

Pebbles

Shadows and Pebbles, 2017, Archival Digital Print

Pebbles placed by chance moved around by the playing puppies,
picked up
treasures
tossed
carried for a while and then dropped again
they find their place in the random arrangement of the
inconsequential —
the chance touch of sun on a hot July day.

Play

Jump, 2017, Archival Digital Print

The exuberance of these puppies, now eleven months, is tonic.  No matter the state of the world, the frothing of our corrupted political system, the tangle our institutions are in, they see life as an open opportunity for curiosity, joy, and play.  Here Ned jumps off the plastic doghouse that came with the place.  Neither of them have wanted to go  into it, but as a mountain to climb it provides endless good fun.

Away, away

Here comes the sun, 2017, Archival Digital Print

The most unexpected benefit of living in the country is not only the calm that comes with it, but the refinement of sensibilities as a secondary benefit of the quiet and the oscillations of the Earth. Food tastes better, wine deeper, and creativity more natural, less forced and more cohesive. Losing my loft on 36th Street seemed like the most devastating experience I had ever had. To be forced to leave the one place I had felt was home, to pack up my studio and be taken out of my work, a cruel turning. In retrospect, it was moving me onto a profoundly better path.

How could I have known? I could not. We develop a kind of radical trust (not my term, but a good one) as artists driven by a vision. We develop this either by DNA or life experience. We step forward into it and, in spite of the fear, the loss, the sadness,  know we will grow, develop, continue to make things and return our gifts.