elegant windlass at each pair of posts, framing a gateway The only sounds punctuating my bike ride to the coast along the quiet, eight mile stretch of Valley Ford-Franklin School Road were the sweet song of the meadowlark perched on fence posts and the eerily creaking eucalyptus in the wind. As I climbed the long […]
Tag Archives: aesthetics
Making Hay
The road from Valley Ford to Two Rock is flanked by furrowed fields of freshly mowed hay, ready for baling. Pretty soon the barns will be stocked to the rafters with sweet hay, elucidating their proportional relationship to the fields they occupy. Craftwork begins with the localization of supply and demand; contentment begins with their […]
The Week in Bloom
Red Hot Poker (Kniphofia uvaria) brightens roadside culverts Clusters of California poppy, red hot poker and wild pea brightened roadside culverts and hay barns as we cycled the Bodega Highway to the coast through a light morning fog. The lupin grow yellow around the contours of Bodega Head, a rocky bluff that juts out into […]
Missing Stories
Sometimes I think of Art as involving missing stories, requiring more work to assemble a narrative in lieu of functionality (the domain of handicraft). I was thinking about these ‘missing stories’ as I swept around a handmade steamer trunk we found years ago at a garage sale in Oakland. Obviously a production of necessity, the […]
Trivium
Allegory of the Seven Liberal Arts, Marten de Vos, 1590, oil on oak panel I am one of those with the affliction of getting words and songs stuck in my head, sometimes for days or weeks and longer on end. I had the song Midnight at the Oasis repeating in my head during most of […]
Lovability
However mean their origin, some things achieve lovability at the height of their decline.
Steady Hand of Chaos
There are rare times when I find myself aware of what I am doing or making as though I am watching myself and all else momentarily recedes. It is in this state that I am most attuned to the graceful and Steady Hand of Chaos.