Living in the woods, there is literally no limit to inspiration. It has rained more this spring than any year since we've been here...twenty of them. That's not a bad thing. Rain in the woods is so nourishing to the soul. Even the gray skies, heavy with the weight of water, seems to reflect the substance of everything. A person can feel the earth breathing when the rain bathes your skin. When you wipe the water from your eyes you can see the greens get brighter, notice that the birds sing louder, the trees dance and sway and all of a sudden you know your witnessing something that no human being can recreate. If I quiet my breath and soften my muscles I begin to feel the motion of the earth flying through time and space on it's journey to forever. Every sense is heightened and nothing is the same as it was a moment ago. And then I blink and look around and here I am again in my woods, wet and a little chilled, but still glad it's raining. I look around and notice that my hill is carpeted with mushrooms.
In fact, it was exactly a day like this that I started noticing how many different mushrooms grow in these woods. And being who I am, I started bringing some of each kind home and setting them in little spaces around my studio to dry. A person can collect an awful lot of mushrooms that way. But I knew they could make something stunning... some day. That day arrived a few weeks ago. I made a fungus sculpture from them. Really. Which brings me back to inspiration.
Everything is inspiring to someone. There's a rule at our place now, though: no more fungus in the house. Just because one of the specimens I liberated hosted a colony of tiny oval-shaped wormy-kind-of-things that seemed to show up in the oddest places. Like on a workbench among the milled African mahogany boards waiting to become a coffee table. Who knew those little critters could travel that far? Okay, so now I have an outdoor drying area. But those bugs were simply a reflection of inspiration and the urge to see what's around me in a new way. So the lesson? Fungus is inspiring to some of us and African mahogany to others.
Today I'm inspired by words. "...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou. I want to make people feel aroused by the colors of inspiration.
In fact, it was exactly a day like this that I started noticing how many different mushrooms grow in these woods. And being who I am, I started bringing some of each kind home and setting them in little spaces around my studio to dry. A person can collect an awful lot of mushrooms that way. But I knew they could make something stunning... some day. That day arrived a few weeks ago. I made a fungus sculpture from them. Really. Which brings me back to inspiration.
Everything is inspiring to someone. There's a rule at our place now, though: no more fungus in the house. Just because one of the specimens I liberated hosted a colony of tiny oval-shaped wormy-kind-of-things that seemed to show up in the oddest places. Like on a workbench among the milled African mahogany boards waiting to become a coffee table. Who knew those little critters could travel that far? Okay, so now I have an outdoor drying area. But those bugs were simply a reflection of inspiration and the urge to see what's around me in a new way. So the lesson? Fungus is inspiring to some of us and African mahogany to others.
Today I'm inspired by words. "...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou. I want to make people feel aroused by the colors of inspiration.