I am making a collection of vases inspired by trees. “A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it,” writes German forester, Peter Wohlleben in The Secret Life of Trees. I feel this way about my collection. The vases compliment one another. They look better together. I came across this image of the Adansonia grandidieri, an endangered species native to Madagascar and it reminded me of my vases. Trees, vases, people –– aren’t we all better together.

“Sculpture is like farming,” said artist, Ruth Asawa. “If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.” Asawa’s parents were farmers, who emigrated to rural California from Japan, hence the comparison. Asawa discovered the technique of weaving and looping wire while watching basket weavers on a service trip to Mexico in the late 40s. Today, her ethereal wire sculptures hang from ceilings, “like drawings in space” at major institutions all over the world. Asawa had six children, some of whom appear in the image below. If you have a few moments today, this vintage footage of Asawa sharing details of her process and vision is quite lovely. On an artist’s relationship with his/her material, she says, “rather than being concerned with your own design ideas and forcing something into it, what you do is you become background, just like a parent allows the child to express himself…”

There are few words sager than, “one day at a time.” It’s what a wise person said to me in March 2020 when the world turned on its head. I’ve been trying since then to take small bites out of life, only what I can digest, and not looking too far ahead. The weekend forecast? Too far. It’s early Autumn, and with the first few days of October came drizzling rain, orange leaves and cobweb covered hedges. The Halloween decorations are pissing me off, frankly. I find them unsightly and premature. Can’t we just embrace the smell of smoke and falling leaves and the sharpness in the air? Can’t we enjoy the month without feeling catapulted to its gruesome end? My kids on the other hand love the ghouls on our neighbour’s lawns. They love them for the same reason why we plant peonies in the Fall, or buy woolly socks in the height of summer. It gives us something to look forward to. And after 18 months of unpredictability, and countless cancelled plans, we all need to look forward, to whatever it is we are looking forward to. One day at a time.

I came across this beautiful piece of carved stone this morning, showing King Akhenaten offering an olive branch to Aton. Aton, an Ancient Egyptian sun god, was depicted as the radiant disk of the sun. Here, Aton’s sun rays are shown as hands reaching our to accept the fruit. It is currently at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin. “In this fragment only the beautifully carved left hand of Akhenaten remains, holding a heavily laden branch of olives that appears to be caressed by the hands of the sun’s rays. The entire scene would have shown the king standing directly beneath the sun disk, facing what appears to be the olive tree from which he may have cut the branch. The upper boughs of the tree are to the right along the lower edge of the block. The text in the upper right has been intentionally destroyed, leaving only a few traces of the hieroglyphs.”