Mostly Pictures

Occasionally, the Poppet Who Lives On My Desk wants to
get out.
So, we took it out.We found some kids along the way,
who had teeth in various stages of
coming in and going out. These kids are from Palm Springs, which is a riot of gardens this time of year.
It can be easy to forget, among the flowers and palms and swimming pools, that we live in a desert.
And that a desert is a harsh place of brightest brights and darkest darks.
We don't forget.

Crows won't let us.
Still, it seemed a good idea to go out where landscaping and cell phone service don't reach.
To get a bit of the natural desert.

Past the fields of big white flowers that spin.


And even past the dinosaurs. Those sneaky dinosaurs.

So now they were three amigos, explorers, braving sudden winds and dust devils.

Desert flora that offers little shade and hides little bitey and stingy things.


Past strange beardy men in weird hats and icy cold rapids.

And unexpected spots of low gravity.
Whole palettes of grays.
And horizons that want to show up in art.


We returned in the afternoon to vibrant color and warmer temperatures. Still wanting to be outside, we explored our own yard. We discovered an astonishingly beautiful and sculptural old tree disguised as an ancient and imposing old shrub. Once I started trimming, I didn't stop until the light was nearly gone. I've been working on it for a week since, about thirty minutes a day. That tree wanted to come out.
Clearing the growth was a bit like fast bonsai, like slow sculpting, and like being on a treasure hunt.
Inside the tree disguised as a shrub for some thirty or so years, there were things hidden. A sea shell, a very rusted but not broken light bulb, half of a bamboo flute, about a dozen sleepy beetles and the best of all, a very well-preserved rodent skeleton that also wants to show up in art.
I found a niche for this little garden fairy. I sculpted it a long time ago in the Big Blue House in Georgia, sometime before I started The Dark Caravan and after my very first art show exhibit, which was at a Dragon Con, in 1991. Probably about the same time the rat found itself in a great deal of trouble in the tree that was already hidden inside a shrub.


I got some frames just because they were square. I like squares. . I didn't know what I'd do with them exactly. I sometimes find things like that and put them away, knowing that they belong to the work, but not knowing exactly how. I find authors and artists like that too. People I connect with and want to find the right project for. Sometimes it takes years for the project to make itself known. This would be a strain on my patience, if I didn't do other things in between. But I do. Because there are so many objects and people and ideas milling around, and there's always art wanting to be made.




g'night