These are photomicography–photographs from microscopes. I especially like the Differentiation of Unicellular Dictyostelium. Looks like penguins (or ducks?) ice skating. The photos speak for themselves. Enjoy.
Facilitating Creative Breakthroughs
These are photomicography–photographs from microscopes. I especially like the Differentiation of Unicellular Dictyostelium. Looks like penguins (or ducks?) ice skating. The photos speak for themselves. Enjoy.
A friend from Montana recently moved here to the Bay area. She’s having a time adjusting to the Bay area, of course, it’s so different from remote, spacious Montana. (After I moved to Montana, I understood more clearly what “Big Sky” country means. The mountains are so huge and dramatic, they make the sky look VERY big.) She now lives near the ocean in San Francisco, and the ocean has a very different energy. The mountains, she says, “made me feel secure and grounded. I felt safe living next to the mountains.” Here, she says, the ocean is wild and exuberant. She doesn’t feel so safe.
The natural terrain speaks to us through metaphor–WILD, EXUBERANT, GROUNDED, SECURE, BIG and so on, are all metaphoric qualities that we feel and understand through our natural world. The terrain has meaning and depth to it, beyond what we can see on the surface. The terrain of where we live is constantly “working” us on so many levels. Like my friend, the mountains in Montana also made me feel safe, but maybe I left Montana because I needed a different metaphoric energy to work through me. The Pacific ocean makes me feel the flow of life. It keeps me inspired and renewed.
In their book Art and Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland argue that art that deals with ideas is more interesting than art that deals with technique. I could not agree more! Ideas are not only what make art interesting, but ideas also give all of us a way to participate in art. We all have ideas, even if we’re not trained artists. In yesterday’s class, I gave the assignment of exploring the different ways in which we could explore the idea of “Art in Nature.”
Here are two different examples from the students.
The first photo is of fall leaves. The composition of the leaves together created art.
The second photo is a tapestry perched in a tree.
Very different, but both are examples of ART in Nature.
I asked the earth, I asked the sea and the deeps, among the living animals, the things that creep. I asked the winds that blow, I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and to all things that stand at the doors of my flesh…My question was the gaze I turned to them. Their answer was their beauty.